The particular work (in this case a phone book) IS copyrightable. Just because the information is public record and/or easily obtainable does not mean that the actual text is not copyrightable.
That's the WHOLE POINT of this scheme. If another phone book pops up that just contains the valid entries, one can assume that the company producing that book did proper research and produced the information from non copyrighted sources.
However, the appearance of those false numbers provides evidence that those people did in fact garner their information from a copyrighted source (another phone book).
Last I checked this was a PROPOSESD law, which is far different than being an ACTUAL law. Maybe we should start teaching our children how the American government works?
The reach and aim of the bill will be whittled down over the coming months, even then it has a very slim chance of even making it out of committee in both chambers. On the off hand chance it makes it out of both the house and the senate, the versions of the bill will be quite different.. requiring even more whittling and compromise in conference.
Then, after it breezes past our sitting 'I'll sign anything for business' president.. it will almost definitely be challenged in court. The final result will be A) nothing or B) a law that is quite a bit less dranconian and far reaching than this one.
This is the system and the process that MAKES America a pretty darn good country. So, go soak your knee (it probably hurts from the big jerking motion you just made) and let our process do its work.
That would be missing the point. The point is to show how the American consumer is hurt. The consumer in Japan is more of a vehicle to show what would happen without trade tarrifs in America...
I completely agree.. Americans have a long legacy of being isolationist and protectionist. Not because it's the best decision, but because of the reasons you mentioned. I'm pointing out the RESULT of this prevailing opinion.. I have no doubt that you are right, and that we will take protective action..
Lets say that Japan has a competitive advantage in auto manufacturing. They can make BETTER cars, cheaper.
The goal of tariffs is to raise the price of a Japanese car to the level of one made in the U.S., the idea being that it negates the Japanese competitive advantage in car manufacturing.
So lets examine two consumers, one in the U.S. and one in Japan. For the purposes of this discussion we'll say they both make the same salary of $50,000 after tax dollars.
The consumer in Japan can buy a high quality car for $18,000. The car is a very good car, just as good (if not better) than it's American counterpart. This is because the Japanese are very good at making cars. Since the consumer pays cash, he has $32,000 left to spend after buying the car.
The consumer in the U.S. can buy a similiar car,but he has to pay $22,000. He also pays cash, and has $28,000 left to spend.
In overall economic terms the Japenese consumer is now wealthier than the American consumer.. he received the same value in his car purchase, and has an additional $4000 to reinvest in the rest of the economy.
Sure the American buyer may have bought an American car.. but instead of growing the economy by $32,000 he can only contribute $28,000 because he is now less wealthy than his Japanese counterpart.
This is the idea behind globalism in general. By letting the most efficient people build the products, it creates wealth for everyone as they can spend less and get more. They can then grow the economy buy reinvesting that wealth in it. This is the same idea as a tax cut for economic stimulus, but with the bonus of not lowering the spending power of the government.
More that outsourcing , this kind of stupid and ignorant attitude is what is harming the american IT labour. Open your eyes and realise that the companies outside US, to which your jobs are being exported are not evil by nature, neither are their products bloated nor their labour inferior to US labour in any Way.
You mis-read the sentence. I said that the American companies would be more bloated and less efficient because of costs of American labor. I didn't say that foreign companies are bad, less efficient, or more bloated.. christ, before you start flaming at least comprehend what your reading.
I agree that there is some measure of cultural advantage the we enjoy. Our culture promotes that kind of thinking, but it does not mean that other cultures are incapable of it. To beleive that is simply... ignorant.
There are a lot of new products coming out of India, some of which are quite innovative. Much of the software in the emerging verticals, such as the handheld space, comes from places like Russia, China, Isreal, and India. These efforts clearly show the ability to be free thinkers.
I've had the privilige of working with several foreign programmers. I work with two right now, and they are quite inventive and both very good general problem solvers. As they've become comfortable and learned to speak thier minds more and more, they have become more and more effective. So yes, their is something to the culture argument.. but you've taken it to an illogical and damaging extreme.
