Your logic works as long as we continue to keep writing implements out of the hands of would-be ID thieves. Clearly we need to step up our pen security, or face the ugly consequences.
Yeah, I've had some problems with "recurring billing," (for access to NFL broadcasts after the NFL season ended, for example) and inaccurate charges, but those are easy to dispute and companies almost always refund the charges with a simple e-mail or phone call.
Try getting a refund from the guy who just wiped out your accounts or maxed out a platinum card you never knew you had. Sure, you might be able to get the charges removed eventually, and most of your name cleared (although your credit file will probably be flagged for a while), but it's gonna take a lot of time and work. Not worrying about ID theft because you've never been a target is like not worrying about an STD because you've never caught one.
Forgot to mention the solution I did end up using for a particularly determined bank which kept sending me high interest "pre-approved" credit card applications:
I made my own checkbox next to the "YES! Sign me up." that said "No thanks," and checked it. Naturally, I put it in the business reply envelope, along with a dollar or two in pennies (to be used toward the processing fee of course), and sent it on its way.
You know, I've had other friends suggest the "smear some of substance X on the paper" idea. I'm no lawyer, but I think sending biohazardous material through the mail is probably a felony, and would likely be the target of a much larger investigation in a "Post 9/11 era" than I'd care to be a party in. While peanut butter may not count, its less tasty digested form probably would.
First of all, the First Amendment protects religion, speech, press, assembly, and petitioning. You probably meant the Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search & seizure, or perhaps the Ninth Amendment's implied right to privacy.
Regardless, Google's own argument (PDF warning) is primarily about the burden of the request:
"A court must quash or modify a subpoena issued to a non-party if it subjects that person to undue burden." The court basically agreed, and the government agreed to accept less information.
Google goes on to say: "Search queries run on Google's databases come from such a wide variety of sources that Google's query data, stripped of personally identifying information, will not reveal whether the search query was run by a minor or adult, human or non-human, or on behalf of an individual or business. No conclusion can accurately be drawn from this data about individual behavior."
So if the search information isn't providing any useful data about individuals, as they argue, then it can't possibly be a violation of users' privacy. The court disagreed that the information was useless without identifying information.
Nowhere in Google's response do they mention anything about their Fourth Amendment rights, which is most likely because there is no legal challenge on those grounds. Furthermore, the court will only consider the arguments presented. It's like the old saying: You'll never get something if you don't ask for it. If Google fails to make a compelling argument, the judge typically won't just make one up on Google's behalf. That's not his job -- his job is to decide which argument has the most merit.
The thing is, social suppression of ideas doesn't work. Just look what the 50s did: The age of Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best gave rise to promiscuous sex and rampant drug use. A culture-wide willful ignorance of all things "evil" made the contemporary youth even more determined to experience and participate in it.
If they really wanted to make the game unpopular, they'd assign it as homework.
The song was first published in a movie titled The Lion King.
It doesn't matter if the song was published on a CD, in a movie, or through mindwaves; the title of that song cannot be copyrighted.
There exists a trademark of the phrase "Hakuna Matata" on clothing. The trademark registration says nothing of "The Lion King." Using one word from a trademark with a different spelling for an unrelated product over which there is no trademark is a huge stretch. You might as well say Burger King is likely to get sued because their name is diluting the Lion King, since lions obviously are not burgers.
Well, I typed this entire sentence in about three seconds. People argue with me about this all the time, but I maintain that the efficiency of operation is directly proportional to the number of buttons you can readily use, assuming the interface is otherwise straightforward. "Apple is God," they cry, "their products don't NEED buttons." Humbug.
It would help if MP3 enabled phones -- as in: storage of several GB of MP3s, not merely enough room to store a 20 second clip at 8kbps -- which would produce quality playback would catch on. I think the US, as usual, will be slow to catch up. For a while we'll enjoy our separate MP3 player, just as we were keen on our separate PDAs. But the rest of the world will integrate, and a few years later perhaps we'll jump on the bandwagon.
a) It's the name of a song, not a movie. b) Titles can't be copyrighted. c) Trademarks can only be enforced against confusingly similar products. IE, not a search engine vs. a theme park. d) The Disney spelling is Hakuna Matata. e) The tradmark is Class 25 (See: Your own link) which means it's for clothing.
this bill doesn't stand a chance of taking effect.
Right. It's all just political maneuvering so one side can claim the other doesn't care about kids or some crap.
Scary stuff actually.
