It is made quite clear over at LawMeme...Here is a quote from that article:
"Well, Roland nastygrammed the Project, claiming copyright in the sound samples embedded in the MT-32's ROM. In response, the only adult member of the Project team fired back a letter pointing out that Roland had never registered that copyright. And since the MT-32 had been distributed before 1989 (when the pre-Sonny round of copyright "reform" went into effect), 17 U.S.C. section 405 meant that Roland had lost its copyright, according to the Project team.
Use it or lose it, right?
No! No! No! This meme must be killed NOW! The Project's home page seems to indicate that they've already backed down from this stance and won't contest in court the enforceability of the copyright. As well they shouldn't, because they would lose. Painfully so."
Hmm, I feel the need to elaborate slightly, and make the point that no intelligent player of SWG (of which there are surely a handful) would ever use the official forums, except maybe to check if their server was down. The signal to noise ratio was, well, if we're talking noise/signal, you'd get a division by zero error. Other fan sites, especially (for me, a crafter) the quite good SWG craft.com site, offered a notably better community/resource.
So -- take the complaints over how the official boards are moderated with a grain of salt...anyone with a lick of sense wouldn't be hanging around there in the first place.
(and btw I didn't quit b/c of bugginess, found the game quite stable. There just wasn't a damn thing to do.)
I don't think that's playing devil's advocate at all, at least not against what I'm saying. I thought the same thing, and I think they'd be more in the right going after Kazaa than its users, not for maintaining the network, but for extracting money from its users under misleading/questionable business claims. (Yes I know they did have a go at Kazaa already.)
On the other hand, it might've just been some deceitful pop-up ad that they fell for, and not Kazaa at all. Since, erm, my friend uses Kazaa Lite, with the adware and spyware removed, I'm not too familiar with the official version.
(BTW, there was a typo in my original post, as I noticed in your quote...should read "...apparently thought they were thereby legit." [emphasis mine, now!]
But if the prevailing popular opinions run strongly anti-RIAA crackdown, especially amongst the older, voting public, Congresspeople will start listening, as they did when the public outcry went up against the FCC allowing further media consolidation.
I can't believe you're accusing Fox News and the NY Post, two of the most conservative news sources around (and both owned by Rupert Murdoch), of spinning anything to the left. You've got to be out of your mind.
The NY Post may often be guilty of sensationalizing a story, and playing up the human interest bits, but no one has *ever* accused them of being anything but a reactionary right-wing rag, at least since Murdoch took over...
The New York City papers are all over this -- it's on the cover of both the Post and the Daily News. They skew really sympathetically towards the girl and her family, who apparently were paying $29.95 a month for Kazaa "service", and apparently thought there were thereby legit.
This is really going to help the cause against the RIAA's draconian retributive lawsuits, as it will appeal to the hearts of the populace at large. Bad PR, RIAA, baaaaad PR.
Did you happen to notice that the only think lit up in the Manhattan skyline last night (that was visible from my back porch in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was a huge, bright Verizon sign?
I think it's a fabulous idea, the kind of idea that make me slap my head and say "why didn't I think of this?" You're right -- the biggest obstacle to producing a truly free (as in speech, natch) search engine solution is not in producing the software (patent minefield notwithstanding), but in the "physical" costs of hardware and bandwidth.
I think to way to overcome this obstacle is to develop a distributed system...run a nutch node on your server, host a few GBs of index data. There could be master nodes that are able to route requests to the right nodes for a given set of keywords. It sounds far-fetched, and I can't work out the network topography off the top of my head, but I bet it's doable. Of course, you'd have to build in redundancy into the system to make sure it's not exploited, and a power outage (or a machine that's not up 24-7) somewhere doesn't cause failures. You'd also want to encrypt the locally stored data to further protect against exploits, and to perhaps (IANAL) indemnify the node-owner to some degress from whatever problems s/he might face "hosting" this material, kinda like Freenet.
It's interesting. I hope they think about this sort of approach.
I wanted to second Brian's rallying call to support independent developers -- these people are doing it out of love, and it tends to show. Another independently produced game is A Tale in the Desert, an incredibly innovative MMOG which has one of the most sophisticated and complex world-models I've ever seen in a game...Moreover, it's the only RPG-style game I've seen in which people become truly skilled at doing what they choose to do (gemcutting? gear-box design? pyrotechnics?) by doing it, and performing the complex machinations involved. So players actually become skilled, rather than characters just advancing a skill number! There's at lot more -- check out the website if you are at all interested. Only in an independent game like ATITD would the lead developer give out his cellphone number in case the server goes down!
No, I don't work for them -- I'm just really impressed by the game and want to spread the word.
Well, your old customers were a self-selecting group. I'd reckon that no, you wouldn't hear from anyone who had had success with an ultasonic repeller device, because then they wouldn't need you...
How do you think the recent discovery of a formulaic test for the primality of a number might affect current cryptographic systems? Is there a way to exploit this method into a better system for factoring large primes?
