He's Jesus Christ! He's the Devil! He gets the DMCA passed, and then is disappointed. It's cool and all that's he's calling this like it is, but some consistency and forethought would be nice, nicer than pointing out it's bad after the fact.
Slow computers' X servers cannot keep up with the data rate of the cuecat, and munge the data. My 486 laptop with 24MB of RAM running Gnome, for instance, can't use the CueCat in userspace. This would be the advantage of using a kernel driver. The disadvantage is that you have to patch the kernel and recompile it, something most people will not do.
On September 6th, I had emailed ceo@digitalconvergence.com and ddavis@digitalconvergence.com requesting information on how to obtain a license and so far no one
has gotten back to me. Are the 22 present licensees people that know Davis personally or something? If he wants other to "follow suit" then why doesn't he respond to
emails?!
He does. Just ask nicely and he'll probably send you a copy of the license to look over. Remember, be nice. No one likes assholes.
There's no way to shut the lights off, short of installing a switch. Pierre's kernel driver lets you hook up any number of cuecats (as many as you have amperage for), to the mouse, serial and usb ports all at once.
Because the userspace decoders all actually depend on the keyboard handler, they cannot play nice with a cuecat on the mouse port.
Of course, you can also just disable the 'encryption' and use the thing like a regular keyboard wedge.
Might work. We'd be shoving the garbage into Earth's very hot and very radioactive mantle, where it will be recycled into rock. Why bury it in the valuable lithosphere?
Like Celebrity Deathmatch -- it would be fun to see a razor-fan lowered into the ring while Rosen and Valenti are in it. I'd even give them the copyright on it.
If it can differentiate between "the lightest touch" and "a hammer blow," perhaps it can be used for shopping-cart and telephone-pole collision detection, and autmatically signal a camera to take a picture, or light the flamethrower, or something.
geez, I saw this story the moment it was posted, and his site is already slashdotted. I'm trying to mirror it, without success as of yet. Perhaps someone could email me a big, fat tarball of it?
It is in response to something that was, up until yesterday, on his site[...]
This is your local FBM representative speaking:) It's
The Baltimore Sun that has an article about this cuecat mess:
When I asked Davis about the letters, he was a bit more specific but not much. "They're developing computer applications in
our patent space," he said.
Pressed a bit more, he said the company is relying on a 1991 patent it acquired that covers the use of a standard bar code
scanner to "create a network event."
This would be a fairly broad patent, and could keep others from using bar code readers for purposes that have nothing to
do with Digital Convergence's core business.
If you can find the patent(s) in question, please email me. Search freshmeat for the software.
Actually, we should just get back to respecting the constitution we do have. Tearing it up would be much, much worse than anything going on now. Can you imagine documents like the Declaration of Independance and the Constitution being created today? We'd have a bunch of Pat Robertsons, Bill Clintons, George W. ("there ought to be limits to freedom") Bushes, etc. running the show. A LONG way from Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, et al.
Take the Strict Construction Cure! Make the government stop doing anything not authorized explicitly by the Constitution!
Gee, I've always read it, "any thing in the constitution, or laws of any state, to the contrary, notwithstanding." Meaning, when there is a contradiction, the Constitution wins.
However, I'm not not so sure that that means what I thought it meant, either way, due to the "notwithstanding." That word means "in spite of." Essentially, the constitution can be repealed via treaty if that's what it means, which scares me and pisses me off. People like Clinton study COnstitutional Law just to find loopholes in it and ways around it. Treaty would be the mother of all loopholes.
The idea that nothing supercedes the U.S. Constitution is familiar; here's a couple of links I just dug up:
Thus, when the United States joins a treaty organization, it holds NO AUTHORITY over us.We
abide by our treaty obligations because they are the domestic law of our land, and because our
elected leaders have judged that the agreement serves our national interest. But NO treaty or law
can EVER supercede the one document that all Americans hold sacred: The U.S. Constitution.
Critics, particularly those from the United States, stress the negative impact allowing treaty law to supercede domestic law would have on the
constitutional balance of power and the federal checks and balances. Ultimately, as one observer note, they believe that allowing "treaty law to be
superior to federal legislation (let alone to the constitution) to be dangerous to the idea of democracy and democratic representation of individuals."
Regardless of whether the Constitution can technically be countermanded by treaty, the U.S. can simply withdraw from treaties its citizens do not like. The whole idea of surrendering soverign authority to unelected, unaccountable bureaucracies like the WTO, WIPO, etc. strikes me as highly distasteful, and even treasonous. I for one have no intention of obeying the "laws" made by faceless parties outside of my country.
Can you provide an explanation of how treaties can supercede the U.S. Constitition as the supreme law of the land? Could the fifth amendment, for example, be nullified by treaty? Wouldn't that constitute a change to the consitution which the states would have to ratify?
Slashdot Mirror
It just did it again!!!! ARGH!!!!!!
