I really think Lindows is going to lose the trademark tussle with Microsoft over the name. Not only does Microsoft have nearly infinite legal resources, but I think here they may actually be right (and that's from a Mac user). Unless they've lost control of the windows name themselves, entirely possible from what I've heard -- Microsoft has no lack of hubris and is overdue for a stumble or more.
Good think Apple never got arrogant. Oh, wait.... But they felll big time, and I think it was a good thing, if only because it drew Jobs back like the second coming, and vested him with unilateral power to match. He's proud but smart. Like Gates. If their positions were reversed, hmmm....
Stop chuckling Linux-heads. Power/pride corrupts, your turn may come.:)
I must admit it's not insane to try to distribute a burden across a wide group of people, even if they object to the ultimate purpose. It's called taxation, and makes a lot of sense for a public good. Say, for example, a fuel tax to pay for the roads. Not perfect, but not insane.
Maybe we're not taking socialism seriously enough. Here's a proposal: If the various labels want to impose a tax and distribute it amongst themselves (an entirely inappropriate and possibly unconstitutional thing for the gov't to be doing, redistributing for a private "good"), why not go whole hog and socialize the music industry. Then they'll get their tax, and we, through Congress, can decide how much of the take they get. No profits, of course.
Symmetry? Everyone happy? No one happy? Well, that's the point.:)
I could have sworn I saw frames at the White House site, but came across a different IP issue:
Are most others aware of the difference between whitehouse.com and whitehouse.gov? The.com version has appeared and reappeared over the months; I think I saw it as a "help finding gov't agencies" version at some point.
My Q: Isn't it about time the White House sued for trademark dilution? Trademark aside, seriously, is there some kind of leverage they can use against this example of, ah, free speech? It seems a bit unfair in an FTC sense for the average schoolkid typing "whitehouse" to get misdirected, unfair publicity at the minimum. Obviously, the White House was dumb not to grab the.com variant, but it may have been sold within days.
Anyone know some similar cybersquatter examples?
Adolescent jokes need not apply, I've heard them already.
That's what pushed NASA and the Soviet program in the first place, and there is nothing wrong with using increased defense spending to fund technology. It's what drove pretty much every advancement in aviation, ships, cargo handling, communications, materials science, and aerodynamics in the last 100 years. And in the US intergration of the races in the military happened before the private sector intergrated. Military doesn't always mean bad.
I think you're 100% right on the history, and am surprised by how often people don't know of or deny the link between the Space Race and Cold War. Aside from the interaction with military ICBM technology and the like, going to the Moon out of nationalistic pride was for the Americans another way to show we were better than the communist Soviet Union. Now that the competition is settled, it's difficult now to imagine of our nations as economic and scientific competitors that tried to show the world, and themselves, they would outlast the other. Victory and not armageddon was what Khrushchev meant when he declared, "We will bury you." (Sorry, Sting.)
I don't agree with the logic that military spending in excess of our need (however one defines excess) is good for science, though realistically it is probably necessary. To the extent their are collateral benefits to essential expenses, wonderful. Beyond that, military programs are not known for their efficiency, and using them as an indirect method to pursue peaceful goals is even worse -- a "trickle down theory" of aerospace. If you want to hit a target, aim at the target.
What's necessary is necessary, but spending what is likely even more with the expectation of a peace dividend, or holding back on direct spending, is unwise. But the argument we need something for defense is what lights the fire under the camel.
As alluded to above, the healthy alternative to overspending that ALSO was a major force behind Apollo is a healthy sense of competition, on ego rather than power, and it now appears very likely that space is going to be a thoroughly international affair. As someone here put it, if China were close to reaching Mars, we'd kill ourselves to be first. Would America have gone to the Moon if not for the Soviets? I don't think so. Thank you, communist dictators.;-)
Does it matter -- and I'm not being contentious -- how much of the animal we eat, where is the point that we're destroying the population? A dead shark is a dead shark.
There is an aesthetic thing to it, this efficiency business, and it makes sense only if the result is that we kill fewer animals (or sharks) and, most of all, don't destroy the population.
There is a wonder chart at the Monterery Aquarium in California, showing the haul of sardines year after year in 40's (or so). Every year the catch grew... and then the fishery collapsed. Completely, a cliff, not a gradual decline. It shows how things make not wrok intuitively, and after you pass a certain point simply easing off on the take won't fix it.
I feel silly even bothering to correct you, but you missed my point by a mile. I concerned not just with the holiness of our views, but our chances of actually getting them into practice. Preaching and tading on shame doesn't work.
Like many Americans, we scratch our heads when we hear about idiotic practices like killing endangered species such a rhino for its "horn" (actually hair-based protein), or a black bear for its gall bladder, aligators for skin, or, the classic case, elephants for ivory and the occasional foot wastepaper basket (see Gary Larson:).