Hmm, would you mind sending me this post in an email? Never mind, don't bother. You mention "mortgages", "penis enlargement", and "Nigeria". It will never get past my Bayesian spam filter.
'People have worse entertainment addictions than playing computer games. If I am going to be addicted to something, I would choose online gaming over drugs, bowling, gambling, television, or being a baseball fanatic easily... It IS after all just a video game,... just another amusement park.'
Sounds like your classic addict's rationalization to me. For shame, for shame.
I once had the Everquest on my back, but I kicked. Believe me, these addictions do screw up real lives...
I wonder what the apparent obsession with the Chenguin pantheon is all about...To those who aren't in the know, that would include Chenguin, Chunk, Chove, and Chixson. More info can be found here:
IE starts up quickly in Windows because it is loaded into memory at system start up and runs in the background. When you "start" the program you are simply creating a new browser window. So you suffer the program start-up overhead when the system boots, instead of each time you create a new instance.
The good news is, for those inclined to sacrifice system performance for quick browser load times, is that this option is also available in Mozilla...Look under "Preferences...Advanced" for the Quick-launch option.
Where did you get the idea that there isn't handwriting recognition? From the product description:
DocuNote integrates true handwriting recognition and a touch screen interface for entering data using a stylus pen on an 8.4 inch TFT color LCD display.
Big IANAL disclaimer, but I'd warrant that the patent clause (#9) is, while interesting, ultimately unenforceable. Despite that fact that most of us here see anyone who seeks software patent rights, or litigation on the basis of them, as misguided at best and downright evil at worst, prevailing notions of patent rights are that they are just and valuable, and that someone has the right to exercise and enforce those rights if necessary.
Therefore, that clause may be considered discriminatory and overreaching, as it endeavors to *take away* a right that the licensee already has, independent of the license.
The power of the GPL (and much of this new OSL as well) comes from the fact that it only *grants* rights that one wouldn't normally have under copyright (and in this case, under the 2nd clause, patent) law. This "Mutual Termination for Patent Action" clause seeks to take away an established (if perhaps ill-fitting and unfortunate) legal right from the licensee, one which has no direct bearing on the licensed software in question. I don't think that can be enforced.
Please, though, I would love to hear what a real lawyer thinks....
Slashdot Mirror
It is made quite clear over at LawMeme...Here is a quote from that article:
"Well, Roland nastygrammed the Project, claiming copyright in the sound samples embedded in the MT-32's ROM. In response, the only adult member of the Project team fired back a letter pointing out that Roland had never registered that copyright. And since the MT-32 had been distributed before 1989 (when the pre-Sonny round of copyright "reform" went into effect), 17 U.S.C. section 405 meant that Roland had lost its copyright, according to the Project team.
Use it or lose it, right?
No! No! No! This meme must be killed NOW! The Project's home page seems to indicate that they've already backed down from this stance and won't contest in court the enforceability of the copyright. As well they shouldn't, because they would lose. Painfully so."
Hmm, I feel the need to elaborate slightly, and make the point that no intelligent player of SWG (of which there are surely a handful) would ever use the official forums, except maybe to check if their server was down. The signal to noise ratio was, well, if we're talking noise/signal, you'd get a division by zero error. Other fan sites, especially (for me, a crafter) the quite good SWG craft.com site, offered a notably better community/resource.
So -- take the complaints over how the official boards are moderated with a grain of salt...anyone with a lick of sense wouldn't be hanging around there in the first place.
(and btw I didn't quit b/c of bugginess, found the game quite stable. There just wasn't a damn thing to do.)
wouldn't know, I cancelled a month ago.
That's true, but it's also the city from the original Bard's Tale.
Before anyone starts getting litigious, they should recall that there's prior art.
Both pictures available in the article are too close-up to see the entire keypad...Here's a better pic:
http://www.futurebytes.ch/images/news/fastpad.jpg
I don't think that's playing devil's advocate at all, at least not against what I'm saying. I thought the same thing, and I think they'd be more in the right going after Kazaa than its users, not for maintaining the network, but for extracting money from its users under misleading/questionable business claims. (Yes I know they did have a go at Kazaa already.)
On the other hand, it might've just been some deceitful pop-up ad that they fell for, and not Kazaa at all. Since, erm, my friend uses Kazaa Lite, with the adware and spyware removed, I'm not too familiar with the official version.
(BTW, there was a typo in my original post, as I noticed in your quote...should read "...apparently thought they were thereby legit." [emphasis mine, now!]
But if the prevailing popular opinions run strongly anti-RIAA crackdown, especially amongst the older, voting public, Congresspeople will start listening, as they did when the public outcry went up against the FCC allowing further media consolidation.
I can't believe you're accusing Fox News and the NY Post, two of the most conservative news sources around (and both owned by Rupert Murdoch), of spinning anything to the left. You've got to be out of your mind.