___________________________
Actually, the router seems to have flipped out. It's done that twice during a thourough slashdotting recently. The machine itself was running fine.
Who know. I'll go upgrade the router with an axe tomorrow.
___________________________
He's Jesus Christ! He's the Devil! He gets the DMCA passed, and then is disappointed. It's cool and all that's he's calling this like it is, but some consistency and forethought would be nice, nicer than pointing out it's bad after the fact.
___________________________
Slow computers' X servers cannot keep up with the data rate of the cuecat, and munge the data. My 486 laptop with 24MB of RAM running Gnome, for instance, can't use the CueCat in userspace. This would be the advantage of using a kernel driver. The disadvantage is that you have to patch the kernel and recompile it, something most people will not do.
___________________________
Diplomacy is also the art of telling your enemies to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.
Diplomacy is very useful.
___________________________
On September 6th, I had emailed ceo@digitalconvergence.com and ddavis@digitalconvergence.com requesting information on how to obtain a license and so far no one has gotten back to me. Are the 22 present licensees people that know Davis personally or something? If he wants other to "follow suit" then why doesn't he respond to emails?!
He does. Just ask nicely and he'll probably send you a copy of the license to look over. Remember, be nice. No one likes assholes.
___________________________
We can make fake banner ads for it! The robotic marital aid! The colon-cancer detector! Magic wand for curing diseases of sheep!
___________________________
There's no way to shut the lights off, short of installing a switch. Pierre's kernel driver lets you hook up any number of cuecats (as many as you have amperage for), to the mouse, serial and usb ports all at once.
Because the userspace decoders all actually depend on the keyboard handler, they cannot play nice with a cuecat on the mouse port.
Of course, you can also just disable the 'encryption' and use the thing like a regular keyboard wedge.
___________________________
http://greenwood.cr.usgs.gov/pub/open-file-reports /ofr-99-0132/
Might work. We'd be shoving the garbage into Earth's very hot and very radioactive mantle, where it will be recycled into rock. Why bury it in the valuable lithosphere?
___________________________
Jack Valenti: 284
;DeCSS: 504
Hilary Rosen: 142
Ric hard Stallman: 650
Eric S. Raymond: 4260
Lawrence Lessig: 186
CmdrTaco: 388
RIAA: 1090
MPAA: 892
: 3390
: 191,000
: 39,200
... Not looking good for the home team...
___________________________
Like Celebrity Deathmatch -- it would be fun to see a razor-fan lowered into the ring while Rosen and Valenti are in it. I'd even give them the copyright on it.
___________________________
Time for another CueCat story! I'll see what I can drum up in the next few days. :)
-M
___________________________
If it can differentiate between "the lightest touch" and "a hammer blow," perhaps it can be used for shopping-cart and telephone-pole collision detection, and autmatically signal a camera to take a picture, or light the flamethrower, or something.
___________________________
Crapitty crap crap. Here's a link that works
___________________________
geez, I saw this story the moment it was posted, and his site is already slashdotted. I'm trying to mirror it, without success as of yet. Perhaps someone could email me a big, fat tarball of it?
___________________________
"Do not look at desktop with remaining eye"
___________________________
It is in response to something that was, up until yesterday, on his site[...]
:) It's
The Baltimore Sun that has an article about this cuecat mess:
This is your local FBM representative speaking
When I asked Davis about the letters, he was a bit more specific but not much. "They're developing computer applications in our patent space," he said.
Pressed a bit more, he said the company is relying on a 1991 patent it acquired that covers the use of a standard bar code scanner to "create a network event."
This would be a fairly broad patent, and could keep others from using bar code readers for purposes that have nothing to do with Digital Convergence's core business.
If you can find the patent(s) in question, please email me. Search freshmeat for the software.
___________________________
___________________________
Sigh. Let's try this again, shall we, slashcode?