Yet of course we've done all kinds of similar things like the buffalo for tongues and hides, the dodo bird for feathers, fur of various animals driven nearly to extinction, etc. I don't think even now we're particularly unified in our view of spotted owls and other species that "get in the way of progress." So with our history and our modern ambivalence, I don't think we're in a great position to lecture, and we're really recent converts ourselves.
But we are in a great position to persuade and, of course, to fund. Shifting the African economy near game preserves from hunting to tourism and financeing alternative agricultural techniques near the rain forests are examples, and help more than the most earnest sermon.
There are four major candiadates for worst bas guy here, and I'm curious who would pick which (and i have my own ideas):
the copyright holders/lobbyists (Disney et al.)
the Congress (enacted the Act by voice vote during Kosovo amd Lewinskygate)
the President (who failed to veto and was tight with Hollywood)
the Supreme Court (arguably botched the constitutional challenge)
Now, whatever you think of the Court, they're the only one in the list that didn't act of financial interest. My guess is the majority simply did not take the interests of the petitioners seriously, and vaguely relied on what's left of fair use to sweep up.
The Disneys greedily acted in the interest of profit, which is exactly what they're supposed to do in capitalism; their shareholders could rightly toss them out for taking a pass on billions in revenue. Arguably they only exploited the opportunities available, assuming they didn't outright bribe anyone. Remember, soft money regulation is a recent accomplishment.
The President... let sleeping dogs lie.;-) If I can say anything sympathetic, it's that in the middle of Lewinskygate he was in no position to be vetoing anything, and anyway would have doubtlessly been overriden on a popular (in Congress) act like this one. (Yes, it was he who did what he did with you-know-who, and lied about it.)
Sorry to be cynical (unlike Congress), as no one has mentioned it, but it did not hurt that the act was named after a tragically dead Congressman/singer and sponsored by his widow.
I blame the Congress first, last, and foremost. It should have been obvious that the extension was not in the public interest. I don't know how well anyone lobbied against the act, but the politicians should have taken a close look at a decision involving billions of dollars and backed by a handful of very wealthy sponsors. That Congress has so many members makes it difficult to focus on whom to blame. That they passed the act by voice vote (I didn't know you could do that) during a time of national distraction was a craven and venal act.
I'm not saying I'm surprised Congress didn't do a better job. Which brings us to the vital need to get money out of politics.
At least we as taxpayers will get a rebate in state/federal taxes on the profits of Disney et al.
Oh wait, the administration wants to abolish dividend taxes. And corporate taxes. Never mind.:)
The profits from these works is indeed substantial, all the more so if this Sonny Bono Act bootstraps Disney into the next round of copyright extensions less than 20 years down the road. I mean, will it really sound so unreasonable then to raise the corporate 95 years to 125? Mickey to the next millenium!
I'm sitting here to research our kitchen faucet valve (which is jammed, and remarkably has 30 parts) and saw that staid Kohler now has a Disney Collection. I can't wait until Mickey is legally required on all products.
Thanks. I tried taxcut a few years ago and had an unfortunate experience with it corrupting a data file I had worked on for quite a while.:) Soon I imagine everything will be handled online, which will allow one-user restrictions from any computer while avoiding this activation hooey.
Gone are the days when one could compare performance between setups. I suppsoe there are too many variables.
I've been using Chimera on a 400 MHz G4 w/300+ Mb RAM and a 466 iBook w/ 192 Mb RAM. Also, OS X 10.2 was a significant performance improvement, as I think was generally reported -- esp. with graphics. Maybe you haev some bottleneck somewhere that Chimera can't handle... SpeedChimera has improved performance here. Also, I watch the little status bar to see what the broser is doing, and my impression is that the slow part is the remote servers.
Hmm. I'd like to see benchmarks -- not that they'll mean anything.:)
Chimera is not set up for broadband out of the box for some reason. That's what SpeedChimera does, changes a fes of the properties for you. Here is a casual benchmark over a SLOW modem; Apple stats show near-parity with differences of maybe 15% except on launch (Safari wins naturally.. but dontcha think iBench returns more than three numbers?). I bet the types of sites one visit matters a lot, too.
I don't care... so long as IE gets creamed, and it is the dog in this horserace. I dount MS can work backwards with the same product to speed it up. Perhaps it would be clever to whip up a fast IE Lite. We'll see.
I'm not so sure, the Court has been willing enough to reverse even its own precedent, granted in selected cases.
