"The dumbing down of Joe SixPack over the last 70 years is nothing short of amazing."
Lately I've been heard to rant about how having a 3rd generation that grew up away from the farm has largely killed common sense and ordinary knowledge of how the real world works... in plainer speech, it's led to a glut of stupid people. (Frex, I've met two people here in Los Angeles who did not grok that beef comes from cows. I shit you not.) This is very much in line with a generation that doesn't understand what a deer rifle IS.
Back toward the nominal Topic: M$ has been trying to get in bed with the media people, and between that and Treach^H^H^H^H Trusted Computing, it's not surprising that Vista will have obligatory artificial scarcity (ie. enforces region coding). But given the "oh well, just buy something else" mentality of the average yuppie, I doubt this will result in the slashdot fantasy of a wholesale migration to linux. Rather, it'll cause a big upsurge in the sale of cheap standalone DVD players, because that has become the typical current generation's solution to any obstacle.
Whereas I (and you too, I think:) would say "fuck this shit" and do without.
That's an interesting thought, actually. Not that some of the geek set will vanish, but rather, to what degree will their defection into a non-TC'd system (and subsequently into prison, when using a non-TC'd system is outlawed) disrupt the remaining TC'd internet?
Will it be sufficiently griefful (new word, made up to go with your numbers:) that TPTB's pain will cause a swing back toward a non-damaged internet and security system?
I was wondering about that... whether this was meant not to fit into a world of newer hardware, but rather into a world of Treach^H^H^H^H Trusted Computing...
Wonderful tagline. Hope you don't mind if I steal and quote it liberally, most especially to anyone who doesn't get the concept.:)
Well, maybe I'm just lucky:) or haven't ever done what's needed to run into the issue; I don't have any non-PC playback equipment. However friends use their burned disks with various standalone players and haven't complained of anything amiss. Tho I know some players are very fussy, while others will play any piece of crap.
If you've got a link to documentation of the problem, I'd be interested in seeing it.
Hmmmm... so you're on some species of *NIX? Still wonder if it could be a glitch in your burning software? as you're the only such case I've heard of, and not only myself but also all my clients use LiteOn drives, w/o any problems.
Or maybe it's something in the LiteOn firmware that's not completely compatible with your setup?
Very often the "obvious culprit" isn't really at fault, or is not the whole story... frex the "47 day rollover bug" in Win9x: It does *not* affect ALL Win9x systems (at least three of mine are not affected, and I've heard of others); at this point I'm pretty sure this bug requires a matching system timer (hardware) bug to manifest. Might be you're running into something like that.
I don't do any special-format burning, so can't speak to that, tho do have to wonder how much of what you mention is the drive, and how much the burning software? I know there were compatibility issues with video disks written by some versions of Roxio.
As to data disks (written with plain old Nero, which I detest but use because it writes no coasters) my LiteOns have been 100% reliable, and two of 'em have done a number of marathon burn sessions. And I've never seen one of their drives die (unlike Yamahas, where all 20 that I've been able to track died early deaths, and wrote disks that died early as well).
Oh well, goes to show not all hardware likes everyone:)
A couple years ago I planted petunias. They looked like normal petunias in normal colours, albeit in more variety than I remembered seeing as a kid. In the normal course of events they bloomed copiously and produced plenty of seeds; second and third generation volunteers are now all over my garden. These offspring produce flowers in all sorts of weird colours I'd never seen before (including blotched and spotted), and some of the flowers are *wrinkled*, like crumpled newspaper. Not only that, but some specimens are freeze-resistant (petunias are a perennial, but normally quite freeze-sensitive and easily killed by cold).
So I went looking for info on the weird colours, and learned that the new colours now seen in commercial petunias were created by adding a gene from, of all things, corn!! Apparently with a few more side effects than merely adding new colours to the petunia gene pool. Of course most people replace them every year so never see what happens when they're allowed to reproduce at random.