Yes and no.. This sort of thing has been going on for aeons, and if it hasn't concerned you in the past, there's no reason it should now. On the other hand, there are arguably many reasons you should've already been concerned.
Also, as someone else mentioned already, my brain, hands and tools aremine, that property already exists. Patents limit what I can do with those.
Relevance? All laws limit what you can do with your hands and tools. That's what law is, and patent laws are just a subset of that. Surely you don't think that murder should be legal if you commit it with your bare hands, or your own tools? I'm not disagreeing with your overall sentiment, but that particular point holds no water.
Here we go again. This reminds me of the not-incorrect observation by a certain Harvard dean that women, in general, tend to be better in areas not related to math and science. Regardless of the merit of such a claim, the current political climate is such that any observation other than the obvious is regarded as demeaning. Even obvious differences are often taboo. It would be fine to observe, for example, that asians tend to excell at math and science, but mentioning that they're generally shorter than their european counterparts would be considered insulting by some, regardless of the fact that being smaller has many advantages for survival.
I suppose though, in light of our inability to view differences objectively, that it's probably for the best. Invariably, when someone points out differences, one group will use those differences to assert some sort of supreriority over the other. While it would be nice if we could discuss differences with scientific detachment and actually learn something, it seems that the most common trait among humanity -- our desire to be the best; to feel superior -- prevents such objectivity.
Right, because craters aren't caused by the object, but by the explosion of the impact. The area affected by the explosion is always larger than the size of the object, because earth isn't very compressible so the object doesn't travel very far except at very shallow angles. Any trail smaller than the radius of the explosive crater would be pretty much destroyed. (Also, explosions don't generally occur in elliptical patterns along the ground. I could do a bad job of explaining why, but it's fairly intuitive anyway.)
I think you'd have a hard time suing StarForce, since you never bought anything from them, nor did you buy the product expecting StarForce to effectively prevent you from copying. At least, you'd have a hard time convincing the judge that you were concerned about your right not to copy, so the case would probably be thrown out.
You might be able to sue the publishers for artificially increasing the product price, but that's a huge stretch as well. The only real hope would be for shareholders to sue publishers for financial imprudence by licensing StarForce. Again, that would be a tough sell, since publishers would argue that they were exercising due dilligance in trying to prevent rampant copying. They'd also argue, accurately, that every copy protection scheme in the past has eventually been compromised, yet copy protection remains the industry standard, so there's no reason to single out StarForce protection as a waste of money. Additionally, the costs were recouped from the consumer, so it didn't hurt the company's bottom line.
Furthermore, they would argue, the goal of modern copy protection is merely to extend the time between release of the title and release of a crack, which is believed to increase overall sales. Anecdotally, anyone who's ever read threads regarding games which took months to crack has doubtless seen the "Screw this, I'm buying the game," posts, so there's possibly some merit to publishers' thinking.
Today's QOTD is a particularly appropriate response to your sentiments:
"The multitude of books is making us ignorant."
- Voltaire
There are a multitude of reasons for intelligence failures, particularly the signal to noise ratio. When there are volumes of data out there, it's difficult to know which are credible and which are not. Even titles such as "Bin Laden determined to Strike US" are taken out of context; i.e. the hundreds and hundreds of other probable titles, such as "Hamas likely to execute diplomats," or "Disgruntled ex-military are possible threats," etc., etc. Furthermore, without knowing a date or time, even knowing the exact method the hijackers planned to use is no more useful than knowing "a burglar will likely come through an opening in your home." It's even less useful, because you probably only have 1 house, but there are thousands of flights every day, and millions of travellers. Security is not free, either in dollars or personal sacrifice, nor is it priceless. In the vast majority of cases, it's only cost effective to provide some illusion of security, because the cost/benefit ratio quickly passes the point of diminishing returns.
But getting back to the point, the idea that the government can protect us from any and all threats is a childish sort of naivete. No rational person complains that the police aren't preventing all crime. Why? Because we realize that it's impossible for a small segment of the population (law enforcement) to know what everybody else is up to at all times. Similarly, the idea that we can know what the rest of the world is up to is fantastic.
We like to think physical security is much more basic than, say, digital security, because we believe it's much easier to maintain. But the reality is that ALL security, from an external perspective, is not about whether or not there are no holes, but simply exploiting the weakest link until you MAKE a hole, if necessary. Digital security tends to fail much more rapidly because there are potentially thousands or millions of people testing all aspects, but physical security is really not intrinsically stronger.. there are simply fewer people testing it.