I haven't analyzed the opinions yet, if I ever do. But the argument Congress has done it for years is weak -- maybe no one thought to challenge it? Certainly the Supreme Court never addressed it, and perhaps if they had we wouldn't have this mess. One weird thing the Court likely wanted to avoid would have been the implicit voiding of the last extension (in the 70's?), but that's not reason enough to allow something UNCONSTITUTIONAL to stay on the book. Congress has no power to corrupt the Constitution. I think even the Framers would have flipped out over one-century copyrights. Congress's edge was that they snuck in on it by increments, but after all that was the most likely way it would have happened.
Yet I have relatively high faith in Justices Ginsburg and Souter, even Kennedy and O'Connor (note who I leave out), and take their votes as indications the outcome is reasonable if not "right."
Ultimately (and maybe I shouldn't say it here), this is a pretty trivial issue relatively to, say, the death case decided the very same day, a 5-4 vote, or the Michigan race-sensitive admissions policy, or even (!) the Kazaa case.
Check out lawpsided.com if you'd like to try handicapping the Court.:)
Yes. But there's always next time! In, um, 20 years.
I think a boycott would be a good thing (Disney is an evil tentacular mind-control corporation anyway) but my three y.o. thinks Mickey is godlike. I've tried explaining, but he doens't even know what money is. We don't buy the stuff, at least -- well, almost, they even own Pooh!
Well, I'm not so sure... usually it's a venial offense or mistake or whatever, and that's a pretty mild reproach.
I think the writer had in mind VENAL -- as I did when I saw it, so it took a minute to figure out why the dictionary.com definition was "wrong"!
And... FWIW I think venal is a little harsh. This not an unjustifiable ruling, it's just a bad ruling by a fairly conservative Court. I would have been floored if they had overruled Congress on the extension of the copyright term, given precedent, and prefer that sort of thing to be decided by elected, sometimes venal legislators rather than an unelected unreviewable group of justices. We save the Court for the relatively foul measures of the legislature, not disagreement over judgment calls like the magic number of years. If the Court starts picking and choosing here, they might start getting a lot more intrusive in other areas, too. At least we can yell at Congress.
However, what I really dislike is the *retroactive* application of the law to existing copyright holders like Disney. It (1) makes no sense under the Copyright Clause purpose to promote creativity, (2) stomps on the freedom of speech ethic if not right, and (3) looks like outright cash quid pro quo (well, might as well say it, that's what it is).
The retroactivity portion is what the dissents focus on, though I haven't plowed through it all. Without retroactivity, groups like Disney would have much much much less incentive to push for things like the Sonny Bono Act, as there would be no benefit for decades. The Sonny Bono Act provides Disney with money right away, with (early days) Mickey otherwise "expiring" this year.
Don't forget, this thing can be repealed. The chances are slim, but it's not written in stone.
Actually, it makes me nervous when there (supposedly) isn't a rift between them. That weird pretend alliance a few years ago, where Microsoft got a slot on the Apple desktop and Apple got a $100 million "investment" (Bill spend more than that on real estate taxes) was too strange for words.
Someone suggested to me a while ago that despite Apple's desperate need for continued Office for Mac support, Microsoft maybe needed them even more. If Apple were to die, hey presto! incontrovertible monopoly that, with a few missteps, could lead to Microsoft's splitting up in antitrust action. Now that Linux is becoming a more credible alternative, Microsoft might be tempted to abandon Macintosh and cause Apple's fall into oblivion even if it means losing a lucrative niche. Cutting into the education market is a lot like cutting Apple out of the business market.
The key thing is that people need to be weaned off of Office.
On its attempt to bulldoze into education, I'm glad Microsoft got tagged, though it immediately trying to learn loss into victory with VOUCHERS and discounts in a naked attempt to steer those same purchasers back to the MS fold. The cyncicism of it is astounding, and I had assumed the settlement offer was dead on arrival. Please tell me California is smarter than this.
Most of all, I'm glad to see Apple acting like a normal bitter competitor again, too. I wonder what Jobs, who we know already has a bit of a vicious streak, says about Microsoft in private? Hmm.:)
Hmm, I've seen them almost universally described as Jr. and sr., such in dissection of the crisis. (Risks Digest also carried Cornell's self-absolution -- I had no idea "damage estimates" ran as high as $96 million! That's criminal exaggeration, if there is such a thing.)
But the press screwing up names -- it's going to take me some time to readjust.:) (I checking NSA really quick -- did you know they have a secure Linux project? Something about them using Linux surprises me.)
Mr. Morris reminds me of Mrs. O'Leary's cow. (Actually, the cow was recently absolved; a vagrant started the fire.:) It was a mistake to play with the fire, but should the fire have been so scucessful? What kind of system gives a single individual that much power?
