In all the cases I've seen, and in my own case, the answer is that we have *some* interest in the outcome of our effort. Be it that we want to write a piece of code 'better' than we've seen it written. Be it that we simply have it in our heads to do a certain thing.
However, you state it, it's important to note that we write code because we want to see the outcome of writing that code. We write open source code because cooperation is often preferable to competition.
As to not getting much/any monitary remuneration from our work in this area, when's the last time you got paid to do yardwork around your own house? Did you ever get tipped for washing/waxing/detailing your own car? Most likely not, but you got something out of the activity, yes?
If you'd just insert another column in those spreadsheets you use to track revenue. Ok, now label the column "Satisfaction".... Happier?
It makes me wonder how much longer technology like this will be legal. Of course, it's not as if we haven't wondered before (The link I have was to banjo, sorry folks).
Everyone knows that java's been underlying program development in all languages. After all, computer scientists are machines for turning caffeine into algorithms, right?
"The DCMA[sic] takes away my right to h4x0r j00..."
<irony>
That having been cleared up, there is a portion of the article that seems interesting. In summation, Ms. Harmon writes:
copied directly from this article without permission, with all due credit, and with unknown intentions.
"The inequity is of greatest concern to the law where there's a constitutional interest at stake," said Pamela Samuelson, co-director of the Center for Law and Technology at the University of California at Berkeley. "If there is a constitutional-based interest in fair use, it shouldn't just be someone with a Ph.D. in computer science who can circumvent an access control -- just like you can't say people who own property can vote, but poor people can't."
end quote
Essentially, the viewpoint that Ms. Harmon relates here shows the problem of fair use limitation in the DMCA as a question of equalitybeforethelaw.
Now, the traditional American viewpoint (as you can see above) is even still somewhat fragmented. Equality before the law is given at least a nod of consideration, unless of course it isn't....
So if I may make a slight and modest proposal....
Proposed: Whereas much of western polical thought since the Hellenic age has rested in part on an underpinning concerned with a 'aristocracy of the mind', and whereas the DMCA is one of the clearest positional statements of the American Government on the principle of an 'aristocracy of the mind', it is hearby proposed that
The American Government consciensiously and systematically adopt the advancement of an aristocracy of the mind with respect to equality before the law.
Perhaps, if we're lucky, the right to vote in America will some day have the prerequsite of correctly explaining the Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent.
Solving Sociological Problems Technologically
on
The End of Innovation?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
At nearly the end of the interview, Lawrence Lessig makes the following statement:
copied directly from this article without permission, with all due credit, and with unknown intentions.
Yes. I think we should go back to the principles that defined us originally, which was about open societies with free people who should obey the law but you don't get them to obey the law by basically coding it so that they can't do anything different [italics added]. You get them to obey the law by making the law reasonable and getting people to be respectful of it, and that's the direction we ought to be going.
end quote
This statement interests me, because it seems that there is an even stronger statement to be made, namely that: Replacing the responsibility of the individual to obey the law with the inability of the individual to break the law not only encourages an ignorance of the law, but also encourages a lack of basic moral judgement.
Now for some justification.
Historically, moral philosophy has often considered the ability to reason practially about ethical and moral issues to be a sign of some maturity. Rousseau's Emile encourages this view especially with respect to children when it presents the advice that one not command a particular behavior from a child; rather, make it impossible for the child to misbehave. Similar thought has gone into modern society in every niche from electrical-outlet-covers to child-safety car-door locks. The underlying principle at work is that a child has not developed the practial reason required to go from an abstract commanded behavior pattern (Don't stick the scissors into the outlet) to the benefits (not getting electrocuted) without experimentation.
Very much simplified, in the case of persons without the ability to reason practically about ethical and moral issues (those who cannot understand *why* they should obey a guiding principle) technology is an oft-used preventative measure.
With respect to children, the profoundly impared, and other similar cases, no one argues that the use of technology to prevent a harmful outcome is innapropriate; however, I would argue that the continued use of technology to make impossible the breaking of a rule frees the faculty of reason from having any connection with that rule.
In other words, utilizing high technology to keep people from being able to commit a crime does not in any way educate the moral faculties of the people being so protected from their impulses. In fact, I would argue that through reliance on that protection, people become inherently less able to distinguish the moral reasoning behind the rule being enforced. Instead, it would be much like your telling me "It's illegal to fly by jumping up into the air and flapping your wings". Should you say that, I would give the moral reasoning behind it no thought simply because I can't accomplish the deed.
Certainly in such an imaginative case, giving the reasoning behind the law no thought would do no great harm; however, in a society where we are all in theory responsible for the health of our democracy (I seem to recall hearing that once with respect to the American legal/judical system) an inability to clearly reason about the morality and justification of the social contract under which we live spells the eventual end of that social contract.
A special case exists here in that the content producers are freelance writers not working as either contractors or employees of the companies involved.
