One application of this I'd be interested in is perhaps the opportunity to buy music videos in addition to songs.
Then it is with supreme irony that you'll find the iTunes Music Store supplying videos for free while charging for the audio track alone. You don't get to pick and choose, though, since not every song gets made into a video.
That's an interesting idea, but that would be radically different than how we have been doing things. Traditionally copyright has dealt with creating and distributing copies and some public performances or displays. It's not really about usage so much.
And that's why it's completely backwards to most people. Copies are becoming increasingly easy to make in this digital age, and for some products copies are even necessary. While "fair use" might currently be a defense against claims of infringement, I think a focus on usage instead of copies in a better direction. The whole word may be "copyright", but the important half is the "right", not the "copy".
So? Courts are perfectly capable of taking that into account. Check out the 110(5) homestyle exception sometime.
Again, that supports my point. They have to make exceptions every time novel technology comes out. It would be much better to redraft the law to deal not with the specifics of technology at all. Just because a CD gives up its bits more easily than vinyl records shouldn't materially change anything regarding copyright.
No it doesn't. The legal definition of a derivative work (see sections 101-103) is not the same as what a lot of people think it means. A derivative is more like adapting something to a different medium, non-slavishly and meeting the requirements of 102. Like making a movie based on a book.
It seems a lot more fuzzy than that to me. What, really, is the "work" when fixed to a digital medium? Just a series of 1s and 0s, as far as I can tell. If I take the series and and encode it to another series, what do I have if not a derivative? How else could the copyright holder of the original set of bits make a claim on the encoded bits unless they can show derivation?
More amusingly, hop on over to DataFetish and do a search. What can be said about the resulting bits when viewed in isolation? Can they really be said to represent any particular copyrighted work or any of thousands of possible encodings? That's why I say the copies, the bits, are irrelevant in a digital age. Focus on the right to use and things will fall in place a lot easier.
Before you question the sanity of the developers in question, you need to reflect on why you use it yourself and what is sufficient to meet those needs. If the project is small or well partitioned, it might be just fine to use regular ol' backups. Even for more complicated projects, a lot of the VC tools can still be overkill and require too much manual hand holding. Personally, I eagerly await the day where we have filesystems that essentially do versioning themselves. Drive space is cheap, especially when it comes to text files, so I don't see why we can't just have the system maintain snapshots of critical files and then allow you to change the view to a particular point in history.
The courts generally have agreed that putting something in RAM counts because you can read it back out again. Speakers probably wouldn't count, not so much for a logical reason but because judges probably wouldn't feel that they do. It's very imprecise; I welcome suggestions for a better definition.
I'm no legal expert, but it seems to me the problem copyright gets into in a digital age is not about the copies themselves, but rather the simultaneous usage. Me keeping a backup copy of a DVD is not something to sue over. Me keeping that copy offsite (e.g., a friend's house) likewise should not be a problem. Where I would expect a problem is if my friend tried to watch that copy at the same time I was watching my copy. Otherwise, all the copy does is eliminate the hassle of me having to deliver the physical media to them.
But also note that since fair use would continue to apply, and perhaps some degree of estoppel, even if playing a CD with ordinary equipment were considered reproduction, you'd probably be okay in the end. Plus, who'd bother to bring that case? You don't get to go to federal court and just ask theoretical questions. You'd have to be sued, and it seems unlikely anyone would sue you merely for listening to a CD, as distinguished from some of the other things we've discussed of late.
I don't disagree. My point is that what is "ordinary equipment" is changing all the time. If a copy in RAM is bad, wouldn't that make a no-skip buffer bad? Doesn't pretty much every CD player have that? Is an iPod considered "ordinary equipment" yet? It not only keeps copies on a HD for repeated long-term "infringement", it does so by creating derivative works! The technology will keep changing, too, and if the law doesn't keep up then, yes, we'll eventually have all sorts of "unlawful" activity being prosecuted that people consider "ordinary" usage. Hell, some might argue that's already the state of things with P2P.
Well, you can't transfer data between computers. Only reproduce it. So it's really very clear that doing nearly anything with a computer involves reproduction.
By that measure any use is infringement. NO device I own simply transfers data. My CD player copies the bits, creating a derivative work (analog) no less, and reproduces it with my speakers! My DVD player copies the bits and reproduces them on my TV! EVERY use I have for the copyrighted works I purchased seems to infringe! The law is so unclear on a number of points, especially in this digital age, that it needs to be completely scrapped and restructured to make the proper things unlawful.
Yes. 106(1) makes ALL unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted works unlawful unless there is some applicable exception. There are a few, but not a lot, and they're not all that broad.
And roughly 100% of consumers have no idea what is "unauthorized". I didn't sign any contract that spelled out what I can and can't do with this optical disk I just bought. As a consumer, I have certain expectations regarding the goods I bought, and none of them involve me getting prosecuted for simple personal use.
Okay, we will presume them to not be guilty. But so what? Copyright cases are actually really easy civilly and criminally. If you ever face one, you're probably going to lose if you fight it. Well, unless it's rather unusual. But most of the ones we're seeing are clear-cut music, software, and video pirating. No sweat for the prosecutor or plaintiff.
I agree that most of what we're talking about here doesn't apply to the case at hand, but the fact remains that the RIAA mass suing people is a really, really bad idea for them because they keep extending the borders of what they're calling infringement. At some point someone will fight them and win, and establish a precedence for "lawfully" using copyrighted works on computers. They think it's bad now? Cue the floodgates! Of course, there is also much irony in the fact that for all the MPAA fought against VCRs, the home video market has turned into a cash cow for them.
Well, that's what I'd like, but I don't expect it at all. I see things getting worse, not better. (not even better after getting worse)
If you're right, then it simply spells the collapse of that government, which is a tried and true solution to tyranny throughout history. The only question is whether the revolution will be peaceful or violent this time around. I think it would be a good idea for the rights holders to at least try for peaceful.:-)
To be more accurate, there is no blanket rule indicating that the fair use defense to copyright infringement applies for any specific set of circumstances.
Right. But by the same measure, there is no blanket rule making it illegal, and that is more important. You are free to hem and haw over some particular case, but in the general case people have a good idea what is fair and what is blatant disregard for copyright.
The act of uploading is a form of distribution, also an action. And it's an infringing one, all else being equal.