Hmmm.... well, okay, we'll grant you ownership of the patent. But this also means you're taking responsibility for all these arsonists who've misused your invention....;)
your idea makes sense so there's not much chance of convincing legislators
to make it into law...;-)
I'm sure we can think up a few nonsense (and unenforcible:) provisions to make it more attractive to legislators....
Adding provisions, of course, for stuff like inheritance. Should the inventor die within a reasonable time of the
invention, his/her heir(s) should be considered "first owners".
Say, within the normal span for patent protection -- what is that now, 17 to 20 years? -- if the original inventor dies, then yes, it should go to his heirs as "first owners". Makes good sense.
The obvious loophole there is that your heirs might murder you for your patents [g] but the risk is no greater than being murdered for your bank account, so we'll consider this negligible and adequately covered by existing criminal law.
Even then I can think of a couple of loopholes
here...
[consults synonymy, discovers that "law" and "loophole" are considered equivalent]
The obvious one is when a patent is corporate owned and the corporation is dissolved (ie. "dies"), what becomes of its patents? Because if another company can be the "heir" that could lead to a thriving business in deliberately shortlived companies. But if only "natural heirs" can be grandfathered as "first owners", then there's no profit in "inheriting" patents from a dead company. So -- how about this: if you buy a company OR a dissolved company's assets, you become the second owner, and while you can profit from the patent, you can't resell it (since 3rd owners have no right of patent protection under my scheme).
Notice that this also attacks the "corporation as personhood" nonsense:)
I wonder if it's also partly because repeating parts of previous exchanges tends to confuse the listener to where they're not sure if the answer they intend is YES or NO, and is likely to make the wrong answer, or have to correct themselves, which makes them look unsure or unreliable in the eyes of the judge and jury. So savvy shysters would cultivate the speech pattern.
It's somewhat akin to "Have you quit beating your wife??"
True enough. So how to close this loophole? In most cases, first and second owners will be actual inventors and manufacturies of one sort or another, and after that the patent would have no value anyway. So the loophole probably won't matter in most cases.
Also, perhaps if patent ownership were restricted to 1) the inventor themselves, and 2) companies producing tangible physical products that actually utilize the patent in question? Which might also get rid of a lot of this "software patents" and "business methods" nonsense.
Occurs to me that one solution to the "buy patents, sue everyone" business model would be to make patents protect only the original inventor, and for non-independent inventors, the company said inventor was working for at the time, and only the FIRST buyer thereafter.
Under such a system, patents could only be sold ONCE. After that, the idea would fall into the public domain. That way inventors and companies could make a reasonable return on their innovations, but there'd be no incentive to buy up "used" patents, as they'd have no value.
This might have a further effect in that it would no longer be profitable to buy another company SOLELY to acquire their intellectual property assets, since as of the 2nd sale, they'd no longer have any protected value. This would probably incline the market toward more smallish companies that competed more directly, and a great many more small-scale patent-licensing deals among related companies, which ought to ultimately be all to the good (smaller companies generally being more customer-centric, and less beholden to stockholders).
And it would cut the lawyers, who had nothing to do with the invention itself, out of the profit chain.
Oh yeah... I'm gonna patent this as my business model.;)
Yep, if you have the right kind of earplugs, they do help. But I can't wear earplugs for very long -- gives me pressure-clogged ears I can't easily get rid of, and then I can barely hear at all!
So I use little wads of dead sheep, er, I mean sheepskin (when one gets lost, I just pull another little chunk off the edge of the dead sheep that does duty as a seat cover -- the hide gets friable after too many years in the sun). In my truck the main problem is tire rumble, coupled with white noise from the windows. The bit of dead sheep, wool side into the ear for comfort/sound baffle and skin side out as a reflector, works quite well: It seems fairly specific for both the main culprits, as I can still hear what I need to -- at least with highspeed traffic where the audible cues are seldom subtle, and are usually of less value than visuals.
