This is an important point commercially, but it's not just NVIDIA and ATI. You have to think about the whole "ecosystem". The GPU vendors have an interest in driving people to buy the latest and greatest chips. Quality and speed only go so far with consumer applications; at some point you need to add features. Those features are only interesting if games developers can use them to create new titles that people will buy. Thus, the API vendor or standards body needs to work with both communities to develop and share new ideas for hardware features that can be applied as easily as possible into new games.
Of course, the workstation market - where OpenGL is still king - is a different beast. Stability, quality, and performance are critical, in that order, and new features are generally adopted quite slowly.
I'm not an expert on OpenGL and DirectX, so I'll leave it to others to dissect whether the same API can really serve both markets.
The same exothermic chemical reaction used in this coffee cup is the basis for ancient Roman hydraulic cement, plaster for fresco painting, etc. CaO + H2O = Ca(HO)2 + O + heat. The materials are essentially recyclable, since the calcium hydroxide can be baked to release water vapor and reduce it back to calcium oxide. However, in reality all these cups will simply end up in a garbage dump somewhere.
This bill also includes an amendment by my local Representative, Ed Markey (D-MA) to ban the "extraordinary rendition" of suspects to regimes like Syria that routinely use torture.
I'm not sure which is worse - allowing the government to continue to kidnap potentially innocent people and send them to other countries to be tortured, or a national ID that's little more than the existing drivers' licenses.
Fortunately we still have the Second Amendment. For now.
It depends how much you're willing to spend. You could get a 66000 rack-mount multiple-output DC power supply from Agilent for $2K plus $300/channel. Max total power output is 1200W.
You're right, but video card manufacturers are already including DRM firmware - it's called DVI. DVI creates a secure link between the PC and the display to prevent digital copying of decoded streams (e.g. DVD).
BTW, I'm surprised no one has yet challenged the DVD regional licensing scheme under US antitrust law. The Sherman Act makes such geographic price discrimination illegal.
"Under the Commission's current rules, the field strength of radiated emissions... above 960 MHz at a distance of 3 meters shall not exceed 500 uV/m"
They're asking for that to be reduced to 8.6 uV/m. That's a huge amount of attentuation and requires serious filtering, and probably reductions in transmission power which thereby reduces operating range. I don't know if this would kill 802.11b, but my guess is that it would make it useless for neighborhood networks.
You make a good point about enforceability: any settlement that depends upon executive branch agencies like the DOJ is a "walk" for Microsoft. No executive branch agency in the Bush pro-business-at-any-cost administration will actually enforce the terms of this agreement beyond the bare minimum necessary to avoid gross misconduct.
Any such settlement agreement must be enforced by a non-executive-branch body. (Perhaps the ITAA would like to help.:-)
Moreover, Microsoft have demonstrated a total disregard for the law, and offering them the benefit of "good faith" is irresponsible. The fact that Microsoft is "powerful" should not prevent the DOJ from imposing proper sanctions and relief on their behaviour - in fact, it argues for a stronger and more enforceable penalty.
There are some major gifts in this agreement. For example, see III(A)(2). Microsoft may not retaliate against OEMs that sell Linux, or that ship PCs with multiple OSes or multi-boot capability, but the language allows Microsoft to retaliate against vendors of OS-less PCs or PCs that do not have Windows on them (e.g., PCs with only Linux installed).
Microsoft can also continue to roll functionality into its OS and kernel, or use proprietary APIs, as long as it does not put the entirety of the "middleware" into the OS. Only "Internet Explorer, Microsoft's Java Virtual Machine, Windows Media Player, Windows Messenger, Outlook Express and their successors" are covered by the middleware restrictions anyway. IIS, SQL Server, and other enterprise products can continue to use secret kernel-mode APIs to enhance their performance and maintain an unfair advantage for Microsoft middleware over non-Microsoft middleware.
There's a beautiful escape clause in III(H) which allows Microsoft to bypass third-party software (browser, JVM, media player, etc.) if it "fails to implement a reasonable technical requirement... that is necessary for valid technical reasons to supply the end user with functionality consistent with a Windows Operating System Product."
And there's the spectacular III(J), which allows Microsoft to hide APIs, documentation or "layers of Communications Protocols" if it "would compromise the security of anti-piracy, anti-virus, software licensing, digital rights management, encryption or authentication systems." That's rather broad.
As others have no doubt noted, there is no mention of the "embrace and extend" techniques Microsoft uses to take over open protocols under the guise of improved functionality. There's also no mention of tying Microsoft content to Microsoft products distributed with the OS and thereby creating a substantial barrier to entry for third parties (as they are doing now with MSN).
I would love to see a coordinated campaign to fight this settlement agreement. Congress gets very grumpy if executive branch agencies ignore public comments, and many state attorneys-general will have to sign off on the agreement (many of them do not like it, and even a small amount of public disapproval will help them). This means there is something that people everywhere within the US, or who do business in the US, can do to fight this agreement. Please write me at the email address given if you are interested in this effort.
Re:How could we see the world with DRM in place?
on
What's The Future of DRM?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
That depends on how the compromise is drawn. Consider the position of the framers of the U.S. Constitution: from a natural rights perspective, all expressions of ideas, works of art, etc. covered by copyright are free to be shared and copied as desired. However, the framers also understood that taking this approach would not maximize the amount of intellectual "property" or "content" available to the public.