Anyone who follows Morris, however, cannot plausibly argue they had no idea of the potential risk. The Melissa author got 20 months for causing (supposedly) $80 million in losses (should that be offset by the extra money made by the media overhyping it?). That idiot in the Philipines who wrote iloveyou -- alleged to have got $10 billion in damages The incident caught the Philippines flat-footed to the point that they ask the U.S. to prosecute. De Guzman had a great thesis proposal ("the Internet should be free"). I don't think he or anyone else was ever punished, because of the inadequacy of then-existing law.
Considering the people who have been picked up, beaten, and killed in custody after officials objected to their internet activities, a few blogs getting blocked seems almost quaint. Deaths in custody are serious problem for Chinese detainees. The real problem of course is not usage of the internet but the expression of "subversive" thoughts and ideas.
A Harvard project has been studying the pattern of official site blocking, up until the Chinese gov't figured out a way to block them.
The U.S. does not seem to have a focused policy in surprise, and for many years our presidents have been reluctant to comment on human rights abroad in our political or economic allies. I think President Carter, whatever his merits of demerits, who was the last one willing to make a stink about it.
FWIW, SpeedChimera appears to work as advertized (i'm testing it now). It optimizes for broadband connections, and also permits control over various hidden features of Chimera like stopping animated GIF looping.
A neat feature is the "keyword" item in bookmarks. You can use it so that a single letter will bring up a site, and %s will carry arguments over -- e.g., "http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1& q=%s"
I really haven't experimented with altering Chimera because of the rate of development -- wait 15 minutes and they'll have addressed it. A couple of trivialities that might be nice are autofill and a spellchecker, but I'm not going to suggest it -- they already have plenty of advice!
That's really interesting, because I found the two browsers to run about the same speed, launch and rendering -- in both cases, very good. I wonder if the difference is perception, hardware, link performance (cable modem here), type of page content, something else....
Other folks have a variety of impressions. If I felt Chimera was slow, I would drop it; life's too short to be waiting on a computer....
I wonder what Chimera's future is? They did such a nice job is so little time. I'll keep fiddling with them all.
BTW, Chimera has a fair number of undocumented features, like the keywords in the bookmarks. If you back a bookmark for Google like this "http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1& q=%s" and set the keyword to g, then entering "g keyword" in the location bar does the search. Of course you make this do other tricks, too. (Well, I think it's neat.:)
The first 20 are hard enough to learn. I never learned them, but my biochem roommate did and if he had told me the structure of valine one more time I was going to kill him.
What's the use of it? Well, imagine getting a whole new shape of Lego piece to design around.
4. Chimera (Mozilla based) is still a better browser than Safari on MacOS X.
I've been using Chimera nearly exclusively for months. The Dec. 20 release (vers. 0.6 + a few features) is the nicest so far. What a development curve in the past year compared to the much older Opera and iCab!
I think it's interesting that Chimera is related to NS and Mozilla (Gecko) yet is soooo much cleaner and faster. Unfortunately it gets tarred with the same brush by people who haven't used it much.
Chimera's a lot more Aqua than Safari, too! I think Safari is stunningly ugly for an Apple product.
I agree and don't see why both open source projects can't continue. Competition is not just healthier than bloated monopoly, it's essential when we don't even know precisely what we're after. And our shared mission must be to kill IE, or at least beat it back....
Of course, there's no such thing as a GFP from a known thief.
In the U.S. there are cases where the GFP can get clear title from a thief, but it's the exception. The UCC uses the "entrustment" (voidable title) route and absolves the GFP of certain criminal violations by the seller (cl.3):
2-403. Power to Transfer; Good Faith Purchase of Goods; "Entrusting".
(1) A purchaser of goods acquires all title which his transferor had or had power to transfer except that a purchaser of a limited interest acquires rights only to the extent of the interest purchased. A person with voidable title has power to transfer a good title to a good faith purchaser for value. When goods have been delivered under a transaction of purchase the purchaser has such power even though
* (a) the transferor was deceived as to the identity of the purchaser, or
* (b) the delivery was in exchange for a check which is later dishonored, or
* (c) it was agreed that the transaction was to be a "cash sale", or * (d) the delivery was procured through fraud punishable as larcenous under the criminal law.
(2) Any entrusting of possession of goods to a merchant who deals in goods of that kind gives him power to transfer all rights of the entruster to a buyer in ordinary course of business.
(3) "Entrusting" includes any delivery and any acquiescence in retention of possession regardless of any condition expressed between the parties to the delivery or acquiescence and regardless of whether the procurement of the entrusting or the possessor's disposition of the goods have been such as to be larcenous under the criminal law.
Gee, that's almost in English.