Justice Ginsburg makes a special note of this difference here. If the work is done by someone for hire (either an employee or through contract) then the rights associated with the work belong to the employer.
In addition, the decision by the Court to foist remedy and future situations back to the lower courts (ultimately back to Congress) seems to indicate that the Court recognizes the crisis that current copyright law does and will face in the near future.
However, the Court's decision most decidedly affirms the rights of the content-producers, even though noting that this will possibly lead to more stringent contracts and an overall setback (see note 17, same page as above).
So IMO, the Court has given *no* indication that it favors the concept put forward by the orignal articles author. Indeed, it seems that the justices realize that would eventually mean a return to an earlier, less tolerable situation.
Thus the danger of the abrogation of the rights of property.
Nietzsche on Diku: sn; at god ba g :Backstab >KILLS< god.
While I'm sure this question has been aimed at the more creative of you by your phb's, it has an insidious quality about it in this discussion. Namely that someone is getting close to creating a really efficient highly energetic system. Great, then what do we do with it?
While I'm sure this'll risk being labeled redundant, I noticed that several posts raise the question of getting energy out of this system.
The answer, at least since Cestesibus's chronicler Hero recorded it, has been to let the system transfer energy into an expanding liquid, and use that liquid (air, steam, etc) to drive a mechanical system.
An interesting paper (warning, pdf) supporting an alternative fusion concept describes obliquely how magnetohydrodynamics may provide an inductive transfer of current from the plasma mass to the surrounding apparatus with an efficiency ranging from 70 to 95% depending on the fuel used to form the plasma mass.
Nietzsche on Diku: sn; at god ba g :Backstab >KILLS< god.
Though Yang now must use another optical laser to excite the zinc oxide molecules so that they will emit UV light -- a process called optical pumping -- he hopes eventually to "pump" the zinc oxide with electrons. Electron pumping is necessary for a laser to be integrated into an electronic circuit.
*end quote*
Now then, once they're capable of electron-pumping, you'll have an incredibly small laser (which, most likely can be pumped by miniscule--comparatively--voltages). This will probably involve growing the lasers in place on something that later is etched as the circuit to provide the electrons.... So you'll have an incredibly small solid state UV laser.... I don't know what the characteristics of the laser are (especially the firing time), but it'd be entertaining if they could be fired in the short enough pulses to allow the kind of storage this other article talked about
Nietzsche on Diku: sn; at god ba g :Backstab >KILLS< god.
The article points out that the pages displaying the ads were so well organized (or at least consistant) that users of the pages didn't look around very much, they didn't see the ads in other words.
Well,... good. The ads obviously weren't crafted into the content model of either service, just grafted on top, so I'd say the article provides a huge kudos to the site designers.
The higher questions are, what kind of site *should* host ads, how can advertising be incorporated into the content in such a way as to be visable, interesting, and attractive to users of the site.
Thank god I don't know the answer, otherwise I'd be upstairs in marketing instead of reading/.
Nietzsche on Diku: sn; at god ba g :Backstab >KILLS< god.
It is indeed cute; however, it raises an excellent point.
One cannot make a charge that something is not a fair use if it is the reasonably possible use
That is, as technology marches ahead, the standards for fair use will also march ahead, albeit not as quickly in the court's views. In twenty years when AV is happily encoded in storage-gobbling hugely oversampled, uncompressed formats (who cares if the song takes 500GB, the density lets me pack that 500GB into something like a cubic millimeter) no one in thier right mind will care if you make a copy to some lossy compression (MP3) medium. It won't be any different than making a tape is today.
So, like many things, time will eventually solve the problem. Nietzsche on Diku: sn; at god ba g :Backstab >KILLS< god.
End-user license agreement for Big Movie House Motion Picture
IMPORTANT-READ CAREFULLY: This Viewer License Agreement ("VLA") is a legal agreement between you (either an individual or a single entity) and Big Movie House Motion Picture Corporation ("Us") for the Big Movie House Motion Picture entertainment product identified above, which includes visual and auditory signals reproduced from media. This entertainment product may include, reference, or be referenced by associated media, printed materials, and "online" or electronic information or advertisement (collectively, "ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT"). By viewing, referencing, or otherwise using the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT (the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT EXPERIENCE), you agree to be bound by the terms of this VLA. If you do not agree to the terms of this VLA, you may not join in the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT EXPERIENCE.
ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT LICENSE
The ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT is protected by copyright laws and international copyright treaties, as well as other intellectual property laws and treaties. The ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT is licensed, not sold. For the duration, and in accordance with the strictures outlined below, the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT is licensed to you for use only as a part of the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT EXPERIENCE.
INTRODUCTION. The ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT is comprised of the following components: (i) the visual and auditory reproductions from media of the original entertainment product in a mannner allowed under the legal and authorized sale of the original media to authorized ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT EXPERIENCE vendors; (ii) any and all associated media, printed materials, and "online" or electronic information or advertisement; and (iii) Foreign Language translations of the same ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT. The Foreign Language translations of the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT for use with the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT EXPERIENCE are subject to this VLA, which VLA will only be provided in English. English shall be deemed the language that controls the terms of this VLA.