The founders' response was a compromise between the natural rights and the best interests of the people. They allowed useful, novel ideas such as machines to be patented, or writings and art to be copyrighted, granting a monopoly for a limited time. The key here is the "limited times" clause. By making sure that works would eventually enter the public domain, the founders gave inventors, artists, and publishers a compelling reason to fully disclose their inventions and publish their works: monopoly profits. In exchange for the protection of patents and copyrights, the owners agreed to release all claims on the works after a period of time.
This compromise was a stroke of genius, as it balanced the need to provide incentives to creators and distributors of ideas to maximize their production with the natural rights of the people. Unfortunately, the founders left it up to Congress to define what the "limited times" clause meant. The Supreme Court has ruled that this clause allows Congress to set any non-infinite period without violating the Constitution. The Court cannot set a maximum period on its own authority because that would violate the separation of powers between legislative and judicial branches.
The problem with current DRM schemes, the DMCA, and the SSSCA is that they completely ignore the natural rights of the people. Intellectual "property" corporations like publishers, movie studios, and conglomerates (AOL Time Warner, Viacom) have spent the last two centuries trying to indoctrinate people with the belief that intellectual property is a natural right. The repeated extensions of copyright terms during the 20th century suggests they are winning.
However, a DRM system consistent with the framers' intent would be beneficial to everyone. Digital media technologies have undermined the balance between natural rights and maximizing available content. Current DRM systems and supporting legislation go too far in the opposite direction, undermining the peoples' natural rights.
What we need is a DRM system that works to maintain the framers' compromise, rather than benefitting either side. It should ensure that fair uses are permitted, that works enter the public domain when their copyright expires, and that creators are given the necessary returns from their work to ensure a vital public discourse.
This suggests that legitimate DRMs must codify ideas like limiting the number of serial copies (copies of copies of...) that may be made, but must also codify the right to view at any time after purchase, the right to transfer ownership to another person, etc. The Congress has thus far failed to strike this balance because they have not been educated about its importance.
DRMs do not have to be totally secure; that is unnecessary and probably impossible. However, they do need to be sufficiently secure that the cost of circumventing them is prohibitive. (Should circumvention tools be legal or illegal? I'm not sure.) I believe such a level of security is attainable and sufficient in the general case, because people value their time.
This is as far as I've been able to get, but I think it's a good starting point for a reasoned, non-kneejerk discussion of copyrights and intellectual "property" in the digital age. I look forward to reading comments and followups to these ideas. DRMs need not be the end of the world.
Yes. Having seen the signaling methods and the internals of a FireWire link controller and link-PHY interface, it is one of the most horrendous hacks I've ever seen. It makes ATM look simple. The standard is little more than a reverse engineering of an unjustifiably complex hardware implementation done by some folks who have taken far too many scary drugs. Now the 1394b committee has to work around these problems to get signaling speeds up beyond 400 Mbit/s.
Don't get me wrong; there's some clever stuff in FireWire, like the dynamic peer-to-peer bus model, and some foresight with things like large address spaces. But like everything else in Hollywood - and especially the awards - it's not the content that matters, it's the image and marketing.:-)
I saw a bit on some police camera show on TLC about a similar sound being tested by some police force in Britain. Apparently the sound is easier for people to locate, allowing drivers to get out of the way of emergency services vehicles safely. Get the ambulance, fire truck, etc. to the scene faster, lives are bound to be saved. You're also less likely to have accidents as people panic from the police car pulling up behind them "without warning" (because they couldn't tell where it was and so weren't expecting it).
The show was first run months ago, but it was just re-run lately. Same sound? Can't tell.;-) But the same idea - broadband white noise in whooshing patterns in between siren bursts.
As I posted previously, this is clearly deceptive business practice and possibly fraud. Take a few minutes to visit the Federal Trade Commission website. They have an online complaint form which you can fill out against Macrovision and the "John Doe" record companies. Only if lots of people fight this will the FTC take action.
The information for Macrovision that they request is:
Macrovision Corporation
1341 Orleans Drive
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
408-743-8600
The text of my complaint reads:
Macrovision Corp. along with various John Doe corporations (unnamed record
companies) have introduced copy-protected music/audio CDs into
U.S. distribution channels. No notice is given consumers who purchase these
CDs, yet these new CDs take away a right which consumers have come to
expect, and which is protected by the Supreme Court's "Betamax" decision
and the Audio Home Recording Act, namely the ability to copy said CDs onto
a personal computer for personal use.
I believe this constitutes fraud and deceptive business practices due to
the failure to disclose this information to consumers. I urge the
Commission to help stop this activity.
Please see the following article for additional information:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6604222.htm l
A lawsuit may not be the best approach. This is clearly deceptive business practices and possibly fraud. Take a few minutes to visit the Federal Trade Commission website. They have an online complaint form which you can fill out against Macrovision and the "John Doe" record companies.
Please do not flame the FTC - it won't help our cause any.;-)
The information for Macrovision that they request is:
Macrovision Corporation
1341 Orleans Drive
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
408-743-8600
The text of my complaint reads:
Macrovision Corp. along with various John Doe corporations (unnamed record
companies) have introduced copy-protected music/audio CDs into
U.S. distribution channels. No notice is given consumers who purchase these
CDs, yet these new CDs take away a right which consumers have come to
expect, and which is protected by the Supreme Court's "Betamax" decision
and the Audio Home Recording Act, namely the ability to copy said CDs onto
a personal computer for personal use.
I believe this constitutes fraud and deceptive business practices due to
the failure to disclose this information to consumers. I urge the
Commission to help stop this activity.
