Well, I'm not sure exactly how DivX compression works, but in general, the more data the compression algorithm can see at once, the more redundancy it can find, and therefore the more it can compress. Chopping a piece of data up into bits will at some point start reducing the seen compression ratio.
"It's not piracy when kids swap music over the Internet using Napster or Gnutella or Freenet or iMesh or beaming their CDs into a My.MP3.com or MyPlay.com music locker. It's piracy when those guys that run those companies make side deals with the cartel lawyers and label heads so that they can be "the labels' friend," and not the artists'."
This was exactly Metallica's point, when all you other Slashdotters were bashing Metallica and buying "Fuck Metallica" t-shirts. The point is, that these P2P applications should negotiate *with the artists* not the *labels* to distribute legitimate content. This is NOT to say that the either the artists or the labels will be able to completely control the medium and totally prevent copyright infringement, but where they CAN offer legitimate content, it should be the *artists* which do so, not the labels in some shady deal with the P2P folks to *mutually exploit* the artists. Of course all of you took this as Metallica saying that they didn't want their songs traded, period.
"But the guidelines of the professional society do not make us any more or less ethical than the next profession. In the end we do what we're told or we get replaced."
Well, they can (e.g. Hippocratic oath for doctors, the oath veterinarians take, the oath lawyers take, etc.). But it only holds up if there is a consequence for failing to support the code of ethics (in the case of a doctor or vet, their licenses are revoked, and lawyers are barred). So there would have to be some sort of "certification" involved. The tricky part is that the former consequences are actually legally controlled by the state...so there probably would have to be something equivalent, a license, a certification, etc., for programmers (or engineers for that matter) which is legally required before performing your job (or at least legally required in the most critical cases).
"the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure -- Uncle Sam can just walk into your small business without a warrant and take your stuff. (4th amendment)"
Correct...they don't have the *RIGHT* to be free from unreasonable search and seizure because they are not *PERSONS*. Now sure, they can have a reasonable *expectation* to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, but since corporations are (supposedly) beholden to the public who gave them their charter, their privelages, and their responsibilities - then YES the public should be able to execute inquiries into a corporations behavior at any time. Of course this DOESN'T happen all the time because just because we can do it, doesn't mean we have to be jerks and do it. Most of the time there is no reason to.
"the right to due process (5th) and speedy and public jury trials for criminal offenses (6th)"
Yeah, that sucks doesn't it? Poor poor legal abstraction, let me weep for thee. On the other hand, large corporations have the money to tie the courts up forever, often to the point that the public just gives up.
"imagine a free society where the above situations are possible."
Gladly.
"many charities and universities are non-profit corporations"
Uh, I'd be *highly* suspect of a "non-profit charity" whatever the hell that is. And for what it is worth, YES, I think universities should be open to public inspection and critique.
Other corporate rights (Score:2) by IntelliTubbie on 01:01 PM May 4th, 2002 (#3462838) (User #29947 Info) To me, the whole problem starts with "Santa Clara vs. Southern Pacific Railroad," in which the (US) Supreme Court ruled that a corporation is a natural person for the purposes of constitutional rights protections. Which I think is a crock. A corporation shouldn't be entitled to free speech under Article I because it's not a person. It's a legal abstraction.
Then I suppose you think corporations (including non-profit corporations, of course) should be denied:
the right to be free of religious persecution -- the government can freely discriminate against Jewish, or Muslim, or atheist corporations (1st amendment).
the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure -- Uncle Sam can just walk into your small business without a warrant and take your stuff. (4th amendment)
the right to due process (5th) and speedy and public jury trials for criminal offenses (6th) -- the government can shut your business down without reason and without telling you what you've been charged with, and give you a secret trial or delay the trial indefinitely.
It's easy to bash corporations (and good for a few karma points), but try to imagine a free society where the above situations are possible. Imagine what would happen not just to our economy, but to our society -- many charities and universities are non-profit corporations -- if these rights didn't exist.
"Remember, the Bill of Rights doesn't "give" rights to anyone -- it only prevents the government from taking them away."
Fine, then corporations can simply give up the benefits of being a corporation (we certainly wouldn't want to impose by *giving them* any special privelages). Corporations can just dis-incorporate, give up any special privelages that were granted to them, and revel in their freedom!
Let's see, so some insignificant line worker should be persecuted for decisions made by some senior CEO?
"Of course not" you'll say. At which point the whole argument that corporations are "just a collection of people" breaks down, because now some people are more and some people are less responsible for the actions of a corporation.
"But if corporations don't have free speech, doesn't that mean that the people who work for corporations also don't have free speech?"
Uh, no. I can work for any corporation which may be held to different standards, yet still go out in the street and demonstrate my free speech all I want. I corporation is a bit of legal fiction that only exists in our minds and in legal books...it is not an entity that deserves some inalienable rights granted by God.