Massachusetts for one provides some protection for a GFP from a thief: a 3-year statute of limitations running from the date of purchase, and a narrower affirmative defense for "good faith purchasers for value." What I'm looking at right now suggests that Europe goes farthest in protecting the GFP and clear title, as it should be IMHO because it is destructive to have the risk of someone showing up ten years later demanding their painting back, or worse four of five purchasers down the line.
For a better analogy without all this commentary, I should have used "bailee" instead of "thief." The point is that the middleman can screw up and the end purchaser still gets the goods (URL).
Slashdot Mirror
...before a fall (whu is it spelled "goeth"?)
:)
I really think Lindows is going to lose the trademark tussle with Microsoft over the name. Not only does Microsoft have nearly infinite legal resources, but I think here they may actually be right (and that's from a Mac user). Unless they've lost control of the windows name themselves, entirely possible from what I've heard -- Microsoft has no lack of hubris and is overdue for a stumble or more.
Good think Apple never got arrogant. Oh, wait.... But they felll big time, and I think it was a good thing, if only because it drew Jobs back like the second coming, and vested him with unilateral power to match. He's proud but smart. Like Gates. If their positions were reversed, hmmm....
Stop chuckling Linux-heads. Power/pride corrupts, your turn may come.
I must admit it's not insane to try to distribute a burden across a wide group of people, even if they object to the ultimate purpose. It's called taxation, and makes a lot of sense for a public good. Say, for example, a fuel tax to pay for the roads. Not perfect, but not insane.
:)
Maybe we're not taking socialism seriously enough. Here's a proposal: If the various labels want to impose a tax and distribute it amongst themselves (an entirely inappropriate and possibly unconstitutional thing for the gov't to be doing, redistributing for a private "good"), why not go whole hog and socialize the music industry. Then they'll get their tax, and we, through Congress, can decide how much of the take they get. No profits, of course.
Symmetry? Everyone happy? No one happy? Well, that's the point.
We always tried to commit unholy acts on Sally, and would get unceremoniously ejected from the game. ;-)
I could have sworn I saw frames at the White House site, but came across a different IP issue:
.com version has appeared and reappeared over the months; I think I saw it as a "help finding gov't agencies" version at some point.
.com variant, but it may have been sold within days.
Are most others aware of the difference between whitehouse.com and whitehouse.gov? The
My Q: Isn't it about time the White House sued for trademark dilution? Trademark aside, seriously, is there some kind of leverage they can use against this example of, ah, free speech? It seems a bit unfair in an FTC sense for the average schoolkid typing "whitehouse" to get misdirected, unfair publicity at the minimum. Obviously, the White House was dumb not to grab the
Anyone know some similar cybersquatter examples?
Adolescent jokes need not apply, I've heard them already.
That's what pushed NASA and the Soviet program in the first place, and there is nothing wrong with using increased defense spending to fund technology. It's what drove pretty much every advancement in aviation, ships, cargo handling, communications, materials science, and aerodynamics in the last 100 years. And in the US intergration of the races in the military happened before the private sector intergrated. Military doesn't always mean bad.
;-)
I think you're 100% right on the history, and am surprised by how often people don't know of or deny the link between the Space Race and Cold War. Aside from the interaction with military ICBM technology and the like, going to the Moon out of nationalistic pride was for the Americans another way to show we were better than the communist Soviet Union. Now that the competition is settled, it's difficult now to imagine of our nations as economic and scientific competitors that tried to show the world, and themselves, they would outlast the other. Victory and not armageddon was what Khrushchev meant when he declared, "We will bury you." (Sorry, Sting.)
I don't agree with the logic that military spending in excess of our need (however one defines excess) is good for science, though realistically it is probably necessary. To the extent their are collateral benefits to essential expenses, wonderful. Beyond that, military programs are not known for their efficiency, and using them as an indirect method to pursue peaceful goals is even worse -- a "trickle down theory" of aerospace. If you want to hit a target, aim at the target.
What's necessary is necessary, but spending what is likely even more with the expectation of a peace dividend, or holding back on direct spending, is unwise. But the argument we need something for defense is what lights the fire under the camel.
As alluded to above, the healthy alternative to overspending that ALSO was a major force behind Apollo is a healthy sense of competition, on ego rather than power, and it now appears very likely that space is going to be a thoroughly international affair. As someone here put it, if China were close to reaching Mars, we'd kill ourselves to be first. Would America have gone to the Moon if not for the Soviets? I don't think so. Thank you, communist dictators.
Does it matter -- and I'm not being contentious -- how much of the animal we eat, where is the point that we're destroying the population? A dead shark is a dead shark.
... and then the fishery collapsed. Completely, a cliff, not a gradual decline. It shows how things make not wrok intuitively, and after you pass a certain point simply easing off on the take won't fix it.