Please see the following article for additional information:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6604222.htm l
At the time Adobe registered "Adobe Illustrator", there was an existing registration for "PC Illustrator" in the same field. A few years later the "PC Illustrator" mark expired and was not renewed. A few years after that, Adobe registered just plain "Illustrator". This sequence of events suggests that "Illustrator" is sufficiently weak that any prefix or postfix, except pluralisation, may be sufficient in the eyes of the USPTO.
Is KIllustrator too close? Maybe, or maybe not. Most likely a court would rule against it because there is clear intent to ride the "goodwill" of the Illustrator mark. The above history might give you justification, though.
The smart thing to do here is drop KIllustrator like a hot potato and choose another name. There are much better places to spend our money establishing and changing legal precedents in favour of freedom and free software.
Intel can't afford to withhold the EV6 from AMD, even if they own patents. The Alpha has such a small market share that Intel's Herfindahl market concentration index isn't going to move more than a few points as a result of the acquisition. Thus the acquisition itself does not meet the DOJ or FTC criteria for monopolistic behaviour.
However, using EV6 to cripple AMD would be clearly anticompetitive and, even though the FTC and DOJ would not act (*cough* President Bu$h), AMD could bring antitrust charges in federal court. They would be very likely to win an injunction allowing them to continue using EV6, and eventually a judgement against Intel.
I think this is an overbroad generalisation. You can find good software engineers with all sorts of backgrounds, from biology to linguistics. In my experience, there is no correlation between educational background and software development skill. Attitude, experience, and a love of learning are the most highly correlated factors.
The best way to attract good software developers is to offer a reasonable and competitive salary and a great work environment. Until recently, it has been very difficult to compete with commercial employers willing to pay high salaries even to substandard candidates, with the added lure of stock option fantasies. Now, fortunately, people are realising that most startups fail and stock options aren't such a great deal. Salaries for good people are still going to be high, but this doesn't mean you can't afford us.
Creative alternative forms of compensation for research institutions associated with universities include free classes and access to athletic facilities. More general forms of compensation are a low-stress environment, flex time, a private office (with a door and preferably a window), and the option to use resources for personal side-projects. Showing a developer that they will be working in an attractive, pleasant environment, rather than a high-stress cube farm, is worth real dollars.
Above all is the opportunity to learn new things, so if the candidate has a track record of learning quickly and applying new skills on the fly, consider hiring them even if they don't have the specific skill you need. Chances are they'll pick it up very quickly.
As an embedded systems developer, this is an interesting issue to me. Real-time and compact embedded systems often put much of their code in what is conventionally viewed as kernel space in order to have direct access to hardware for key functions. Shared library mechanisms and kernel calls incur too much overhead for performance-critical operations, so these applications are typically statically linked and often have a fixed memory map.
In the context of the GPL, these code fragments must be released as they are linked with the kernel. With a kernel under the LGPL or other more permissive license, e.g. Red Hat's eCos, these functions may not need to be released. This is fine with me; if you don't like the GPL's requirements, use another OS.
Stallman is very clear on his intent in the GPL, although the wording in GPL 2 is not so clear. I fully expect that this will be clarified in GPL 3, to everyone's benefit. This will also make it less subject to potentially damaging judicial interpretation.
That leaves only the lack of legal precedents pertaining to the GPL. Yet the overwhelming majority of commercial software licenses, including Wind River's, are not court-tested and many of their provisions are blatantly unenforceable in many jurisdictions. This argument does not hold water.
Now consider for a moment that Wind River are one of the leading vendors of non-free, closed-source, proprietary OSes, notably VxWorks and pSOS. Their lunch is being eaten from above by Windows and Linux, and from below by uCLinux, eCos, and other free RTOSes. Clearly Schacker's statements are nothing more than a calculated FUD counterattack. He is trying to scare commercial embedded developers away from free software competitors and back to Wind River's proprietary solutions by raising the spectre of legal actions and a vague threat that companies might someday lose all of their proprietary code and with it their competitive advantage.
The truth is that the guidelines are clear, but Wind River can't compete. They would do much better for their investors to figure out how to adapt to the changing business climate instead of entrenching a lost position.
(IANAL) The best approach to contract, IP agreement and other legal document negotiations is to simply modify the document to suit your desires. For each stricken section, addition, etc., read over your changes, then initial and date each individual change. Sign the result and send it along. Attempting to negotiate the conditions before negotiating the specific terms is more trouble than it's worth.
Simply making the changes unilaterally puts you in charge of the negotiations in the position of power. Inertia is now in your favour - the easiest thing for them to do is accept you on your terms, provided the terms are reasonable. If they disagree, it's up to them to counterpropose.
Of course, they could always say they're not willing to accept any changes to the terms, but you should not accept such terms unless you're desperate for a job and can't find anything better.
It sounds like you have three major points, at least two of which are of interest to the school board. Make sure you prepare, prepare, prepare before you even engage with the school board.
I would strongly suggest you find an "advisor", preferably a librarian, teacher or administrator to assist and guide you in your efforts - no doubt they are at least somewhat familiar with the politics and dynamics of the school board. They should come with you to the board meeting, although they do not need to participate in the presentation. They are there to advocate for you, to lend legitimacy to your efforts in the eyes of those who may not be so enlightened about the validity of minors' concerns, and to help you make the best presentation you possibly can.
In your preparations, be very organised. Focus on the two of three points that will best achieve your ends: (1) the software prevents you from visiting valuable research sites; and (2) the software is being used to violate your privacy to enrich this greedy corporation.