Fine in theory, but what happens when you handcuff American corporations to American labor? One of two things, either companies in other countries with cheaper labor markets rise to fill the product gap left by their less efficient (in terms of money) and more bloated American counterparts... OR those American companies move their operations to those cheaper locales.
It's the concept of a competitive advantage. It's time that workers in IT (and I am one) recognize that workers in China and India have a fairly pronounced competitive advantage over the workers herein the United States. We're expensive, difficult to manage, and only slightly better programmers than those in other countries (as a whole). You can legislate this all you want, the fact remains however that you burying our heads in our the sand won't make the problem go away. We must find a way to compete as a workforce.. or turn to another economic system. Tariffs and taxes on foreign goods do nothing but destroy OUR wealth.. after all we only make up ~5% of the worlds population.
It's a tough pill to swallow, and our auto workers and manufacturers have had to swallow it in the past. What's insanely funny to me is that Americans in general have this view that in order for our economy to be strong, everyone elses must be weak. You don't have to watch CNN long to hear "We can't have free trade, that will make the Chinese economy stronger!!" Yes, this is the result. Basically the economies in India, China, etc.. are so weak that the cost of living is almost neglible. So a programmer in India doesn't have to make a whole lot to be comfortable by the standards of his society. $5,000 goes a long ways in those countries.
At the end of the day, protectionism doesn't help us.. it doesn't fix any problems. It simply plugs a small hole in the damn and HURTS the overall American economy in a major way. Sure it may keep you in a job for 6 months or a year.. but the fundemental problem remains. We simply can't compete with our foreign counterparts at the salaries we expect.
While I beleive that things aren't nearly as bleak as people seem to think (I'll expound on that in another post), it's interesting you bring up McCarthy.
Right now one of the primary voices of this ultra-conservative movement (Anne Coulter I beleive is her name) is spouting off about the VIRTUES of McCarthy. She see's him as one of the most admirable men (her words not mine) of the last century. It's interesting, that it seems in order to protect the 'integrity' of this neo conservative movement, they feel like they have to revise the history of the one that came before it.
"After all, you might be more likely to get hit by lightning and a meteor in the Arctic.. yet less likely to encounter Zebra. As you move south, you may be less likely to get hit by lightning and a meteor, but less likely to get hit by Zebra."
Should read:
"After all, you might be more likely to get hit by lightning and a meteor in the Arctic.. yet less likely to encounter Zebra. As you move south, you may be less likely to get hit by lightning and a meteor, but more likely to get hit by Zebra."
The statement "trampled by a herd of zebra above the Arctic Circle, while being hit by a meteor and lightning" would be (if valid) only applicable to people above the Arctic Circle.
The 'odds', statistically speaking, would be completely different as you head south. They wouldn't neccesarily increase.. the statement is simply valid for one location.
After all, you might be more likely to get hit by lightning and a meteor in the Arctic.. yet less likely to encounter Zebra. As you move south, you may be less likely to get hit by lightning and a meteor, but less likely to get hit by Zebra.
The point being, there are 3 independent variables in this statistical system and all 3 may be location dependent. So are the odds really greater in the U.S.?? Maybe, but you can't base those odds on a closed system like the one presented.
I'll give you Iraq... As I didn't support that in the least.
But Afghanistan? They most definitely 'started it' by creating a nation and a culture that actively encouraged the rape, abuse, and killing of everyone who didn't beleive as they did. They started it by being a breeding ground for the type of criminal that runs planes into buildings. Afghanistan was beyond justifiable.. as that 'nation' represented a state dedicated to terrorism. When you have dozens of terrorist training camps and are harboring the head terrorist.. you are nothing but the instigator.
Period.