In slow traffic I find I'm a lot more dependent on the small sound cues, so don't use 'em, but at low speeds road and wind noise aren't much of a problem anyway.
16x DVD is 48x CD. As I recall, CD media starts turning to shrapnel at speeds over 56x, so that is the practical max -- ie. 18.3x for DVD, if there could be such a speed.
And yep, if I had to choose, I'd rather have a slower unit that does it right, and isn't beholden to some special interest.
(As it is, I just bought a LiteOn DVD DL writer, mainly cuz I have 6 LiteOn CDRW and DVD-ROM units that have been 100% reliable in heavy use.)
From what I've read, rebadged LiteOn CDRWs are not as good as own-name LiteOns -- supposed to be something to do with the firmware. Dunno about here, but with other rebadged components, that often means the chips themselves are seconds.
Myself, I have a bunch of own-name LiteOn CDRWs and DVD-ROMs in heavy use with zero problems (I've yet to see one fail). I just got an own-name LiteOn DVD writer, hopefully it'll be the workhorse its older kin have been.
I have a similar problem in that when two or more people are talking, especially against background noise, I can hear them but I can't distinguish words (unless I cup my ears, then I hear perfectly again, so it's primarily volume-deafness). The cause is partly living with household fans going all the time (hot climate) and partly road noise from driving a truck (worse, with no A/C so the windows are usually open).
As to earbuds, headphones, and the like -- the concentrated noise is NOT the total culprit. Pressure against or near the ear can cause the area to go numb, and I've noticed when that happens, that ear ALSO loses hearing (sometimes entirely) until sensation is restored. In fact, back in the 1960s, a similar problem was documented as a distinct cause of hearing loss in people who wore earmuffs -- apparently the persistent pressure (even if subtle) against the ear causes cumulative nerve damage.
Yep, you're right about FTP (tho some browsers do it better'n others!) but it's not THOUGHT of as a "filesharing" app by anyone but purists.
Ditto for the whole damn internet, cuz as you say, by definition it's a filesharing network!
So let's get rid of all those evil P2P apps, and get back to basics... oh, say, gopher and BBSs:)
And while you're suing M$ for enabling this filesharing internet thingee, don't forget to sue Cisco, everyone who makes modem and NIC chips, serial and network cables, and oh yes, the phone company for wiring us all with "filesharing copper" in the first place! Tsk tsk, what were they thinking?!
Interesting, and goes along with how the only bands I've bought music from in recent years are those who first gave away copies as MP3s. (How else am I going to hear 'em without decent radio?)
Side thought: If *every* browser had a filesharing extension, wouldn't that make ALL browser users equally "guilty of theft" by the RIAA's lights?? I foresee interesting legal tangles.:D
"It's a matter of an inequity of resources. A corporation typically has enormous financial, and legal resources compared to an individual."
Okay... so how about limiting both parties to the same resources? if one can only afford $NN for a lawwer, the other side is constrained to spend only $NN for their lawyer. Would be hard to enforce to the penny, but should be doable to the near hundreds of dollars, which in most cases would be sufficient for something near a balance of resources. (I don't know how it'd deal with corporate attorneys on retainer, but surely someone can think up a way.)
Yes, and changing many, many microclimates is liable to cause some small climate shifts across neighbouring areas. But none of this has any impact on the sun's highly variable output, nor on the total energy being absorbed by the planet. The sun's efforts at global warming put humanity's to shame.:)
I don't know how it works with cars, but with real estate, typically you do indeed own it -- the mortgage is actually payments on the bank's lien against your property, NOT payments on the property itself (that's paid in full up front, with money you were lent by the bank).
And since you are therefore named on the deed, guess who gets to pay the property tax!!
Slashdot Mirror
"The dumbing down of Joe SixPack over the last 70 years is nothing short of amazing."
:) would say "fuck this shit" and do without.