On (1), as others have said, make sure you have a long list of sites. However, you should also detail the merits of the top 3 and be prepared to answer questions on the top 10. Have at least a few notes on each site to refer to if a question is asked about its content. You should have some screenshots of the top 10 so people can see and understand what this resource is you are trying to access so that they can see for themselves how valuable it is.
On (2), make sure you have one or more good analogies to what this company are doing that could be understood by someone who has never used a computer in their life. Remember, you're addressing the least common denominator here - the general public. Make your arguments relevant to these people by couching them in terms of everyday life.
I would not raise the issue of the software failing to block some sites - it complicates the discussion unnecessarily, and does not advance your position. It might even hurt your position by suggesting to some that (a) you are a troublemaker who wants to look at porn; and/or (b) stronger measures are needed, like disconnecting the 'net completely. If someone raises this issue, simply deflect it back to your main arguments by stating "We're not trying to look at porn, so it doesn't matter. We're much more concerned about the fact that this software prevents us from using the 'net for our education and invades our privacy." This should win you some points *and* avoid an emotionally-charged "morals" issue.
To summarise, prepare very well, partner with an authority figure who is respected in the community and in school politics, and organise your presentation very carefully so that every point you make comes back to your central argument: we need to get rid of this software.
Whether or not this is compliant with one or more RFCs, it is entirely noncompliant with most. Internationalization of the Internet is inevitable and a Good Thing(tm), but only when it takes place via the appropriate processes. As others have pointed out, internationalization was already happening, but it takes time.
This is nothing more than an attempt by NSI to open another huge revenue stream without any consideration for the effect it will have on the Internet, or the long-term interests of the Internet community. After all, they see an untapped potential market and a chance to dominate it by jumping in before the standards are developed that would allow others to participate. Now their competitors will have to follow their lead or risk losing the market, and the standards process will have been neatly circumvented. The cost is borne by the Internet community, and the benefits are reaped by NSI.
1. Video capture cards. The "client" is the program running on the host processor in host memory. The "server" is the controller on the video card. The "network" is PCI/AGP/NuBus/... Metadata is exchanged to determine the size, aspect ratio, frame rate, field dominance and other features of the stream, as well as the capabilities of the "server" and the addresses of its control registers ("feedback").
As others have noted, the original rationalisation for the FCC's restriction on radio/TV speech was the limited broadcast spectrum available. Spectrum is a public good, and some regulation does make sense, particularly to ensure free public access rather than having it totally owned and dominated by large corporations appealing to the least common denominator. (This is a very republican notion, in keeping with the Constitution, which limits direct democracy on the same grounds.) Consider the decline in the quality of radio programming since the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996 loosened ownership restrictions and increased market concentration.
The problem we face as proponents of online freedom is that existing legal precedent cannot be easily applied to the Internet. It is funded partly by public money and partly by private money. Its organisation stretches analogies to other media beyond reasonable applicability. For example, bandwidth is in a sense limited, but as a user/listener/viewer-controlled medium that traffic is allocated by consumers, not producers. Moreover bandwidth is not permanently fixed by the laws of physics, but rather can be added on demand. It is an international medium. Hence the clear public interest in regulation does not pertain.
There is also a fundamental contradiction in NSI insisting that they are a private enterprise not subject to the same First Amendment standard as a government body, and in acting as a regulator like the FCC. Worse, by establishing themselves as a regulatory body, they've violated any pretense at common-carrier privileges and could be held liable in any number of interesting ways for domain names that others find offensive. Oops.:-)
One might argue that NSI should be compelled to divest control of the root database into a non-profit organisation tasked with minimising the administrative costs of root service. No single organisation (even a nonprofit and especially a bureacracy) will ever have the incentive to actually attain this minimum, and yet the difficulty of maintaining multiple databases for the same TLD appears to make a market solution impossible. Perhaps a nonprofit root service funded by for-profit domain registrars, who would have an incentive to force down root server costs, is the best we can hope for.
Why not simply prepend a length field to the message and pad with strongly random data? This is not vulnerable to known-plaintext attack, and the random pad can only be discerned from the "real data" by decrypting the length field. Alternatively, one could use Ron Rivest's MAC-based chaffing-and-winnowing scheme on a packetised form of the message prior to encryption. There are a number of solutions to this problem.
The Free Software Foundation is incorporated as a non-profit. You may not like RMS personally, but he knows what he's doing.
All you need to do to receive the protection afforded a corporation is work out an assignment of copyright with RMS. Assuming your work is clean, which some GLIDE wrappers appear not to be, I'm sure he could work something out.
The key folks on the AP/Linux project for Fujitsu's supercomputers have also been central contributors to the Linux-on-PowerPC effort. It's nice to see these excellent folks getting some recognition. Congratulations to Paul Mackerras, Andrew Tridgell, et. al.!
Summus owns a stack of patents on wavelet codecs, and they're royal bastards about "their IP". In fact, this is one of the most patented areas of mathematics. Even though you can't patent mathematical formulae under US law...
Wavelets, especially adaptive wavelet coding, is vastly superiour to DCT (the basis for JPEG and MPEG), especially if you do video codecs using 3D wavelet transforms. Why haven't they taken over? Because it's a patent minefield.
I saw this stuff three years ago - it looks nice, and it really does work, but it's not remotely open. The JPEG2000 standard will likely be no more open and free than GIF or MP3, with their associated patents.