So mr. anonymous coward.. what exactly would you have us do? Tell the Taliban 'You know guys.. it would sure be nice if you weren't so hell bent on killing everyone.' ? No, the only responsible course of action was to do exactly what we did.. I just can't see any other way. Violence sucks, but sometimes it really is the only solution.
There has been at least one case where a guy was hosting child porn without any knowledge of it. He was aquitted, and received a very good lesson in computer security to boot.
(I can't look up the case right now, as I'm a bit loathe to search for anything related to 'child porn' while at work:))
The definition of strict-liability is (as with everything else) open to some interpretation. In many cases strict-liability has a "reaonable action" test associated with it. For example, if someone was breaking into my Mail Boxes Etc. mail box and was using it to ship child porn across the country, I would have very limited liability. However, if I noticed that the mailbox had been tampered with and took no reasonable action based on that (reporting it to the mail boxes etc. people?).. then my liability would increase.
Same thing applies here. If someone is hosting stuff on my machine without my knowledge, even under strict-liability I have some wiggle room. However, if I run a firewall and it's spitting out traffic warnings...and I take no reasonable action to track down the cause, then under a strict-liability law I'm in a pretty bad spot.
Hasn't it also been interpreted as a right of privacy from the government? Making no claims about the privacy of the indivdual from other individuals or corporations?
Later laws on the books (various privacy acts) have addressed that relationship, somewhat.. but the 'right of privacy' much like the 'right of free speech' is restricted only to a persons interaction with government and does not extend to censure or infringement in other domains.
I beleive (and it is ambigous) that the article poster was saying 'It's unfortunate because Wal-Mart didn't kill the idea of the RFID completely'. The concept of the RFID is very much disfavored by the Slashdot crowd, and the poster was simply playing to that.
It's not as simple as having a dirty crewmember on the ground. You'd need one with actual access to this circuitry, which is sealed off and only accessible to a small number of people. It's not like the luggage guy can climb ontop of the plane, pop open the hatch, and start hacking away.
The weak link would have to be the one actually uploading the soft wall data, and we have ways of dealing with things like that (Seperating the responsibilities so that no one has access to the whole system).
Sure there is a weak link, but it is probably a MILLION times harder to beat this system than simply hijacking a plane by our current standard methods. 1) You have to now have someone on the 'inside'.
We don't see it as OK, but for the most part Americans also see it as 'their problem'. As do I.
It is the responsibility of the GOVERNED to deal with these issues. If the people of another country (or the government of another country) want to do this type of thing, that's fine by me. Who am I to tell another how to govern themselves?
In short, I don't consider a breach of someone elses civil liberties as 'OK'.. but at the same time, I have no reason to be concerned with that either. My job, as a governed member of society, is to be vigilante in ensuring that MY civil liberties are not breached. I can only offer empathy and support to those in other places.
Before the anti-american bashers in the crowd go nuts, I recognize that the United States does have this habit of getting involved in other peoples civil liberties. That's not something I support (along with a large percentage of the actual citizens here)..
He had already commited the crime and had actually begun selling his 'product'. The damages are based on what damage he would have done over time (doesn't say how far out)...
Since you obviously payed so much attention in beta, grond vehicles are slated to be added real soon now, along with player run cities, and mounts.
So speeders and the like are not part of the space expansion, the actual art assets and models are on your CD when you buy the game.
Once those are added (2-3 months from what I understand) the transport problems go away.
It's funny, you talk about this game as being 'EQ in Space', and then you attack game mechanics (no loot!!) for basically being different than EQ. Interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
Not true..
The particular work (in this case a phone book) IS copyrightable. Just because the information is public record and/or easily obtainable does not mean that the actual text is not copyrightable.
That's the WHOLE POINT of this scheme. If another phone book pops up that just contains the valid entries, one can assume that the company producing that book did proper research and produced the information from non copyrighted sources.
However, the appearance of those false numbers provides evidence that those people did in fact garner their information from a copyrighted source (another phone book).