There is an aesthetic thing to it, this efficiency business, and it makes sense only if the result is that we kill fewer animals (or sharks) and, most of all, don't destroy the population.
There is a wonder chart at the Monterery Aquarium in California, showing the haul of sardines year after year in 40's (or so). Every year the catch grew
I feel silly even bothering to correct you, but you missed my point by a mile. I concerned not just with the holiness of our views, but our chances of actually getting them into practice. Preaching and tading on shame doesn't work.
I would be naive IF I HAD ACTUALLY SAID THAT. Of course they pay taxes, which President Bush and others would like repealed.
some idiots like to cut off the dorsal fin
:).
Whoa, you just dissed an entire country!
Like many Americans, we scratch our heads when we hear about idiotic practices like killing endangered species such a rhino for its "horn" (actually hair-based protein), or a black bear for its gall bladder, aligators for skin, or, the classic case, elephants for ivory and the occasional foot wastepaper basket (see Gary Larson
Yet of course we've done all kinds of similar things like the buffalo for tongues and hides, the dodo bird for feathers, fur of various animals driven nearly to extinction, etc. I don't think even now we're particularly unified in our view of spotted owls and other species that "get in the way of progress." So with our history and our modern ambivalence, I don't think we're in a great position to lecture, and we're really recent converts ourselves.
But we are in a great position to persuade and, of course, to fund. Shifting the African economy near game preserves from hunting to tourism and financeing alternative agricultural techniques near the rain forests are examples, and help more than the most earnest sermon.
There are four major candiadates for worst bas guy here, and I'm curious who would pick which (and i have my own ideas):
Now, whatever you think of the Court, they're the only one in the list that didn't act of financial interest. My guess is the majority simply did not take the interests of the petitioners seriously, and vaguely relied on what's left of fair use to sweep up.
The Disneys greedily acted in the interest of profit, which is exactly what they're supposed to do in capitalism; their shareholders could rightly toss them out for taking a pass on billions in revenue. Arguably they only exploited the opportunities available, assuming they didn't outright bribe anyone. Remember, soft money regulation is a recent accomplishment.
The President
Sorry to be cynical (unlike Congress), as no one has mentioned it, but it did not hurt that the act was named after a tragically dead Congressman/singer and sponsored by his widow.
I blame the Congress first, last, and foremost. It should have been obvious that the extension was not in the public interest. I don't know how well anyone lobbied against the act, but the politicians should have taken a close look at a decision involving billions of dollars and backed by a handful of very wealthy sponsors. That Congress has so many members makes it difficult to focus on whom to blame. That they passed the act by voice vote (I didn't know you could do that) during a time of national distraction was a craven and venal act.
I'm not saying I'm surprised Congress didn't do a better job. Which brings us to the vital need to get money out of politics.
So there. Talk amongst yourselves.
At least we as taxpayers will get a rebate in state/federal taxes on the profits of Disney et al.
:)
Oh wait, the administration wants to abolish dividend taxes. And corporate taxes. Never mind.
The profits from these works is indeed substantial, all the more so if this Sonny Bono Act bootstraps Disney into the next round of copyright extensions less than 20 years down the road. I mean, will it really sound so unreasonable then to raise the corporate 95 years to 125? Mickey to the next millenium!
I'm sitting here to research our kitchen faucet valve (which is jammed, and remarkably has 30 parts) and saw that staid Kohler now has a Disney Collection. I can't wait until Mickey is legally required on all products.
Gee, I don't think I've ever heard the word contrapuntal. Thank you, another small step in the evolution of my vocabulary. :)
Thanks. I tried taxcut a few years ago and had an unfortunate experience with it corrupting a data file I had worked on for quite a while. :) Soon I imagine everything will be handled online, which will allow one-user restrictions from any computer while avoiding this activation hooey.
Gone are the days when one could compare performance between setups. I suppsoe there are too many variables.
... SpeedChimera has improved performance here. Also, I watch the little status bar to see what the broser is doing, and my impression is that the slow part is the remote servers.
:)
.. but dontcha think iBench returns more than three numbers?). I bet the types of sites one visit matters a lot, too.
... so long as IE gets creamed, and it is the dog in this horserace. I dount MS can work backwards with the same product to speed it up. Perhaps it would be clever to whip up a fast IE Lite. We'll see.
I've been using Chimera on a 400 MHz G4 w/300+ Mb RAM and a 466 iBook w/ 192 Mb RAM. Also, OS X 10.2 was a significant performance improvement, as I think was generally reported -- esp. with graphics. Maybe you haev some bottleneck somewhere that Chimera can't handle
Hmm. I'd like to see benchmarks -- not that they'll mean anything.