Slashdot Mirror
This is an important point commercially, but it's not just NVIDIA and ATI. You have to think about the whole "ecosystem". The GPU vendors have an interest in driving people to buy the latest and greatest chips. Quality and speed only go so far with consumer applications; at some point you need to add features. Those features are only interesting if games developers can use them to create new titles that people will buy. Thus, the API vendor or standards body needs to work with both communities to develop and share new ideas for hardware features that can be applied as easily as possible into new games.
Of course, the workstation market - where OpenGL is still king - is a different beast. Stability, quality, and performance are critical, in that order, and new features are generally adopted quite slowly.
I'm not an expert on OpenGL and DirectX, so I'll leave it to others to dissect whether the same API can really serve both markets.
The same exothermic chemical reaction used in this coffee cup is the basis for ancient Roman hydraulic cement, plaster for fresco painting, etc. CaO + H2O = Ca(HO)2 + O + heat. The materials are essentially recyclable, since the calcium hydroxide can be baked to release water vapor and reduce it back to calcium oxide. However, in reality all these cups will simply end up in a garbage dump somewhere.
This bill also includes an amendment by my local Representative, Ed Markey (D-MA) to ban the "extraordinary rendition" of suspects to regimes like Syria that routinely use torture.
I'm not sure which is worse - allowing the government to continue to kidnap potentially innocent people and send them to other countries to be tortured, or a national ID that's little more than the existing drivers' licenses.
Fortunately we still have the Second Amendment. For now.
It depends how much you're willing to spend. You could get a 66000 rack-mount multiple-output DC power supply from Agilent for $2K plus $300/channel. Max total power output is 1200W.
You're right, but video card manufacturers are already including DRM firmware - it's called DVI. DVI creates a secure link between the PC and the display to prevent digital copying of decoded streams (e.g. DVD).
BTW, I'm surprised no one has yet challenged the DVD regional licensing scheme under US antitrust law. The Sherman Act makes such geographic price discrimination illegal.
From page 2 of the petition:
"Under the Commission's current rules, the field strength of radiated emissions... above 960 MHz at a distance of 3 meters shall not exceed 500 uV/m"
They're asking for that to be reduced to 8.6 uV/m. That's a huge amount of attentuation and requires serious filtering, and probably reductions in transmission power which thereby reduces operating range. I don't know if this would kill 802.11b, but my guess is that it would make it useless for neighborhood networks.
You make a good point about enforceability: any settlement that depends upon executive branch agencies like the DOJ is a "walk" for Microsoft. No executive branch agency in the Bush pro-business-at-any-cost administration will actually enforce the terms of this agreement beyond the bare minimum necessary to avoid gross misconduct.
:-)
Any such settlement agreement must be enforced by a non-executive-branch body. (Perhaps the ITAA would like to help.
Moreover, Microsoft have demonstrated a total disregard for the law, and offering them the benefit of "good faith" is irresponsible. The fact that Microsoft is "powerful" should not prevent the DOJ from imposing proper sanctions and relief on their behaviour - in fact, it argues for a stronger and more enforceable penalty.
There are some major gifts in this agreement. For example, see III(A)(2). Microsoft may not retaliate against OEMs that sell Linux, or that ship PCs with multiple OSes or multi-boot capability, but the language allows Microsoft to retaliate against vendors of OS-less PCs or PCs that do not have Windows on them (e.g., PCs with only Linux installed).
Microsoft can also continue to roll functionality into its OS and kernel, or use proprietary APIs, as long as it does not put the entirety of the "middleware" into the OS. Only "Internet Explorer, Microsoft's Java Virtual Machine, Windows Media Player, Windows Messenger, Outlook Express and their successors" are covered by the middleware restrictions anyway. IIS, SQL Server, and other enterprise products can continue to use secret kernel-mode APIs to enhance their performance and maintain an unfair advantage for Microsoft middleware over non-Microsoft middleware.
There's a beautiful escape clause in III(H) which allows Microsoft to bypass third-party software (browser, JVM, media player, etc.) if it "fails to implement a reasonable technical requirement... that is necessary for valid technical reasons to supply the end user with functionality consistent with a Windows Operating System Product."
And there's the spectacular III(J), which allows Microsoft to hide APIs, documentation or "layers of Communications Protocols" if it "would compromise the security of anti-piracy, anti-virus, software licensing, digital rights management, encryption or authentication systems." That's rather broad.
As others have no doubt noted, there is no mention of the "embrace and extend" techniques Microsoft uses to take over open protocols under the guise of improved functionality. There's also no mention of tying Microsoft content to Microsoft products distributed with the OS and thereby creating a substantial barrier to entry for third parties (as they are doing now with MSN).
I would love to see a coordinated campaign to fight this settlement agreement. Congress gets very grumpy if executive branch agencies ignore public comments, and many state attorneys-general will have to sign off on the agreement (many of them do not like it, and even a small amount of public disapproval will help them). This means there is something that people everywhere within the US, or who do business in the US, can do to fight this agreement. Please write me at the email address given if you are interested in this effort.
That depends on how the compromise is drawn. Consider the position of the framers of the U.S. Constitution: from a natural rights perspective, all expressions of ideas, works of art, etc. covered by copyright are free to be shared and copied as desired. However, the framers also understood that taking this approach would not maximize the amount of intellectual "property" or "content" available to the public.