Star Trek fans don't flesh out throwaway comments into things of vast significance in the Star Trek universe
Your kidding right?
Last I checked this was a PROPOSESD law, which is far different than being an ACTUAL law. Maybe we should start teaching our children how the American government works?
The reach and aim of the bill will be whittled down over the coming months, even then it has a very slim chance of even making it out of committee in both chambers. On the off hand chance it makes it out of both the house and the senate, the versions of the bill will be quite different.. requiring even more whittling and compromise in conference.
Then, after it breezes past our sitting 'I'll sign anything for business' president.. it will almost definitely be challenged in court. The final result will be A) nothing or B) a law that is quite a bit less dranconian and far reaching than this one.
This is the system and the process that MAKES America a pretty darn good country. So, go soak your knee (it probably hurts from the big jerking motion you just made) and let our process do its work.
That would be missing the point. The point is to show how the American consumer is hurt. The consumer in Japan is more of a vehicle to show what would happen without trade tarrifs in America...
I completely agree.. Americans have a long legacy of being isolationist and protectionist. Not because it's the best decision, but because of the reasons you mentioned. I'm pointing out the RESULT of this prevailing opinion.. I have no doubt that you are right, and that we will take protective action..
Simple..
,but he has to pay $22,000. He also pays cash, and has $28,000 left to spend.
Lets say that Japan has a competitive advantage in auto manufacturing. They can make BETTER cars, cheaper.
The goal of tariffs is to raise the price of a Japanese car to the level of one made in the U.S., the idea being that it negates the Japanese competitive advantage in car manufacturing.
So lets examine two consumers, one in the U.S. and one in Japan. For the purposes of this discussion we'll say they both make the same salary of $50,000 after tax dollars.
The consumer in Japan can buy a high quality car for $18,000. The car is a very good car, just as good (if not better) than it's American counterpart. This is because the Japanese are very good at making cars. Since the consumer pays cash, he has $32,000 left to spend after buying the car.
The consumer in the U.S. can buy a similiar car
In overall economic terms the Japenese consumer is now wealthier than the American consumer.. he received the same value in his car purchase, and has an additional $4000 to reinvest in the rest of the economy.
Sure the American buyer may have bought an American car.. but instead of growing the economy by $32,000 he can only contribute $28,000 because he is now less wealthy than his Japanese counterpart.
This is the idea behind globalism in general. By letting the most efficient people build the products, it creates wealth for everyone as they can spend less and get more. They can then grow the economy buy reinvesting that wealth in it. This is the same idea as a tax cut for economic stimulus, but with the bonus of not lowering the spending power of the government.
Are you F***ing kidding me?
More that outsourcing , this kind of stupid and ignorant attitude is what is harming the american IT labour. Open your eyes and realise that the companies outside US, to which your jobs are being exported are not evil by nature, neither are their products bloated nor their labour inferior to US labour in any Way.
You mis-read the sentence. I said that the American companies would be more bloated and less efficient because of costs of American labor. I didn't say that foreign companies are bad, less efficient, or more bloated.. christ, before you start flaming at least comprehend what your reading.
I agree that there is some measure of cultural advantage the we enjoy. Our culture promotes that kind of thinking, but it does not mean that other cultures are incapable of it. To beleive that is simply... ignorant.
There are a lot of new products coming out of India, some of which are quite innovative. Much of the software in the emerging verticals, such as the handheld space, comes from places like Russia, China, Isreal, and India. These efforts clearly show the ability to be free thinkers.
I've had the privilige of working with several foreign programmers. I work with two right now, and they are quite inventive and both very good general problem solvers. As they've become comfortable and learned to speak thier minds more and more, they have become more and more effective. So yes, their is something to the culture argument.. but you've taken it to an illogical and damaging extreme.
Fine in theory, but what happens when you handcuff American corporations to American labor? One of two things, either companies in other countries with cheaper labor markets rise to fill the product gap left by their less efficient (in terms of money) and more bloated American counterparts... OR those American companies move their operations to those cheaper locales.