.CO M
.NE T
.OR G
.CO M
.CO M
.CO M
.CO M
.CO M
.CO M
.CO M
.CO M
.CO M
digital -co nvergence.net
digitalc onv ergence.com
digitalc onv ergence.net
digitalc onv ergence.org
nettalki.com
nettalklive.com
pcwebcode.org
pcwebtone.org
pcwebwand.org
thewwwand.com
web-code.com
web-wand.com
webwand.org CATFORFREE1.COM
CATFORFREE2.COM
CATFORFREE3.COM
CRQATEMYBALLS
CRQATEMYBALLS
CRQATEMYBALLS
CRQSUCK.COM CRQSUCK.NET CRQSUCK.ORG CUECATATEM YBA LLS.COM
CUECATATEM YBA LLS.NET
CUECATATEM YBA LLS.ORG
FREE1080CAT.COM
FREECATNOW1.COM
FREECATNOW2.COM
FREECATNOW3.COM
FREECATONTV1.C OM
FREECATONTV2.C OM
FREECATONTV3.C OM
FREEEDGECAT.COM
FREEHOT100CAT
FREERUSSCAT.COM
FREETICKETCAT
GETACATNOW1.COM
GETACATNOW2.COM
GETACATNOW3.COM
GETAFREECAT1.C OM
GETAFREECAT2.C OM
GETAFREECAT3.C OM
GETMYFREECAT1
GETMYFREECAT2
GETMYFREECAT3
IWANTACAT1.COM&l t;/a>
IWANTACAT2.COM&l t;/a>
IWANTACAT3.COM&l t;/a>
IWANTAFREECA T1. COM
IWANTAFREECA T2. COM
IWANTAFREECA T3. COM
MYCATFREE1.COM&l t;/a>
MYCATFREE2.COM&l t;/a>
MYCATFREE3.COM&l t;/a>
MYFREECATNOW1
MYFREECATNOW2
MYFREECATNOW3
SENDMEACAT1.COM
SENDMEACAT2.COM
SENDMEACAT3.COM
THESPOTTO.COM
WHATSONCRQ.COM&l t;/a>
WHATSONCRQ.NET&l t;/a>
WRITECONGRESS
___________________________
Here's what they currently have registered (thanks to Larry Gilbert for this list and to sed for formatting it):
.CO M
.NE T
.OR G
.CO M
.CO M
.CO M
.CO M
.CO M
.CO M
.CO M
.CO M
.CO M
digital -co nvergence.net
digitalc onv ergence.com
digitalc onv ergence.net
digitalc onv ergence.org
nettalki.com
nettalklive.com
pcwebcode.org
pcwebtone.org
pcwebwand.org
thewwwand.com
web-code.com
web-wand.com
webwand.orgCATFORFREE1.COM
CATFORFREE2.COM
CATFORFREE3.COM
CRQATEMYBALLS
CRQATEMYBALLS
CRQATEMYBALLS
CRQSUCK.COMCRQSUCK.NETCRQSUCK.ORGCUECATATEM YBA LLS.COM
CUECATATEM YBA LLS.NET
CUECATATEM YBA LLS.ORG
FREE1080CAT.COM
FREECATNOW1.COM
FREECATNOW2.COM
FREECATNOW3.COM
FREECATONTV1.C OM
FREECATONTV2.C OM
FREECATONTV3.C OM
FREEEDGECAT.COM
FREEHOT100CAT
FREERUSSCAT.COM
FREETICKETCAT
GETACATNOW1.COM
GETACATNOW2.COM
GETACATNOW3.COM
GETAFREECAT1.C OM
GETAFREECAT2.C OM
GETAFREECAT3.C OM
GETMYFREECAT1
GETMYFREECAT2
GETMYFREECAT3
IWANTACAT1.COM&l t;/a>
IWANTACAT2.COM&l t;/a>
IWANTACAT3.COM&l t;/a>
IWANTAFREECA T1. COM
IWANTAFREECA T2. COM
IWANTAFREECA T3. COM
MYCATFREE1.COM&l t;/a>
MYCATFREE2.COM&l t;/a>
MYCATFREE3.COM&l t;/a>
MYFREECATNOW1
MYFREECATNOW2
MYFREECATNOW3
SENDMEACAT1.COM
SENDMEACAT2.COM
SENDMEACAT3.COM
THESPOTTO.COM
WHATSONCRQ.COM&l t;/a>
WHATSONCRQ.NET&l t;/a>
WRITECONGRESS
___________________________
Go grab Foocat -- it looks up author, info URL, title and a cover shot for books, CDs and DVD.
___________________________
Fork! Fork!
Maybe we can get changes to the VFS and VM system now!
___________________________
linton being one of our greatest president? That's a judgement call. But he didn't get us in any wars,
Um... yes he has. Quite a number, actually.
___________________________
Actually, we should just get back to respecting the constitution we do have. Tearing it up would be much, much worse than anything going on now. Can you imagine documents like the Declaration of Independance and the Constitution being created today? We'd have a bunch of Pat Robertsons, Bill Clintons, George W. ("there ought to be limits to freedom") Bushes, etc. running the show. A LONG way from Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, et al.
Take the Strict Construction Cure! Make the government stop doing anything not authorized explicitly by the Constitution!
___________________________
However, I'm not not so sure that that means what I thought it meant, either way, due to the "notwithstanding." That word means "in spite of." Essentially, the constitution can be repealed via treaty if that's what it means, which scares me and pisses me off. People like Clinton study COnstitutional Law just to find loopholes in it and ways around it. Treaty would be the mother of all loopholes.
The idea that nothing supercedes the U.S. Constitution is familiar; here's a couple of links I just dug up:
http://citizens.reagan.com/rig ht/ no-irs/helms.htm
http://www.aei.org/past_event/conf12 09b
Can you provide an explanation of how treaties can supercede the U.S. Constitition as the supreme law of the land? Could the fifth amendment, for example, be nullified by treaty? Wouldn't that constitute a change to the consitution which the states would have to ratify?
___________________________