If we were actually in a declared state of war (i.e. Congress actually made a declaration of war, something not done since WWII), like we were when all of those other Presidents did those things, I would have much less of a problem with what is happening. As is, we are in an open ended 'war', which is not a war, not that there isn't combat going on, but it NOT a war. Not to pull a Godwin's Law, but a perpetual state of war is one of the tricks used in 1984 as a justification of rights suppression tactics. Can you honestly envision an end to this war on terror? The war on drugs is still going on. The price for freedom is eternal vigilence, and not buying into the bull of 'well we're at war'. No we're not. We're in an undeclared combat situation on two fronts.
Colonization can obviously not be used to lower population on earth, moving billions of people off planet is simply not feasible. However, colonization can insure species survival if a cataclysmic event were to befall earth. If it is a one time thing, that can be recovered from, the colonists from other planets could maybe even recolonize the earth. This is speaking of species survival, not necessarily species survival on earth.
NDA's are part of contractual law between two private parties in a business transaction. The university is not a private party, it receives funds from the state, and as such is an agent of the government. Requiring an NDA signature after you have begun your transaction happens often, but it does change the terms of the agreement. Scholarships should have no retroactive conditions, especially from a public school.
I think this violates the first amendment "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech... the right of the people peaceably to assemble". This is an implicit freedom of association issue, and as a state funded school, Kent State has an obligation to uphold the constitution.
They do as an institution with an internet connection, have the right to blacklist certain websites at their ISP level, which would probably be the best technological solution, which would block students from using the account on campus. But they are going after 'athletes' in particular, which is a viscious form of discriminiation.
They feel that they need to 'protect their image', and student athletes form a higher percentage of that 'image' than should really be the case. As much as I like sports, we have elevated their role in college policy to an absurd level. Money talks. But if a student has an athletic scholarship, he should be considered a student, first and foremost, and no additional restrictions on being a student should be allowed. Sure, kick them off the team if you want to, but by tying their student status to this rule, you are holding them hostage, and to a different standard than your regular student. This is unfair to them, especially as they are generating more revenue for you than the average student.
Sure maybe the student may be giving stalkers information, or embarrasing the school. But that could be true of any student. So should the university ban all cameras on campus, as not to show any drunken students? Ban all contact with the outside world? These are students, not prisoners, and if they want to hand over their information for stalkers, that is their right. They are being stupid, but that is their right. If the university doesn't want them stalked on campus, it should beef up campus security. They are not the university's 'asset', they are it's student, and it is supposed to be providing them a service, not the other way around. Don't treat them as a revenue stream, and don't violate the spirit of the constitution.
This may not be a popular sentiment here, but I think the statement the failure of open source Java means that it can't be used on millions of $100, Linux-powered PC's... to bring affordable computing to children in developing nations is a bit of a cheap shot. The way it is stated, it makes Sun look like some sort of terrible ogre, that is denying children access to computers, when it is the program creator that does not allow Java on the laptops.
It is similar to the argument people make saying "corporations that make genetically modified food are causing people in Africa to starve", in countries that forbid the import of genetically modified food. The policy, not the companies making the food, are what is causing the lack of that particular food to be used.
Don't get me wrong, it would be great if Sun made Java open source, but what they have now is not evil. The software is free as in beer to use, and as such would add no more cost to the laptops, if installed, it would just conflict with the philosophy of the program's founder.
Also, if you want to write your own JVM, Sun has written books to let you do just that. It is not an easy project, it is similar to JBoss in complexity, but JBoss was written. If the CTO at RedHat was that concerned about Java not being on the laptops, he could have part of his company work on an open source JVM implementation. That company has a lot of resources, and would be more able to manage a project of that complexity than several freelance developers in their free time.