Nope. The entire idea of upload is an anachronism. The Internet is just a bunch of connected computers. There is no "up", and P2P makes that all the more clear. If anything, upload/download only convey who initiated the transfer. If I have something on my computer and you want it, me sending it to you is an "upload" while you requesting it from me is a "download". Regardless, a simple transfer is neither an obvious form of distribution or infringement, since we know absolutely nothing about how the systems are connected or what their purpose is. By your logic, my DVD player "uploads" movies to my TV, and I'm infringing just watching what I paid for. No, I don't thing mere wire transmission makes a good case at all.
You can reproduce copies for backup purposes lawfully where it doesn't infringe copyright.
I think this points out where we don't see eye-to-eye on this issue. The word "lawfully" is loaded, because it implies other actions are less correct. The truth is, something has to be made unlawful before you can make an exception for what is lawful. So I think the preoccupation with "lawfully" complete shifts the focus from the question of whether or not the original law is a good one.
OTOH, if you were willfully blind to the public accessibility of the materials and it was highly likely that they'd be publicly accessible, or you knew they were, or if you intended public access of the materials, then we've satisfied the willfulness requirement.
Sure. I absolutely don't disagree that people can be shady about trying to skirt fair use by saying something like "they broke into my backup server (wink, wink); prosecute them for that, too, and don't prosecute me at all because I'm innocent here." Still, they should get the treatment of innocent until proven guilty, instead of your default "infringement" angle.
You've gone off on a tangent. Fair use is ONLY available as a defense where the conduct is infringing but for the purported fair use.
My point is that we live in times where what is and isn't "infringing" is unclear. I recall a case where some company was shut down because they provided mp3s on a network jukebox, so you could access the music you owned from wherever, provided you demonstrated ownership of the CD. It is not at all clear to me the me playing my music at a friend's house is infringement. I don't care about the technical details of the Internet vs. using my iPod vs. me carting my CD along with me. And I don't think most people care what is "lawfully" allowed; if you're listening to music you bought and you're getting sued for it, the system is fucked.
But the possibility that literally any infringement might be a fair use doesn't mean that it's likely that such a defense will work. People lose on fair use all the time. It doesn't always _actually_ apply, it just always _might_ apply.
I still don't dispute that. I'm just saying that it is ludicrous to be suing grandmothers who don't know jack about what is running on their computers. Lumping all these things under the heading of P2P is a bad idea. Not just for we the people, but for the music industry as well. At some point I see things simply getting so outlandish that the government has no choice but to make certain actions "lawful", and it'll just be that much wider a floodgate for the fringe element that really is cutting into the RIAA's profits.
. . . Hitachi leaked . . . IC manufacturers said . . . Time revealing . . .
In those cases, nobody was hiding, though. With the first two it might even have been necessary to disclose the contracts (for very non-specific raw parts, no less) as part of business. The last was a pretty big blunder, but it's possible that was allowed by whatever agreement was in place. To be a parity example, Apple would have had to have given ThinkSecret a scoop. Either that or the "source" should have leaked on their own blog (or whatever) instead of passing it on to ThinkSecret.
A company does have a right to use Non Disclosure Agreements to keep trade secrets. Every company does it. It's normal business. I can't think of one company that doesn't do it. Even non-profits have to do it.
Yep. I agree that Apple does seem like a big hardass about it, but the action should have been expected at some point, and this is just the straw that broke the camel's back. The thing I find most odd is that it was such a big leak, and he just flooded it out without any editing that could have given him plausible deniability. I mean, he would have be just as "correct" (rumor-wise) if he'd vaguely stated a sub-$500 revamped Cube. Instead he just shoved the way-too-detailed information on his site, and the consequences are hell for him and likely to be hell for the person that broke their NDA and fed it.
Yep -- each one has to stand on its own. There's no blanket rule allowing this.
We've had this dispute before, but I'll go on and mention again (from ye ol' DoI): "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Laws are not necessary to allow us shit. They are used, and sometimes abused, to restrict us. Maybe you're offering up the practical "you can be sued any time by anybody for any reason", but when it comes to up-against-the-wall revolutions against injustice, the government doesn't get almighty say in what people are "allowed" to do. If you can point to a law that specifically prohibits it, then do so. To say it hasn't been "allowed" smacks of all manner of evil.
But uploading is distinct from downloading. It cannot borrow any possible justification from downloading -- it too has to stand on its own. And it basically can't.
Wrong. An "upload" is just a copy. I can copy for the purposes of backup. Some companies even have products just for the purpose of backing up to network shares. I am not willfully doing anything wrong if someone else gains access to those copies. Even that person may not being doing anything wrong if they have otherwise secured the right to copy the same material. I mean, if I'm backing up 1000 workstations, why should I have 1000 identical copies of the OS on the server? If everyone has the right to a copy, it's all a big stupid pissing match over the particulars of how access is or isn't "allowed".
That said, it probably doesn't apply to the subject at hand. Although the articles don't go into the exact nature of what these guys did, it certainly doesn't sound like they were doing anything that they could even attempt a defense for. But not knowing the details means I can't blanket say there is no justification.
Now I'm wondering whether you can skip from album to album if you want to. Maybe by double-clicking the + button?
Doesn't seem likely. I doubt it has any concept of "album" or deals with ID3 tags at all. In one mode it just plays them in the order they were written, in the other, it just picks randomly what to play next.
I have done exactly the same as your first line... by using virtually nothing but Microsoft products. The difference is, I have a tiny bit of a brain and I don't traverse warez sites and I don't install every program from every jackass on the planet.
Well good for you, but how does your policy help the other 99% of Windows users who don't have a tiny bit of a brain?
What I have gotten is a ton of work done using top of the line tools and software.
I thought you said you were using Windows? You don't get a 95% market share by being top of the line, you get it by appealing to the lowest common denominator. You've gotten the "good enough" experience, which is nothing to brag about.
Vendor Lock in: When you switch to Apple for an IT strategy you will be stuck with it. And switching to an other platform is expensive.
How is this less true for any other platform? It's not like Linux has dismantled the MS monopoly overnight, and it's not like Linux is cheap enough (despite being free) to have people defecting in droves.
With Windows and Linux you can buy whatever hardware and still keep the same software, reducing the risk of needing a major upgrade. With apple you are stuck with apple.