This VLA describes your rights with respect to the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT and its associated ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT EXPERIENCE.
1. GRANT OF LICENSE. This VLA grants you the following rights:
* Standard Use. You may experience, one (1) time a copy of the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT in a single location for a contiguous period of time (the SHOWING PERIOD).
* Associated Use. Big Movie House Motion Picture Corporation grants you a non-exclusive, limited license, subject to the associated use requirements below, to: (i) reference in speech or in writing portions of the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT (ii) create displays, discriptions, or informative productions referencing the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT in any way.
* Associated Use Requirements:
ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT. If you exercise the Associated Use rights described above, you agree to: (a) only exercise the associated rights described above in forums accessible only to persons or single entities in the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT REGION where you were originally granted this ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT LICENSE...... [twitching begins here.....]
Alright, so hopefully it won't happen, but don't be surprised when you have to click on the I agree button the next time you go to the theatre.
Nietzsche on Diku: sn; at god ba g :Backstab >KILLS< god.
What is "release" of the software? The new FAQ collection contains the following quote:
*begin quote*
Does the GPL required that source code of modified versions be posted to the public?
The GPL does not require you to release the modified program. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them.
But if you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the users, under the GPL.
Thus, the GPL gives permission to release the modified program in certain ways, and not in other ways; but the decision of whether to release it is up to you.
*end quote*
Now then. Here is what I can see as a reasonable definition of "release".
When the entity holding the copyright on the derivative work makes the derivative work available to an entity or entities not holding the copyright.
However, this has implications that are not clear.
For instance, the copyright holder may be an institution utilizing the derivative work internally (think any GPL derived tools used by a major corporation, developed by that corporation and not released to any other entity in any form).
That scenario isn't terribly frightening, but I guarantee that it goes against the spirit of community involvement. Just suppose the outrage here on/. if MS snarfed up some of the GCC code, and slammed it together with some Beowulf supporting software, modified the mess to make it taste better and started running Windows XP compile farms on it.
Now imagine a second possibility.
A company contracts to write software for another firm. The copyright of the software is specified by contract to reside with the hiring firm. The hiring firm desires the software for internal use (perhaps a bank is hiring a software company to develop its transaction system). The software company is perfectly able to use GNU GPL'd source in this application, modify it, AND NOT RELEASE IT. There is never a release of the software since the copyright holder is a legal entity, no more so than if I modify software for my own use and never give it to anyone.
this by the way provides a possible model for incorporating use of GPL'd software into business.
I know this will be a controversial view, it goes against the spirit of the GNU GPL; however, it appears to be supported by the wording of the license....
Nietzsche on Diku: sn; at god ba g :Backstab >KILLS< god.
3.3 Analysis limitations
There are three assumptions that underly our analysis:
* Address uniformity: attackers spoof source addresses at random.
*end quote*
This seems to me to be a currently acceptable assumption IFF the attacks are of an unsophisticated/sophomoric nature; however, if the attackers are attempting to cause maximum utilization of the target network's resources, the attackers most likely will not use a randomly distributed source address. In fact, the optimal employment of spoofed addresses will likely be some subset of the addresses employed by the target's network.
It seems likely in light of this that the "backscatter technique" outlined here, while useful, may not record the attacks engineered by more sophisticated attackers.
Nietzsche on Diku: sn; at god ba g :Backstab >KILLS< god.
Sometimes I'm amused, sometimes amazed that we can continue to let ourselves live in a world where the average man considers the image of a naked blade less disturbing than the image of a naked breast.
Murder, death, violence. Portray these and you may rise to be a "news source" for the world. Love, kindness, and attraction. Portray these and you may live... if you run quickly.
Nietzsche on Diku: sn; at god ba g :Backstab >KILLS< god.
Well.... I figured it all out. If you go out and back and around and back in enough pages, it is *barely* possible that you can get to the MSDN from that site.
Once there you can get some headers to go with your Micro-Softwich & Coffee. Oh wait, those are just the same thing I already found in my dev-kit.... Darn. Hmm, what's that dev-kit doing on here anyway?
--Isn't shared source what happens when M$ lets a new build of WinBloats out the door before they mean to?
Nietzsche on Diku: sn; at god ba g :Backstab >KILLS< god.
The scientist set up a data-storage device (in this case an acoustically massaged medium), then an information retrieval was carried out against the medium. This retrieval was carried out in parallel. Now this is fairly exciting news, but it has some serious distance to go before it manages to become something general enough to threaten the intellectual-share of true quantum-entaglement computing schemes.
The promises for the device so far seem to be in determining data returns along mulitple paths. In effect, the thing is performing the many many calculations (in this case actually only data-retrievals). However, it's performing them in parallel.
