On behalf of all Americans, I apologize if our screwy patent office has deprived Aussies of their God-given liberty to write bad novels combining MIT and Rip van Winkle.
It's a test case. If approved, there will be literally thousands of similar ones approved and used to harrass writers all over the world.
I found this on the asshole who is making the claim's website:
As far back as high school, [Andrew Knight] authored various works of short fiction that were published in national magazines,... Since then, he has conceived of a variety of unique fictional storylines. Recognizing that fierce competition for publication and financial reward focused on the quality of storytelling, as opposed to the quality of the underlying storyline itself, and further recognizing that even the world's most skilled storytellers (of which he is clearly not) rarely turn a profit, his unique fictional storylines have matured into pending patent applications instead of novels or screenplays. He thus seeks reward on the true value of his innovations--the underlying storylines--instead of forced, sub-par expressions of these underlying storylines.
So the same concept as submarine patents: don't create a sellable product, just patent the concept and wait to ambush someone who has the talent to think of it AND bring it to market. The main target will be movie studios I think -- already they have to fight off hacks who claim that someone read their script and stole the idea, now they'd be liable even if the "idea" was never shown to anyone or published.
I actually searched for The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein. I was given a complete page of the book (as an image)
You only get complete pages if the publisher has agreed to allow that. You can get similar results from Amazon. Any halfway popular book, particularly SF, can be found online as a bootleg OCR, of varying quality, already. (http://tinyurl.com/dxsze). I can buy secondhand novels for a dollar, or borrow from a library, so reading such onscreen is not something I'd bother to do.
That said, with a decent OCR program, it would be pretty trivial to write a script that just dumps a book from the snippets provided by Google. So there is a security issue right there.
I don't think it would be trivial. From the examples I've seen these "snippets" amount to a couple of lines by default, you'd need at least 20 hits for each page, say 5000 for an average book. I suspect Google would notice such a search from a single IP and block it, though it would be possible to distribute it over time and different IPs.... But the "security risk" of public libraries is 1000 times worse. I can reserve any book over the web, pick it up a couple of days later, and OCR it. Much simpler than the espionage/hacker fantasy method of using a botnet to attack Google to get a copy of the latest Harry Potter book in 10,000 fragments.
Ten years ago in Taiwan you could buy excellent reproductions of almost any bestselling Western book, printed offset by phoptgraphically copying the orignals. (Recently US pressure led to a crackdown and sadly you can't buy these any more.) Google hasn't enabled book piracy, it's existed for centuries.
Nearly every copyright statement I've ever read in a book contains the phrase...
Wwell, that's what the publisher WANTS you to do (or not do), whether he has the right to dictate that is another thing; pretty much like a software EULA. I've actually drafted that kind of statement for books' "legal" pages, I have no legal training and just copied it from other books. I'm sure almost every publisher does the same.
When it got down to it there wasn't a suitable law in statue and they could only charge him with "Theft of Electricity" and he ended up with a minor fine.
After I quit from a job, due to my salary being 3 months in arrears, I took the company to court to recover the money owed. To counterattack they tried to think of claims to make against me, like $100,000 in losses because I had left unexpectedly. Another was that I had used their Internet (dial up) access after I quit, which was true for a few days till I noticed and organised a personal acount. They tried to make a big deal of this theft of services, but the magistrate wasn't interested in hearing a claim of 50 cents, the total for the couple of hours involved.
The real question about the Sony "service pack" is whether it removes the entire software program, leaves anything behind,
Well, the slashsummary says "uninstall the DRM Rootkit. From the announcement: 'This Service Pack removes the cloaking technology". And if you RTFA, that's ALL is removed, the part that concealed files begining with $sys$ or whatever. The nasty parts that hook themselves into your CD driver and such, apparently remain.
Diabolical is not a compliment.
However, when paired with the phrase "clever", it actually is. Context is really very important.
In the context given, kidnapping children, "diabolically clever" is still not a compliment. Looking again at the OED: diabolically adv. ( a ) fiendishly, very wickedly; ( b ) slang shockingly, excruciatingly; exceedingly: L16.
So yes, there is a sense of just an intensifier, like "wicked", say. But the main sense is still evil. These days it seems hard to use "wicked", "fiendish", "diabolical" without seeming sounding slightly camp, in an Austin Powers way; nevertheless, unless you have reason to assume irony, I'd read them as being uncomplimentary.
Uses Pixar as leverage is diabolically clever.
But Microsoft using it's market share as leverage against South Korea is evil?
Oh, wait. I forgot we were talking about Apple. Steve Jobs could kidnap and use Eisner's grandbabies as leverage against Disney and it would still be "diabolically clever".
Diabolical is not a compliment.
diabolical 1. Of, concerning, or characteristic of the devil; satanic.
2. Appropriate to a devil, especially in degree of wickedness or cruelty.
Who knows the programmers responsible for a title? Are their names on the box? Does their name recognition add any actual financial value to the producers?