Complete BS. You can only use the hardware your OS supports. Buying a USB+Bluetooth motherboard doesn't magically make your PS/2+serial compiled kernel work with it. You're only "stuck" by your limits of migration planning.
Companies want to be able to plan for things usually a year in advance. So if there is going to be a 5 ghz G5 coming out within a year or so they want to know that so they can budget the upgrade or wait an other year.
More rubbish. Please point out all the other companies out there that are decimating their sales by announcing things they won't be shipping for 3 quarters. Hint: there are none. Unlike you, they all learned the Osborne lesson. You'll get roadmaps, but Apple's "progression" roadmap exists, too, and isn't too hard to puzzle out. What they don't give you is an "innovation" roadmap, partly because they're one of the only companies that does major innovation on the desktop, and partly because pre-announcing leads to expectations that might not be so interesting by the time they ship. I mean, before they announced Spotlight I hadn't heard about anyone doing desktop search, and now it seems like everyone and their mother are trying to sew up a market niche before Tiger ships. But, regardless, a smart company makes their IT/IS plans based on what is shipping now, not on what might be shipping next year.
Short life cycles: Wow those G4 Powermacs didn't last long.
They didn't? I've had mine for over 4 years (wasn't one of the first PowerMacs, either, but one of the first duals), and it's still running fine today.
And when their supplies run out that is the end of them other then buying them used on ebay. Some companies may not need to have the best of the best.
Again, this differs from other companies how? Is Dell somehow rushing to ship orders of 486 systems? If you don't need the best Apple offers, get an eMac or an iBook.
We need to be able to get parts for these system when they break, and not just extra harddrive spare Processors, motherboards, video cards. Basically all the stuff to make a Mac by itself.
Uh, so get them. Are you saying Apple somehow has special resistors and capacitors made just for their Macs? Are you saying your company already regularly does, but somehow doesn't know how to get parts for, in-house component level repair on old PCs? How exactly does it make sense to pay a $50000 salary to replace $.10 parts on a machine worth $100 that could be replaced/upgraded for just $400 more?
Stereotypes indeed . . .
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Stereotypes suck. Besides, who needs blondes when we already have the hottest woman in the world.
Yeah, nothing says breaking down barriers like the ability to classify women based solely on their looks.
One school principal says that 'many students were blindsided by costs associated with text-messaging and other features, like customized ring tones'
Wow, what a frank admission by one Mr. Kevin Truitt that he isn't properly teaching kids to grow up in today's society. How hard is it to get a math problem reworded to make such costs more obvious? "Little Billy sends Suzie 8 eight SMS a day at 12 cents each . .."
Depending on what needs to be done, Contemplate might be another option. It doesn't have a "slick" editor (that forces you to write bad HTML 2.0 when you'd rather be doing XHTML+CSS), but it does allow you to render static version of a site if necessary. I looked at some of the other options at the time we switched away from WebObjects (which was overkill for our own stuff), and Contemplate hit our sweet spot better than the alternatives.
My personal favorite piece of vaporware is currently The Fool and his Money. I pre-ordered in Jan 2003 for a Halloween release, and it keeps getting pushed back, now to mid-2005. The best part, and why this is really a favorite, is that Cliff has always made such good, actual Mac puzzle games that it makes me think the "game" here is actually getting the orders without shipping any software. The very title of the purported release practically mocks you about it! I swear, I get the biggest smile every time I get an email saying there is going to be another delay. Entertainment money well spent, I say. The Phantom Console isn't half as fun when it comes to vaporware gaming!
There's a very good legal reason for this: liability if the game goes down.
That is not a very good legal reason. Devaluation of any currency is an economic issue, not a legal one. Whether it's a bar of metal, a piece of paper, or a bunch of bits, it could all be essentially worthless tomorrow for any number of reasons. The only legal issue is if the people involved were inappropriately manipulating the system for their own gain.
It's well within the realm of probability, then, that you could sue the game maker for the loss of your $2500, and win.
Whee, a judgment against a (likely) bankrupt company! Look, the only value is in the exchange, not in the items themselves. On Gilligan's Island, Thurston Howell's millions wouldn't even make a good toilet paper, but it's not the fault of the US that a dollar bill is just paper to some people. Same goes with any currency, including game money and items. I would hope that a judge would look at the case and simply say, "You should have bought low and sold high, not bought high and sold low."
Same reason: if you can define an exchange rate from USD to ingame gold pieces, you can claim that by shutting the game down, you have lost money, and that they should be liable for it.
Just plain wrong. There isn't a single game I know of that claims it is an investment plan with a guaranteed return. Plus, an exchange rate can already be defined for any game you have to pay to play. If a starter account costs $9.95 and comes with 200 gold (or whatever), then you have defined at least one base exchange rate. If there are ways to earn money in the game that you can pay someone to "work", you have at least another exchange rate. What is the material difference of me paying someone minimum wage to play my character for a while vs. paying someone else who has played their own character to get the same item?
Even if we can't communicate meaningfully this will put our little daily endeavours in a new light, I think.
I'm not sure I understand what light that might be. It sounds like you're still trying to hold on to a human-centered Universe when you could just as easily give up the assumption that Earth is somehow special. Sure, it would be nice to know for certain that we're not some odd quirk in this vast Universe, but I'm not sure what you think we'd gain compared to simply just discarding the egotistical assumption that we are alone.
They might also be broadcasting something more interesting than just "hello world", who knows?
I haven't seen a sensible argument that they be broadcasting anything at all; that's why I started this thread. If you can't make a solid case for even a single bit, don't kid yourself about them spewing out vast libraries of knowledge.
Most of the objections you raised are based on the physics we do know. There is an awful lot we do not know.
Point being? It's not like SETI is using a detector based on we-do-not-know physics. So while it is possible messages are coming to us by means we don't understand, we're just as ignorant of them today as people 100 years ago would have been with a laser signal. And some of my other issues are exactly as relevant (e.g., you can't point a receiver at a system you see and expect to get a faster-than-light signal; you have to point to where its "now" location is).
Obviously the civilization sending out the beam couldn't be very far away, probably a couple of hundred light years away, but this is still a sizeable number of systems.
That would actually work against you, since more potential targets means more resources you have to allocate or split amongst them.
The laser beam spreads naturally, so you wouldn't need to be all that accurate, from a few light-years away the beam is already as wide as entire solar system.
