the dude posting this makes the assumption that DVI is missing from DVD players because of MPAA... wrong.
More likely...take a look at how expensive those LCD TVs are. You can build one with a mini-ITX board, a TV-capable video card, and a PC-type LCD panel for half what a real "TV" one costs. And...people are paying it.
Exactly... and exactly why CmdrTaco's comment was dumb:
I'd like to use it at video rental places and CD stores to get product reviews.
What video store is he visiting that requires you to stand 100 yards away from the shelves and not handle the movie?
In the case of hundreds of items stored closely together that you are expected to pick up in your hands... wouldn't you just have a regular barcode reader or something on your phone?
You wouldn't use a megaphone to talk to your honey in bed...
Whatever your motivations for that belief... I actually agree!
I think I should be able to chop down 300 oak trees on my acreage, if I wanted (a man was imprisoned recently for that). If I had a thought I should be able to never divulge it (I remember a story about a guy being forced by the court to reveal his invention to his employer that claimed ownership of his compilation invention because they owned anything he invented during his tenure with them). Examples could go on and on.
I wonder about this dude with the images. The court assumes that the search business is doing him a favor by bringing him more eyeballs. But, the fact that he sued presumes (in my mind) that he very specifically wants to deny those kinds of eyeballs being attracted to viewership of his work. I think that is his right. I think that's fine. I should be able to take a picture of my kids and show them only to my parents, but nobody else, if that's what I choose. A search engine is not at all doing any of the usual protected uses, like spoofs or whatever. They are doing something like the index of a phone book. But, his creations are not simple pieces of fact such as a phone number. Have you ever considered a program you wrote "your baby"? If there weren't some inate desire to protect our works, even within the OSS communities, then why any GPL (term used to generically represent the 100,000 various licensing acronyms) mechanisms?
But, besides believing in such a right to absolute control over my own property... I understand that there are practicalities in life.
Consider Ted Kazinski(sp?). He didn't allow for practicalities. Here's an example. Suppose you hated something, such as cigarettes. But, so thorough was your hatred that only the complete wiping of "cigarette knowledge" from all human psyche would satisfy your viewpoint. In fact, you might only be satisfied with a genetic manipulation of the human race that bares any possible future reintroduction of "cigarette knowledge". That's pretty extreme. But, what are you likely to get in real life? Even with tremendous cost and effort... you'll get various cities to ban smoking in work places. Restaurants will be required to operate with a non-smoking section. And domestic airflights over 3 hours will ban smoking (my sister was responsible for that one; working with an organization called FANS) and that regulation has since been strengthened plenty. Certainly those concessions would appease you, right? No, not at all. Only an existence completely devoid of "cigarette knowledge" would satisfy you. But, you'll never get it. What do you do? Learn to live with it? Get over it? Lobby for greater concessions whenever practical? Or... become a terrorist and blow up anything cigarette related. That's the Ted Kazinski thing and what he spoke of in his manifesto.
Little me might create some work and want to exercise complete and total control over it's use and availability. I'd be fit for a straightjacket to pull a Ted Kazinski trying to achieve that kind of total control. And there is no other way, so one must accept a certain practical limitation or reality. Or, one might be a corporation with lawyers...the DMCA exists specifically to allow corporations to pull a Ted Kazinski and exercise total control, without actually resorting to bombs.
Yeah, I think some people, though... very strongly believe in personal property rights and think that they are endowed a divinely inspired fundamental right to complete sovereign control over their creations or property.
Some people's art stinks and so maybe they don't have such a problem of preventing snoopy crazy people from peaking at it...:)
Ok, then... so I'm right. You can take any image, and split it into pieces. Here's a slightly re-worded quote:
In fact, users are unlikely to [draw the missing half of the picture] and use them for artistic purposes because the [halves are missing half of] the originals".
Haha!
Of course, this is just silly talk. This copyright stuff is a great example of how nice things would be if it were possible to trust people and courts to honor "what is reasonable". If someone did what I suggested, split a pic in half into two files, but display both... any reasonable person would say "oh, come on! give me a break!". And he'd be right. My friend Larry would argue it unto his death, but everyone playing the board game with him would get pissed and leave early and then swear to never play with him again.