The founders' response was a compromise between the natural rights and the best interests of the people. They allowed useful, novel ideas such as machines to be patented, or writings and art to be copyrighted, granting a monopoly for a limited time. The key here is the "limited times" clause. By making sure that works would eventually enter the public domain, the founders gave inventors, artists, and publishers a compelling reason to fully disclose their inventions and publish their works: monopoly profits. In exchange for the protection of patents and copyrights, the owners agreed to release all claims on the works after a period of time.
This compromise was a stroke of genius, as it balanced the need to provide incentives to creators and distributors of ideas to maximize their production with the natural rights of the people. Unfortunately, the founders left it up to Congress to define what the "limited times" clause meant. The Supreme Court has ruled that this clause allows Congress to set any non-infinite period without violating the Constitution. The Court cannot set a maximum period on its own authority because that would violate the separation of powers between legislative and judicial branches.
The problem with current DRM schemes, the DMCA, and the SSSCA is that they completely ignore the natural rights of the people. Intellectual "property" corporations like publishers, movie studios, and conglomerates (AOL Time Warner, Viacom) have spent the last two centuries trying to indoctrinate people with the belief that intellectual property is a natural right. The repeated extensions of copyright terms during the 20th century suggests they are winning.
However, a DRM system consistent with the framers' intent would be beneficial to everyone. Digital media technologies have undermined the balance between natural rights and maximizing available content. Current DRM systems and supporting legislation go too far in the opposite direction, undermining the peoples' natural rights.
What we need is a DRM system that works to maintain the framers' compromise, rather than benefitting either side. It should ensure that fair uses are permitted, that works enter the public domain when their copyright expires, and that creators are given the necessary returns from their work to ensure a vital public discourse.
This suggests that legitimate DRMs must codify ideas like limiting the number of serial copies (copies of copies of...) that may be made, but must also codify the right to view at any time after purchase, the right to transfer ownership to another person, etc. The Congress has thus far failed to strike this balance because they have not been educated about its importance.
DRMs do not have to be totally secure; that is unnecessary and probably impossible. However, they do need to be sufficiently secure that the cost of circumventing them is prohibitive. (Should circumvention tools be legal or illegal? I'm not sure.) I believe such a level of security is attainable and sufficient in the general case, because people value their time.
This is as far as I've been able to get, but I think it's a good starting point for a reasoned, non-kneejerk discussion of copyrights and intellectual "property" in the digital age. I look forward to reading comments and followups to these ideas. DRMs need not be the end of the world.
Yes. Having seen the signaling methods and the internals of a FireWire link controller and link-PHY interface, it is one of the most horrendous hacks I've ever seen. It makes ATM look simple. The standard is little more than a reverse engineering of an unjustifiably complex hardware implementation done by some folks who have taken far too many scary drugs. Now the 1394b committee has to work around these problems to get signaling speeds up beyond 400 Mbit/s.
:-)
Don't get me wrong; there's some clever stuff in FireWire, like the dynamic peer-to-peer bus model, and some foresight with things like large address spaces. But like everything else in Hollywood - and especially the awards - it's not the content that matters, it's the image and marketing.
I saw a bit on some police camera show on TLC about a similar sound being tested by some police force in Britain. Apparently the sound is easier for people to locate, allowing drivers to get out of the way of emergency services vehicles safely. Get the ambulance, fire truck, etc. to the scene faster, lives are bound to be saved. You're also less likely to have accidents as people panic from the police car pulling up behind them "without warning" (because they couldn't tell where it was and so weren't expecting it).
;-) But the same idea - broadband white noise in whooshing patterns in between siren bursts.
The show was first run months ago, but it was just re-run lately. Same sound? Can't tell.
As I posted previously, this is clearly deceptive business practice and possibly fraud. Take a few minutes to visit the Federal Trade Commission website. They have an online complaint form which you can fill out against Macrovision and the "John Doe" record companies. Only if lots of people fight this will the FTC take action.
m l
The information for Macrovision that they request is:
Macrovision Corporation
1341 Orleans Drive
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
408-743-8600
The text of my complaint reads:
Macrovision Corp. along with various John Doe corporations (unnamed record
companies) have introduced copy-protected music/audio CDs into
U.S. distribution channels. No notice is given consumers who purchase these
CDs, yet these new CDs take away a right which consumers have come to
expect, and which is protected by the Supreme Court's "Betamax" decision
and the Audio Home Recording Act, namely the ability to copy said CDs onto
a personal computer for personal use.
I believe this constitutes fraud and deceptive business practices due to
the failure to disclose this information to consumers. I urge the
Commission to help stop this activity.
Please see the following article for additional information:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6604222.ht
A lawsuit may not be the best approach. This is clearly deceptive business practices and possibly fraud. Take a few minutes to visit the Federal Trade Commission website. They have an online complaint form which you can fill out against Macrovision and the "John Doe" record companies.
;-)
m l
Please do not flame the FTC - it won't help our cause any.
The information for Macrovision that they request is:
Macrovision Corporation
1341 Orleans Drive
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
408-743-8600
The text of my complaint reads:
Macrovision Corp. along with various John Doe corporations (unnamed record
companies) have introduced copy-protected music/audio CDs into
U.S. distribution channels. No notice is given consumers who purchase these
CDs, yet these new CDs take away a right which consumers have come to
expect, and which is protected by the Supreme Court's "Betamax" decision
and the Audio Home Recording Act, namely the ability to copy said CDs onto
a personal computer for personal use.
I believe this constitutes fraud and deceptive business practices due to
the failure to disclose this information to consumers. I urge the
Commission to help stop this activity.