It's the concept of a competitive advantage. It's time that workers in IT (and I am one) recognize that workers in China and India have a fairly pronounced competitive advantage over the workers herein the United States. We're expensive, difficult to manage, and only slightly better programmers than those in other countries (as a whole). You can legislate this all you want, the fact remains however that you burying our heads in our the sand won't make the problem go away. We must find a way to compete as a workforce.. or turn to another economic system. Tariffs and taxes on foreign goods do nothing but destroy OUR wealth.. after all we only make up ~5% of the worlds population.
It's a tough pill to swallow, and our auto workers and manufacturers have had to swallow it in the past. What's insanely funny to me is that Americans in general have this view that in order for our economy to be strong, everyone elses must be weak. You don't have to watch CNN long to hear "We can't have free trade, that will make the Chinese economy stronger!!" Yes, this is the result. Basically the economies in India, China, etc.. are so weak that the cost of living is almost neglible. So a programmer in India doesn't have to make a whole lot to be comfortable by the standards of his society. $5,000 goes a long ways in those countries.
At the end of the day, protectionism doesn't help us.. it doesn't fix any problems. It simply plugs a small hole in the damn and HURTS the overall American economy in a major way. Sure it may keep you in a job for 6 months or a year.. but the fundemental problem remains. We simply can't compete with our foreign counterparts at the salaries we expect.
While I beleive that things aren't nearly as bleak as people seem to think (I'll expound on that in another post), it's interesting you bring up McCarthy.
Right now one of the primary voices of this ultra-conservative movement (Anne Coulter I beleive is her name) is spouting off about the VIRTUES of McCarthy. She see's him as one of the most admirable men (her words not mine) of the last century. It's interesting, that it seems in order to protect the 'integrity' of this neo conservative movement, they feel like they have to revise the history of the one that came before it.
"After all, you might be more likely to get hit by lightning and a meteor in the Arctic.. yet less likely to encounter Zebra. As you move south, you may be less likely to get hit by lightning and a meteor, but less likely to get hit by Zebra."
Should read:
"After all, you might be more likely to get hit by lightning and a meteor in the Arctic.. yet less likely to encounter Zebra. As you move south, you may be less likely to get hit by lightning and a meteor, but more likely to get hit by Zebra."
Your logic is flawed.
The statement "trampled by a herd of zebra above the Arctic Circle, while being hit by a meteor and lightning" would be (if valid) only applicable to people above the Arctic Circle.
The 'odds', statistically speaking, would be completely different as you head south. They wouldn't neccesarily increase.. the statement is simply valid for one location.
After all, you might be more likely to get hit by lightning and a meteor in the Arctic.. yet less likely to encounter Zebra. As you move south, you may be less likely to get hit by lightning and a meteor, but less likely to get hit by Zebra.
The point being, there are 3 independent variables in this statistical system and all 3 may be location dependent. So are the odds really greater in the U.S.?? Maybe, but you can't base those odds on a closed system like the one presented.
Time to feed a troll.
I'll give you Iraq... As I didn't support that in the least.
But Afghanistan? They most definitely 'started it' by creating a nation and a culture that actively encouraged the rape, abuse, and killing of everyone who didn't beleive as they did. They started it by being a breeding ground for the type of criminal that runs planes into buildings. Afghanistan was beyond justifiable.. as that 'nation' represented a state dedicated to terrorism. When you have dozens of terrorist training camps and are harboring the head terrorist.. you are nothing but the instigator.
Period.
So mr. anonymous coward.. what exactly would you have us do? Tell the Taliban 'You know guys.. it would sure be nice if you weren't so hell bent on killing everyone.' ? No, the only responsible course of action was to do exactly what we did.. I just can't see any other way. Violence sucks, but sometimes it really is the only solution.
My god.. it's troll...but it's in a kind of insane way, true.