Without reading the article / ruling / whatever (I'm lazy today)... what makes a thumbnail OK?
Is it because it presents significantly less information than the original?
What if it remained the original's size, but was B&W instead of color?
What if it were saved as JPEG quality 2 instead of the original?
What if the court stated some metric? Like "must be at least 50% less than the original"... how about cutting the image in halves. Then posting both halves on your site such that they appear as one? Neither half violates individually?
Good question. All the copyright images that I use on my site are shrunk 99% of their original size before uploading...because I lawfully only publish thumbnails.
"The system would include an on-board database of the GPS coordinates of the no-fly zones."
So, why not bring your own database / replacement-HD with you when you hijack the plane?
What's the ROM do if it detects a harddrive swap in flight? Crash the plane immediately? Make everything a no-fly zone? Land at the nearest airport, lock the doors, and send knock-out gas through the cabin?
Of course, Lik Sang will sell a modchip. You can't have a computer in a plane without a working Linux port available!
When I was in highschool long ago, there was a store near my house that rented software. Back then, the//e and 8088 were still the big guns. Anyways, it was a "club" type of system. You'd pay a monthly fee for some number of rentals per month. They didn't last long...and, I can't remember the name. This was in the Lynnwood, WA area...if anyone else happens to remember.
The traffic in the greater Seattle area is atrocious, and the State Government has been working hard to find a way to solve the issue.
That is not true at all. The only thing that one might be able to say they work hard on is finding ways to convince everyone to ride the bus. Nevermind that almost every bus I see is near empty and that a single city bus pollutes more than 15 SUVs.
In the interim, they may use eBay as an innovative solution for estimating demand and raising funds.
This will never happen.
How does a sticker help you, anyways? You get pulled over for driving in the HOV lane, the cop sees your sticker, and says "ok, sorry, go on your way". Very convenient!
If you're not familiar with Seattle-area HOV lanes... the sticker will also not be all too helpful because all HOV lanes in the area are incomplete runs. For example, the HOV lane on southbound I-5 ends at Northgate, long before you even reach downtown Seattle. Same thing on I-405, same thing on northbound I-5 in Everett. Same thing on 520. So the sticker would allow you to pass a short run of cars before becoming part of the lane-merge bottleneck problem which is what is really slowing everyone down.
No more buses, no HOV lanes. Just more lanes. Thank you.
but, i haven't been convinced that there's much the FBI could have done to prevent 911. actually, of course, they could have. with the combination of some obvious mistakes not happening, some insightful connections of seemingly unrelated events by a sharp agent, and some luck.
the FBI doesn't want to believe that they have any insightful bright agents, though, but does believe that these connections of seemingly unrelated events are critical...thus the end of the Bill of Rights with Total Information Awareness and scourges like it.
what surprises me, though, is that terrorism doesn't plague our society on a massive scale...that of a massive unleashing of tiny acts. little things that are relatively easy to get away with, require almost no planning, are cheap to implement. arson, vandalism, etc. The gas meter at the highschool might be blown up with a pipe bomb...what are the chances of anyone witnessing? Things like that would be tough to stop. I don't see why terrorism is only considered terrorism if it's a large scale attack that truly incites a feeling of terror. wouldn't you also feel a sense of terror if there was some small incident in neighborhood all across America on a daily basis?
I'm super glad terrorists don't seem to be very bright. Let them try for the bigger attacks, and let's hope that those are easier to anticipate and prevent!
"As if the FBI didn't have their own messes to clean up such as the handling of pre-911 intelligence, FBI agents turned spy (Robert Hanssen), the Los Alamos lab debacle, double agent Mrs. Katrina Leung, need I say more?"
If McDonald's announced it were going to start selling BBQ pork chops, would you say "as if they didn't have their own messes...one time an employee spit in a burger...need I say more?"
Or, maybe you saw a small bug in notepad.exe...quick! Condem all of Microsoft! (ok, maybe)
But, aside from this file-sharing issue, it seems you have an FBI axe you'd like ground to the hilt. I'm sure the FBI is far from perfect. How do you propose it be fixed?