In addition, I'm curious as to how the data is retrieved. If the recombinant beam must be compared to the original beam along all the frequency divisions, there's another indivisible operation requiring some length of time.
But....
It is an interesting method of encoding/decoding data from a medium to a laser without transducers. I'd say that this technology has great promise as a method to be derived from to create all-optical switching fabrics that are actually data-sensitive (how'd you love it if you could decode, process, and filter packet data from the very laser transmission that carried it down the fat fiber pipe...?)
Nietzsche on Diku: sn; at god ba g :Backstab >KILLS< god.
I think that the applications to cryptography should be mentioned. Both for this particular mechanism (low, imnsho) and for more general quantum computers. These eventual cryptography machines will be massive, dedicated, and initially incredibly expensive (think eniac). What they *can* be easily seen to be used for is all manner of brute-forcing attacks on data by governmental and/or large institutions.
Moreover, don't believe for a second that there will be "a slew of new possibilities for encryption schemes" that we'll see anytime soon. In fact, I suspect that it's precisely private data that will be exposed during early usage of new decryption methods; meanwhile, don't suppose that the various powers that be will ever allow an easily implemented, private, and quantum-secure data-hiding scheme.
Nietzsche on Diku: sn; at god ba g :Backstab >KILLS< god.
This *acutally* hits the core of the problem. It's not a question of a single person having access to the law. That access is guaranteed regardless of IP/Copyright issues by the courts. The access may be restricted in some respects (the county clerk's office has a looooong lunch break), and the access may be to only a handful of formats (written, braille--I believe required, etc). But there will be access.
However, the real threat comes when the text of the law needs dissemination to a third party.
How can you, as an iddividual citizen, excercise your Constitutionally protected right of PETITION to get a bad law overturned, if you couldn't even inform the public as to what your problems with that law were, except by getting a license from the very people you oppose?
*points upward* This is exactly the situation that must be avoided. A person or group denouncing the law would have to license the right to publish the law from the IP holders.
Without the right to publish the law, without the right to allow others to view the law at thier leisure, there can *be* no informed public. Thus there can be no democratic process with respect to the law.
In short, restricting by any positive action, access to the text of the laws prevents the very exercise of democracy that the laws intend to forward. While I would also argue that it abrogates the individual's inherant right to self-governance (how may I enter into a social contract without first being able to understand the contract), the important sticking point is that the process of democracy is being destroyed from underneath--by eliminating the informed citizenry needed to propigate it.
Nietzsche on Diku: sn; at god ba g :Backstab >KILLS< god.
But there's a good reason why it stops my *good* use of an OODB.
If you look well and hard at C++, it's mildly object oriented, you can at least *create* objects, right?
If you look well and hard at Java (god bless it), it's *mostly* object oriented, at least there's a *root* object in the hierarchy, right?... Hmm, what are all those basic components though, is that an integer over there? What kind of object is that again?
Now then, if you managed to find a language whose native types were *all* expressed as objects, where my data were all most naturally expressed as an object (god bless Objective C and Scheme)... well, I'd be much more likely to store my data objectively (come to think of it, I do hate most of my data more than a little).
At any rate, I think the answer is that Object technology is only just coming into its own, and the rigor required of us the programmers to *USE* object orientation to its fullest extent is something that we don't enjoy doing for something as crunchy as DBMS access.
Of course, just trying to get the data-creating departments to specify your data in an object oriented fashion might very well bite arse also... Nietzsche on Diku: sn; at god ba g :Backstab >KILLS< god.
Of course, there's not anything wrong with that that I can see, but I *do* have some thoughts about Egoism and GPL versus Egoism and Proprietary software.
If I release my software product under a proprietary model, people see my success at a level accessible to end-users. This is good, I have some Egoistic gratification; however, if I release my work under an OSS model, people see my success at both the end-user level, and at the code-inspected, microscopic level. And I'd argue that these people are those whose cheers would gratify my black, little, egoistic soul more.
Who's better known, Torvald or the poor, tortured soul who started the NT Kernel? Nietzsche on Diku: sn; at god ba g :Backstab >KILLS< god.
*Quoted from above*
2. What examples of fair uses absolutely require access to the work in its most modern, digital, uncorrupted, un-macrovisioned form? The only one that jumped out at me is making a backup copy in case the original is destroyed. But perhaps there are others.
-Any use in which the digital technology, or application of that technology is studied or compared would absolutely require access to the work in its most modern, digital, and uncorrupted form. For instance, any comparison of the compression or capabilities of different audio formats (mp3, wmp, wav) would concievably require the unadulterated source. When you're analyzing artifacts introduced by the digital encoding scheme (don't tell me you other audiophiles don't care....) reproducing the work in it's most authentic format is essential.
-However, I'd really question the concept that a qualitative degredation of the work in question is somehow required for fair use. It would seem that US Code, Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 107 limits fair usage only according to four principles:
(begin quote)
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, and;
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market value of the copyrighted work.