6,850,691 - Automatic playback overshoot correction system
6,847,778 - Multimedia Visual Progress Indication System
6,792,195 - Method and Apparatus Implementing Random Access and Time-Based Functions on a Continuous Stream of Formatted Digital Data (continuation of 6,327,418)
6,757,906 - Television Viewer Interface System
They also have exclusive licensing rights to
5,241,428 - Variable-Delay Video Recorder
Japanese Patents
3615486 - Multimedia Time Warping System
Chinese Patents
ZL 99804757.0 - Method and Apparatus Implementing Random Access and Time-Based Functions on a Continuous Stream of Formatted Digital Data (see US patent 6,327,418)
ZL 00805987.X - Data Storage Management and Scheduling System
This is of March 2005, they may have more since then. Also, if you want to search the text of the US patents, you can start here
Well, it's not as though this kind of thing is unexpected. Once the government is given power, it is human nature to abuse it. What I don't understand is why people fall hook, line, and sinker, for the same techniques throughout history over and over again.
1) Instill fear in the population somehow, by either orchestating or latching on to a catastrophic event, 2) Tell the population that you will take care of it, blame enemies of the state, 3) Go to war, claim critics of the war are unpatriotic, out of touch, part of an "elite".
This is all classic power grab politics, and yet it happens again and again in history.
Why do people not learn from history? It is clear that those in power have a vested interest in having a sheeple populace. A critical thinking, well informed electorate, is the biggest enemy to would be dictators in a democratic society.
Start with the children. I guess fear really is the mind killer. And, at the risk of pulling a Godwin, two quotes from Hermann Goering, leader of Hitler's Luttewaffe.
"Education is dangerous - Every educated person is a future enemy"
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
Finally, just a minor nit. The submitter claims the student was a "Dartmouth" student, whereas the article states that the student was from "U Mass-Dartmouth".
Is'a always amazing to me to see what priorities the government has about crime. Let me first start off by saying that things like child pornography are truly terrible, and should be investigated and prosecuted.
However, the article also mentions things like urinating and defecating on people, which while I think it is disgusting, is really not hurting anyone, with the possible exception of spreading disease.
It is intersting that they can show the body of a dead hooker on tv, but then thex pixellate the nipple when the camera goes there.
This is a country where graphic depictions of violence is not only allowed, but glorified, but gets in an uproar over a boob at a half time commercial.
We have legitimate crime issues. Murder, theft, terrorism (at some level), and pornography is our new focus. Wonderful.
I'm sorry, and I'm sure this is beating a dead horse, but Superman, Batman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, et als. are not SCIENCE FICTION. Granted, there may be a correlation between the viewership of said shows, but these shows don't even pretend to be futuristic, or contain a science element at all. Batman, maybe, but I hate it when people lump these things all under the "sci fi" umbrella. This is why we have all this horror shlock on the Sci-Fi channel and things like Farscape get cancelled.
I have a question. I was a mac user for several years, but not for the last 10 years or so, and I remember that there were several 'viruses' at the time. What ever became of them? This was all pre wideuse internet, so I think those old viruses spread via floppy, but I'm just wondering. Technically, doesn't Mac OSX have some backward compatibility all the way back to the 680X0 chipset? What happens to the new Macs if they encounter these old foes?
This has happened before. Right after the initial success of Batman the movie studios thought that super-hero movies were the way to go. The resulting movies were not made well. They made Captain America once before. As much as I loved the X-Men and Spiderman movies, Fantastic Four was only so-so, and bringing back Captain America, they should be careful. Hollywood tends to beat genres to death, wait a while and do it all over again.
The previous section of the EULA says (bolded emphasis mine) You may install and use the Software on a single desktop computer that has a Windows PC operating system (including desktop PC versions of Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT, ME and XP (Home and Professional), a Macintosh desktop operating system, a Linux desktop operating system, or a Solaris desktop operating system;
So at first glance, it does appear to be "desktop" machines, but then look at the next section.
you may not use the Software on any non-PC product or any embedded or device versions of the above operating systems, including...closed system based service
This seems pretty clear that they mean specialized versions of any of the above OS's, like an XBox or other console, or "closed system" (which appears at the end above). True, they do mention the word "mobile device" in the list of things after the "including", but it also says "non-PC product, or any embedded or device versions" of the OS. Is there any difference at all between laptop and desktop versions of Windows XP, for example? If they really had meant to ban laptops, they would have had the word "laptop" in the list of devices that are explicitly excluded.