Again, the signal spread works against you as much as a beam works for you. You'll have to use more power if you hope to be detected as your signal spreads wider and wider. Too narrow, though, and you risk missing the target completely. I've seen no real discussion on what would have to be done on the sending end to produce a directed, detectable signal.
It is not hard to estimate where to send a beam given the known distance to the target system . . .
I never said that part was particularly hard, I just noted that it is never a question that seems to be asked or addressed. People naively assume that what you see is what you get, but looking into space is looking into history. Just because you observe a candidate solar system a hundred light years out doesn't mean that your message arriving in another 100 years will find the system in the same "receptive" state.
It's very far fetched, but not unthinkable. If the listening technology is available now to us, why not take a look?
Because it doesn't make sense to waste resources on such a long shot that matters so very little. What can we meaningfully gain by detecting an alien signal? You admit they'd have to be more advanced that we are to be broadcasting rather than receiving, so what does it gain us when we know about their advanced technology but they don't know about us? Are we going to send back a 100 year signal that says we're here? If so, then what? What kind if conversation do you expect will take place with a 200 year round trip? Simply assume that aliens are out there and still essentially unable to fix your little human problems, and then just get on with your life.
Re:What if they're already here and observing.
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And what if they're just waiting for us to be able to deal with it.
I think they should stop waiting and do what we would expect aliens to do: Extermination! I mean, what's there to "deal" with? If there were aliens here, showing themselves would be an observable fact. Fuck the humans who can't deal with simple facts. Of course, extermination brings up some major question on why they are here, but I'd be OK if they popped up and said, "Hey, humans, we've be here for 500 years and in that time we've come to the conclusion that your Earth-centric religious zealots are holding you back from a greater universe of understanding, so we're going to off anyone who can't get past the whole "God and man" fable, and if you have a problem with that kind of thinning of the herd, you'll be thinned, too." They'll get even more points in my book if they make such an announcement in late December.:-)
They would look for potentially life-bearing star systems, and try to send a message to them - by, for example, shining a laser that's tight and powerful enough to be detected from the target, and encoding data in the frequency or amplitude of that laser.
I've made this point in past SETI threads, but nobody who favors your style of approach has given me a good answer: How do you actually accomplish that thing you just hand-waved? Put yourself in the place of the alien. Heck, if you assume there are aliens, then you are an alien to them! Plan what you just described and just imagine all the complexities you/they face actually trying to pull it off.
I mean, what does "potentially life-bearing" mean for an alien? How many light years out will they be willing to look? When they shine their very tight beam, will it really be in our direction? That is, their observations detect where Sol (or whatever star) was x years ago and their message has to be sent to where it will be in x more years. How accurate would they have to be in all those things, and yet still have beam spread and strength to detectably cover an entire solar system?
And even then, how long are they going to just spew out that energy, both in terms of pulse length and project duration? What are the odds that they'd be sending longer than the inhabited planet is behind the target star, what are the odds they're sending when the detectors are facing the right way as the planet rotates, what are the odds that the civilization is even looking for a signal at the point in time it arrives? How long are they willing to do it all and wait without a response?
Because a GUI is sometimes an unnecessarily captive interface. Even with broadband, I still often use the phone to dial up the forecast because it is so simple to start (two buttons) and I can go do something else while it plays. It should be especially easy to put a spoken interface on the Mac. Hell, just dinking around for a few minutes got me a fair command I could cron for me every morning:
curl -s 'http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ifps/MapClick.php?FcstTyp e=text&map.x=196&map.y=141&site=mpx&Radius=0&CiTem plate=0&TextType=1' | sed s/\<[^\>]*\>//g | say
If I cared a little more, I could do a full-on solution. But the point is that nothing about weather forecasts makes any special sense done visually. Unless you're looking at an actual radar map (which could making an interesting screen saver, now that I mention it:-), there is very little need to look at pretty graphics of clouds and sun, let alone do a lot of clicking around to get at what is essentially a chronological text stream.
If you don't like what you see in signatures, turn signatures off in your Slashdot settings.
I'll second that; I turned off sigs years ago. Further, there is already a system in place to mark when a person is an ass-stick: foe them. Moderating individual articles for some unseen sig offense will likely have me hitting the Unfair radio button as well.
It's an advantage not built into the game. It's circumventing the balance of the game because you feel it's not worth the time to kill and loot.
You are wrong on so many level. It's definitely built into the game inasmuch as someone is playing the game to collect the resources. If the game allows them to just give me the stuff, why should it matter if I give them something back in the game or out?
The majority of players don't have the option of using RL (real life) money to outfit their IG (in-game) characters, and the game was built with that in mind.
Again, so very wrong. Players only have the option of spending money to outfit their characters. As I pointed out, there is no way they can build up anything for free. The real issue is whether or not, in addition to the money, they must also spend time to outfit their characters. I say they don't. The trivial demonstration is that someone can hire a person specifically to play their character. Why is buying excess inventory from another (actual) player any worse than that?
By using RL money, the balance is broken because someone didn't have to put time and effort into the game to get equal rewards - they put in far less time and effort to reap equal rewards.
Then you simply don't understand what "balance" means. Nothing in game is out of balance. Things merely shift from one player to the other, regardless of any RL compensation. Is like you're saying life itself is out of balance because money is exchanged for goods and services. You're just deluding yourself if you think the game isn't part of the real-world economy.
Thus, it is cheating.
No, it isn't. If anything, it's anti-cheating. What it results in is weak characters with a lot of powerful items they have no real idea how to use. Easy pickings, as I see it. And once you kill and loot them, they may even be willing to buy the stuff back again!
Too many people don't want to work for what they get, they want everything handed to them.
Is someone handing out real cash to these people? If so, where's this happening because I'd sure like to get in on the "free money" action!
They think, I have money so I shouldn't have to spend the time building my own character up.
Look, they're already paying for the game and then paying monthly fees to play it. There is no isolated game economy where you can build up people from birth without spending a dime. If you're already paying to get a character at a certain state in the world, what's the big deal with paying even more to get an even more advanced character?
We are clearly capable of tracking things through space with very, very low margins of error.
To know where something is now doesn't mean you can predict where it will be in the future. Not within a "space is big" margin of error.
So what's the bottleneck here?