Slashdot Mirror
In all the cases I've seen, and in my own case, the answer is that we have *some* interest in the outcome of our effort. Be it that we want to write a piece of code 'better' than we've seen it written. Be it that we simply have it in our heads to do a certain thing.
However, you state it, it's important to note that we write code because we want to see the outcome of writing that code. We write open source code because cooperation is often preferable to competition.
As to not getting much/any monitary remuneration from our work in this area, when's the last time you got paid to do yardwork around your own house? Did you ever get tipped for washing/waxing/detailing your own car? Most likely not, but you got something out of the activity, yes?
If you'd just insert another column in those spreadsheets you use to track revenue. Ok, now label the column "Satisfaction"....
Happier?
Interesting story
It makes me wonder how much longer technology like this will be legal. Of course, it's not as if we haven't wondered before (The link I have was to banjo, sorry folks).
Everyone knows that java's been underlying program development in all languages. After all, computer scientists are machines for turning caffeine into algorithms, right?
"The DCMA[sic] takes away my right to h4x0r j00..."
<irony>
That having been cleared up, there is a portion of the article that seems interesting. In summation, Ms. Harmon writes:
copied directly from this article without permission, with all due credit, and with unknown intentions.
"The inequity is of greatest concern to the law where there's a constitutional interest at stake," said Pamela Samuelson, co-director of the Center for Law and Technology at the University of California at Berkeley. "If there is a constitutional-based interest in fair use, it shouldn't just be someone with a Ph.D. in computer science who can circumvent an access control -- just like you can't say people who own property can vote, but poor people can't."
end quote
Essentially, the viewpoint that Ms. Harmon relates here shows the problem of fair use limitation in the DMCA as a question of equality before the law.
Now, the traditional American viewpoint (as you can see above) is even still somewhat fragmented. Equality before the law is given at least a nod of consideration, unless of course it isn't....
So if I may make a slight and modest proposal....
Proposed:
Whereas much of western polical thought since the Hellenic age has rested in part on an underpinning concerned with a 'aristocracy of the mind', and whereas the DMCA is one of the clearest positional statements of the American Government on the principle of an 'aristocracy of the mind', it is hearby proposed that
The American Government consciensiously and systematically adopt the advancement of an aristocracy of the mind with respect to equality before the law.
Perhaps, if we're lucky, the right to vote in America will some day have the prerequsite of correctly explaining the Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent.
At nearly the end of the interview, Lawrence Lessig makes the following statement:
copied directly from this article without permission, with all due credit, and with unknown intentions.
Yes. I think we should go back to the principles that defined us originally, which was about open societies with free people who should obey the law but you don't get them to obey the law by basically coding it so that they can't do anything different [italics added]. You get them to obey the law by making the law reasonable and getting people to be respectful of it, and that's the direction we ought to be going.
end quote
This statement interests me, because it seems that there is an even stronger statement to be made, namely that: Replacing the responsibility of the individual to obey the law with the inability of the individual to break the law not only encourages an ignorance of the law, but also encourages a lack of basic moral judgement.
Now for some justification.
Historically, moral philosophy has often considered the ability to reason practially about ethical and moral issues to be a sign of some maturity. Rousseau's Emile encourages this view especially with respect to children when it presents the advice that one not command a particular behavior from a child; rather, make it impossible for the child to misbehave. Similar thought has gone into modern society in every niche from electrical-outlet-covers to child-safety car-door locks. The underlying principle at work is that a child has not developed the practial reason required to go from an abstract commanded behavior pattern (Don't stick the scissors into the outlet) to the benefits (not getting electrocuted) without experimentation.
Very much simplified, in the case of persons without the ability to reason practically about ethical and moral issues (those who cannot understand *why* they should obey a guiding principle) technology is an oft-used preventative measure.
With respect to children, the profoundly impared, and other similar cases, no one argues that the use of technology to prevent a harmful outcome is innapropriate; however, I would argue that the continued use of technology to make impossible the breaking of a rule frees the faculty of reason from having any connection with that rule.
In other words, utilizing high technology to keep people from being able to commit a crime does not in any way educate the moral faculties of the people being so protected from their impulses. In fact, I would argue that through reliance on that protection, people become inherently less able to distinguish the moral reasoning behind the rule being enforced. Instead, it would be much like your telling me "It's illegal to fly by jumping up into the air and flapping your wings". Should you say that, I would give the moral reasoning behind it no thought simply because I can't accomplish the deed.
Certainly in such an imaginative case, giving the reasoning behind the law no thought would do no great harm; however, in a society where we are all in theory responsible for the health of our democracy (I seem to recall hearing that once with respect to the American legal/judical system) an inability to clearly reason about the morality and justification of the social contract under which we live spells the eventual end of that social contract.
Perhaps
it is better that way.
