Moses Znaimer scares me. He has too much power, dealt to him by the CRTC. The CRTC also scares me. Moreso than MZ.
With the exceptions of CBC and CTV, he controls any aspect of our television pop culture that the Americans don't. Other than these 2 'networks' (and local cable stations), you'd be hard pressed to find Canadian TV that doesn't have his name in the credits, usually as Executive Producer.
Did you see the pictures of the rocket? It looks like something that Marvin the Martian from the cartoons would be flying!
Remember that this guy is using the royalty money from his toy inventions to do this. He's a toy inventor. Why would we expect his rocket to look like anything but what he's good at?
How is it possible for this to apply to something that didn't exist yet?
I think an inventor is allowed to patent something that doesn't yet exist.
If I'm not mistaken, "Velcro" was was patented before it was possible to produce the nylon hooks. Unfortunately, Velcro was invented in 1941, and the USPTO database only seems to go back to 1976, so I can't look it up myself.
Actually, I've got some pretty good results from scanning myself directly on my scanner.
For some real fun scanning your face, start with your left cheek on the scanner, and as the scanning head moves, slowly turn your head so that your right cheek is touching the scanner when the scan is complete.
Creates some... shall we say... interesting results.
>I'm interested to see how they'll >make sure I'm Canadian through software
login.html: <FORM ACTION="mainpage.php3"> <INPUT TYPE=CHECKBOX NAME="can"> By clicking this button, I acknowlege that I am Canadian, and that I am NOT a citizen of another country, trying to gain unauthorized access to your network. This is a legally binding contract between myself and the service provider. [insert rest of legal gobblygook here.] <INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT VALUE="I AM CANADIAN"> </FORM>
I was given the task earlier this week to track down some prices for a web serving solution that my company is looking at setting up. The specs included Allaire's Coldfusion Server (for those not enlightened, Coldfusion is remotely similar to ASP and PHP), backed by Microsoft SQL Server 7.
I had heard, from an acquaintance that there was some sort of special licensing when putting an SQL server on the 'net, so I checked out the MSSQL website, and ran accross something called an "Internet Connector License" on the Licensing and Pricing page.
According to this page, you need to purchase a license for each client of MSSQL Server. Makes sense. Client licensing is commonly used in the industry. I have no big beef with this.
In my proposed setup, as I mentioned, the web users would connect to the webserver, which in turn connects to the Coldfusion Daemon, which requests information from the SQL server. Coldfusion would be the only client of the SQL server. Nothing else would be connecting. So, naturally, I thought that I would only need one(1) Client Access License (CAL) for the Coldfusion Server.
Microsoft thinks differently. See, according to Microsoft's legal department (and my supplier), each user of my web server is indirectly a client of the SQL server, and therefore, I need licenses for user who receives pages generated by the Coldfusion daemon.
Since it's pretty much impossible to determine how many different users will visit the server, and VERY impractical to try and maintain a bank of licenses for the userbase, Microsoft has 'conveniently' created a special licensing package which covers all internet based users.
The Internet Connector License is $2999USD. This is ridiculous. There is no added value to this 'product', no extra features, and is just an underhanded way to make extra cash. Web users never connect to the SQL server. By this logic, if I pull information from a MSSQL server put it into a word processor, and print 100 copies of this document, I need 100 client licenses.
Other software doesn't repartition and format my hard drive without asking.
I don't download the newest version of Netscape, and fear executing it because of this threat.
It's completely unethical for software to exhibit this behaviour.
So, no, I didn't RTFM, because I've installed Windows dozens of times, but always on an empty, or previously partitioned disk that had windows or dos on it. I was not afraid of losing data, because I mistakenly trusted an installer I've used dozens of times. Do you re-read all of the documentation on the CD every time you install a new version of your favourite Linux distro?
I needed to use some windows software last week. (Photoshop -- yes, I'm aware of the Gimp, and Premiere)
I had Redhat on my 8 gig drive, on a 6 gig partition, and an EMPTY 2 gig partition.
So, I popped in the Windows98 CD (a real CD, none of that Recovery crap) to install Windows.