Lately I've been heard to rant about how having a 3rd generation that grew up away from the farm has largely killed common sense and ordinary knowledge of how the real world works... in plainer speech, it's led to a glut of stupid people. (Frex, I've met two people here in Los Angeles who did not grok that beef comes from cows. I shit you not.) This is very much in line with a generation that doesn't understand what a deer rifle IS.
Back toward the nominal Topic: M$ has been trying to get in bed with the media people, and between that and Treach^H^H^H^H Trusted Computing, it's not surprising that Vista will have obligatory artificial scarcity (ie. enforces region coding). But given the "oh well, just buy something else" mentality of the average yuppie, I doubt this will result in the slashdot fantasy of a wholesale migration to linux. Rather, it'll cause a big upsurge in the sale of cheap standalone DVD players, because that has become the typical current generation's solution to any obstacle.
Whereas I (and you too, I think
That's an interesting thought, actually. Not that some of the geek set will vanish, but rather, to what degree will their defection into a non-TC'd system (and subsequently into prison, when using a non-TC'd system is outlawed) disrupt the remaining TC'd internet?
:) that TPTB's pain will cause a swing back toward a non-damaged internet and security system?
Will it be sufficiently griefful (new word, made up to go with your numbers
I was wondering about that... whether this was meant not to fit into a world of newer hardware, but rather into a world of Treach^H^H^H^H Trusted Computing...
:)
Wonderful tagline. Hope you don't mind if I steal and quote it liberally, most especially to anyone who doesn't get the concept.
Well, maybe I'm just lucky :) or haven't ever done what's needed to run into the issue; I don't have any non-PC playback equipment. However friends use their burned disks with various standalone players and haven't complained of anything amiss. Tho I know some players are very fussy, while others will play any piece of crap.
If you've got a link to documentation of the problem, I'd be interested in seeing it.
Hmmmm... so you're on some species of *NIX?
Still wonder if it could be a glitch in your burning software? as you're the only such case I've heard of, and not only myself but also all my clients use LiteOn drives, w/o any problems.
Or maybe it's something in the LiteOn firmware that's not completely compatible with your setup?
Very often the "obvious culprit" isn't really at fault, or is not the whole story... frex the "47 day rollover bug" in Win9x: It does *not* affect ALL Win9x systems (at least three of mine are not affected, and I've heard of others); at this point I'm pretty sure this bug requires a matching system timer (hardware) bug to manifest. Might be you're running into something like that.
I don't do any special-format burning, so can't speak to that, tho do have to wonder how much of what you mention is the drive, and how much the burning software? I know there were compatibility issues with video disks written by some versions of Roxio.
:)
As to data disks (written with plain old Nero, which I detest but use because it writes no coasters) my LiteOns have been 100% reliable, and two of 'em have done a number of marathon burn sessions. And I've never seen one of their drives die (unlike Yamahas, where all 20 that I've been able to track died early deaths, and wrote disks that died early as well).
Oh well, goes to show not all hardware likes everyone
A couple years ago I planted petunias. They looked like normal petunias in normal colours, albeit in more variety than I remembered seeing as a kid. In the normal course of events they bloomed copiously and produced plenty of seeds; second and third generation volunteers are now all over my garden. These offspring produce flowers in all sorts of weird colours I'd never seen before (including blotched and spotted), and some of the flowers are *wrinkled*, like crumpled newspaper. Not only that, but some specimens are freeze-resistant (petunias are a perennial, but normally quite freeze-sensitive and easily killed by cold).
So I went looking for info on the weird colours, and learned that the new colours now seen in commercial petunias were created by adding a gene from, of all things, corn!! Apparently with a few more side effects than merely adding new colours to the petunia gene pool. Of course most people replace them every year so never see what happens when they're allowed to reproduce at random.
[eyeing globe] Damn, you're right! Why can't America be 12 hours ahead for a change?? ;)
Hmmm.... well, okay, we'll grant you ownership of the patent. But this also means you're taking responsibility for all these arsonists who've misused your invention.... ;)
I'm sure we can think up a few nonsense (and unenforcible :) provisions to make it more attractive to legislators....
