The problem with software patents is that they will end up covering obvious solutions to problems.
Seriously. "A method to get around 8 character filenames by storing the rest of the filename elsewhere"? If this is innovation, then I should run out and see what sort of patents I can get in my Qbasic RPG.
Yes you can. You're thinking of trademark infringements. You can't lose a patent or copyright by not enforcing it. If that were the case, most companies would lose their copyright due to piracy.
It seems to me that China is such a shithole, that it would be completely unethical to waste time dealing with piracy at this point. Let's stop slavery, let's stop human rights abuses, let's enforce workplace health and safety standards.
Moaning and whining about how a few people are getting games for free in a country like China is like complaining that Hitler stole your parking spot.
To me, this is more like a publisher demanding a rental store pay full box price for full distribution rights for every xbox game rental because an end-user might have a hacked xbox and could pirate the game.
Amazon is selling text, not audio. The fact that the end user can take a device, even one made by amazon, and turn it into audio is irrelevant. Under that theory, every paper publisher should have to pay for audio book rights because all it takes is a scanner and some patience to turn a paper book into an audio book.
If the author's guild isn't interested in what the end-user does, then they have no business talking about this. Amazon is selling text. At no point are they selling audio files. They happen to sell a device that will render text into sound, but as with my mp3 example, it's just a case of taking a format designed to reproduce audio and doing just that.
If Microsoft sold the end-user a device to convert text into speech, would Amazon be forced to pay for audio book rights? If some company built a device that would scan a page, convert it to text, then convert the text to speech, would paper publishers be forced to pay for audio book rights?
It's madness. Amazon is only selling text. They aren't selling audio books. What the end-user does with that text, even with an Amazon provided device, is their problem, not Amazon's.
Your player piano analogy is broken because it deals with different performances. You can't sing your favourite copyrighted song in a bar if that bar hasn't paid the organization that handles music licensing. You absolutely can sing your favourite song in your home. A pianist playing in the same bar would need to pay licensing fees, or have the bar owner pay licensing fees, to play copyrighted music in a public place.
Under your theory, let's say that Amazon isn't selling the Kindle. Let's say it's Microsoft selling the Kindle. Is Amazon still violating copyright by selling the books?
Let's say we're talking about a physical book, and someone sells a scanner device which will read a page and convert it to text. Are all publishers of paper books now violating copyright by selling the books?
My answer is no. Neither Amazon nor paper publishers are selling audio-books. It's irrelevant that text files can be later rendered in audio form in either case. Neither publisher is selling audio books, and thus shouldn't be forced to pay as if they were because someone could conceivably convert text into audio form.
Homophobia follows a much worse fear than racism. It feeds on the closeted shame most men feel for the horrible way they treat women. It's the fear that someone might treat them the way they treat others.
Clearly, the way to stop this fear is for people to shape up.
That was my first thought, but my second is that XBox live is vulgar, filled with 12 year olds saying things that would make Red Fox blush. That being the case, it's inconsistent to attack gays and lesbians for simply revealing their sexual orientation, while doing nothing about 12 year olds talking about how they fucked your mother last night and she was horrible.
It's a private performance for personal use. I see no difference between this and a parent reading to their child. For that matter, I see no difference between this and reading out loud to oneself.
Amazon isn't selling audio books. They aren't selling machine read copies of books. They are selling the text of a book in electronic format. Incidentally, they also sell a device which reads those books in electronic format and either displays the text on the screen or translates them into sound. This action is taken by the end-user of the book, not Amazon themselves. They aren't selling audio books.
Ah, in that case, I agree. I really enjoy the beta, but I won't pay for (or steal) the final product, because of the crap they're going to add. In particular, their copy protection has actually locked me out of legitimate copies of Windows XP. If they think I'm going to drop a few hundred dollars on something they have no problem arbitrarily taking away, they're nuts.
Here's my problem. The Roman alphabet and the english language is a phonetic system where a series of sounds are represented by symbols. Therefore, when you buy a book in the english language, you're buying a very long set of data designed to represent a long series of sounds. How is creating a device to reconstitute that series of sounds into a sound stream for a legitimate (and paid) end-user a violation of that, while reconstituting it by looking at the symbols and recreating the sounds yourself not a violation of that?
Amazon isn't distributing audio files or derivative works. They're distributing the original work in it's original format as provided by the writer, and they happen to be distributing a second, separate device which can automatically convert this original work into the series of sounds they're meant to represent. It seems to me like if this interpretation is to be accepted, every MP3 player on the planet is evil because it too converts a medium meant to represent sounds into.....sounds!