One of the problems is that we're not used to hearing the word "No" from our government. We elect the leaders, and they do what we say. We say jump, they ask how high. We say we want to be secure, they tell us we are. What else are they going to do? If any politician said "Security is often just a perception, and it's always relative," he'd be booted out of office at the next election. Nobody wants to know the truth -- we want our government to lie to us, to tell us that they can do the impossible, that they're superheros with powers beyond those of us mere mortals, and so that's what they tell us. And then we get pissed when we find out they were lying.
You just think it's wrong because the man trained you to only believe their "reputable" puppet news sources, man!! Futurepower.org is the future! Of power! Not only that, it's the power of the future! (100% green, of course.)
The long answer is that it's not a linear ratio of price to sales, and there are way more factors that go into pricing than you've probably ever thought of. First of all, you want to get the most money for your product, but eveyone has a different idea of what they're willing to pay. Some would pay $1000. Some would pay $500. Some would pay $25. Obviously the best thing would be to just ask them how much they're willing to pay and then charge them that, but in practice it's not that easy. So you can build a chart, find out how many people would pay X, and find the perfect price point, but there are still more factors. You're missing potential sales from people who would pay less, and potential profits from people who would pay more. So what's the solution? Different product lines. Charge the rich guy Z, the average guy Y, and the budget guy X.
Second, when you charge more, people feel that they're getting more.If you're selling shirts for $1, and the guy across the street is selling shirts for $250, the expensive ones must be better, right? They have to be, otherwise how could he charge $250? Because people will pay it. And if they feel they're getting something for their money, then they are.. at least, according to many economists. If they enjoy the goods received at the price they paid, then it was a fair price.
I'm too sleepy to keep writing, but as long as Nvidia is selling their chips and turning a profit, they must be doing ok.
Slashdot Mirror
Your logic works as long as we continue to keep writing implements out of the hands of would-be ID thieves. Clearly we need to step up our pen security, or face the ugly consequences.
Yeah, I've had some problems with "recurring billing," (for access to NFL broadcasts after the NFL season ended, for example) and inaccurate charges, but those are easy to dispute and companies almost always refund the charges with a simple e-mail or phone call.
Try getting a refund from the guy who just wiped out your accounts or maxed out a platinum card you never knew you had. Sure, you might be able to get the charges removed eventually, and most of your name cleared (although your credit file will probably be flagged for a while), but it's gonna take a lot of time and work. Not worrying about ID theft because you've never been a target is like not worrying about an STD because you've never caught one.
Forgot to mention the solution I did end up using for a particularly determined bank which kept sending me high interest "pre-approved" credit card applications:
I made my own checkbox next to the "YES! Sign me up." that said "No thanks," and checked it. Naturally, I put it in the business reply envelope, along with a dollar or two in pennies (to be used toward the processing fee of course), and sent it on its way.
They never sent me another application.
You know, I've had other friends suggest the "smear some of substance X on the paper" idea. I'm no lawyer, but I think sending biohazardous material through the mail is probably a felony, and would likely be the target of a much larger investigation in a "Post 9/11 era" than I'd care to be a party in. While peanut butter may not count, its less tasty digested form probably would.
First of all, the First Amendment protects religion, speech, press, assembly, and petitioning. You probably meant the Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search & seizure, or perhaps the Ninth Amendment's implied right to privacy.
Regardless, Google's own argument (PDF warning) is primarily about the burden of the request:
"A court must quash or modify a subpoena issued to a non-party if it subjects that person to undue burden." The court basically agreed, and the government agreed to accept less information.
Google goes on to say: "Search queries run on Google's databases come from such a wide variety of sources that Google's query data, stripped of personally identifying information, will not reveal whether the search query was run by a minor or adult, human or non-human, or on behalf of an individual or business. No conclusion can accurately be drawn from this data about individual behavior."
So if the search information isn't providing any useful data about individuals, as they argue, then it can't possibly be a violation of users' privacy. The court disagreed that the information was useless without identifying information.
Nowhere in Google's response do they mention anything about their Fourth Amendment rights, which is most likely because there is no legal challenge on those grounds. Furthermore, the court will only consider the arguments presented. It's like the old saying: You'll never get something if you don't ask for it. If Google fails to make a compelling argument, the judge typically won't just make one up on Google's behalf. That's not his job -- his job is to decide which argument has the most merit.