"Isn't a corporation just a collection of individuals, no matter how much the Left tries to depersonalize things?"
A corporation is also a contract with the public and the government, involving a charter (which can be revoked) and several special privelages and responsibilities.
The suit was filed in 2000, only 2 years ago - hardly a seminal software innovation. I am pretty damn sure that there is at least 1 piece of software dating since 2000 that has a feature like this.
"I assert that GUI innovations SHOULD be patentable (although I'd like to see a much shorter duration on all software-related patents)."
Well, that's the tricky part isn't it? And this really isn't a software innovation. It's one of those squirmy "look and feel" "innovations". I find it very hard to believe that Adobe spent very much money "researching" this "invention". Software research, especially UI research, (compared other types of research) is pretty cheap.
I seriously doubt the worth of handing out patents for things which are not physical inventions or processes in the first place. But if we *were* to hand out patents for these things, we should have some clueful people determine patent durations, on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the speed of the market in which the patent was filed, and the significance of the patent. I wouldn't give software UI innovations a patent duration of more than a year. Software patents themselves probably shouldn't be more than a few years.
"Or does everyone look forward to every channel running PBS-like pledge drives?"
I would GLADLY GLADLY GLADLY pay, on a per-channel or per-show (hell, even per-episode) basis for the shows I watch. I only watch a few shows out of the sea of absolute stinking shit that is out there...why the hell should I be paying the same fee as people watching all that other crap?
If I could, say, purchase episodes of Futurama, Simpsons, Family Guy, BBC news, SNL, and a Frontline or Nova here and there (well, ok, I can "purchase" those by donating to PBS), I would be in heaven. So YES I would like channels to be responsive to the market of VIEWERS not ADVERTISERS. Then maybe through natural selection, the vast amount of crap that is out there would die.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I'm not sure exactly how DivX compression works, but in general, the more data the compression algorithm can see at once, the more redundancy it can find, and therefore the more it can compress. Chopping a piece of data up into bits will at some point start reducing the seen compression ratio.
Well, if you are already saddled with Windows XP, I hear that you can really skin it a *lot* more than previous releases. Google around.
I thought "Danese Cooper" meant a barrel-maker from the People's Republic of Dan.
Hahahaha why is this post -1
If FreeBSD dies, the terrorists have won.
"I can't wait for (air)floating surfboards and cloud-cities."
Uh, lighter-than-air doesn't mean anti-gravity.
This wouldn't happen to be the DRM that has already been broken?
...it's a doozy...
"It's not piracy when kids swap music over the Internet using Napster or Gnutella or Freenet or iMesh or beaming their CDs into a My.MP3.com or MyPlay.com music locker. It's piracy when those guys that run those companies make side deals with the cartel lawyers and label heads so that they can be "the labels' friend," and not the artists'."
This was exactly Metallica's point, when all you other Slashdotters were bashing Metallica and buying "Fuck Metallica" t-shirts. The point is, that these P2P applications should negotiate *with the artists* not the *labels* to distribute legitimate content. This is NOT to say that the either the artists or the labels will be able to completely control the medium and totally prevent copyright infringement, but where they CAN offer legitimate content, it should be the *artists* which do so, not the labels in some shady deal with the P2P folks to *mutually exploit* the artists. Of course all of you took this as Metallica saying that they didn't want their songs traded, period.
Right, some random free email address is JUST what I trust when communicating with coworkers.
"But the guidelines of the professional society do not make us any more or less ethical than the next profession. In the end we do what we're told or we get replaced."
Well, they can (e.g. Hippocratic oath for doctors, the oath veterinarians take, the oath lawyers take, etc.). But it only holds up if there is a consequence for failing to support the code of ethics (in the case of a doctor or vet, their licenses are revoked, and lawyers are barred). So there would have to be some sort of "certification" involved. The tricky part is that the former consequences are actually legally controlled by the state...so there probably would have to be something equivalent, a license, a certification, etc., for programmers (or engineers for that matter) which is legally required before performing your job (or at least legally required in the most critical cases).
...has to be the single most atrocious movie in this respect. (Not to mention the completely farcical characters in the first place)
Don't forget Roy. Although they were both of course an intentional meta-commentary, so I don't know if they count.
Nice try Seth Green.
...is that Evan Chan better be watching his back...
Or as Hawkings puts it...not only does God play dice, he *cheats*.
"the right to be free of religious persecution"
Corporations have religions?
"the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure -- Uncle Sam can just walk into your small business without a warrant and take your stuff. (4th amendment)"
Correct...they don't have the *RIGHT* to be free from unreasonable search and seizure because they are not *PERSONS*. Now sure, they can have a reasonable *expectation* to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, but since corporations are (supposedly) beholden to the public who gave them their charter, their privelages, and their responsibilities - then YES the public should be able to execute inquiries into a corporations behavior at any time. Of course this DOESN'T happen all the time because just because we can do it, doesn't mean we have to be jerks and do it. Most of the time there is no reason to.