Please see the following article for additional information:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6604222.ht
At the time Adobe registered "Adobe Illustrator", there was an existing registration for "PC Illustrator" in the same field. A few years later the "PC Illustrator" mark expired and was not renewed. A few years after that, Adobe registered just plain "Illustrator". This sequence of events suggests that "Illustrator" is sufficiently weak that any prefix or postfix, except pluralisation, may be sufficient in the eyes of the USPTO.
Is KIllustrator too close? Maybe, or maybe not. Most likely a court would rule against it because there is clear intent to ride the "goodwill" of the Illustrator mark. The above history might give you justification, though.
The smart thing to do here is drop KIllustrator like a hot potato and choose another name. There are much better places to spend our money establishing and changing legal precedents in favour of freedom and free software.
Intel can't afford to withhold the EV6 from AMD, even if they own patents. The Alpha has such a small market share that Intel's Herfindahl market concentration index isn't going to move more than a few points as a result of the acquisition. Thus the acquisition itself does not meet the DOJ or FTC criteria for monopolistic behaviour.
However, using EV6 to cripple AMD would be clearly anticompetitive and, even though the FTC and DOJ would not act (*cough* President Bu$h), AMD could bring antitrust charges in federal court. They would be very likely to win an injunction allowing them to continue using EV6, and eventually a judgement against Intel.
I think this is an overbroad generalisation. You can find good software engineers with all sorts of backgrounds, from biology to linguistics. In my experience, there is no correlation between educational background and software development skill. Attitude, experience, and a love of learning are the most highly correlated factors.
The best way to attract good software developers is to offer a reasonable and competitive salary and a great work environment. Until recently, it has been very difficult to compete with commercial employers willing to pay high salaries even to substandard candidates, with the added lure of stock option fantasies. Now, fortunately, people are realising that most startups fail and stock options aren't such a great deal. Salaries for good people are still going to be high, but this doesn't mean you can't afford us.
Creative alternative forms of compensation for research institutions associated with universities include free classes and access to athletic facilities. More general forms of compensation are a low-stress environment, flex time, a private office (with a door and preferably a window), and the option to use resources for personal side-projects. Showing a developer that they will be working in an attractive, pleasant environment, rather than a high-stress cube farm, is worth real dollars.
Above all is the opportunity to learn new things, so if the candidate has a track record of learning quickly and applying new skills on the fly, consider hiring them even if they don't have the specific skill you need. Chances are they'll pick it up very quickly.
As an embedded systems developer, this is an interesting issue to me. Real-time and compact embedded systems often put much of their code in what is conventionally viewed as kernel space in order to have direct access to hardware for key functions. Shared library mechanisms and kernel calls incur too much overhead for performance-critical operations, so these applications are typically statically linked and often have a fixed memory map.
In the context of the GPL, these code fragments must be released as they are linked with the kernel. With a kernel under the LGPL or other more permissive license, e.g. Red Hat's eCos, these functions may not need to be released. This is fine with me; if you don't like the GPL's requirements, use another OS.
Stallman is very clear on his intent in the GPL, although the wording in GPL 2 is not so clear. I fully expect that this will be clarified in GPL 3, to everyone's benefit. This will also make it less subject to potentially damaging judicial interpretation.
That leaves only the lack of legal precedents pertaining to the GPL. Yet the overwhelming majority of commercial software licenses, including Wind River's, are not court-tested and many of their provisions are blatantly unenforceable in many jurisdictions. This argument does not hold water.
Now consider for a moment that Wind River are one of the leading vendors of non-free, closed-source, proprietary OSes, notably VxWorks and pSOS. Their lunch is being eaten from above by Windows and Linux, and from below by uCLinux, eCos, and other free RTOSes. Clearly Schacker's statements are nothing more than a calculated FUD counterattack. He is trying to scare commercial embedded developers away from free software competitors and back to Wind River's proprietary solutions by raising the spectre of legal actions and a vague threat that companies might someday lose all of their proprietary code and with it their competitive advantage.
The truth is that the guidelines are clear, but Wind River can't compete. They would do much better for their investors to figure out how to adapt to the changing business climate instead of entrenching a lost position.
(IANAL) The best approach to contract, IP agreement and other legal document negotiations is to simply modify the document to suit your desires. For each stricken section, addition, etc., read over your changes, then initial and date each individual change. Sign the result and send it along. Attempting to negotiate the conditions before negotiating the specific terms is more trouble than it's worth.
Simply making the changes unilaterally puts you in charge of the negotiations in the position of power. Inertia is now in your favour - the easiest thing for them to do is accept you on your terms, provided the terms are reasonable. If they disagree, it's up to them to counterpropose.
Of course, they could always say they're not willing to accept any changes to the terms, but you should not accept such terms unless you're desperate for a job and can't find anything better.
It sounds like you have three major points, at least two of which are of interest to the school board. Make sure you prepare, prepare, prepare before you even engage with the school board.
I would strongly suggest you find an "advisor", preferably a librarian, teacher or administrator to assist and guide you in your efforts - no doubt they are at least somewhat familiar with the politics and dynamics of the school board. They should come with you to the board meeting, although they do not need to participate in the presentation. They are there to advocate for you, to lend legitimacy to your efforts in the eyes of those who may not be so enlightened about the validity of minors' concerns, and to help you make the best presentation you possibly can.
In your preparations, be very organised. Focus on the two of three points that will best achieve your ends: (1) the software prevents you from visiting valuable research sites; and (2) the software is being used to violate your privacy to enrich this greedy corporation.