The thing is, social suppression of ideas doesn't work. Just look what the 50s did: The age of Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best gave rise to promiscuous sex and rampant drug use. A culture-wide willful ignorance of all things "evil" made the contemporary youth even more determined to experience and participate in it.
If they really wanted to make the game unpopular, they'd assign it as homework.
The song was first published in a movie titled The Lion King.
It doesn't matter if the song was published on a CD, in a movie, or through mindwaves; the title of that song cannot be copyrighted.
There exists a trademark of the phrase "Hakuna Matata" on clothing. The trademark registration says nothing of "The Lion King." Using one word from a trademark with a different spelling for an unrelated product over which there is no trademark is a huge stretch. You might as well say Burger King is likely to get sued because their name is diluting the Lion King, since lions obviously are not burgers.
Well, I typed this entire sentence in about three seconds. People argue with me about this all the time, but I maintain that the efficiency of operation is directly proportional to the number of buttons you can readily use, assuming the interface is otherwise straightforward. "Apple is God," they cry, "their products don't NEED buttons." Humbug.
It would help if MP3 enabled phones -- as in: storage of several GB of MP3s, not merely enough room to store a 20 second clip at 8kbps -- which would produce quality playback would catch on. I think the US, as usual, will be slow to catch up. For a while we'll enjoy our separate MP3 player, just as we were keen on our separate PDAs. But the rest of the world will integrate, and a few years later perhaps we'll jump on the bandwagon.
a) It's the name of a song, not a movie.
b) Titles can't be copyrighted.
c) Trademarks can only be enforced against confusingly similar products. IE, not a search engine vs. a theme park.
d) The Disney spelling is Hakuna Matata.
e) The tradmark is Class 25 (See: Your own link) which means it's for clothing.
So no, to answer your question, they're not.
this bill doesn't stand a chance of taking effect.
Right. It's all just political maneuvering so one side can claim the other doesn't care about kids or some crap.
Scary stuff actually.
Yes and no.. This sort of thing has been going on for aeons, and if it hasn't concerned you in the past, there's no reason it should now. On the other hand, there are arguably many reasons you should've already been concerned.
It would also be funnier if it was actually issued by Nintendo rather than a comedian.
my WoW sessions do nothing to make me want to go out and gank a wandering priest;)
Maybe not, but mine occasionally make me want to use violence against my computer.
It's both. See Section (g)
Although courts upheld that felons could not be charged for both posession of, and failure to register a firearm. http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/cramer.haynes.ht ml
You forgot the "by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" part.
Yeah, I lost all respect for him after I read the foreword to "America: The Book."
Also, as someone else mentioned already, my brain, hands and tools aremine, that property already exists. Patents limit what I can do with those.
Relevance? All laws limit what you can do with your hands and tools. That's what law is, and patent laws are just a subset of that. Surely you don't think that murder should be legal if you commit it with your bare hands, or your own tools? I'm not disagreeing with your overall sentiment, but that particular point holds no water.
Here we go again. This reminds me of the not-incorrect observation by a certain Harvard dean that women, in general, tend to be better in areas not related to math and science. Regardless of the merit of such a claim, the current political climate is such that any observation other than the obvious is regarded as demeaning. Even obvious differences are often taboo. It would be fine to observe, for example, that asians tend to excell at math and science, but mentioning that they're generally shorter than their european counterparts would be considered insulting by some, regardless of the fact that being smaller has many advantages for survival.
I suppose though, in light of our inability to view differences objectively, that it's probably for the best. Invariably, when someone points out differences, one group will use those differences to assert some sort of supreriority over the other. While it would be nice if we could discuss differences with scientific detachment and actually learn something, it seems that the most common trait among humanity -- our desire to be the best; to feel superior -- prevents such objectivity.
Right, because craters aren't caused by the object, but by the explosion of the impact. The area affected by the explosion is always larger than the size of the object, because earth isn't very compressible so the object doesn't travel very far except at very shallow angles. Any trail smaller than the radius of the explosive crater would be pretty much destroyed. (Also, explosions don't generally occur in elliptical patterns along the ground. I could do a bad job of explaining why, but it's fairly intuitive anyway.)
Statement above: What would statement below say you would say about his statement?
I think you'd have a hard time suing StarForce, since you never bought anything from them, nor did you buy the product expecting StarForce to effectively prevent you from copying. At least, you'd have a hard time convincing the judge that you were concerned about your right not to copy, so the case would probably be thrown out.