A special case exists here in that the content producers are freelance writers not working as either contractors or employees of the companies involved.
Justice Ginsburg makes a special note of this difference here. If the work is done by someone for hire (either an employee or through contract) then the rights associated with the work belong to the employer.
This most likely is the case with the major music lables. If the artists assign certain rights, especially the right to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission then most likely the Court's decision would have no impact.
In addition, the decision by the Court to foist remedy and future situations back to the lower courts (ultimately back to Congress) seems to indicate that the Court recognizes the crisis that current copyright law does and will face in the near future.
However, the Court's decision most decidedly affirms the rights of the content-producers, even though noting that this will possibly lead to more stringent contracts and an overall setback (see note 17, same page as above).
So IMO, the Court has given *no* indication that it favors the concept put forward by the orignal articles author. Indeed, it seems that the justices realize that would eventually mean a return to an earlier, less tolerable situation.
Thus the danger of the abrogation of the rights of property.
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
... Alright, now what can we do with it?
While I'm sure this question has been aimed at the more creative of you by your phb's, it has an insidious quality about it in this discussion. Namely that someone is getting close to creating a really efficient highly energetic system. Great, then what do we do with it?
While I'm sure this'll risk being labeled redundant, I noticed that several posts raise the question of getting energy out of this system.
The answer, at least since Cestesibus's chronicler Hero recorded it, has been to let the system transfer energy into an expanding liquid, and use that liquid (air, steam, etc) to drive a mechanical system.
An interesting paper (warning, pdf) supporting an alternative fusion concept describes obliquely how magnetohydrodynamics may provide an inductive transfer of current from the plasma mass to the surrounding apparatus with an efficiency ranging from 70 to 95% depending on the fuel used to form the plasma mass.
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
Hmmm...
First a quote:
*begin quote from the article (UniSci's)*
Though Yang now must use another optical laser to excite the zinc oxide molecules so that they will emit UV light -- a process called optical pumping -- he hopes eventually to "pump" the zinc oxide with electrons. Electron pumping is necessary for a laser to be integrated into an electronic circuit.
*end quote*
Now then, once they're capable of electron-pumping, you'll have an incredibly small laser (which, most likely can be pumped by miniscule--comparatively--voltages). This will probably involve growing the lasers in place on something that later is etched as the circuit to provide the electrons.... So you'll have an incredibly small solid state UV laser.... I don't know what the characteristics of the laser are (especially the firing time), but it'd be entertaining if they could be fired in the short enough pulses to allow the kind of storage this other article talked about
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
The article points out that the pages displaying the ads were so well organized (or at least consistant) that users of the pages didn't look around very much, they didn't see the ads in other words.
... good. The ads obviously weren't crafted into the content model of either service, just grafted on top, so I'd say the article provides a huge kudos to the site designers.
/.
Well,
The higher questions are, what kind of site *should* host ads, how can advertising be incorporated into the content in such a way as to be visable, interesting, and attractive to users of the site.
Thank god I don't know the answer, otherwise I'd be upstairs in marketing instead of reading
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
It is indeed cute; however, it raises an excellent point.
One cannot make a charge that something is not a fair use if it is the reasonably possible use
That is, as technology marches ahead, the standards for fair use will also march ahead, albeit not as quickly in the court's views. In twenty years when AV is happily encoded in storage-gobbling hugely oversampled, uncompressed formats (who cares if the song takes 500GB, the density lets me pack that 500GB into something like a cubic millimeter) no one in thier right mind will care if you make a copy to some lossy compression (MP3) medium. It won't be any different than making a tape is today.
So, like many things, time will eventually solve the problem.
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
End-user license agreement for Big Movie House Motion Picture
IMPORTANT-READ CAREFULLY: This Viewer License Agreement ("VLA") is a legal agreement between you (either an individual or a single entity) and Big Movie House Motion Picture Corporation ("Us") for the Big Movie House Motion Picture entertainment product identified above, which includes visual and auditory signals reproduced from media. This entertainment product may include, reference, or be referenced by associated media, printed materials, and "online" or electronic information or advertisement (collectively, "ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT"). By viewing, referencing, or otherwise using the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT (the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT EXPERIENCE), you agree to be bound by the terms of this VLA. If you do not agree to the terms of this VLA, you may not join in the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT EXPERIENCE.
ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT LICENSE
The ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT is protected by copyright laws and international copyright treaties, as well as other intellectual property laws and treaties. The ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT is licensed, not sold. For the duration, and in accordance with the strictures outlined below, the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT is licensed to you for use only as a part of the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT EXPERIENCE.
INTRODUCTION. The ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT is comprised of the following components: (i) the visual and auditory reproductions from media of the original entertainment product in a mannner allowed under the legal and authorized sale of the original media to authorized ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT EXPERIENCE vendors; (ii) any and all associated media, printed materials, and "online" or electronic information or advertisement; and (iii) Foreign Language translations of the same ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT. The Foreign Language translations of the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT for use with the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT EXPERIENCE are subject to this VLA, which VLA will only be provided in English. English shall be deemed the language that controls the terms of this VLA.