The very thing that makes it want to hit us: gravity. That is, the Three-Body Problem, an 3 is at the lower end of influences that come into play over the next 25 years.
Slashdot Mirror
One application of this I'd be interested in is perhaps the opportunity to buy music videos in addition to songs.
Then it is with supreme irony that you'll find the iTunes Music Store supplying videos for free while charging for the audio track alone. You don't get to pick and choose, though, since not every song gets made into a video.
That's an interesting idea, but that would be radically different than how we have been doing things. Traditionally copyright has dealt with creating and distributing copies and some public performances or displays. It's not really about usage so much.
And that's why it's completely backwards to most people. Copies are becoming increasingly easy to make in this digital age, and for some products copies are even necessary. While "fair use" might currently be a defense against claims of infringement, I think a focus on usage instead of copies in a better direction. The whole word may be "copyright", but the important half is the "right", not the "copy".
So? Courts are perfectly capable of taking that into account. Check out the 110(5) homestyle exception sometime.
Again, that supports my point. They have to make exceptions every time novel technology comes out. It would be much better to redraft the law to deal not with the specifics of technology at all. Just because a CD gives up its bits more easily than vinyl records shouldn't materially change anything regarding copyright.
No it doesn't. The legal definition of a derivative work (see sections 101-103) is not the same as what a lot of people think it means. A derivative is more like adapting something to a different medium, non-slavishly and meeting the requirements of 102. Like making a movie based on a book.
It seems a lot more fuzzy than that to me. What, really, is the "work" when fixed to a digital medium? Just a series of 1s and 0s, as far as I can tell. If I take the series and and encode it to another series, what do I have if not a derivative? How else could the copyright holder of the original set of bits make a claim on the encoded bits unless they can show derivation?
More amusingly, hop on over to DataFetish and do a search. What can be said about the resulting bits when viewed in isolation? Can they really be said to represent any particular copyrighted work or any of thousands of possible encodings? That's why I say the copies, the bits, are irrelevant in a digital age. Focus on the right to use and things will fall in place a lot easier.
Before you question the sanity of the developers in question, you need to reflect on why you use it yourself and what is sufficient to meet those needs. If the project is small or well partitioned, it might be just fine to use regular ol' backups. Even for more complicated projects, a lot of the VC tools can still be overkill and require too much manual hand holding. Personally, I eagerly await the day where we have filesystems that essentially do versioning themselves. Drive space is cheap, especially when it comes to text files, so I don't see why we can't just have the system maintain snapshots of critical files and then allow you to change the view to a particular point in history.
The courts generally have agreed that putting something in RAM counts because you can read it back out again. Speakers probably wouldn't count, not so much for a logical reason but because judges probably wouldn't feel that they do. It's very imprecise; I welcome suggestions for a better definition.
I'm no legal expert, but it seems to me the problem copyright gets into in a digital age is not about the copies themselves, but rather the simultaneous usage. Me keeping a backup copy of a DVD is not something to sue over. Me keeping that copy offsite (e.g., a friend's house) likewise should not be a problem. Where I would expect a problem is if my friend tried to watch that copy at the same time I was watching my copy. Otherwise, all the copy does is eliminate the hassle of me having to deliver the physical media to them.
But also note that since fair use would continue to apply, and perhaps some degree of estoppel, even if playing a CD with ordinary equipment were considered reproduction, you'd probably be okay in the end. Plus, who'd bother to bring that case? You don't get to go to federal court and just ask theoretical questions. You'd have to be sued, and it seems unlikely anyone would sue you merely for listening to a CD, as distinguished from some of the other things we've discussed of late.
I don't disagree. My point is that what is "ordinary equipment" is changing all the time. If a copy in RAM is bad, wouldn't that make a no-skip buffer bad? Doesn't pretty much every CD player have that? Is an iPod considered "ordinary equipment" yet? It not only keeps copies on a HD for repeated long-term "infringement", it does so by creating derivative works! The technology will keep changing, too, and if the law doesn't keep up then, yes, we'll eventually have all sorts of "unlawful" activity being prosecuted that people consider "ordinary" usage. Hell, some might argue that's already the state of things with P2P.
Well, you can't transfer data between computers. Only reproduce it. So it's really very clear that doing nearly anything with a computer involves reproduction.
By that measure any use is infringement. NO device I own simply transfers data. My CD player copies the bits, creating a derivative work (analog) no less, and reproduces it with my speakers! My DVD player copies the bits and reproduces them on my TV! EVERY use I have for the copyrighted works I purchased seems to infringe! The law is so unclear on a number of points, especially in this digital age, that it needs to be completely scrapped and restructured to make the proper things unlawful.
Yes. 106(1) makes ALL unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted works unlawful unless there is some applicable exception. There are a few, but not a lot, and they're not all that broad.
And roughly 100% of consumers have no idea what is "unauthorized". I didn't sign any contract that spelled out what I can and can't do with this optical disk I just bought. As a consumer, I have certain expectations regarding the goods I bought, and none of them involve me getting prosecuted for simple personal use.
Okay, we will presume them to not be guilty. But so what? Copyright cases are actually really easy civilly and criminally. If you ever face one, you're probably going to lose if you fight it. Well, unless it's rather unusual. But most of the ones we're seeing are clear-cut music, software, and video pirating. No sweat for the prosecutor or plaintiff.
I agree that most of what we're talking about here doesn't apply to the case at hand, but the fact remains that the RIAA mass suing people is a really, really bad idea for them because they keep extending the borders of what they're calling infringement. At some point someone will fight them and win, and establish a precedence for "lawfully" using copyrighted works on computers. They think it's bad now? Cue the floodgates! Of course, there is also much irony in the fact that for all the MPAA fought against VCRs, the home video market has turned into a cash cow for them.
Well, that's what I'd like, but I don't expect it at all. I see things getting worse, not better. (not even better after getting worse)
If you're right, then it simply spells the collapse of that government, which is a tried and true solution to tyranny throughout history. The only question is whether the revolution will be peaceful or violent this time around. I think it would be a good idea for the rights holders to at least try for peaceful. :-)
To be more accurate, there is no blanket rule indicating that the fair use defense to copyright infringement applies for any specific set of circumstances.
Right. But by the same measure, there is no blanket rule making it illegal, and that is more important. You are free to hem and haw over some particular case, but in the general case people have a good idea what is fair and what is blatant disregard for copyright.