Personally, I'm not a lawyer, but the interpretation of "no laptops" seems to be a very literal interpretation, and I know this was kind of done as a "look how stupid this company is" attitude, but I don't think a) a court would interpret this to mean "no laptops" or that b) Macromedia would take that stupid an interpretation of the agreement.
Having said all that, companies have surprised me in the past, however.
Here are some nice points at the end of the article, and my thoughts on each...
Changes the current "first to invent" standard to "first to file," which means patent rights go to the first inventor to file for a patent who can provide sufficient evidence for a claimed invention.
Biggest mistake, in my opinion. All of the patent infringement cases that I have heard of in the news as of late have not been by an inventor that has thought that another person had stolen his idea, but rather by companies, with questionably vague patents, suing infringers, or rightful blatant patent infringement, usually perpetrated by larger companies.
Eliminates the subjective "best mode" requirement from 112 of the Patent Act, delineating objective criteria that an inventor must set forth in an application
This seems fine to me.
Imposes a duty of candor and good faith on parties to contested cases before the patent office, eliminating inequitable conduct as a defense of patent unenforceability.
Don't know what this means exactly. Kind of scary that you'd have to legislate "duty of candor and good faith though"
Reduces the scope of willful infringement by raising the standard of proof required, and limits the amount of damages a patentholder can collect from an infringer
Like any damage caps, this is good and bad. Good for the little guy getting sued by MegaCorp., terrible for the little company MegaCorp. is doing patent infringement on.
Limits patentees' ability to get injunctions, directing courts with jurisdiction over patent cases to stay an injunction pending an appeal if it finds that the stay neither will cause irreparable harm to the patent owner nor the balance of hardships from the stay favor the patent owner
Like the previous step, good and bad, like any legislative tool.
Authorizes the director of the patent office to regulate continuation applications -- subsequent patent applications filed by the same inventor, based on information included in an earlier application, but containing different claims
I don't understand this, why should there be continuation applications at all? New claims? New patent. Old patent should not expire earlier.
Establishes a new post-grant opposition system in the patent office
How does this work? Can anyone file to get a patent looked at? How does this lessen patent litigation?
Allows members of the public to introduce new information to the patent office up to six months after the date of publication of the patent application to challenge the patent and to provide a final quality check (10).
Might be good to allow this any time a patent litigation suit is brought. Avoids submarine patents.
All and all, it is good that Congress is looking into this, but I think some of their remedies here are dangerous, and also, that the article has it right. More money for patent examiners, and not allocating money based on patent acceptance/rejection (thus giving them an incentive to accept all patents) would be a better use of their time and money. Not to mention, more enforcement of things like "obviousness".
from the article: But because some people object to the destruction of or experimentation on a human embryo, U.S. law restricts the use of federal funds for this kind of research.
Is it US law? What bill did Congress vote on? Oh, that's right, President Bush declared an "executive order". What is the constitutional basis for this? I thought the Legislative Branch was supposed to create the laws, and the Executive Branch enforce them.
While it may seem we are moving backwards, within 20 years of "100 years ago", we had the Scopes Monkey trial, and physicists are still doing research now. We've had backwards people and forwards people the entire time. The only issue now is who is making policy.
That for most of us that believe in the Scientific Method, to the point, almost to the exclusion of all else, we need to be reminded that sometimes we can be just as blinded by the theories that we believe as those we criticize.
Slashdot Mirror
Then based on your title, the whole title should be...
The Sad Story of Sega's Sucky Saga
Works for me.
What about the American revolution?
If we were actually in a declared state of war (i.e. Congress actually made a declaration of war, something not done since WWII), like we were when all of those other Presidents did those things, I would have much less of a problem with what is happening. As is, we are in an open ended 'war', which is not a war, not that there isn't combat going on, but it NOT a war. Not to pull a Godwin's Law, but a perpetual state of war is one of the tricks used in 1984 as a justification of rights suppression tactics. Can you honestly envision an end to this war on terror? The war on drugs is still going on. The price for freedom is eternal vigilence, and not buying into the bull of 'well we're at war'. No we're not. We're in an undeclared combat situation on two fronts.