"the right to due process (5th) and speedy and public jury trials for criminal offenses (6th)"
Yeah, that sucks doesn't it? Poor poor legal abstraction, let me weep for thee. On the other hand, large corporations have the money to tie the courts up forever, often to the point that the public just gives up.
"imagine a free society where the above situations are possible."
Gladly.
"many charities and universities are non-profit corporations"
Uh, I'd be *highly* suspect of a "non-profit charity" whatever the hell that is. And for what it is worth, YES, I think universities should be open to public inspection and critique.
Other corporate rights (Score:2)
by IntelliTubbie on 01:01 PM May 4th, 2002 (#3462838)
(User #29947 Info)
To me, the whole problem starts with "Santa Clara vs. Southern Pacific Railroad," in which the (US) Supreme Court ruled that a corporation is a natural person for the purposes of constitutional rights protections. Which I think is a crock. A corporation shouldn't be entitled to free speech under Article I because it's not a person. It's a legal abstraction.
Then I suppose you think corporations (including non-profit corporations, of course) should be denied:
the right to be free of religious persecution -- the government can freely discriminate against Jewish, or Muslim, or atheist corporations (1st amendment).
the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure -- Uncle Sam can just walk into your small business without a warrant and take your stuff. (4th amendment)
the right to due process (5th) and speedy and public jury trials for criminal offenses (6th) -- the government can shut your business down without reason and without telling you what you've been charged with, and give you a secret trial or delay the trial indefinitely.
It's easy to bash corporations (and good for a few karma points), but try to imagine a free society where the above situations are possible. Imagine what would happen not just to our economy, but to our society -- many charities and universities are non-profit corporations -- if these rights didn't exist.
"Remember, the Bill of Rights doesn't "give" rights to anyone -- it only prevents the government from taking them away."
Fine, then corporations can simply give up the benefits of being a corporation (we certainly wouldn't want to impose by *giving them* any special privelages). Corporations can just dis-incorporate, give up any special privelages that were granted to them, and revel in their freedom!
Let's see, so some insignificant line worker should be persecuted for decisions made by some senior CEO?
"Of course not" you'll say. At which point the whole argument that corporations are "just a collection of people" breaks down, because now some people are more and some people are less responsible for the actions of a corporation.
"But if corporations don't have free speech, doesn't that mean that the people who work for corporations also don't have free speech?"
Uh, no. I can work for any corporation which may be held to different standards, yet still go out in the street and demonstrate my free speech all I want. I corporation is a bit of legal fiction that only exists in our minds and in legal books...it is not an entity that deserves some inalienable rights granted by God.
"Isn't a corporation just a collection of individuals, no matter how much the Left tries to depersonalize things?"
A corporation is also a contract with the public and the government, involving a charter (which can be revoked) and several special privelages and responsibilities.
Christ man, Yoda was old even back in the 70s...you know they have to replace actors *sometime*.
Yeah, but then California could just use this to replace the EULA before they installed ;)
"While you might not get screwed by a big cooperation"
No, in fact, "a big cooperation" is what makes OSS so valuable!
The suit was filed in 2000, only 2 years ago - hardly a seminal software innovation. I am pretty damn sure that there is at least 1 piece of software dating since 2000 that has a feature like this.
"I assert that GUI innovations SHOULD be patentable (although I'd like to see a much shorter duration on all software-related patents)."
Well, that's the tricky part isn't it? And this really isn't a software innovation. It's one of those squirmy "look and feel" "innovations". I find it very hard to believe that Adobe spent very much money "researching" this "invention". Software research, especially UI research, (compared other types of research) is pretty cheap.
I seriously doubt the worth of handing out patents for things which are not physical inventions or processes in the first place. But if we *were* to hand out patents for these things, we should have some clueful people determine patent durations, on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the speed of the market in which the patent was filed, and the significance of the patent. I wouldn't give software UI innovations a patent duration of more than a year. Software patents themselves probably shouldn't be more than a few years.
Futurama reference?
"After that I vowed never to by "Tums" again."
These days the only thing commercials do to me is make me resolve NOT to ever buy their product.
"Or does everyone look forward to every channel running PBS-like pledge drives?"
I would GLADLY GLADLY GLADLY pay, on a per-channel or per-show (hell, even per-episode) basis for the shows I watch. I only watch a few shows out of the sea of absolute stinking shit that is out there...why the hell should I be paying the same fee as people watching all that other crap?
If I could, say, purchase episodes of Futurama, Simpsons, Family Guy, BBC news, SNL, and a Frontline or Nova here and there (well, ok, I can "purchase" those by donating to PBS), I would be in heaven. So YES I would like channels to be responsive to the market of VIEWERS not ADVERTISERS. Then maybe through natural selection, the vast amount of crap that is out there would die.