The act of uploading is a form of distribution, also an action. And it's an infringing one, all else being equal.
Nope. The entire idea of upload is an anachronism. The Internet is just a bunch of connected computers. There is no "up", and P2P makes that all the more clear. If anything, upload/download only convey who initiated the transfer. If I have something on my computer and you want it, me sending it to you is an "upload" while you requesting it from me is a "download". Regardless, a simple transfer is neither an obvious form of distribution or infringement, since we know absolutely nothing about how the systems are connected or what their purpose is. By your logic, my DVD player "uploads" movies to my TV, and I'm infringing just watching what I paid for. No, I don't thing mere wire transmission makes a good case at all.
You can reproduce copies for backup purposes lawfully where it doesn't infringe copyright.
I think this points out where we don't see eye-to-eye on this issue. The word "lawfully" is loaded, because it implies other actions are less correct. The truth is, something has to be made unlawful before you can make an exception for what is lawful. So I think the preoccupation with "lawfully" complete shifts the focus from the question of whether or not the original law is a good one.
OTOH, if you were willfully blind to the public accessibility of the materials and it was highly likely that they'd be publicly accessible, or you knew they were, or if you intended public access of the materials, then we've satisfied the willfulness requirement.
Sure. I absolutely don't disagree that people can be shady about trying to skirt fair use by saying something like "they broke into my backup server (wink, wink); prosecute them for that, too, and don't prosecute me at all because I'm innocent here." Still, they should get the treatment of innocent until proven guilty, instead of your default "infringement" angle.
You've gone off on a tangent. Fair use is ONLY available as a defense where the conduct is infringing but for the purported fair use.
My point is that we live in times where what is and isn't "infringing" is unclear. I recall a case where some company was shut down because they provided mp3s on a network jukebox, so you could access the music you owned from wherever, provided you demonstrated ownership of the CD. It is not at all clear to me the me playing my music at a friend's house is infringement. I don't care about the technical details of the Internet vs. using my iPod vs. me carting my CD along with me. And I don't think most people care what is "lawfully" allowed; if you're listening to music you bought and you're getting sued for it, the system is fucked.
But the possibility that literally any infringement might be a fair use doesn't mean that it's likely that such a defense will work. People lose on fair use all the time. It doesn't always _actually_ apply, it just always _might_ apply.
I still don't dispute that. I'm just saying that it is ludicrous to be suing grandmothers who don't know jack about what is running on their computers. Lumping all these things under the heading of P2P is a bad idea. Not just for we the people, but for the music industry as well. At some point I see things simply getting so outlandish that the government has no choice but to make certain actions "lawful", and it'll just be that much wider a floodgate for the fringe element that really is cutting into the RIAA's profits.
. . . Hitachi leaked . . . IC manufacturers said . . . Time revealing . . .
In those cases, nobody was hiding, though. With the first two it might even have been necessary to disclose the contracts (for very non-specific raw parts, no less) as part of business. The last was a pretty big blunder, but it's possible that was allowed by whatever agreement was in place. To be a parity example, Apple would have had to have given ThinkSecret a scoop. Either that or the "source" should have leaked on their own blog (or whatever) instead of passing it on to ThinkSecret.
A company does have a right to use Non Disclosure Agreements to keep trade secrets. Every company does it. It's normal business. I can't think of one company that doesn't do it. Even non-profits have to do it.
Yep. I agree that Apple does seem like a big hardass about it, but the action should have been expected at some point, and this is just the straw that broke the camel's back. The thing I find most odd is that it was such a big leak, and he just flooded it out without any editing that could have given him plausible deniability. I mean, he would have be just as "correct" (rumor-wise) if he'd vaguely stated a sub-$500 revamped Cube. Instead he just shoved the way-too-detailed information on his site, and the consequences are hell for him and likely to be hell for the person that broke their NDA and fed it.
Yep -- each one has to stand on its own. There's no blanket rule allowing this.
We've had this dispute before, but I'll go on and mention again (from ye ol' DoI): "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Laws are not necessary to allow us shit. They are used, and sometimes abused, to restrict us. Maybe you're offering up the practical "you can be sued any time by anybody for any reason", but when it comes to up-against-the-wall revolutions against injustice, the government doesn't get almighty say in what people are "allowed" to do. If you can point to a law that specifically prohibits it, then do so. To say it hasn't been "allowed" smacks of all manner of evil.
But uploading is distinct from downloading. It cannot borrow any possible justification from downloading -- it too has to stand on its own. And it basically can't.
Wrong. An "upload" is just a copy. I can copy for the purposes of backup. Some companies even have products just for the purpose of backing up to network shares. I am not willfully doing anything wrong if someone else gains access to those copies. Even that person may not being doing anything wrong if they have otherwise secured the right to copy the same material. I mean, if I'm backing up 1000 workstations, why should I have 1000 identical copies of the OS on the server? If everyone has the right to a copy, it's all a big stupid pissing match over the particulars of how access is or isn't "allowed".
That said, it probably doesn't apply to the subject at hand. Although the articles don't go into the exact nature of what these guys did, it certainly doesn't sound like they were doing anything that they could even attempt a defense for. But not knowing the details means I can't blanket say there is no justification.
Now I'm wondering whether you can skip from album to album if you want to. Maybe by double-clicking the + button?
Doesn't seem likely. I doubt it has any concept of "album" or deals with ID3 tags at all. In one mode it just plays them in the order they were written, in the other, it just picks randomly what to play next.
I have done exactly the same as your first line... by using virtually nothing but Microsoft products. The difference is, I have a tiny bit of a brain and I don't traverse warez sites and I don't install every program from every jackass on the planet.
Well good for you, but how does your policy help the other 99% of Windows users who don't have a tiny bit of a brain?
What I have gotten is a ton of work done using top of the line tools and software.
I thought you said you were using Windows? You don't get a 95% market share by being top of the line, you get it by appealing to the lowest common denominator. You've gotten the "good enough" experience, which is nothing to brag about.
Vendor Lock in: When you switch to Apple for an IT strategy you will be stuck with it. And switching to an other platform is expensive.
How is this less true for any other platform? It's not like Linux has dismantled the MS monopoly overnight, and it's not like Linux is cheap enough (despite being free) to have people defecting in droves.