Chimera is not set up for broadband out of the box for some reason. That's what SpeedChimera does, changes a fes of the properties for you. Here is a casual benchmark over a SLOW modem; Apple stats show near-parity with differences of maybe 15% except on launch (Safari wins naturally
I don't care
I'm not so sure, the Court has been willing enough to reverse even its own precedent, granted in selected cases.
:)
I haven't analyzed the opinions yet, if I ever do. But the argument Congress has done it for years is weak -- maybe no one thought to challenge it? Certainly the Supreme Court never addressed it, and perhaps if they had we wouldn't have this mess. One weird thing the Court likely wanted to avoid would have been the implicit voiding of the last extension (in the 70's?), but that's not reason enough to allow something UNCONSTITUTIONAL to stay on the book. Congress has no power to corrupt the Constitution. I think even the Framers would have flipped out over one-century copyrights. Congress's edge was that they snuck in on it by increments, but after all that was the most likely way it would have happened.
Yet I have relatively high faith in Justices Ginsburg and Souter, even Kennedy and O'Connor (note who I leave out), and take their votes as indications the outcome is reasonable if not "right."
Ultimately (and maybe I shouldn't say it here), this is a pretty trivial issue relatively to, say, the death case decided the very same day, a 5-4 vote, or the Michigan race-sensitive admissions policy, or even (!) the Kazaa case.
Check out lawpsided.com if you'd like to try handicapping the Court.
Yes. But there's always next time! In, um, 20 years.
I think a boycott would be a good thing (Disney is an evil tentacular mind-control corporation anyway) but my three y.o. thinks Mickey is godlike. I've tried explaining, but he doens't even know what money is. We don't buy the stuff, at least -- well, almost, they even own Pooh!
Well, I'm not so sure ... usually it's a venial offense or mistake or whatever, and that's a pretty mild reproach.
... FWIW I think venal is a little harsh. This not an unjustifiable ruling, it's just a bad ruling by a fairly conservative Court. I would have been floored if they had overruled Congress on the extension of the copyright term, given precedent, and prefer that sort of thing to be decided by elected, sometimes venal legislators rather than an unelected unreviewable group of justices. We save the Court for the relatively foul measures of the legislature, not disagreement over judgment calls like the magic number of years. If the Court starts picking and choosing here, they might start getting a lot more intrusive in other areas, too. At least we can yell at Congress.
I think the writer had in mind VENAL -- as I did when I saw it, so it took a minute to figure out why the dictionary.com definition was "wrong"!
And
However, what I really dislike is the *retroactive* application of the law to existing copyright holders like Disney. It (1) makes no sense under the Copyright Clause purpose to promote creativity, (2) stomps on the freedom of speech ethic if not right, and (3) looks like outright cash quid pro quo (well, might as well say it, that's what it is).
The retroactivity portion is what the dissents focus on, though I haven't plowed through it all. Without retroactivity, groups like Disney would have much much much less incentive to push for things like the Sonny Bono Act, as there would be no benefit for decades. The Sonny Bono Act provides Disney with money right away, with (early days) Mickey otherwise "expiring" this year.
Don't forget, this thing can be repealed. The chances are slim, but it's not written in stone.
© 2003 Mickey M. Mouse, all rights reserved.
Say it ain't so!
:)
Actually, it makes me nervous when there (supposedly) isn't a rift between them. That weird pretend alliance a few years ago, where Microsoft got a slot on the Apple desktop and Apple got a $100 million "investment" (Bill spend more than that on real estate taxes) was too strange for words.
Someone suggested to me a while ago that despite Apple's desperate need for continued Office for Mac support, Microsoft maybe needed them even more. If Apple were to die, hey presto! incontrovertible monopoly that, with a few missteps, could lead to Microsoft's splitting up in antitrust action. Now that Linux is becoming a more credible alternative, Microsoft might be tempted to abandon Macintosh and cause Apple's fall into oblivion even if it means losing a lucrative niche. Cutting into the education market is a lot like cutting Apple out of the business market.
The key thing is that people need to be weaned off of Office.
On its attempt to bulldoze into education, I'm glad Microsoft got tagged, though it immediately trying to learn loss into victory with VOUCHERS and discounts in a naked attempt to steer those same purchasers back to the MS fold. The cyncicism of it is astounding, and I had assumed the settlement offer was dead on arrival. Please tell me California is smarter than this.
Most of all, I'm glad to see Apple acting like a normal bitter competitor again, too. I wonder what Jobs, who we know already has a bit of a vicious streak, says about Microsoft in private? Hmm.