In TFA, he basically says "No, none of your predictable arguments matter, only mine".
Tell me the difference between reading a book out loud and getting a machine to read it for you. You're paying for data whose primary purpose is being reconstituted into phonetics. I see no distinction between a manual or automated reconstitution.
When we're talking about these sorts of orders of magnitude difference, it's effectively incompressible. Hydrodynamics don't bother taking compressibility into account, for example.
I wouldn't want a pressure vessel at millions of atmospheres in MY camper.
I've got the same machine, and I couldn't handle how poor the video performance was under Ubuntu 8.10 compared to Windows XP or Windows 7, so I switched to the latter.
Yeah, I'll be back on Ubuntu later because I don't intend to pay for something Microsoft will just take back when I install it one too many times, but the truth in the meantime doesn't change. Performance under Windows is better.
Not just voices. An unadorned novel will not have the required information for a tts parser to read it properly. It won't know when the action scenes are coming up so it's time to speed up the pace and emote. It won't know that a main character just lost their mother, so it's time to slow down and emote. It won't even know the difference between a "breathe here" period and a "oh my god the suspense is killing me" period.
For tts to ever replace audio books, it would require not just excellent tts, it would require a team of programmers and artists to smooth out the pronunciation of words, mark up proper emoting, and generally change the experience from bland monotone to an artistic experience. It's like saying women shouldn't exist in video games because the ai might someday become competitive with women in real life.
Slashdot Mirror
Read the summary again. This isn't blu-ray, it's just using a blue laser to regular burn CDs instead of a red one.
It's solving a problem nobody has.
This reminds me of the gold plated cables "to ensure the digital signal has the highest fidelity".
This looks like snake oil marketed to the "I'm a pretend audiophile who loves buying more expensive things with questionable benefits" crowd.
That's unlikely and, as far as I know, unprecedented.
They'll more likely be forced to either license the patent or stop selling the infringing product and pay damages.
The problem with software patents is that they will end up covering obvious solutions to problems.
Seriously. "A method to get around 8 character filenames by storing the rest of the filename elsewhere"? If this is innovation, then I should run out and see what sort of patents I can get in my Qbasic RPG.
Yes you can. You're thinking of trademark infringements. You can't lose a patent or copyright by not enforcing it. If that were the case, most companies would lose their copyright due to piracy.
It seems to me that China is such a shithole, that it would be completely unethical to waste time dealing with piracy at this point. Let's stop slavery, let's stop human rights abuses, let's enforce workplace health and safety standards.
Moaning and whining about how a few people are getting games for free in a country like China is like complaining that Hitler stole your parking spot.
You're talking about two different things.
To me, this is more like a publisher demanding a rental store pay full box price for full distribution rights for every xbox game rental because an end-user might have a hacked xbox and could pirate the game.
Amazon is selling text, not audio. The fact that the end user can take a device, even one made by amazon, and turn it into audio is irrelevant. Under that theory, every paper publisher should have to pay for audio book rights because all it takes is a scanner and some patience to turn a paper book into an audio book.
If the author's guild isn't interested in what the end-user does, then they have no business talking about this. Amazon is selling text. At no point are they selling audio files. They happen to sell a device that will render text into sound, but as with my mp3 example, it's just a case of taking a format designed to reproduce audio and doing just that.
If Microsoft sold the end-user a device to convert text into speech, would Amazon be forced to pay for audio book rights? If some company built a device that would scan a page, convert it to text, then convert the text to speech, would paper publishers be forced to pay for audio book rights?
It's madness. Amazon is only selling text. They aren't selling audio books. What the end-user does with that text, even with an Amazon provided device, is their problem, not Amazon's.
You're wrong on two points.
Your player piano analogy is broken because it deals with different performances. You can't sing your favourite copyrighted song in a bar if that bar hasn't paid the organization that handles music licensing. You absolutely can sing your favourite song in your home. A pianist playing in the same bar would need to pay licensing fees, or have the bar owner pay licensing fees, to play copyrighted music in a public place.
Under your theory, let's say that Amazon isn't selling the Kindle. Let's say it's Microsoft selling the Kindle. Is Amazon still violating copyright by selling the books?
Let's say we're talking about a physical book, and someone sells a scanner device which will read a page and convert it to text. Are all publishers of paper books now violating copyright by selling the books?