You might be able to sue the publishers for artificially increasing the product price, but that's a huge stretch as well. The only real hope would be for shareholders to sue publishers for financial imprudence by licensing StarForce. Again, that would be a tough sell, since publishers would argue that they were exercising due dilligance in trying to prevent rampant copying. They'd also argue, accurately, that every copy protection scheme in the past has eventually been compromised, yet copy protection remains the industry standard, so there's no reason to single out StarForce protection as a waste of money. Additionally, the costs were recouped from the consumer, so it didn't hurt the company's bottom line.
Furthermore, they would argue, the goal of modern copy protection is merely to extend the time between release of the title and release of a crack, which is believed to increase overall sales. Anecdotally, anyone who's ever read threads regarding games which took months to crack has doubtless seen the "Screw this, I'm buying the game," posts, so there's possibly some merit to publishers' thinking.
Today's QOTD is a particularly appropriate response to your sentiments:
"The multitude of books is making us ignorant."
- Voltaire
There are a multitude of reasons for intelligence failures, particularly the signal to noise ratio. When there are volumes of data out there, it's difficult to know which are credible and which are not. Even titles such as "Bin Laden determined to Strike US" are taken out of context; i.e. the hundreds and hundreds of other probable titles, such as "Hamas likely to execute diplomats," or "Disgruntled ex-military are possible threats," etc., etc. Furthermore, without knowing a date or time, even knowing the exact method the hijackers planned to use is no more useful than knowing "a burglar will likely come through an opening in your home." It's even less useful, because you probably only have 1 house, but there are thousands of flights every day, and millions of travellers. Security is not free, either in dollars or personal sacrifice, nor is it priceless. In the vast majority of cases, it's only cost effective to provide some illusion of security, because the cost/benefit ratio quickly passes the point of diminishing returns.
But getting back to the point, the idea that the government can protect us from any and all threats is a childish sort of naivete. No rational person complains that the police aren't preventing all crime. Why? Because we realize that it's impossible for a small segment of the population (law enforcement) to know what everybody else is up to at all times. Similarly, the idea that we can know what the rest of the world is up to is fantastic.
We like to think physical security is much more basic than, say, digital security, because we believe it's much easier to maintain. But the reality is that ALL security, from an external perspective, is not about whether or not there are no holes, but simply exploiting the weakest link until you MAKE a hole, if necessary. Digital security tends to fail much more rapidly because there are potentially thousands or millions of people testing all aspects, but physical security is really not intrinsically stronger.. there are simply fewer people testing it.
One of the problems is that we're not used to hearing the word "No" from our government. We elect the leaders, and they do what we say. We say jump, they ask how high. We say we want to be secure, they tell us we are. What else are they going to do? If any politician said "Security is often just a perception, and it's always relative," he'd be booted out of office at the next election. Nobody wants to know the truth -- we want our government to lie to us, to tell us that they can do the impossible, that they're superheros with powers beyond those of us mere mortals, and so that's what they tell us. And then we get pissed when we find out they were lying.
You just think it's wrong because the man trained you to only believe their "reputable" puppet news sources, man!! Futurepower.org is the future! Of power! Not only that, it's the power of the future! (100% green, of course.)
The short answer is they could.
The long answer is that it's not a linear ratio of price to sales, and there are way more factors that go into pricing than you've probably ever thought of. First of all, you want to get the most money for your product, but eveyone has a different idea of what they're willing to pay. Some would pay $1000. Some would pay $500. Some would pay $25. Obviously the best thing would be to just ask them how much they're willing to pay and then charge them that, but in practice it's not that easy. So you can build a chart, find out how many people would pay X, and find the perfect price point, but there are still more factors. You're missing potential sales from people who would pay less, and potential profits from people who would pay more. So what's the solution? Different product lines. Charge the rich guy Z, the average guy Y, and the budget guy X.
Second, when you charge more, people feel that they're getting more.If you're selling shirts for $1, and the guy across the street is selling shirts for $250, the expensive ones must be better, right? They have to be, otherwise how could he charge $250? Because people will pay it. And if they feel they're getting something for their money, then they are.. at least, according to many economists. If they enjoy the goods received at the price they paid, then it was a fair price.
I'm too sleepy to keep writing, but as long as Nvidia is selling their chips and turning a profit, they must be doing ok.
Just do what I do.. Find "that guy" who's always buying the very latest card the day it's released, then offer him $20 for his "old one."