So, I say this from the perspective of someone who's actually done research on TeraHertz Imaging, which is what this is. You really can't see that much. I've seen a number of pictures of people of a couple of different body types, and in none of them could you see anything remotely nipple-like. You could see the larger forms of genitals, but not especially well. Also, the imaging doesn't respond to visible colors, just densities, so everything's just sort of flat and grey. You look more or less like the silver surfer, and heck, he's a "kid's" comic book character.
What you could see well were things like ceramic knives and explosives hidden under clothes that would otherwise be undetectable.
And at least for me, I'd rather have this than a full pat down any day of the week.
Hanging out your phone from a car, bus or (shock!) train is pretty dangerous stuff, maybe superman will find this thing handy.
I envision this, and I think they do to, as a turbine at the end of a long thin cable, probably with a magnetic mount. You'd stick it to the top of your car or the side of a bus, close the window, and be good to go. Assumedly, you could also stick it to the side of a house on a windy day.
Read the post. Blizzard specifically admitted that at any time the original owner could re-take the account, and that there was no way to prevent this. If he bought from a store or e-bay, etc. where the original owner is anonymous, this certainly isn't an option.
The place you bought it from owes you a refund. Most stores I go to now won't buy back any game that has a CD key tied to online play/accounts.
My girlfriend worked at a EBworld a few years ago. I don't know that it was company policy, but it was certainly known by the store manager that they often bought and sold Phantasy Star Online, which was associated with the Dreamcast serial number and could NEVER be transferred.
Apparently the stores you go to are more honest about it, but its definatly not uncommon for this to happen.
Besides, it's expressly stated that you should be able to resell this in the EULA, which is perhaps the more relevant point.
As much as I hate the man, that's not a valid point. The dept. of Homeland Security plans were started during the Clinton Administration. Furthermore, though I can't be sure of this last point, I've been told that Bush actually opposed the DHS at first.
But see this is a large part of my point. If all you are paying for is the content, then you are leasing. Because unless you are buying the rights entirely, you don't own anything. The only person who can 'own' information is the copy right holder. In the car-home-production example, it's still owned by ford, and thus they still have the right to control it and it's uses, whether they feel like sharing or not. I've tried to bring up this point before to lots of different people on all sides of the issue. Before anything can be acomplished, we have to decide whether we want to own a specific object, or whether we are simply paying for the right to listen for a while, like when you rent a movie. It may very well suck, but we cannot have the best of both worlds, and neither can the media companies.
As for the broken paper bag analogy, that's really not applicable. Of course you'll get a new bag from the grocery store, but if you bought stuff in jars and it broke after you left the store, then by 'act of god' or whatever, some of your property was destroyed, and the store is Not liable for a replacement.
If we can't reasonably accept the downside to way of looking at things, then nothing will ever get accomplished. We must be rational and find the scheme in which everyone is at least satisfied, because there is no way that all parties can get everything that they want. Hence the word "Compromise".
PS. Whatever you thought you paid for, whatever you want to pay for, whatever you think you should have to pay for, does not make that what you actually paid for.
Not to troll or anything, but is this really a matter of fair use? I suppose it makes sense that he's demonstrating a system to back up a movie collection in the event of scratching, but dvd's are pretty resistant to superficial damage anyways, and can usually be fixed with a 2-dollar kit.
Of course If you leave them in a car they can melt... but we've been likening software and media to cars for as long as I've read/. (for liability, warranties, etc.) and if your car should somehow melt or be snapped in half, you don't get a free replacement. Part of owning something is taking care of it.
It seems to me that while not the ONLY use, the far more common use of such a capability will be copying and distributing movies. Even without the distribution, and assuming that that FBI warning makes an exception for personal copying (Newsflash: It Doesn't) people will still be using this far away for illicit purposes. While it's fine to record a broadcast, not to mention already easy to do so, there really isn't any good reason why we need to be able to copy DVDs. Is there?
I'm not entirely certain, but I'm fairly sure that it's not illegal (yet) to recieve such data.
What I am sure of is that the moment you try to USE that data, you've just commited, say, credit card fraud, which is a felony carrying some years of jail time for each count.
You can't possibly know real public Transit pain until you've tried to get from anywhere to ANYwhere on Atlanta's "MARTA" It's really rather useless. Well, no, it goes to the airport. But that's about it. For a city the size of Atlanta, it's only got two lines. TWO! Supposedly you can get most places by getting off a train and taking buses, but the routes are so convoluted that the one time I tried to use them It took almost as much time as it would have to walk. And on top of all this, it costs $1.75, vs most cities' 50-80cents.