Service Announcement: The text of this post that you've just read is copyright, me, and I have not given you permission to read it. You are in violation of my copyright and the FBI will be raiding you soon. Thank you.
"Petswarehouse.com" has long been a source of confusion in the marketplace. For many years a company known as "Pet Warehouse" (not "Petswarehouse") has been a trusted source of supplies for fish enthusiasts. Long before the.com retailer thing, Pet Warehouse was, IMHO, the best of the mail order catalogs. They were eventually bought out by "Doctors Foster and Smith" (www.drsfostersmith.com), but the good Drs continue to print the "Pet Warehouse" name on their catalogs because it's a well respected name. They even continue to operate via the same old tollfree number. I've been out of the hobby for years, but hopefully they're still good.
It's been a nuisance that Novak and his pathetic activities has brought confusion via a similar name. Good riddance.
The saving grace has been that the spam had to be transmitted manually, through a web form, so the sending rate was limited by how fast the spammer could cut-n-paste.
If you check the box to list your new hotmail address on various partners' lists...ever wonder how that works?
InfoSpace was such a partner (maybe still is, but I don't work there anymore). Every so often Hotmail sends these partners a huge set of files. Basically, it's all the diffs, new users, etc.
All it takes is a few employees at a few such partners to copy the data and do whatever they want with it.
Of course, this is a very old problem...nothing unique to Hotmail...
And, I recognize that my house analogy was pretty weak...but I often use weak analogies. Sometimes they can be a catalyst for a creative perspective, but mostly I'm just lazy that way.
The photographer aspect that you raise is a particularly frustrating example for me. At least, when it involves pictures of my likeness, or that of my family. It's interesting how my attitude might shift depending if the photographer is a small-time independent, or a large national chain. My strong interests in privacy rights drive my attitude here. I find it offensive that I might pay a studio to take a portrait of my baby son, and find that they are using that portrait to advertise their services in another region. By preserving their copyright interest all they want is the DRM control over my access to duplicates / reprints. I can live with that, so long as I can control all uses of the picture.
Then, you missed my point... although you were close.
while being paid by the employer
That's the distinction... I suggested that I'm not being paid by the employer, for at least, moments at a time.
Is that so far fetched? That I might be at my employer's place of business for some portion of time yet not being paid by them during that time?
The majority of employers (like my last one, InfoSpace) assume to own all of your developments even while not at the employer's place of business (ie. at home), so long as you are employed by them.
That thing didn't read like a wakeup call at all. And it certainly wasn't something Ballmer will regret got leaked. In fact, quite the contrary...
It read very much like a piece of "sure hope this leaks quick" propaganda.
Everything semi-critical of MS, or anything suggesting that "we have work to do", etc...was carefully worded to be pretty light work, while at the same time seeming honest and responsible. People respond well to those thin veils of apparent sincerity.
The real purpose of the note was to press forward with that same old stuff about the lack of accountability behind OpenSource. Tell us again how nobody is responsible for OpenSource. Lacking a commercial interest, OpenSource is a hodge podge of buggy software built by faceless hackers who have no long-term interest and might even care to purposefully endanger your IT system with notions of anarchy!!
Run for the hills!!!
Yep, sounds like the same old stuff. Been reading that stuff for years. Where else did we just read this a few days ago? Oh yeah, Darl McBride's / SCO's comments...
Soon the Gimp will get some little improvement that will have Adobe shouting the same stuff. Maybe they already should.
[These comments best converted to PDF using GhostView]
Slashdot Mirror
Somebody has been watching far too much "Wild Thornberries".
would they object to rampant copyright violations with P2P sharing of these commercials??
the dude posting this makes the assumption that DVI is missing from DVD players because of MPAA... wrong.
More likely...take a look at how expensive those LCD TVs are. You can build one with a mini-ITX board, a TV-capable video card, and a PC-type LCD panel for half what a real "TV" one costs. And...people are paying it.
So, why gut that market before necessary?
Exactly... and exactly why CmdrTaco's comment was dumb:
I'd like to use it at video rental places and CD stores to get product reviews.