Does Symantec still have pictures of Peter Norton, with his sleeves rolled up, on their boxes? They did for many years after he stopped having anything to do with the products...
Programmers are not compensated for every copy of their software they develop for their employers. Actors are no different.
Actors are completely different. Most work on a project for a few days, weeks or occasionally months, most at a mediocre "scale" salary. No job security, no promotions, no company benefits. Standard contracts prescribe residual payments for each broadcast/perfomrance, etc; actors (and writers and other creative staff) regularly go on strike when producers try to wind back their residuals (royalties, basically).
What's so culturally phenomenal about modifying stuff? We've been doing it ever since we made flint knives. The only new aspect of "modding" is the restrictions unreasonably placed on it by corpolitics.
Exactly what TFA says, though I don't know how that rates +5 insight. Maybe the mods didn't read it either.
Oh come on, this is hardly new. Movies have been being colorized for years. How is that different from what is being done now?
There'a a vast difference between revisions made by the author and those made by others later without their blessing. Though movies don't belong to a single person, despite the auteur theory, it seems almost immoral, though not illegal, for Ted Turner to colorise b/w movies sometimes in the face of the expressed opposition of those involved with the original movies.
I understand The Sopranos film two versions of every scene, one for HBO and one for future syndication to broadcast televison.
No. In Hong Kong we see the Sopranos on broadcast TV. All the swear words are overdubbed ("Fuck you" becomes "Forget you") in an often obtrusive way, nudity is cut, etc. I picked up a DVD release of a season and was rather startled at the language of the original after some years of watching the bowdlerised version. Anyway, the changes are post-production and not reshoots.
When did Windows 98 come out? Cos that's what's on the other side of the partition.
Fairly obviously it's a video driver problem. Good luck with that, but my point was that more recent distros are very likely to detect and set up the video painlessly.
Personally, I also bought RH6 and installed it on my Pentium 233, with Win95B, and on a couple of 486s without any issues, except it didn't like one floppy drive (which was needed for the install in those far-gone times) so I swapped it from an older PC and it was fine.
how does a name change (forced or voluntary) impact relations
I learnt about that when I had a "free email address for life" and of course, after a couple of years of spreading it around, the hosts went belly-up and I had to rebuild my contacts. I was pretty annoyed, but after all, you don't really expect to have the same phone number or street address forever, so just keep your address book in your hands, and backup any important email (one reason I remain dubious of webmail; though GMail is probably a good bet to outlive me).
Every so often a fellow enlists who's last name actually *is* Sailor in the native language. More often than not, this drives his superiors nuts as they have to address him as "Sailor Sailor".
In Catch-22 there was a character, Major Major Major, who was of course promoted to Major by a computer error. But his superiors refused to promote him further, as "the Air Force isn't going to lose its only Major Major Major Major".
But, what the hell - don't let facts and actual threats from terrorism get in the way of pimping for some anti-US "Insightful" points.
Don't worry about that, there are lots of patriotic Americans here. So I'm modded "flamebait", you're "insightful". So feel validated. America - Fuck Yeah!
Odd. I know quite a few Muslims who are unhappy about US policies, and none of them are in a "gulag".
Odd, I've never been to New York, so that doesn't exist either.
Let one of your Muslim friends wear an al-Qaeda tee-shirt and try to catch an airplane. Or for that matter, attend school, or demonstrate in Washington...
Slashdot Mirror
It's a test case. If approved, there will be literally thousands of similar ones approved and used to harrass writers all over the world.
I found this on the asshole who is making the claim's website:
So the same concept as submarine patents: don't create a sellable product, just patent the concept and wait to ambush someone who has the talent to think of it AND bring it to market. The main target will be movie studios I think -- already they have to fight off hacks who claim that someone read their script and stole the idea, now they'd be liable even if the "idea" was never shown to anyone or published.
You only get complete pages if the publisher has agreed to allow that. You can get similar results from Amazon. Any halfway popular book, particularly SF, can be found online as a bootleg OCR, of varying quality, already. (http://tinyurl.com/dxsze). I can buy secondhand novels for a dollar, or borrow from a library, so reading such onscreen is not something I'd bother to do.
I don't think it would be trivial. From the examples I've seen these "snippets" amount to a couple of lines by default, you'd need at least 20 hits for each page, say 5000 for an average book. I suspect Google would notice such a search from a single IP and block it, though it would be possible to distribute it over time and different IPs.... But the "security risk" of public libraries is 1000 times worse. I can reserve any book over the web, pick it up a couple of days later, and OCR it. Much simpler than the espionage/hacker fantasy method of using a botnet to attack Google to get a copy of the latest Harry Potter book in 10,000 fragments.
Ten years ago in Taiwan you could buy excellent reproductions of almost any bestselling Western book, printed offset by phoptgraphically copying the orignals. (Recently US pressure led to a crackdown and sadly you can't buy these any more.) Google hasn't enabled book piracy, it's existed for centuries.