*head explodes*
There has been at least one case where a guy was hosting child porn without any knowledge of it. He was aquitted, and received a very good lesson in computer security to boot.
(I can't look up the case right now, as I'm a bit loathe to search for anything related to 'child porn' while at work:))
The definition of strict-liability is (as with everything else) open to some interpretation. In many cases strict-liability has a "reaonable action" test associated with it. For example, if someone was breaking into my Mail Boxes Etc. mail box and was using it to ship child porn across the country, I would have very limited liability. However, if I noticed that the mailbox had been tampered with and took no reasonable action based on that (reporting it to the mail boxes etc. people?).. then my liability would increase.
Same thing applies here. If someone is hosting stuff on my machine without my knowledge, even under strict-liability I have some wiggle room. However, if I run a firewall and it's spitting out traffic warnings...and I take no reasonable action to track down the cause, then under a strict-liability law I'm in a pretty bad spot.
Hasn't it also been interpreted as a right of privacy from the government? Making no claims about the privacy of the indivdual from other individuals or corporations?
Later laws on the books (various privacy acts) have addressed that relationship, somewhat.. but the 'right of privacy' much like the 'right of free speech' is restricted only to a persons interaction with government and does not extend to censure or infringement in other domains.
I beleive (and it is ambigous) that the article poster was saying 'It's unfortunate because Wal-Mart didn't kill the idea of the RFID completely'. The concept of the RFID is very much disfavored by the Slashdot crowd, and the poster was simply playing to that.
The GPS coordinates are static (that's a large part of the point). They are only updated, like maybe once a day.
Think of the complexity your adding.
It's not as simple as having a dirty crewmember on the ground. You'd need one with actual access to this circuitry, which is sealed off and only accessible to a small number of people. It's not like the luggage guy can climb ontop of the plane, pop open the hatch, and start hacking away.
The weak link would have to be the one actually uploading the soft wall data, and we have ways of dealing with things like that (Seperating the responsibilities so that no one has access to the whole system).
Sure there is a weak link, but it is probably a MILLION times harder to beat this system than simply hijacking a plane by our current standard methods.
1) You have to now have someone on the 'inside'.
We don't see it as OK, but for the most part Americans also see it as 'their problem'. As do I.
It is the responsibility of the GOVERNED to deal with these issues. If the people of another country (or the government of another country) want to do this type of thing, that's fine by me. Who am I to tell another how to govern themselves?
In short, I don't consider a breach of someone elses civil liberties as 'OK'.. but at the same time, I have no reason to be concerned with that either. My job, as a governed member of society, is to be vigilante in ensuring that MY civil liberties are not breached. I can only offer empathy and support to those in other places.
Before the anti-american bashers in the crowd go nuts, I recognize that the United States does have this habit of getting involved in other peoples civil liberties. That's not something I support (along with a large percentage of the actual citizens here)..
He had already commited the crime and had actually begun selling his 'product'. The damages are based on what damage he would have done over time (doesn't say how far out)...
May I suggest taking a look at Mobilefile (http://www.quickoffice.com)? This allows a primitive form of P2P sharing across Palm devices and desktops.
Since you obviously payed so much attention in beta, grond vehicles are slated to be added real soon now, along with player run cities, and mounts.
So speeders and the like are not part of the space expansion, the actual art assets and models are on your CD when you buy the game.
Once those are added (2-3 months from what I understand) the transport problems go away.
It's funny, you talk about this game as being 'EQ in Space', and then you attack game mechanics (no loot!!) for basically being different than EQ. Interesting.
I'm going to make a bold prediction:
There will be thread after thread as to why Worlds of Warcraft sucks on Slashdot whenever it comes out.
It's amazingly consistent, it seems that MMORPG developers are simply the most incompetent group of developers possibly ever.
They made it known MONTHS ago that they would be taking down the development forums ahead of release. It's not a conspiracy.. I promise.