Boots of the CD fine, goes into a 'checking hardware screen', everything looks fine. Go into Windows, once it's installed, and notice that, somehow, there's 8 gigs allocated to windows.
Turns out Windows AUTOMATICALLY RE-PARTITIONED my hard drive on install.
While the company is within it's legal rights to dictate how people who don't have permission use their intellectual property, this is anything but productive.
If it wasn't for the net, I never would've heard of this show.
It's irresponsible for a web site to say, "Well, gee, here are all these illegal warez/MP3/whatever sites, but you really shouldn't go there with the intention of stealing someone's intellectual property. And if you do, well, we can't be held responsible".
I completely agree that it's irresponsible. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but this practice (linking to questionable content) is not illegal. At least not yet.
That's the whole point.
If this goes through, it sets a NASTY precedent. I understand that precedent isn't law, but it seems to be treated so.
The lawmaking should be left to lawmakers, even though they occasionally (interpret that at will) screw up their lawmaking, and not to whatever company has more lawyers, and more cash, and whoever the court wishes to appease.
but I would expect that 99.9% of the links that are followed are for pirated music.
It's still not illegal.
I can go two blocks over to the local tobacconist, and pick up a bong, a hash pipe, and various types of rolling papers with certain leaf logos printed on the package. It's not illegal to sell this 'paraphenalia' (sp?). Everyone knows that people use this stuff to smoke pot, but if you say the words 'bong' or 'hash pipe' in the store, the tobacconist quickly informs you that these tools are 'Tobacco Sampling Devices'.
Sure, 99.9% or people use them to smoke pot, but it's not illegal. (Selling these devices, not smoking pot).
Now, if he were marketing these as tools to help you get high, he'd most likely get busted tomorrow.
Is it illegal for me to tell you where to buy crack? Where the 'corner-girls' can be purchased?
What about if I draw a map to these places? Give driving directions?
I'm all for treating the web as a new medium, but come on. If this sets a precident, will it be illegal to link to questionable content? What if I link to a link to this content. What if I link to google on my homepage, and google 'accidentally' links to questionable content? Is my link illegal, because it's obscurely linking to illegal content?
Although 350MB is still ridiculously large, this will lend credence to the claims that DeCSS is aiding piracy.
A good counter-argument to this is simple.
When you encode video at such a low ratio, you lose a LOT of quality. I seriously doubt that I could tell the difference between VHS and DVD when encoded in this format.
People trade movies that were recoded with 8MM Video, on a tripod in an empty theatre for that matter. If you want the quality you buy the DVD.
Same as music. In my car, with the factory sound system (Chrysler makes some sweet Inifinity speakers), I can DEFINATELY tell the difference between tracks I've burned, from compressed and uncompressed audio. If you want the quality, you buy the CD.
If I'm not mistaken, Microsoft's ASF format has been using MPEG4 for a while now.
With ASF, you can easily fit a movie onto a CD. This works great with really BRIGHT footage, but for dark titles, like The Matrix and the 6th Sense, it pretty much sucks the nut. The darks all blend together, and become quite.. uh.. MPEGgy. Weird artifactish type things start showing up, and the video gets pretty chunky.
It's like losing low tones on music. The darks become all chunky, vague, and distorted.
Then again, what do you expect, for a movie that fits on a CD?
My Kensington Thinking Mouse has four application specific programmable buttons. It is attached to my G3. HA HA HA! Let's act really condescending and assume that Mac users know nothing about using multi-button mice! The Xerox Alto had a three-button mouse; would that make it superior to the standard PC two button? Why should computers have to have mice at all? Nearly everyone here still seems to think that people should adapt to computers and not vice versa. This kind of thinking keeps many people away from computers for fear of screwing them up because they think only "experts" can PROPERLY and CORRECTLY use them. Get off your high horse and look at the big picture: computers are still WAY too complex and inflexible.
It's also pretty funny to watch them overreact to a joke.
Ahh yes, but with that you get access to our wonderful Healthcare system!
You're joking, right? I mean, it's good that the people who can't afford insurance can still get healthcare, but since EVERYONE gets it free, it's way over abused.