Wwell, that's what the publisher WANTS you to do (or not do), whether he has the right to dictate that is another thing; pretty much like a software EULA. I've actually drafted that kind of statement for books' "legal" pages, I have no legal training and just copied it from other books. I'm sure almost every publisher does the same.
After I quit from a job, due to my salary being 3 months in arrears, I took the company to court to recover the money owed. To counterattack they tried to think of claims to make against me, like $100,000 in losses because I had left unexpectedly. Another was that I had used their Internet (dial up) access after I quit, which was true for a few days till I noticed and organised a personal acount. They tried to make a big deal of this theft of services, but the magistrate wasn't interested in hearing a claim of 50 cents, the total for the couple of hours involved.
What do you mean "Britian"?
It shows you have no right (in the UK) not to be mail bombed.
Well, the slashsummary says "uninstall the DRM Rootkit. From the announcement: 'This Service Pack removes the cloaking technology". And if you RTFA, that's ALL is removed, the part that concealed files begining with $sys$ or whatever. The nasty parts that hook themselves into your CD driver and such, apparently remain.
IF and ONLY IF you have access to a binary news server.
However, when paired with the phrase "clever", it actually is. Context is really very important.
In the context given, kidnapping children, "diabolically clever" is still not a compliment. Looking again at the OED:
diabolically adv. ( a ) fiendishly, very wickedly; ( b ) slang shockingly, excruciatingly; exceedingly: L16.
So yes, there is a sense of just an intensifier, like "wicked", say. But the main sense is still evil. These days it seems hard to use "wicked", "fiendish", "diabolical" without seeming sounding slightly camp, in an Austin Powers way; nevertheless, unless you have reason to assume irony, I'd read them as being uncomplimentary.
But Microsoft using it's market share as leverage against South Korea is evil? Oh, wait. I forgot we were talking about Apple. Steve Jobs could kidnap and use Eisner's grandbabies as leverage against Disney and it would still be "diabolically clever".
Diabolical is not a compliment.
diabolical 1. Of, concerning, or characteristic of the devil; satanic.
2. Appropriate to a devil, especially in degree of wickedness or cruelty.
It's defined here simply as shows broadcast by the station "Sci Fi UK", which obviously does run stuff that is undeniably fantasy, like Xena.
Well, it's rumoured that HBO will have an official release next year. Rather lacking in supporting details though.
Does Symantec still have pictures of Peter Norton, with his sleeves rolled up, on their boxes? They did for many years after he stopped having anything to do with the products...
Actors are completely different. Most work on a project for a few days, weeks or occasionally months, most at a mediocre "scale" salary. No job security, no promotions, no company benefits. Standard contracts prescribe residual payments for each broadcast/perfomrance, etc; actors (and writers and other creative staff) regularly go on strike when producers try to wind back their residuals (royalties, basically).
Would you believe ...
THE BEST OF GET SMART, 93 episodes on 9 DVDs, $99.99.
Exactly what TFA says, though I don't know how that rates +5 insight. Maybe the mods didn't read it either.
Plenty more at Bugmenot.
There'a a vast difference between revisions made by the author and those made by others later without their blessing. Though movies don't belong to a single person, despite the auteur theory, it seems almost immoral, though not illegal, for Ted Turner to colorise b/w movies sometimes in the face of the expressed opposition of those involved with the original movies.
No. In Hong Kong we see the Sopranos on broadcast TV. All the swear words are overdubbed ("Fuck you" becomes "Forget you") in an often obtrusive way, nudity is cut, etc. I picked up a DVD release of a season and was rather startled at the language of the original after some years of watching the bowdlerised version. Anyway, the changes are post-production and not reshoots.
Fairly obviously it's a video driver problem. Good luck with that, but my point was that more recent distros are very likely to detect and set up the video painlessly.
Personally, I also bought RH6 and installed it on my Pentium 233, with Win95B, and on a couple of 486s without any issues, except it didn't like one floppy drive (which was needed for the install in those far-gone times) so I swapped it from an older PC and it was fine.
RH6 came out in 1999.
I learnt about that when I had a "free email address for life" and of course, after a couple of years of spreading it around, the hosts went belly-up and I had to rebuild my contacts. I was pretty annoyed, but after all, you don't really expect to have the same phone number or street address forever, so just keep your address book in your hands, and backup any important email (one reason I remain dubious of webmail; though GMail is probably a good bet to outlive me).
In Catch-22 there was a character, Major Major Major, who was of course promoted to Major by a computer error. But his superiors refused to promote him further, as "the Air Force isn't going to lose its only Major Major Major Major".
Don't worry about that, there are lots of patriotic Americans here. So I'm modded "flamebait", you're "insightful". So feel validated. America - Fuck Yeah!
Odd. I know quite a few Muslims who are unhappy about US policies, and none of them are in a "gulag".
Odd, I've never been to New York, so that doesn't exist either.
Let one of your Muslim friends wear an al-Qaeda tee-shirt and try to catch an airplane. Or for that matter, attend school, or demonstrate in Washington...