Adding provisions, of course, for stuff like inheritance. Should the inventor die within a reasonable time of the invention, his/her heir(s) should be considered "first owners".
Say, within the normal span for patent protection -- what is that now, 17 to 20 years? -- if the original inventor dies, then yes, it should go to his heirs as "first owners". Makes good sense.
The obvious loophole there is that your heirs might murder you for your patents [g] but the risk is no greater than being murdered for your bank account, so we'll consider this negligible and adequately covered by existing criminal law.
Even then I can think of a couple of loopholes here...
[consults synonymy, discovers that "law" and "loophole" are considered equivalent]
The obvious one is when a patent is corporate owned and the corporation is dissolved (ie. "dies"), what becomes of its patents? Because if another company can be the "heir" that could lead to a thriving business in deliberately shortlived companies. But if only "natural heirs" can be grandfathered as "first owners", then there's no profit in "inheriting" patents from a dead company. So -- how about this: if you buy a company OR a dissolved company's assets, you become the second owner, and while you can profit from the patent, you can't resell it (since 3rd owners have no right of patent protection under my scheme).
Notice that this also attacks the "corporation as personhood" nonsense :)
I wonder if it's also partly because repeating parts of previous exchanges tends to confuse the listener to where they're not sure if the answer they intend is YES or NO, and is likely to make the wrong answer, or have to correct themselves, which makes them look unsure or unreliable in the eyes of the judge and jury. So savvy shysters would cultivate the speech pattern.
:)
It's somewhat akin to "Have you quit beating your wife??"
(Correct answer: "Which one?"
LOL!! oh, man... I'll never look at Sim City the same again....
:)
(Tho as it is, I try to avoid looking at it altogether
True enough. So how to close this loophole? In most cases, first and second owners will be actual inventors and manufacturies of one sort or another, and after that the patent would have no value anyway. So the loophole probably won't matter in most cases.
Also, perhaps if patent ownership were restricted to 1) the inventor themselves, and 2) companies producing tangible physical products that actually utilize the patent in question? Which might also get rid of a lot of this "software patents" and "business methods" nonsense.
If you build it, they will come!
Happens everywhere. Provide access, and housing magically sprouts.
Occurs to me that one solution to the "buy patents, sue everyone" business model would be to make patents protect only the original inventor, and for non-independent inventors, the company said inventor was working for at the time, and only the FIRST buyer thereafter.
;)
Under such a system, patents could only be sold ONCE. After that, the idea would fall into the public domain. That way inventors and companies could make a reasonable return on their innovations, but there'd be no incentive to buy up "used" patents, as they'd have no value.
This might have a further effect in that it would no longer be profitable to buy another company SOLELY to acquire their intellectual property assets, since as of the 2nd sale, they'd no longer have any protected value. This would probably incline the market toward more smallish companies that competed more directly, and a great many more small-scale patent-licensing deals among related companies, which ought to ultimately be all to the good (smaller companies generally being more customer-centric, and less beholden to stockholders).
And it would cut the lawyers, who had nothing to do with the invention itself, out of the profit chain.
Oh yeah... I'm gonna patent this as my business model.
Yep, if you have the right kind of earplugs, they do help. But I can't wear earplugs for very long -- gives me pressure-clogged ears I can't easily get rid of, and then I can barely hear at all!
So I use little wads of dead sheep, er, I mean sheepskin (when one gets lost, I just pull another little chunk off the edge of the dead sheep that does duty as a seat cover -- the hide gets friable after too many years in the sun). In my truck the main problem is tire rumble, coupled with white noise from the windows. The bit of dead sheep, wool side into the ear for comfort/sound baffle and skin side out as a reflector, works quite well: It seems fairly specific for both the main culprits, as I can still hear what I need to -- at least with highspeed traffic where the audible cues are seldom subtle, and are usually of less value than visuals.