Colonization can obviously not be used to lower population on earth, moving billions of people off planet is simply not feasible. However, colonization can insure species survival if a cataclysmic event were to befall earth. If it is a one time thing, that can be recovered from, the colonists from other planets could maybe even recolonize the earth. This is speaking of species survival, not necessarily species survival on earth.
and you 'mericans already killed the ENGLISH language...
Sorry, but you forgot one
"'mericans" = Merkins
Thank you
NDA's are part of contractual law between two private parties in a business transaction. The university is not a private party, it receives funds from the state, and as such is an agent of the government. Requiring an NDA signature after you have begun your transaction happens often, but it does change the terms of the agreement. Scholarships should have no retroactive conditions, especially from a public school.
I think this violates the first amendment "Congress
shall make no law
peaceably to assemble". This is an implicit freedom of association issue, and as a
state funded school, Kent State has an obligation to uphold the constitution.
They do as an institution with an internet connection, have the right to
blacklist certain websites at their ISP level, which would probably be the best
technological solution, which would block students from using the account on
campus. But they are going after 'athletes' in particular, which is a viscious form of
discriminiation.
They feel that they need to 'protect their image', and student athletes form
a higher percentage of that 'image' than should really be the case. As much as I like
sports, we have elevated their role in college policy to an absurd level. Money talks.
But if a student has an athletic scholarship, he should be considered a student, first and
foremost, and no additional restrictions on being a student should be allowed. Sure, kick
them off the team if you want to, but by tying their student status to this rule, you are
holding them hostage, and to a different standard than your regular student. This is unfair
to them, especially as they are generating more revenue for you than the average student.
Sure maybe the student may be giving stalkers information, or embarrasing the
school. But that could be true of any student. So should the university ban all
cameras on campus, as not to show any drunken students? Ban all contact with the
outside world? These are students, not prisoners, and if they want to hand over their
information for stalkers, that is their right. They are being stupid, but that is their right.
If the university doesn't want them stalked on campus, it should beef up campus security.
They are not the university's 'asset', they are it's student, and it is supposed to be providing
them a service, not the other way around. Don't treat them as a revenue stream, and don't
violate the spirit of the constitution.
This may not be a popular sentiment here, but I think the statement the failure of open source Java ... to bring affordable computing
means that it can't be used on millions of $100, Linux-powered PC's
to children in developing nations is a bit of a cheap shot. The way it is stated, it makes Sun look
like some sort of terrible ogre, that is denying children access to computers, when it is the program
creator that does not allow Java on the laptops.
It is similar to the argument people make saying "corporations that make genetically modified food
are causing people in Africa to starve", in countries that forbid the import of genetically modified
food. The policy, not the companies making the food, are what is causing the lack of that particular
food to be used.
Don't get me wrong, it would be great if Sun made Java open source, but what they have now is not evil.
The software is free as in beer to use, and as such would add no more cost to the laptops, if installed, it would just conflict
with the philosophy of the program's founder.
Also, if you want to write your own JVM, Sun has written books to let you do just that.
It is not an easy project, it is similar to JBoss in complexity, but JBoss was written. If the CTO at
RedHat was that concerned about Java not being on the laptops, he could have part of his company work
on an open source JVM implementation. That company has a lot of resources, and would be more able
to manage a project of that complexity than several freelance developers in their free time.
Found on a TiVo press release.