What video store is he visiting that requires you to stand 100 yards away from the shelves and not handle the movie?
In the case of hundreds of items stored closely together that you are expected to pick up in your hands... wouldn't you just have a regular barcode reader or something on your phone?
You wouldn't use a megaphone to talk to your honey in bed...
Sorry man. If it might help you any... I'll ask her to try and get flying banned. :)
Whatever your motivations for that belief... I actually agree!
I think I should be able to chop down 300 oak trees on my acreage, if I wanted (a man was imprisoned recently for that). If I had a thought I should be able to never divulge it (I remember a story about a guy being forced by the court to reveal his invention to his employer that claimed ownership of his compilation invention because they owned anything he invented during his tenure with them). Examples could go on and on.
I wonder about this dude with the images. The court assumes that the search business is doing him a favor by bringing him more eyeballs. But, the fact that he sued presumes (in my mind) that he very specifically wants to deny those kinds of eyeballs being attracted to viewership of his work. I think that is his right. I think that's fine. I should be able to take a picture of my kids and show them only to my parents, but nobody else, if that's what I choose. A search engine is not at all doing any of the usual protected uses, like spoofs or whatever. They are doing something like the index of a phone book. But, his creations are not simple pieces of fact such as a phone number. Have you ever considered a program you wrote "your baby"? If there weren't some inate desire to protect our works, even within the OSS communities, then why any GPL (term used to generically represent the 100,000 various licensing acronyms) mechanisms?
But, besides believing in such a right to absolute control over my own property... I understand that there are practicalities in life.
Consider Ted Kazinski(sp?). He didn't allow for practicalities. Here's an example. Suppose you hated something, such as cigarettes. But, so thorough was your hatred that only the complete wiping of "cigarette knowledge" from all human psyche would satisfy your viewpoint. In fact, you might only be satisfied with a genetic manipulation of the human race that bares any possible future reintroduction of "cigarette knowledge". That's pretty extreme. But, what are you likely to get in real life? Even with tremendous cost and effort... you'll get various cities to ban smoking in work places. Restaurants will be required to operate with a non-smoking section. And domestic airflights over 3 hours will ban smoking (my sister was responsible for that one; working with an organization called FANS) and that regulation has since been strengthened plenty. Certainly those concessions would appease you, right? No, not at all. Only an existence completely devoid of "cigarette knowledge" would satisfy you. But, you'll never get it. What do you do? Learn to live with it? Get over it? Lobby for greater concessions whenever practical? Or... become a terrorist and blow up anything cigarette related. That's the Ted Kazinski thing and what he spoke of in his manifesto.
Little me might create some work and want to exercise complete and total control over it's use and availability. I'd be fit for a straightjacket to pull a Ted Kazinski trying to achieve that kind of total control. And there is no other way, so one must accept a certain practical limitation or reality. Or, one might be a corporation with lawyers...the DMCA exists specifically to allow corporations to pull a Ted Kazinski and exercise total control, without actually resorting to bombs.
Yeah, I think some people, though... very strongly believe in personal property rights and think that they are endowed a divinely inspired fundamental right to complete sovereign control over their creations or property.
:)
Some people's art stinks and so maybe they don't have such a problem of preventing snoopy crazy people from peaking at it...
Ok, then... so I'm right. You can take any image, and split it into pieces. Here's a slightly re-worded quote:
In fact, users are unlikely to [draw the missing half of the picture] and use them for artistic purposes because the [halves are missing half of] the originals".
Haha!
Of course, this is just silly talk. This copyright stuff is a great example of how nice things would be if it were possible to trust people and courts to honor "what is reasonable". If someone did what I suggested, split a pic in half into two files, but display both... any reasonable person would say "oh, come on! give me a break!". And he'd be right. My friend Larry would argue it unto his death, but everyone playing the board game with him would get pissed and leave early and then swear to never play with him again.
Without reading the article / ruling / whatever (I'm lazy today)... what makes a thumbnail OK?
Is it because it presents significantly less information than the original?
What if it remained the original's size, but was B&W instead of color?
What if it were saved as JPEG quality 2 instead of the original?