My answer is no. Neither Amazon nor paper publishers are selling audio-books. It's irrelevant that text files can be later rendered in audio form in either case. Neither publisher is selling audio books, and thus shouldn't be forced to pay as if they were because someone could conceivably convert text into audio form.
Yeah, that's how men treat women.
(Maybe 50 years ago.)
Homophobia follows a much worse fear than racism. It feeds on the closeted shame most men feel for the horrible way they treat women. It's the fear that someone might treat them the way they treat others.
Clearly, the way to stop this fear is for people to shape up.
We're talking about the Internet. The fact that she's a she will cause harassment.
Rights to access vs. right to not be annoyed by people who don't think like you do.
One of those is liberty. The other is not.
Should you be banned from Slashdot for having an opinion I find offensive?
That was my first thought, but my second is that XBox live is vulgar, filled with 12 year olds saying things that would make Red Fox blush. That being the case, it's inconsistent to attack gays and lesbians for simply revealing their sexual orientation, while doing nothing about 12 year olds talking about how they fucked your mother last night and she was horrible.
It's a private performance for personal use. I see no difference between this and a parent reading to their child. For that matter, I see no difference between this and reading out loud to oneself.
Amazon isn't selling audio books. They aren't selling machine read copies of books. They are selling the text of a book in electronic format. Incidentally, they also sell a device which reads those books in electronic format and either displays the text on the screen or translates them into sound. This action is taken by the end-user of the book, not Amazon themselves. They aren't selling audio books.
The baker is inconsequential next to the person who owns the bakery. The baker couldn't make a living if he didn't have access to the bakery.
Ah, in that case, I agree. I really enjoy the beta, but I won't pay for (or steal) the final product, because of the crap they're going to add. In particular, their copy protection has actually locked me out of legitimate copies of Windows XP. If they think I'm going to drop a few hundred dollars on something they have no problem arbitrarily taking away, they're nuts.
Here's my problem. The Roman alphabet and the english language is a phonetic system where a series of sounds are represented by symbols. Therefore, when you buy a book in the english language, you're buying a very long set of data designed to represent a long series of sounds. How is creating a device to reconstitute that series of sounds into a sound stream for a legitimate (and paid) end-user a violation of that, while reconstituting it by looking at the symbols and recreating the sounds yourself not a violation of that?
Amazon isn't distributing audio files or derivative works. They're distributing the original work in it's original format as provided by the writer, and they happen to be distributing a second, separate device which can automatically convert this original work into the series of sounds they're meant to represent. It seems to me like if this interpretation is to be accepted, every MP3 player on the planet is evil because it too converts a medium meant to represent sounds into.....sounds!
Congrats. I've lost 3 legit copies of XP to their asinine DRM, and most vlk keys you can get on the internet are already forbidden.
Hey, it's not a problem for me. I pity Microsoft though, because they've long lost a customer over this shit.
In TFA, he basically says "No, none of your predictable arguments matter, only mine".
Tell me the difference between reading a book out loud and getting a machine to read it for you. You're paying for data whose primary purpose is being reconstituted into phonetics. I see no distinction between a manual or automated reconstitution.
When we're talking about these sorts of orders of magnitude difference, it's effectively incompressible. Hydrodynamics don't bother taking compressibility into account, for example.
I wouldn't want a pressure vessel at millions of atmospheres in MY camper.
It wouldn't be the first time a piece of technology made VAG upset.
I've got the same machine, and I couldn't handle how poor the video performance was under Ubuntu 8.10 compared to Windows XP or Windows 7, so I switched to the latter.
Yeah, I'll be back on Ubuntu later because I don't intend to pay for something Microsoft will just take back when I install it one too many times, but the truth in the meantime doesn't change. Performance under Windows is better.
I just died from the unhealthy amounts of win surrounding that link.
Not just voices. An unadorned novel will not have the required information for a tts parser to read it properly. It won't know when the action scenes are coming up so it's time to speed up the pace and emote. It won't know that a main character just lost their mother, so it's time to slow down and emote. It won't even know the difference between a "breathe here" period and a "oh my god the suspense is killing me" period.
For tts to ever replace audio books, it would require not just excellent tts, it would require a team of programmers and artists to smooth out the pronunciation of words, mark up proper emoting, and generally change the experience from bland monotone to an artistic experience. It's like saying women shouldn't exist in video games because the ai might someday become competitive with women in real life.