I think I might need stitches in my toe right now, but I don't have time to wait in outpatients at the hospital for 3 hours for some nurse to tell me I don't need them.
People go to the hospital for hangnails. They don't care. As soon as anything -- the tiniest little thing -- comes up, off to the emergency room. "I twisted my ankle."
I had mono a couple years ago. Went to the doctor, she told me that I needed to have bloodwork done that night, after the blood clinic was closed, and the only place to do it was in outpatients.
I waited for 2 1/2 hours for the bloodnurse to come and take blood for 2 minutes. I could've spent that time sleeping. Mono is nasty that way. I fought sleep the whole time I was there, and had a severe headache.
Anyway, my point is that if people aren't accountable (such as paying for insurance, and having insurance companies ask questions), then they will abuse the system. Oh, and that if you're actually paying for service, that is, if a hospital is trying to turn a profit, the hospital will see you as a customer, one they need to please, and not just "some guy who needs stitches in his toe".
Slashdot Mirror
As for a "global FCC," well that's just a huge stinker of a solution. After all, look at the marvelous job they do here in the US...
At least you don't have a CRTC.
*shudders at the thought of Canadian Content laws.*
Moses Znaimer scares me. He has too much power, dealt to him by the CRTC. The CRTC also scares me. Moreso than MZ.
With the exceptions of CBC and CTV, he controls any aspect of our television pop culture that the Americans don't. Other than these 2 'networks' (and local cable stations), you'd be hard pressed to find Canadian TV that doesn't have his name in the credits, usually as Executive Producer.
SXLHBMFT.
Super X-Large Huge Bigass Mo Fo of a Telescope?
(I'm not an astronomer.)
Try this in QBASIC (on windows9x CD)
'causes GPF, but not BSOD
DEF SEG = &H0000
POKE 32, 32
END
Did you see the pictures of the rocket? It looks like something that Marvin the Martian from the cartoons would be flying!
Remember that this guy is using the royalty money from his toy inventions to do this. He's a toy inventor. Why would we expect his rocket to look like anything but what he's good at?
It's a standard self extracting zip file. I'm not as knowledgable about the mac as I'd like to be, but any unzipping tool will handle it nicely.
I'd post a copy of it here, but.. well... we all know what happened last time someone did something like that. (-:
The honestly expect programmers to pronounce this C sharp , when we all say pound for "#".
This comes somewhat naturally (pun intended) for those of us who read music.
(# is the musical symbol to augment a natural note a half tone, making it sharp)
How is it possible for this to apply to something that didn't exist yet?
I think an inventor is allowed to patent something that doesn't yet exist.
If I'm not mistaken, "Velcro" was was patented before it was possible to produce the nylon hooks.
Unfortunately, Velcro was invented in 1941, and the USPTO database only seems to go back to 1976, so I can't look it up myself.
Another fun thing to do is scan your hand, but move it with the light as the scanning head crosses it.
You can make 12" long fingers. (-:
Actually, I've got some pretty good results from scanning myself directly on my scanner.
For some real fun scanning your face, start with your left cheek on the scanner, and as the scanning head moves, slowly turn your head so that your right cheek is touching the scanner when the scan is complete.
Creates some... shall we say... interesting results.
There was a mini one of these kicking around the Geekpride Festival back in April. I think it was at the ThinkGeek table.
also offtopic:
I paid $0.789CDN per LITRE (approx 4L in a gallon.. like 3.78 or something like that) last night.
Don't complain about YOUR prices.
Hmm.. It's strange they didn't ask:
If you walk down to the nearest McDonalds and order Pizza, do they laugh at you? (McD's sells pizza here)
Do you avoid drinking Mountain Dew after supper because of the high caffeine content? (Dew doesn't contain caffeine here)
Color or Colour? (detects Americans, but not Brits)
Which is correct: "I'm gonna go buy a soda" or "I'm gonna go buy a pop"?
Did you hear of the Bare Naked Ladies before 1997?
What about Blue Rodeo, or the Tragically hip?
Does Moses Znaimer control your pop culture?
Is your takehome pay actually LOWER since you got that raise last month, due to taxes?