The NY Post may often be guilty of sensationalizing a story, and playing up the human interest bits, but no one has *ever* accused them of being anything but a reactionary right-wing rag, at least since Murdoch took over...
The New York City papers are all over this -- it's on the cover of both the Post and the Daily News. They skew really sympathetically towards the girl and her family, who apparently were paying $29.95 a month for Kazaa "service", and apparently thought there were thereby legit.
This is really going to help the cause against the RIAA's draconian retributive lawsuits, as it will appeal to the hearts of the populace at large. Bad PR, RIAA, baaaaad PR.
Did you happen to notice that the only think lit up in the Manhattan skyline last night (that was visible from my back porch in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was a huge, bright Verizon sign?
Curious.
I think it's a fabulous idea, the kind of idea that make me slap my head and say "why didn't I think of this?" You're right -- the biggest obstacle to producing a truly free (as in speech, natch) search engine solution is not in producing the software (patent minefield notwithstanding), but in the "physical" costs of hardware and bandwidth.
I think to way to overcome this obstacle is to develop a distributed system...run a nutch node on your server, host a few GBs of index data. There could be master nodes that are able to route requests to the right nodes for a given set of keywords. It sounds far-fetched, and I can't work out the network topography off the top of my head, but I bet it's doable. Of course, you'd have to build in redundancy into the system to make sure it's not exploited, and a power outage (or a machine that's not up 24-7) somewhere doesn't cause failures. You'd also want to encrypt the locally stored data to further protect against exploits, and to perhaps (IANAL) indemnify the node-owner to some degress from whatever problems s/he might face "hosting" this material, kinda like Freenet.
It's interesting. I hope they think about this sort of approach.
I wanted to second Brian's rallying call to support independent developers -- these people are doing it out of love, and it tends to show. Another independently produced game is A Tale in the Desert, an incredibly innovative MMOG which has one of the most sophisticated and complex world-models I've ever seen in a game...Moreover, it's the only RPG-style game I've seen in which people become truly skilled at doing what they choose to do (gemcutting? gear-box design? pyrotechnics?) by doing it, and performing the complex machinations involved. So players actually become skilled, rather than characters just advancing a skill number! There's at lot more -- check out the website if you are at all interested. Only in an independent game like ATITD would the lead developer give out his cellphone number in case the server goes down!
No, I don't work for them -- I'm just really impressed by the game and want to spread the word.
Another independent game I'm keeping my eyes on is They Came From Hollywood!, which looks to be a great update on the old "Crush, Crumble, and Chomp!" concept...
Well, your old customers were a self-selecting group. I'd reckon that no, you wouldn't hear from anyone who had had success with an ultasonic repeller device, because then they wouldn't need you...
If this were true Microsoft's anti-competitive practice would be a non-issue, as would marketing budgets and distribution networks.
Real economics isn't this simple.
Hold up -- they're distributing neither binaries nor source? What exactly are they distributing?
"I don't know, but I'm sure there's something in MS Word that will do that..."
Am I hired?
You're right, my mistake. What I meant was "factoring the product of two large primes."
If you choose this question, editors, please make the correction?
thanks
How do you think the recent discovery of a formulaic test for the primality of a number might affect current cryptographic systems? Is there a way to exploit this method into a better system for factoring large primes?
Hmm, would you mind sending me this post in an email? Never mind, don't bother. You mention "mortgages", "penis enlargement", and "Nigeria". It will never get past my Bayesian spam filter.
/. isn't a mailing list!
Thank goodness
My favorite way to show off linux on TV is with my TiVo, of course... ;)
I once had the Everquest on my back, but I kicked. Believe me, these addictions do screw up real lives...
Chenguin site
IE starts up quickly in Windows because it is loaded into memory at system start up and runs in the background. When you "start" the program you are simply creating a new browser window. So you suffer the program start-up overhead when the system boots, instead of each time you create a new instance.
The good news is, for those inclined to sacrifice system performance for quick browser load times, is that this option is also available in Mozilla...Look under "Preferences...Advanced" for the Quick-launch option.
Big IANAL disclaimer, but I'd warrant that the patent clause (#9) is, while interesting, ultimately unenforceable. Despite that fact that most of us here see anyone who seeks software patent rights, or litigation on the basis of them, as misguided at best and downright evil at worst, prevailing notions of patent rights are that they are just and valuable, and that someone has the right to exercise and enforce those rights if necessary.
Therefore, that clause may be considered discriminatory and overreaching, as it endeavors to *take away* a right that the licensee already has, independent of the license.
The power of the GPL (and much of this new OSL as well) comes from the fact that it only *grants* rights that one wouldn't normally have under copyright (and in this case, under the 2nd clause, patent) law. This "Mutual Termination for Patent Action" clause seeks to take away an established (if perhaps ill-fitting and unfortunate) legal right from the licensee, one which has no direct bearing on the licensed software in question. I don't think that can be enforced.
Please, though, I would love to hear what a real lawyer thinks....