This VLA describes your rights with respect to the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT and its associated ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT EXPERIENCE.
1. GRANT OF LICENSE. This VLA grants you the following rights:
* Standard Use. You may experience, one (1) time a copy of the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT in a single location for a contiguous period of time (the SHOWING PERIOD).
* Associated Use. Big Movie House Motion Picture Corporation grants you a non-exclusive, limited license, subject to the associated use requirements below, to: (i) reference in speech or in writing portions of the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT (ii) create displays, discriptions, or informative productions referencing the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT in any way.
* Associated Use Requirements:
ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT. If you exercise the Associated Use rights described above, you agree to: (a) only exercise the associated rights described above in forums accessible only to persons or single entities in the ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT REGION where you were originally granted this ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT LICENSE
Alright, so hopefully it won't happen, but don't be surprised when you have to click on the I agree button the next time you go to the theatre.
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
Here's an issue that I've been mulling over....
/. if MS snarfed up some of the GCC code, and slammed it together with some Beowulf supporting software, modified the mess to make it taste better and started running Windows XP compile farms on it.
What is "release" of the software? The new FAQ collection contains the following quote:
*begin quote*
Does the GPL required that source code of modified versions be posted to the public? The GPL does not require you to release the modified program. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. But if you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the users, under the GPL. Thus, the GPL gives permission to release the modified program in certain ways, and not in other ways; but the decision of whether to release it is up to you.
*end quote*
Now then. Here is what I can see as a reasonable definition of "release".
When the entity holding the copyright on the derivative work makes the derivative work available to an entity or entities not holding the copyright.
However, this has implications that are not clear.
For instance, the copyright holder may be an institution utilizing the derivative work internally (think any GPL derived tools used by a major corporation, developed by that corporation and not released to any other entity in any form).
That scenario isn't terribly frightening, but I guarantee that it goes against the spirit of community involvement. Just suppose the outrage here on
Now imagine a second possibility.
A company contracts to write software for another firm. The copyright of the software is specified by contract to reside with the hiring firm. The hiring firm desires the software for internal use (perhaps a bank is hiring a software company to develop its transaction system). The software company is perfectly able to use GNU GPL'd source in this application, modify it, AND NOT RELEASE IT. There is never a release of the software since the copyright holder is a legal entity, no more so than if I modify software for my own use and never give it to anyone.
this by the way provides a possible model for incorporating use of GPL'd software into business.
I know this will be a controversial view, it goes against the spirit of the GNU GPL; however, it appears to be supported by the wording of the license....
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
Quoted from the article above:
*begin quote*
3.3 Analysis limitations
There are three assumptions that underly our analysis:
* Address uniformity: attackers spoof source addresses at random.
*end quote*
This seems to me to be a currently acceptable assumption IFF the attacks are of an unsophisticated/sophomoric nature; however, if the attackers are attempting to cause maximum utilization of the target network's resources, the attackers most likely will not use a randomly distributed source address. In fact, the optimal employment of spoofed addresses will likely be some subset of the addresses employed by the target's network.
It seems likely in light of this that the "backscatter technique" outlined here, while useful, may not record the attacks engineered by more sophisticated attackers.
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
Alright, first off... let's point the masses at some good reading
Some Basics Of Radio Astronomy
Chapter 2. The Properties of Electromagnetic Radiation (PDF)
Now that that's done, let's revisit your comment again. Please see the section regarding the inverse square law and EM propagation.
Thank you,
-Goodnight
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
Sometimes I'm amused, sometimes amazed that we can continue to let ourselves live in a world where the average man considers the image of a naked blade less disturbing than the image of a naked breast.
Murder, death, violence. Portray these and you may rise to be a "news source" for the world. Love, kindness, and attraction. Portray these and you may live... if you run quickly.
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
*snickers*
Well.... I figured it all out. If you go out and back and around and back in enough pages, it is *barely* possible that you can get to the MSDN from that site.
Once there you can get some headers to go with your Micro-Softwich & Coffee. Oh wait, those are just the same thing I already found in my dev-kit.... Darn. Hmm, what's that dev-kit doing on here anyway?
--Isn't shared source what happens when M$ lets a new build of WinBloats out the door before they mean to?
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
*blinks*
Wow.... it's older than I am... or at least more mature.
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
*smirks*
Let's look at the story for a second here folks.
The scientist set up a data-storage device (in this case an acoustically massaged medium), then an information retrieval was carried out against the medium. This retrieval was carried out in parallel. Now this is fairly exciting news, but it has some serious distance to go before it manages to become something general enough to threaten the intellectual-share of true quantum-entaglement computing schemes.
The promises for the device so far seem to be in determining data returns along mulitple paths. In effect, the thing is performing the many many calculations (in this case actually only data-retrievals). However, it's performing them in parallel.