What if the court stated some metric? Like "must be at least 50% less than the original"... how about cutting the image in halves. Then posting both halves on your site such that they appear as one? Neither half violates individually?
Good question. All the copyright images that I use on my site are shrunk 99% of their original size before uploading...because I lawfully only publish thumbnails.
Was that it? I couldn't remember. Was thinking Niven's Ringworld.
Anyways, there was a map in Duke Nukem 3D with a floor like this. Therefore, it's clearly possible!
"The system would include an on-board database of the GPS coordinates of the no-fly zones."
So, why not bring your own database / replacement-HD with you when you hijack the plane?
What's the ROM do if it detects a harddrive swap in flight? Crash the plane immediately? Make everything a no-fly zone? Land at the nearest airport, lock the doors, and send knock-out gas through the cabin?
Of course, Lik Sang will sell a modchip. You can't have a computer in a plane without a working Linux port available!
When I was in highschool long ago, there was a store near my house that rented software. Back then, the //e and 8088 were still the big guns. Anyways, it was a "club" type of system. You'd pay a monthly fee for some number of rentals per month. They didn't last long...and, I can't remember the name. This was in the Lynnwood, WA area...if anyone else happens to remember.
The traffic in the greater Seattle area is atrocious, and the State Government has been working hard to find a way to solve the issue.
That is not true at all. The only thing that one might be able to say they work hard on is finding ways to convince everyone to ride the bus. Nevermind that almost every bus I see is near empty and that a single city bus pollutes more than 15 SUVs.
In the interim, they may use eBay as an innovative solution for estimating demand and raising funds.
This will never happen.
How does a sticker help you, anyways? You get pulled over for driving in the HOV lane, the cop sees your sticker, and says "ok, sorry, go on your way". Very convenient!
If you're not familiar with Seattle-area HOV lanes... the sticker will also not be all too helpful because all HOV lanes in the area are incomplete runs. For example, the HOV lane on southbound I-5 ends at Northgate, long before you even reach downtown Seattle. Same thing on I-405, same thing on northbound I-5 in Everett. Same thing on 520. So the sticker would allow you to pass a short run of cars before becoming part of the lane-merge bottleneck problem which is what is really slowing everyone down.
No more buses, no HOV lanes. Just more lanes. Thank you.
no, certainly not.
but, i haven't been convinced that there's much the FBI could have done to prevent 911. actually, of course, they could have. with the combination of some obvious mistakes not happening, some insightful connections of seemingly unrelated events by a sharp agent, and some luck.
the FBI doesn't want to believe that they have any insightful bright agents, though, but does believe that these connections of seemingly unrelated events are critical...thus the end of the Bill of Rights with Total Information Awareness and scourges like it.
what surprises me, though, is that terrorism doesn't plague our society on a massive scale...that of a massive unleashing of tiny acts. little things that are relatively easy to get away with, require almost no planning, are cheap to implement. arson, vandalism, etc. The gas meter at the highschool might be blown up with a pipe bomb...what are the chances of anyone witnessing? Things like that would be tough to stop. I don't see why terrorism is only considered terrorism if it's a large scale attack that truly incites a feeling of terror. wouldn't you also feel a sense of terror if there was some small incident in neighborhood all across America on a daily basis?
I'm super glad terrorists don't seem to be very bright. Let them try for the bigger attacks, and let's hope that those are easier to anticipate and prevent!
"As if the FBI didn't have their own messes to clean up such as the handling of pre-911 intelligence, FBI agents turned spy (Robert Hanssen), the Los Alamos lab debacle, double agent Mrs. Katrina Leung, need I say more?"
If McDonald's announced it were going to start selling BBQ pork chops, would you say "as if they didn't have their own messes...one time an employee spit in a burger...need I say more?"
Or, maybe you saw a small bug in notepad.exe...quick! Condem all of Microsoft! (ok, maybe)
But, aside from this file-sharing issue, it seems you have an FBI axe you'd like ground to the hilt. I'm sure the FBI is far from perfect. How do you propose it be fixed?
Service Announcement: The text of this post that you've just read is copyright, me, and I have not given you permission to read it. You are in violation of my copyright and the FBI will be raiding you soon. Thank you.