US Patents
6,850,691 - Automatic playback overshoot correction system
6,847,778 - Multimedia Visual Progress Indication System
6,792,195 - Method and Apparatus Implementing Random Access and Time-Based Functions on a Continuous Stream of Formatted Digital Data (continuation of 6,327,418)
6,757,906 - Television Viewer Interface System
They also have exclusive licensing rights to
5,241,428 - Variable-Delay Video Recorder
Japanese Patents
3615486 - Multimedia Time Warping System
Chinese Patents
ZL 99804757.0 - Method and Apparatus Implementing Random Access and Time-Based Functions on a Continuous Stream of Formatted Digital Data (see US patent 6,327,418)
ZL 00805987.X - Data Storage Management and Scheduling System
This is of March 2005, they may have more since then. Also, if you want to search the text of the US patents, you can start here
Well, it's not as though this kind of thing is unexpected. Once the
government is given power, it is human nature to abuse it. What I
don't understand is why people fall hook, line, and sinker, for the
same techniques throughout history over and over again.
1) Instill fear in the population somehow, by either orchestating or latching on to
a catastrophic event,
2) Tell the population that you will take care of it, blame enemies of the state,
3) Go to war, claim critics of the war are unpatriotic, out of touch, part of an "elite".
This is all classic power grab politics, and yet it happens again and again in
history.
Why do people not learn from history? It is clear that those in power have a
vested interest in having a sheeple populace. A critical thinking, well informed
electorate, is the biggest enemy to would be dictators in a democratic society.
Start with the children. I guess fear really is the mind killer. And, at the risk of
pulling a Godwin, two quotes from Hermann Goering, leader of Hitler's Luttewaffe.
"Education is dangerous - Every educated person is a future enemy"
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
Finally, just a minor nit. The submitter claims the student was a "Dartmouth" student, whereas the article states that the student was from "U Mass-Dartmouth".
Is'a always amazing to me to see what priorities the government has about crime. Let me first start off by saying that things like child pornography are truly terrible, and should be investigated and prosecuted.
However, the article also mentions things like urinating and defecating on people, which while I think it is disgusting, is really not hurting anyone, with the possible exception of spreading disease.
It is intersting that they can show the body of a dead hooker on tv, but then thex pixellate the nipple when the camera goes there.
This is a country where graphic depictions of violence is not only allowed, but glorified, but gets in an uproar over a boob at a half time commercial.
We have legitimate crime issues. Murder, theft, terrorism (at some level), and pornography is our new focus. Wonderful.
I'm sorry, and I'm sure this is beating a dead horse, but Superman, Batman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, et als. are not SCIENCE FICTION. Granted, there may be a correlation between the viewership of said shows, but these shows don't even pretend to be futuristic, or contain a science element at all. Batman, maybe, but I hate it when people lump these things all under the "sci fi" umbrella. This is why we have all this horror shlock on the Sci-Fi channel and things like Farscape get cancelled.
I have a question. I was a mac user for several years, but not for the last 10 years or so, and I remember that there were several 'viruses' at the time. What ever became of them? This was all pre wideuse internet, so I think those old viruses spread via floppy, but I'm just wondering. Technically, doesn't Mac OSX have some backward compatibility all the way back to the 680X0 chipset?
What happens to the new Macs if they encounter these old foes?
This has happened before. Right after the initial success of Batman
the movie studios thought that super-hero movies were the way to go. The resulting movies were not made well.
They made Captain America once before. As much as I loved the X-Men and Spiderman movies, Fantastic Four was only so-so,
and bringing back Captain America, they should be careful. Hollywood tends to beat genres to death, wait a while and do it
all over again.
I don't know if it explictly bans laptops.
The previous section of the EULA says (bolded emphasis mine)
You may install and use the Software on a single desktop computer that
has a Windows PC operating system (including desktop PC versions of Windows
95, 98, 2000, NT, ME and XP (Home and Professional), a Macintosh desktop operating
system, a Linux desktop operating system, or a Solaris desktop operating
system;
So at first glance, it does appear to be "desktop" machines, but then look at the next section.
you may not use the Software on any non-PC product or any embedded or device
versions of the above operating systems, including...closed system based service
This seems pretty clear that they mean specialized versions of any of the above OS's, like an XBox or
other console, or "closed system" (which appears at the end above). True, they do mention the word
"mobile device" in the list of things after the "including", but it also says "non-PC product, or any
embedded or device versions" of the OS. Is there any difference at all between laptop and desktop versions
of Windows XP, for example? If they really had meant to ban laptops, they would have had the word "laptop"
in the list of devices that are explicitly excluded.