In slow traffic I find I'm a lot more dependent on the small sound cues, so don't use 'em, but at low speeds road and wind noise aren't much of a problem anyway.
16x DVD is 48x CD. As I recall, CD media starts turning to shrapnel at speeds over 56x, so that is the practical max -- ie. 18.3x for DVD, if there could be such a speed.
And yep, if I had to choose, I'd rather have a slower unit that does it right, and isn't beholden to some special interest.
(As it is, I just bought a LiteOn DVD DL writer, mainly cuz I have 6 LiteOn CDRW and DVD-ROM units that have been 100% reliable in heavy use.)
From what I've read, rebadged LiteOn CDRWs are not as good as own-name LiteOns -- supposed to be something to do with the firmware. Dunno about here, but with other rebadged components, that often means the chips themselves are seconds.
Myself, I have a bunch of own-name LiteOn CDRWs and DVD-ROMs in heavy use with zero problems (I've yet to see one fail). I just got an own-name LiteOn DVD writer, hopefully it'll be the workhorse its older kin have been.
I have a similar problem in that when two or more people are talking, especially against background noise, I can hear them but I can't distinguish words (unless I cup my ears, then I hear perfectly again, so it's primarily volume-deafness). The cause is partly living with household fans going all the time (hot climate) and partly road noise from driving a truck (worse, with no A/C so the windows are usually open).
As to earbuds, headphones, and the like -- the concentrated noise is NOT the total culprit. Pressure against or near the ear can cause the area to go numb, and I've noticed when that happens, that ear ALSO loses hearing (sometimes entirely) until sensation is restored. In fact, back in the 1960s, a similar problem was documented as a distinct cause of hearing loss in people who wore earmuffs -- apparently the persistent pressure (even if subtle) against the ear causes cumulative nerve damage.
Yep, you're right about FTP (tho some browsers do it better'n others!) but it's not THOUGHT of as a "filesharing" app by anyone but purists.
:)
Ditto for the whole damn internet, cuz as you say, by definition it's a filesharing network!
So let's get rid of all those evil P2P apps, and get back to basics... oh, say, gopher and BBSs
And while you're suing M$ for enabling this filesharing internet thingee, don't forget to sue Cisco, everyone who makes modem and NIC chips, serial and network cables, and oh yes, the phone company for wiring us all with "filesharing copper" in the first place! Tsk tsk, what were they thinking?!
Interesting, and goes along with how the only bands I've bought music from in recent years are those who first gave away copies as MP3s. (How else am I going to hear 'em without decent radio?)
:D
Side thought: If *every* browser had a filesharing extension, wouldn't that make ALL browser users equally "guilty of theft" by the RIAA's lights?? I foresee interesting legal tangles.
Well, at least $500B is better than $600B.... about like 5 boils on your ass is better than 6 boils on your ass! :(
Too bad gov'ts can't be forced to live within their means, like the rest of us have to!
"It's a matter of an inequity of resources. A corporation typically has enormous financial, and legal resources compared to an individual."
Okay... so how about limiting both parties to the same resources? if one can only afford $NN for a lawwer, the other side is constrained to spend only $NN for their lawyer. Would be hard to enforce to the penny, but should be doable to the near hundreds of dollars, which in most cases would be sufficient for something near a balance of resources. (I don't know how it'd deal with corporate attorneys on retainer, but surely someone can think up a way.)
Yes, and changing many, many microclimates is liable to cause some small climate shifts across neighbouring areas. But none of this has any impact on the sun's highly variable output, nor on the total energy being absorbed by the planet. The sun's efforts at global warming put humanity's to shame. :)
I don't know how it works with cars, but with real estate, typically you do indeed own it -- the mortgage is actually payments on the bank's lien against your property, NOT payments on the property itself (that's paid in full up front, with money you were lent by the bank).
And since you are therefore named on the deed, guess who gets to pay the property tax!!