Jamie wrote:
I can think of so many uses for this
Or, "I can only think of the obvious to say about this."
"Petswarehouse.com" has long been a source of confusion in the marketplace. For many years a company known as "Pet Warehouse" (not "Petswarehouse") has been a trusted source of supplies for fish enthusiasts. Long before the .com retailer thing, Pet Warehouse was, IMHO, the best of the mail order catalogs. They were eventually bought out by "Doctors Foster and Smith" (www.drsfostersmith.com), but the good Drs continue to print the "Pet Warehouse" name on their catalogs because it's a well respected name. They even continue to operate via the same old tollfree number. I've been out of the hobby for years, but hopefully they're still good.
It's been a nuisance that Novak and his pathetic activities has brought confusion via a similar name. Good riddance.
The kind of person that wants to believe that his/her AIM conversations are now secure, from say...his/her employer.
But, I think AOL just wants less competition in the field of software sold to employers.
How long until someone says AOL is enabling terrorists? Maybe a long time...maybe the encryption used is pretty weak.
Or, I wonder if AOL has a new office in Anguilla.
The saving grace has been that the spam had to be transmitted manually, through a web form, so the sending rate was limited by how fast the spammer could cut-n-paste.
You don't believe in scripting stuff??
If you check the box to list your new hotmail address on various partners' lists...ever wonder how that works?
InfoSpace was such a partner (maybe still is, but I don't work there anymore). Every so often Hotmail sends these partners a huge set of files. Basically, it's all the diffs, new users, etc.
All it takes is a few employees at a few such partners to copy the data and do whatever they want with it.
Of course, this is a very old problem...nothing unique to Hotmail...
well, the question is important:
The company pays an employee for their work and ideas.
which ideas, exactly? That's the question.
all ideas? past, present, future?
btw, I may have paid the carpenter for more than his labor. I may have paid him for materials, knowledge, advice, management, etc.
You raise some good points.
And, I recognize that my house analogy was pretty weak...but I often use weak analogies. Sometimes they can be a catalyst for a creative perspective, but mostly I'm just lazy that way.
The photographer aspect that you raise is a particularly frustrating example for me. At least, when it involves pictures of my likeness, or that of my family. It's interesting how my attitude might shift depending if the photographer is a small-time independent, or a large national chain. My strong interests in privacy rights drive my attitude here. I find it offensive that I might pay a studio to take a portrait of my baby son, and find that they are using that portrait to advertise their services in another region. By preserving their copyright interest all they want is the DRM control over my access to duplicates / reprints. I can live with that, so long as I can control all uses of the picture.
Then, you missed my point... although you were close.
while being paid by the employer
That's the distinction... I suggested that I'm not being paid by the employer, for at least, moments at a time.
Is that so far fetched? That I might be at my employer's place of business for some portion of time yet not being paid by them during that time?
The majority of employers (like my last one, InfoSpace) assume to own all of your developments even while not at the employer's place of business (ie. at home), so long as you are employed by them.
That...is a stretch, if you ask me.
That thing didn't read like a wakeup call at all. And it certainly wasn't something Ballmer will regret got leaked. In fact, quite the contrary...
It read very much like a piece of "sure hope this leaks quick" propaganda.
Everything semi-critical of MS, or anything suggesting that "we have work to do", etc...was carefully worded to be pretty light work, while at the same time seeming honest and responsible. People respond well to those thin veils of apparent sincerity.
The real purpose of the note was to press forward with that same old stuff about the lack of accountability behind OpenSource. Tell us again how nobody is responsible for OpenSource. Lacking a commercial interest, OpenSource is a hodge podge of buggy software built by faceless hackers who have no long-term interest and might even care to purposefully endanger your IT system with notions of anarchy!!
Run for the hills!!!
Yep, sounds like the same old stuff. Been reading that stuff for years. Where else did we just read this a few days ago? Oh yeah, Darl McBride's / SCO's comments...
Soon the Gimp will get some little improvement that will have Adobe shouting the same stuff. Maybe they already should.
[These comments best converted to PDF using GhostView]