Where's Nunavut?
What's east of Quebec?
I could go on and on, but I won't. This is already offtopic enough.
>I'm interested to see how they'll
>make sure I'm Canadian through software
login.html:
<FORM ACTION="mainpage.php3">
<INPUT TYPE=CHECKBOX NAME="can">
By clicking this button, I acknowlege that I am Canadian, and that I am NOT a citizen of another country, trying to gain unauthorized access to your network. This is a legally binding contract between myself and the service provider. [insert rest of legal gobblygook here.]
<INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT VALUE="I AM CANADIAN">
</FORM>
I was given the task earlier this week to track down some prices for a web serving solution that my company is looking at setting up. The specs included Allaire's Coldfusion Server (for those not enlightened, Coldfusion is remotely similar to ASP and PHP), backed by Microsoft SQL Server 7.
I had heard, from an acquaintance that there was some sort of special licensing when putting an SQL server on the 'net, so I checked out the MSSQL website, and ran accross something called an "Internet Connector License" on the Licensing and Pricing page.
According to this page, you need to purchase a license for each client of MSSQL Server. Makes sense. Client licensing is commonly used in the industry. I have no big beef with this.
In my proposed setup, as I mentioned, the web users would connect to the webserver, which in turn connects to the Coldfusion Daemon, which requests information from the SQL server. Coldfusion would be the only client of the SQL server. Nothing else would be connecting. So, naturally, I thought that I would only need one(1) Client Access License (CAL) for the Coldfusion Server.
Microsoft thinks differently. See, according to Microsoft's legal department (and my supplier), each user of my web server is indirectly a client of the SQL server, and therefore, I need licenses for user who receives pages generated by the Coldfusion daemon.
Since it's pretty much impossible to determine how many different users will visit the server, and VERY impractical to try and maintain a bank of licenses for the userbase, Microsoft has 'conveniently' created a special licensing package which covers all internet based users.
The Internet Connector License is $2999USD. This is ridiculous. There is no added value to this 'product', no extra features, and is just an underhanded way to make extra cash. Web users never connect to the SQL server. By this logic, if I pull information from a MSSQL server put it into a word processor, and print 100 copies of this document, I need 100 client licenses.
THIS is a questionable EULA.
Other software doesn't repartition and format my hard drive without asking.
I don't download the newest version of Netscape, and fear executing it because of this threat.
It's completely unethical for software to exhibit this behaviour.
So, no, I didn't RTFM, because I've installed Windows dozens of times, but always on an empty, or previously partitioned disk that had windows or dos on it. I was not afraid of losing data, because I mistakenly trusted an installer I've used dozens of times. Do you re-read all of the documentation on the CD every time you install a new version of your favourite Linux distro?
Speaking of re-installing...
I needed to use some windows software last week. (Photoshop -- yes, I'm aware of the Gimp, and Premiere)
I had Redhat on my 8 gig drive, on a 6 gig partition, and an EMPTY 2 gig partition.
So, I popped in the Windows98 CD (a real CD, none of that Recovery crap) to install Windows.
Boots of the CD fine, goes into a 'checking hardware screen', everything looks fine. Go into Windows, once it's installed, and notice that, somehow, there's 8 gigs allocated to windows.
Turns out Windows AUTOMATICALLY RE-PARTITIONED my hard drive on install.
Needless to say, I'm still miffed.
While the company is within it's legal rights to dictate how people who don't have permission use their intellectual property, this is anything but productive.
If it wasn't for the net, I never would've heard of this show.
It's irresponsible for a web site to say, "Well, gee, here are all these illegal warez/MP3/whatever sites, but you really shouldn't go there with the intention of stealing someone's intellectual property. And if you do, well, we can't be held responsible".
I completely agree that it's irresponsible. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but this practice (linking to questionable content) is not illegal. At least not yet.
That's the whole point.
If this goes through, it sets a NASTY precedent. I understand that precedent isn't law, but it seems to be treated so.
The lawmaking should be left to lawmakers, even though they occasionally (interpret that at will) screw up their lawmaking, and not to whatever company has more lawyers, and more cash, and whoever the court wishes to appease.
but I would expect that 99.9% of the links that are followed are for pirated music.