With Windows and Linux you can buy whatever hardware and still keep the same software, reducing the risk of needing a major upgrade. With apple you are stuck with apple.
Complete BS. You can only use the hardware your OS supports. Buying a USB+Bluetooth motherboard doesn't magically make your PS/2+serial compiled kernel work with it. You're only "stuck" by your limits of migration planning.
Companies want to be able to plan for things usually a year in advance. So if there is going to be a 5 ghz G5 coming out within a year or so they want to know that so they can budget the upgrade or wait an other year.
More rubbish. Please point out all the other companies out there that are decimating their sales by announcing things they won't be shipping for 3 quarters. Hint: there are none. Unlike you, they all learned the Osborne lesson. You'll get roadmaps, but Apple's "progression" roadmap exists, too, and isn't too hard to puzzle out. What they don't give you is an "innovation" roadmap, partly because they're one of the only companies that does major innovation on the desktop, and partly because pre-announcing leads to expectations that might not be so interesting by the time they ship. I mean, before they announced Spotlight I hadn't heard about anyone doing desktop search, and now it seems like everyone and their mother are trying to sew up a market niche before Tiger ships. But, regardless, a smart company makes their IT/IS plans based on what is shipping now, not on what might be shipping next year.
Short life cycles: Wow those G4 Powermacs didn't last long.
They didn't? I've had mine for over 4 years (wasn't one of the first PowerMacs, either, but one of the first duals), and it's still running fine today.
And when their supplies run out that is the end of them other then buying them used on ebay. Some companies may not need to have the best of the best.
Again, this differs from other companies how? Is Dell somehow rushing to ship orders of 486 systems? If you don't need the best Apple offers, get an eMac or an iBook.
We need to be able to get parts for these system when they break, and not just extra harddrive spare Processors, motherboards, video cards. Basically all the stuff to make a Mac by itself.
Uh, so get them. Are you saying Apple somehow has special resistors and capacitors made just for their Macs? Are you saying your company already regularly does, but somehow doesn't know how to get parts for, in-house component level repair on old PCs? How exactly does it make sense to pay a $50000 salary to replace $.10 parts on a machine worth $100 that could be replaced/upgraded for just $400 more?
Stereotypes suck. Besides, who needs blondes when we already have the hottest woman in the world.
Yeah, nothing says breaking down barriers like the ability to classify women based solely on their looks.
One school principal says that 'many students were blindsided by costs associated with text-messaging and other features, like customized ring tones'
Wow, what a frank admission by one Mr. Kevin Truitt that he isn't properly teaching kids to grow up in today's society. How hard is it to get a math problem reworded to make such costs more obvious? "Little Billy sends Suzie 8 eight SMS a day at 12 cents each . . ."
Depending on what needs to be done, Contemplate might be another option. It doesn't have a "slick" editor (that forces you to write bad HTML 2.0 when you'd rather be doing XHTML+CSS), but it does allow you to render static version of a site if necessary. I looked at some of the other options at the time we switched away from WebObjects (which was overkill for our own stuff), and Contemplate hit our sweet spot better than the alternatives.
My personal favorite piece of vaporware is currently The Fool and his Money. I pre-ordered in Jan 2003 for a Halloween release, and it keeps getting pushed back, now to mid-2005. The best part, and why this is really a favorite, is that Cliff has always made such good, actual Mac puzzle games that it makes me think the "game" here is actually getting the orders without shipping any software. The very title of the purported release practically mocks you about it! I swear, I get the biggest smile every time I get an email saying there is going to be another delay. Entertainment money well spent, I say. The Phantom Console isn't half as fun when it comes to vaporware gaming!
There's a very good legal reason for this: liability if the game goes down.
That is not a very good legal reason. Devaluation of any currency is an economic issue, not a legal one. Whether it's a bar of metal, a piece of paper, or a bunch of bits, it could all be essentially worthless tomorrow for any number of reasons. The only legal issue is if the people involved were inappropriately manipulating the system for their own gain.
It's well within the realm of probability, then, that you could sue the game maker for the loss of your $2500, and win.
Whee, a judgment against a (likely) bankrupt company! Look, the only value is in the exchange, not in the items themselves. On Gilligan's Island, Thurston Howell's millions wouldn't even make a good toilet paper, but it's not the fault of the US that a dollar bill is just paper to some people. Same goes with any currency, including game money and items. I would hope that a judge would look at the case and simply say, "You should have bought low and sold high, not bought high and sold low."
Same reason: if you can define an exchange rate from USD to ingame gold pieces, you can claim that by shutting the game down, you have lost money, and that they should be liable for it.
Just plain wrong. There isn't a single game I know of that claims it is an investment plan with a guaranteed return. Plus, an exchange rate can already be defined for any game you have to pay to play. If a starter account costs $9.95 and comes with 200 gold (or whatever), then you have defined at least one base exchange rate. If there are ways to earn money in the game that you can pay someone to "work", you have at least another exchange rate. What is the material difference of me paying someone minimum wage to play my character for a while vs. paying someone else who has played their own character to get the same item?
Even if we can't communicate meaningfully this will put our little daily endeavours in a new light, I think.
I'm not sure I understand what light that might be. It sounds like you're still trying to hold on to a human-centered Universe when you could just as easily give up the assumption that Earth is somehow special. Sure, it would be nice to know for certain that we're not some odd quirk in this vast Universe, but I'm not sure what you think we'd gain compared to simply just discarding the egotistical assumption that we are alone.
They might also be broadcasting something more interesting than just "hello world", who knows?
I haven't seen a sensible argument that they be broadcasting anything at all; that's why I started this thread. If you can't make a solid case for even a single bit, don't kid yourself about them spewing out vast libraries of knowledge.
Most of the objections you raised are based on the physics we do know. There is an awful lot we do not know.
Point being? It's not like SETI is using a detector based on we-do-not-know physics. So while it is possible messages are coming to us by means we don't understand, we're just as ignorant of them today as people 100 years ago would have been with a laser signal. And some of my other issues are exactly as relevant (e.g., you can't point a receiver at a system you see and expect to get a faster-than-light signal; you have to point to where its "now" location is).
Obviously the civilization sending out the beam couldn't be very far away, probably a couple of hundred light years away, but this is still a sizeable number of systems.
That would actually work against you, since more potential targets means more resources you have to allocate or split amongst them.