Personally, I'm not a lawyer, but the interpretation of "no laptops" seems to be a very literal interpretation,
and I know this was kind of done as a "look how stupid this company is" attitude, but I don't think
a) a court would interpret this to mean "no laptops" or that b) Macromedia would take that stupid an interpretation
of the agreement.
Having said all that, companies have surprised me in the past, however.
Here are some nice points at the end of the article, and my thoughts on each...
Changes the current "first to invent" standard to "first to file," which means patent rights go to the first inventor to file for a patent who can provide sufficient evidence for a claimed invention.
Biggest mistake, in my opinion. All of the patent infringement cases that I have heard of in the news as of late have not been by an inventor that has thought that another person had stolen his idea, but rather
by companies, with questionably vague patents, suing infringers, or rightful blatant patent infringement, usually perpetrated by larger companies.
Eliminates the subjective "best mode" requirement from 112 of the Patent Act, delineating objective criteria that an inventor must set forth in an application
This seems fine to me.
Imposes a duty of candor and good faith on parties to contested cases before the patent office, eliminating inequitable conduct as a defense of patent unenforceability.
Don't know what this means exactly. Kind of scary that you'd have to legislate "duty of candor and good faith though"
Reduces the scope of willful infringement by raising the standard of proof required, and limits the amount of damages a patentholder can collect from an infringer
Like any damage caps, this is good and bad. Good for the little guy getting sued by MegaCorp., terrible for the little company MegaCorp. is doing patent infringement on.
Limits patentees' ability to get injunctions, directing courts with jurisdiction over patent cases to stay an injunction pending an appeal if it finds that the stay neither will cause irreparable harm to the patent owner nor the balance of hardships from the stay favor the patent owner
Like the previous step, good and bad, like any legislative tool.
Authorizes the director of the patent office to regulate continuation applications -- subsequent patent applications filed by the same inventor, based on information included in an earlier application, but containing different claims
I don't understand this, why should there be continuation applications at all? New claims? New patent. Old patent should not expire earlier.
Establishes a new post-grant opposition system in the patent office
How does this work? Can anyone file to get a patent looked at? How does this lessen patent litigation?
Allows members of the public to introduce new information to the patent office up to six months after the date of publication of the patent application to challenge the patent and to provide a final quality check (10).
Might be good to allow this any time a patent litigation suit is brought. Avoids submarine patents.
All and all, it is good that Congress is looking into this, but I think some of their remedies here are dangerous, and also, that the article has it right.
More money for patent examiners, and not allocating money based on patent acceptance/rejection (thus giving them an incentive to accept all patents) would
be a better use of their time and money. Not to mention, more enforcement of things like "obviousness".
trials of the system were recently held at six London railway stations
I imagine roadside billboards would not be used, it's bad enough in the US with intrusive bill boards on road sides.
from the article:
But because some people object to the destruction of or experimentation on a human embryo, U.S. law restricts the use of federal funds for this kind of research.
Is it US law? What bill did Congress vote on? Oh, that's right, President Bush declared an "executive order". What is the constitutional basis for this? I thought the Legislative Branch was supposed to create the laws, and the Executive Branch enforce them.
He used to be on the Electric Company.
Elvis created it, he's dead (and if he wasn't already, he'd be by now from old age)
Why? He'd only be 70.
While it may seem we are moving backwards, within 20 years of "100 years ago", we had the Scopes Monkey trial, and physicists are still doing research now. We've had backwards people and forwards people the entire time. The only issue now is who is making policy.
The first link, that is.
Brilliant linkage troll.
Grover Cleveland did just that.
That for most of us that believe in the Scientific Method, to the point, almost to the exclusion of all else, we need to be reminded that sometimes we can be just as blinded by the theories that we believe as those we criticize.