On (1), as others have said, make sure you have a long list of sites. However, you should also detail the merits of the top 3 and be prepared to answer questions on the top 10. Have at least a few notes on each site to refer to if a question is asked about its content. You should have some screenshots of the top 10 so people can see and understand what this resource is you are trying to access so that they can see for themselves how valuable it is.
On (2), make sure you have one or more good analogies to what this company are doing that could be understood by someone who has never used a computer in their life. Remember, you're addressing the least common denominator here - the general public. Make your arguments relevant to these people by couching them in terms of everyday life.
I would not raise the issue of the software failing to block some sites - it complicates the discussion unnecessarily, and does not advance your position. It might even hurt your position by suggesting to some that (a) you are a troublemaker who wants to look at porn; and/or (b) stronger measures are needed, like disconnecting the 'net completely. If someone raises this issue, simply deflect it back to your main arguments by stating "We're not trying to look at porn, so it doesn't matter. We're much more concerned about the fact that this software prevents us from using the 'net for our education and invades our privacy." This should win you some points *and* avoid an emotionally-charged "morals" issue.
To summarise, prepare very well, partner with an authority figure who is respected in the community and in school politics, and organise your presentation very carefully so that every point you make comes back to your central argument: we need to get rid of this software.
Good luck!
Whether or not this is compliant with one or more RFCs, it is entirely noncompliant with most. Internationalization of the Internet is inevitable and a Good Thing(tm), but only when it takes place via the appropriate processes. As others have pointed out, internationalization was already happening, but it takes time.
This is nothing more than an attempt by NSI to open another huge revenue stream without any consideration for the effect it will have on the Internet, or the long-term interests of the Internet community. After all, they see an untapped potential market and a chance to dominate it by jumping in before the standards are developed that would allow others to participate. Now their competitors will have to follow their lead or risk losing the market, and the standards process will have been neatly circumvented. The cost is borne by the Internet community, and the benefits are reaped by NSI.
Why did I vote for Nader? Now I remember...
1. Video capture cards. The "client" is the program running on the host processor in host memory. The "server" is the controller on the video card. The "network" is PCI/AGP/NuBus/... Metadata is exchanged to determine the size, aspect ratio, frame rate, field dominance and other features of the stream, as well as the capabilities of the "server" and the addresses of its control registers ("feedback").
2. Videoconferencing is similar to the above.
As others have noted, the original rationalisation for the FCC's restriction on radio/TV speech was the limited broadcast spectrum available. Spectrum is a public good, and some regulation does make sense, particularly to ensure free public access rather than having it totally owned and dominated by large corporations appealing to the least common denominator. (This is a very republican notion, in keeping with the Constitution, which limits direct democracy on the same grounds.) Consider the decline in the quality of radio programming since the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996 loosened ownership restrictions and increased market concentration.
:-)
The problem we face as proponents of online freedom is that existing legal precedent cannot be easily applied to the Internet. It is funded partly by public money and partly by private money. Its organisation stretches analogies to other media beyond reasonable applicability. For example, bandwidth is in a sense limited, but as a user/listener/viewer-controlled medium that traffic is allocated by consumers, not producers. Moreover bandwidth is not permanently fixed by the laws of physics, but rather can be added on demand. It is an international medium. Hence the clear public interest in regulation does not pertain.
There is also a fundamental contradiction in NSI insisting that they are a private enterprise not subject to the same First Amendment standard as a government body, and in acting as a regulator like the FCC. Worse, by establishing themselves as a regulatory body, they've violated any pretense at common-carrier privileges and could be held liable in any number of interesting ways for domain names that others find offensive. Oops.
One might argue that NSI should be compelled to divest control of the root database into a non-profit organisation tasked with minimising the administrative costs of root service. No single organisation (even a nonprofit and especially a bureacracy) will ever have the incentive to actually attain this minimum, and yet the difficulty of maintaining multiple databases for the same TLD appears to make a market solution impossible. Perhaps a nonprofit root service funded by for-profit domain registrars, who would have an incentive to force down root server costs, is the best we can hope for.
Why not simply prepend a length field to the message and pad with strongly random data? This is not vulnerable to known-plaintext attack, and the random pad can only be discerned from the "real data" by decrypting the length field. Alternatively, one could use Ron Rivest's MAC-based chaffing-and-winnowing scheme on a packetised form of the message prior to encryption. There are a number of solutions to this problem.
The Free Software Foundation is incorporated as a non-profit. You may not like RMS personally, but he knows what he's doing.
All you need to do to receive the protection afforded a corporation is work out an assignment of copyright with RMS. Assuming your work is clean, which some GLIDE wrappers appear not to be, I'm sure he could work something out.
The key folks on the AP/Linux project for Fujitsu's supercomputers have also been central contributors to the Linux-on-PowerPC effort. It's nice to see these excellent folks getting some recognition. Congratulations to Paul Mackerras, Andrew Tridgell, et. al.!
No.
Summus owns a stack of patents on wavelet codecs, and they're royal bastards about "their IP". In fact, this is one of the most patented areas of mathematics. Even though you can't patent mathematical formulae under US law...
Wavelets, especially adaptive wavelet coding, is vastly superiour to DCT (the basis for JPEG and MPEG), especially if you do video codecs using 3D wavelet transforms. Why haven't they taken over? Because it's a patent minefield.
I saw this stuff three years ago - it looks nice, and it really does work, but it's not remotely open. The JPEG2000 standard will likely be no more open and free than GIF or MP3, with their associated patents.