The laser beam spreads naturally, so you wouldn't need to be all that accurate, from a few light-years away the beam is already as wide as entire solar system.
Again, the signal spread works against you as much as a beam works for you. You'll have to use more power if you hope to be detected as your signal spreads wider and wider. Too narrow, though, and you risk missing the target completely. I've seen no real discussion on what would have to be done on the sending end to produce a directed, detectable signal.
It is not hard to estimate where to send a beam given the known distance to the target system . . .
I never said that part was particularly hard, I just noted that it is never a question that seems to be asked or addressed. People naively assume that what you see is what you get, but looking into space is looking into history. Just because you observe a candidate solar system a hundred light years out doesn't mean that your message arriving in another 100 years will find the system in the same "receptive" state.
It's very far fetched, but not unthinkable. If the listening technology is available now to us, why not take a look?
Because it doesn't make sense to waste resources on such a long shot that matters so very little. What can we meaningfully gain by detecting an alien signal? You admit they'd have to be more advanced that we are to be broadcasting rather than receiving, so what does it gain us when we know about their advanced technology but they don't know about us? Are we going to send back a 100 year signal that says we're here? If so, then what? What kind if conversation do you expect will take place with a 200 year round trip? Simply assume that aliens are out there and still essentially unable to fix your little human problems, and then just get on with your life.
And what if they're just waiting for us to be able to deal with it.
I think they should stop waiting and do what we would expect aliens to do: Extermination! I mean, what's there to "deal" with? If there were aliens here, showing themselves would be an observable fact. Fuck the humans who can't deal with simple facts. Of course, extermination brings up some major question on why they are here, but I'd be OK if they popped up and said, "Hey, humans, we've be here for 500 years and in that time we've come to the conclusion that your Earth-centric religious zealots are holding you back from a greater universe of understanding, so we're going to off anyone who can't get past the whole "God and man" fable, and if you have a problem with that kind of thinning of the herd, you'll be thinned, too." They'll get even more points in my book if they make such an announcement in late December. :-)
They would look for potentially life-bearing star systems, and try to send a message to them - by, for example, shining a laser that's tight and powerful enough to be detected from the target, and encoding data in the frequency or amplitude of that laser.
I've made this point in past SETI threads, but nobody who favors your style of approach has given me a good answer: How do you actually accomplish that thing you just hand-waved? Put yourself in the place of the alien. Heck, if you assume there are aliens, then you are an alien to them! Plan what you just described and just imagine all the complexities you/they face actually trying to pull it off.
I mean, what does "potentially life-bearing" mean for an alien? How many light years out will they be willing to look? When they shine their very tight beam, will it really be in our direction? That is, their observations detect where Sol (or whatever star) was x years ago and their message has to be sent to where it will be in x more years. How accurate would they have to be in all those things, and yet still have beam spread and strength to detectably cover an entire solar system?
And even then, how long are they going to just spew out that energy, both in terms of pulse length and project duration? What are the odds that they'd be sending longer than the inhabited planet is behind the target star, what are the odds they're sending when the detectors are facing the right way as the planet rotates, what are the odds that the civilization is even looking for a signal at the point in time it arrives? How long are they willing to do it all and wait without a response?
Why audio reports?
Because a GUI is sometimes an unnecessarily captive interface. Even with broadband, I still often use the phone to dial up the forecast because it is so simple to start (two buttons) and I can go do something else while it plays. It should be especially easy to put a spoken interface on the Mac. Hell, just dinking around for a few minutes got me a fair command I could cron for me every morning:
If I cared a little more, I could do a full-on solution. But the point is that nothing about weather forecasts makes any special sense done visually. Unless you're looking at an actual radar map (which could making an interesting screen saver, now that I mention it :-), there is very little need to look at pretty graphics of clouds and sun, let alone do a lot of clicking around to get at what is essentially a chronological text stream.
If you don't like what you see in signatures, turn signatures off in your Slashdot settings.
I'll second that; I turned off sigs years ago. Further, there is already a system in place to mark when a person is an ass-stick: foe them. Moderating individual articles for some unseen sig offense will likely have me hitting the Unfair radio button as well.
It's an advantage not built into the game. It's circumventing the balance of the game because you feel it's not worth the time to kill and loot.
You are wrong on so many level. It's definitely built into the game inasmuch as someone is playing the game to collect the resources. If the game allows them to just give me the stuff, why should it matter if I give them something back in the game or out?
The majority of players don't have the option of using RL (real life) money to outfit their IG (in-game) characters, and the game was built with that in mind.
Again, so very wrong. Players only have the option of spending money to outfit their characters. As I pointed out, there is no way they can build up anything for free. The real issue is whether or not, in addition to the money, they must also spend time to outfit their characters. I say they don't. The trivial demonstration is that someone can hire a person specifically to play their character. Why is buying excess inventory from another (actual) player any worse than that?
By using RL money, the balance is broken because someone didn't have to put time and effort into the game to get equal rewards - they put in far less time and effort to reap equal rewards.
Then you simply don't understand what "balance" means. Nothing in game is out of balance. Things merely shift from one player to the other, regardless of any RL compensation. Is like you're saying life itself is out of balance because money is exchanged for goods and services. You're just deluding yourself if you think the game isn't part of the real-world economy.
Thus, it is cheating.
No, it isn't. If anything, it's anti-cheating. What it results in is weak characters with a lot of powerful items they have no real idea how to use. Easy pickings, as I see it. And once you kill and loot them, they may even be willing to buy the stuff back again!
Too many people don't want to work for what they get, they want everything handed to them.
Is someone handing out real cash to these people? If so, where's this happening because I'd sure like to get in on the "free money" action!
They think, I have money so I shouldn't have to spend the time building my own character up.
Look, they're already paying for the game and then paying monthly fees to play it. There is no isolated game economy where you can build up people from birth without spending a dime. If you're already paying to get a character at a certain state in the world, what's the big deal with paying even more to get an even more advanced character?
We are clearly capable of tracking things through space with very, very low margins of error.
To know where something is now doesn't mean you can predict where it will be in the future. Not within a "space is big" margin of error.
So what's the bottleneck here?
The very thing that makes it want to hit us: gravity. That is, the Three-Body Problem, an 3 is at the lower end of influences that come into play over the next 25 years.