In addition, I'm curious as to how the data is retrieved. If the recombinant beam must be compared to the original beam along all the frequency divisions, there's another indivisible operation requiring some length of time.
But....
It is an interesting method of encoding/decoding data from a medium to a laser without transducers. I'd say that this technology has great promise as a method to be derived from to create all-optical switching fabrics that are actually data-sensitive (how'd you love it if you could decode, process, and filter packet data from the very laser transmission that carried it down the fat fiber pipe...?)
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
*smirks*
I think that the applications to cryptography should be mentioned. Both for this particular mechanism (low, imnsho) and for more general quantum computers. These eventual cryptography machines will be massive, dedicated, and initially incredibly expensive (think eniac). What they *can* be easily seen to be used for is all manner of brute-forcing attacks on data by governmental and/or large institutions.
Moreover, don't believe for a second that there will be "a slew of new possibilities for encryption schemes" that we'll see anytime soon. In fact, I suspect that it's precisely private data that will be exposed during early usage of new decryption methods; meanwhile, don't suppose that the various powers that be will ever allow an easily implemented, private, and quantum-secure data-hiding scheme.
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
Now then...
This *acutally* hits the core of the problem. It's not a question of a single person having access to the law. That access is guaranteed regardless of IP/Copyright issues by the courts. The access may be restricted in some respects (the county clerk's office has a looooong lunch break), and the access may be to only a handful of formats (written, braille--I believe required, etc). But there will be access.
However, the real threat comes when the text of the law needs dissemination to a third party.
How can you, as an iddividual citizen, excercise your Constitutionally protected right of PETITION to get a bad law overturned, if you couldn't even inform the public as to what your problems with that law were, except by getting a license from the very people you oppose?
*points upward* This is exactly the situation that must be avoided. A person or group denouncing the law would have to license the right to publish the law from the IP holders.
Without the right to publish the law, without the right to allow others to view the law at thier leisure, there can *be* no informed public. Thus there can be no democratic process with respect to the law.
In short, restricting by any positive action, access to the text of the laws prevents the very exercise of democracy that the laws intend to forward. While I would also argue that it abrogates the individual's inherant right to self-governance (how may I enter into a social contract without first being able to understand the contract), the important sticking point is that the process of democracy is being destroyed from underneath--by eliminating the informed citizenry needed to propigate it.
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
Of course that's a personal problem
But there's a good reason why it stops my *good* use of an OODB.
If you look well and hard at C++, it's mildly object oriented, you can at least *create* objects, right?
If you look well and hard at Java (god bless it), it's *mostly* object oriented, at least there's a *root* object in the hierarchy, right?... Hmm, what are all those basic components though, is that an integer over there? What kind of object is that again?
Now then, if you managed to find a language whose native types were *all* expressed as objects, where my data were all most naturally expressed as an object (god bless Objective C and Scheme)... well, I'd be much more likely to store my data objectively (come to think of it, I do hate most of my data more than a little).
At any rate, I think the answer is that Object technology is only just coming into its own, and the rigor required of us the programmers to *USE* object orientation to its fullest extent is something that we don't enjoy doing for something as crunchy as DBMS access. Of course, just trying to get the data-creating departments to specify your data in an object oriented fashion might very well bite arse also...
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
*looks around* Yep, I'm an Egoist.
Of course, there's not anything wrong with that that I can see, but I *do* have some thoughts about Egoism and GPL versus Egoism and Proprietary software.
If I release my software product under a proprietary model, people see my success at a level accessible to end-users. This is good, I have some Egoistic gratification; however, if I release my work under an OSS model, people see my success at both the end-user level, and at the code-inspected, microscopic level. And I'd argue that these people are those whose cheers would gratify my black, little, egoistic soul more.
Who's better known, Torvald or the poor, tortured soul who started the NT Kernel?
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
*Quoted from above*
2. What examples of fair uses absolutely require access to the work in its most modern, digital, uncorrupted, un-macrovisioned form? The only one that jumped out at me is making a backup copy in case the original is destroyed. But perhaps there are others.
-Any use in which the digital technology, or application of that technology is studied or compared would absolutely require access to the work in its most modern, digital, and uncorrupted form. For instance, any comparison of the compression or capabilities of different audio formats (mp3, wmp, wav) would concievably require the unadulterated source. When you're analyzing artifacts introduced by the digital encoding scheme (don't tell me you other audiophiles don't care....) reproducing the work in it's most authentic format is essential.
-However, I'd really question the concept that a qualitative degredation of the work in question is somehow required for fair use. It would seem that US Code, Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 107 limits fair usage only according to four principles:
(begin quote)
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, and;
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market value of the copyrighted work.
(end quote)
(The above work copied in whole from the reference provided at http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html usage is intended only for scholarly discussion.... *smirks*)
-None of which seem to include the *quality* of the used media in any case.
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.