Hmm, I've seen them almost universally described as Jr. and sr., such in dissection of the crisis. (Risks Digest also carried Cornell's self-absolution -- I had no idea "damage estimates" ran as high as $96 million! That's criminal exaggeration, if there is such a thing.)
:) (I checking NSA really quick -- did you know they have a secure Linux project? Something about them using Linux surprises me.)
:) It was a mistake to play with the fire, but should the fire have been so scucessful? What kind of system gives a single individual that much power?
But the press screwing up names -- it's going to take me some time to readjust.
Mr. Morris reminds me of Mrs. O'Leary's cow. (Actually, the cow was recently absolved; a vagrant started the fire.
Anyone who follows Morris, however, cannot plausibly argue they had no idea of the potential risk. The Melissa author got 20 months for causing (supposedly) $80 million in losses (should that be offset by the extra money made by the media overhyping it?). That idiot in the Philipines who wrote iloveyou -- alleged to have got $10 billion in damages The incident caught the Philippines flat-footed to the point that they ask the U.S. to prosecute. De Guzman had a great thesis proposal ("the Internet should be free"). I don't think he or anyone else was ever punished, because of the inadequacy of then-existing law.
Considering the people who have been picked up, beaten, and killed in custody after officials objected to their internet activities, a few blogs getting blocked seems almost quaint. Deaths in custody are serious problem for Chinese detainees. The real problem of course is not usage of the internet but the expression of "subversive" thoughts and ideas.
A Harvard project has been studying the pattern of official site blocking, up until the Chinese gov't figured out a way to block them.
The U.S. does not seem to have a focused policy in surprise, and for many years our presidents have been reluctant to comment on human rights abroad in our political or economic allies. I think President Carter, whatever his merits of demerits, who was the last one willing to make a stink about it.
FWIW, SpeedChimera appears to work as advertized (i'm testing it now). It optimizes for broadband connections, and also permits control over various hidden features of Chimera like stopping animated GIF looping.
& q=%s"
A neat feature is the "keyword" item in bookmarks. You can use it so that a single letter will bring up a site, and %s will carry arguments over -- e.g., "http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1
I really haven't experimented with altering Chimera because of the rate of development -- wait 15 minutes and they'll have addressed it. A couple of trivialities that might be nice are autofill and a spellchecker, but I'm not going to suggest it -- they already have plenty of advice!
That's really interesting, because I found the two browsers to run about the same speed, launch and rendering -- in both cases, very good. I wonder if the difference is perception, hardware, link performance (cable modem here), type of page content, something else....
& q=%s" and set the keyword to g, then entering "g keyword" in the location bar does the search. Of course you make this do other tricks, too. (Well, I think it's neat. :)
Other folks have a variety of impressions. If I felt Chimera was slow, I would drop it; life's too short to be waiting on a computer....
I haven't tried this -- Speed Chimera.
I wonder what Chimera's future is? They did such a nice job is so little time. I'll keep fiddling with them all.
BTW, Chimera has a fair number of undocumented features, like the keywords in the bookmarks. If you back a bookmark for Google like this "http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1
The first 20 are hard enough to learn. I never learned them, but my biochem roommate did and if he had told me the structure of valine one more time I was going to kill him.
What's the use of it? Well, imagine getting a whole new shape of Lego piece to design around.
4. Chimera (Mozilla based) is still a better browser than Safari on MacOS X.
I've been using Chimera nearly exclusively for months. The Dec. 20 release (vers. 0.6 + a few features) is the nicest so far. What a development curve in the past year compared to the much older Opera and iCab!
I think it's interesting that Chimera is related to NS and Mozilla (Gecko) yet is soooo much cleaner and faster. Unfortunately it gets tarred with the same brush by people who haven't used it much.
Chimera's a lot more Aqua than Safari, too! I think Safari is stunningly ugly for an Apple product.
I agree and don't see why both open source projects can't continue. Competition is not just healthier than bloated monopoly, it's essential when we don't even know precisely what we're after. And our shared mission must be to kill IE, or at least beat it back....
In the U.S. there are cases where the GFP can get clear title from a thief, but it's the exception. The UCC uses the "entrustment" (voidable title) route and absolves the GFP of certain criminal violations by the seller (cl.3):
Gee, that's almost in English.
Massachusetts for one provides some protection for a GFP from a thief: a 3-year statute of limitations running from the date of purchase, and a narrower affirmative defense for "good faith purchasers for value." What I'm looking at right now suggests that Europe goes farthest in protecting the GFP and clear title, as it should be IMHO because it is destructive to have the risk of someone showing up ten years later demanding their painting back, or worse four of five purchasers down the line.
For a better analogy without all this commentary, I should have used "bailee" instead of "thief." The point is that the middleman can screw up and the end purchaser still gets the goods (URL).