It's still not illegal.
I can go two blocks over to the local tobacconist, and pick up a bong, a hash pipe, and various types of rolling papers with certain leaf logos printed on the package. It's not illegal to sell this 'paraphenalia' (sp?). Everyone knows that people use this stuff to smoke pot, but if you say the words 'bong' or 'hash pipe' in the store, the tobacconist quickly informs you that these tools are 'Tobacco Sampling Devices'.
Sure, 99.9% or people use them to smoke pot, but it's not illegal. (Selling these devices, not smoking pot).
Now, if he were marketing these as tools to help you get high, he'd most likely get busted tomorrow.
It's all a matter of context.
Is it illegal for me to tell you where to buy crack? Where the 'corner-girls' can be purchased?
What about if I draw a map to these places? Give driving directions?
I'm all for treating the web as a new medium, but come on. If this sets a precident, will it be illegal to link to questionable content? What if I link to a link to this content. What if I link to google on my homepage, and google 'accidentally' links to questionable content? Is my link illegal, because it's obscurely linking to illegal content?
When will this stop?
Although 350MB is still ridiculously large, this will lend credence to the claims that DeCSS is aiding piracy.
A good counter-argument to this is simple.
When you encode video at such a low ratio, you lose a LOT of quality. I seriously doubt that I could tell the difference between VHS and DVD when encoded in this format.
People trade movies that were recoded with 8MM Video, on a tripod in an empty theatre for that matter. If you want the quality you buy the DVD.
Same as music. In my car, with the factory sound system (Chrysler makes some sweet Inifinity speakers), I can DEFINATELY tell the difference between tracks I've burned, from compressed and uncompressed audio. If you want the quality, you buy the CD.
If I'm not mistaken, Microsoft's ASF format has been using MPEG4 for a while now.
With ASF, you can easily fit a movie onto a CD. This works great with really BRIGHT footage, but for dark titles, like The Matrix and the 6th Sense, it pretty much sucks the nut. The darks all blend together, and become quite.. uh.. MPEGgy. Weird artifactish type things start showing up, and the video gets pretty chunky.
It's like losing low tones on music. The darks become all chunky, vague, and distorted.
Then again, what do you expect, for a movie that fits on a CD?
My Kensington Thinking Mouse has four application specific programmable buttons. It is attached to my G3. HA HA HA! Let's act really condescending and assume that Mac users know nothing about using multi-button mice! The Xerox Alto had a three-button mouse; would that make it superior to the standard PC two button? Why should computers have to have mice at all? Nearly everyone here still seems to think that people should adapt to computers and not vice versa. This kind of thinking keeps many people away from computers for fear of screwing them up because they think only "experts" can PROPERLY and CORRECTLY use them. Get off your high horse and look at the big picture: computers are still WAY too complex and inflexible.
It's also pretty funny to watch them overreact to a joke.
Ahh yes, but with that you get access to our wonderful Healthcare system!
You're joking, right? I mean, it's good that the people who can't afford insurance can still get healthcare, but since EVERYONE gets it free, it's way over abused.
I think I might need stitches in my toe right now, but I don't have time to wait in outpatients at the hospital for 3 hours for some nurse to tell me I don't need them.
People go to the hospital for hangnails. They don't care. As soon as anything -- the tiniest little thing -- comes up, off to the emergency room. "I twisted my ankle."
I had mono a couple years ago. Went to the doctor, she told me that I needed to have bloodwork done that night, after the blood clinic was closed, and the only place to do it was in outpatients.
I waited for 2 1/2 hours for the bloodnurse to come and take blood for 2 minutes. I could've spent that time sleeping. Mono is nasty that way. I fought sleep the whole time I was there, and had a severe headache.
Anyway, my point is that if people aren't accountable (such as paying for insurance, and having insurance companies ask questions), then they will abuse the system. Oh, and that if you're actually paying for service, that is, if a hospital is trying to turn a profit, the hospital will see you as a customer, one they need to please, and not just "some guy who needs stitches in his toe".