The way it has been explained to me, and which I fully agree with, is that with any of the recent forms of digital encoding, one of the biggest ways of saving space is to take a zone of the picture that is say, bluish-grey, like the sky, and then instead of including that same color over and over again each sample, a line of code is simply put in that tells the player:
1: be bluish grey here 2: hold that color for x seconds
The problem with this is that very subtle changes in light/color are lost, making backgrounds etc. look plastic-y and unnaturally constant. Film in whichever form, captures the actual color every time, ensuring the expression of every little nuance no matter how small.
Now, you might think that noone would every notice some tiny tiny difference in blue, and admittedly, if you showed them such a scene, I doubt anyone could say "that cloud isn't changing enough!" But the processing parts of the human brain tell their humans an amazing amount of information that doesn't register consciously, and it leads to that same feeling of "somethings off, it looks wierd, but I don't know why..."
Well, not the first, but one of them. They're are a lot of people out there that can get a cable modem from their cousin's friend's roomate who found it in a barn auction, that's probably made by connect-o-corp. Or possibly they just got the cheapest thing they could find in the bargain bin of Computer City, barely understanding enough to realize that they at least think they're saving some money by doing it themselves. AT&T is just protecting themselves from these sors of people who really don't understand that there is a definite difference in quality and support between devices on the market.
Plus, they probably figure that those people who really DO know what they're doing, and want a better modem, would be willing to pay a small extra fee (though 7$/month is too much. maybe 25 a year?) in order to use their own. Another possibility is to have a list of 'supported' modems, but that's hard to implement, more work for them, and leaves you stuck if you have an obscure modem, or one that was just released and 'not yet supported'.
Conclusion: Understandable, but too expensive.
A decision must be made
on
Fair IP Laws?
·
· Score: 1
Well, first of all, it needs to be decided which things constitute a licensed items, and which things constitute sold objects. When we buy the cd, do we own the music/software/whatever, or have we just paid for certain rights of use. If the first, then you can listen at will, sell to a friend, modify for your own uses etc. But there wouldn't be any copying really. You can't copy a car. If you lose or damage your cd, you'd have to buy another one. If you own a DVD and want to watch on a VCR, then you'd have to buy the tape version as well.
On the other hand, if it was a license, then you'd pay once, or perhaps recurringly, and not be able to distribute, modify, etc. but because you have paid for the RIGHT to use the material, and not the material itself, if the cd was ever lost, or broken, etc. then the provider would have to provide another, or at least, it would be perfectly legal to burn a copy of a friend's disc.
The problem is that both parties want the "best" of both worlds. Consumers want to be able to modify something they have bought, and sell it on to someone else once they're done with it. The producers on the other hand, want you to have to buy over and over again, and then don't want you to do anything other than their "approved" uses. In the end, one or the other must be picked, or perhaps a whole new paradigm for dealing with this new problems can be found, but until we can state concretely what the items in dispute actually are, we will never be able to regulate them or their sales/leasings.
I have also seen some press releases on this that cite the list of games as:
'Fear Effect,' 'Doom,' 'Mortal Combat' and 'The Resident Of Evil Creek'.
I don't know if this is a failure of the reporting media, or an example of the court obviously not caring enough to get it right. Does anyone else know something about this?
As much as I agree with the large part of those points, the whole last paragraph basically is flawed. Is copyright law currently being abbused horribly by the corporate media? YES. Is patent law being abused by certain bad apple software makers? YES. Are thes things in such bad shape that they should be done away with? Absolutely not!
Think about those same artists freely releasing their music for you to listen to. Let's assume no copyright law. Let's assume a recording company has little if any morality (stifles a snicker). Let's watch as this company claims that they or one of their artists wrote the song, and proceeds to play it all over the country, drawing a huge crowd using the company's marketing capital. Let's watch as any two bit crook with a printing press print out their own editions of "Lord of the Rings" or "Harry Potter" stripping the writer or their family of the credit and royalties that they do deserve. Let's watch as some corrupt company prints that new hit book without ever giving a cent to the truly gifted(assumedly) author, causing him or her to work 10 hours a day to feed his or her children, perhaps finishing one book in a lifetime instead of a world enriching library like Shakespeare's or Asimov's.
And patents? Think small business. What if a small firm of mechanical engineers creates a lightweight engine that can power 300 hp for 50 mpg. Let's say they spent 4 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars geting it right. And let's watch as adopts this technology to revolutionize their line of cars, and because NOONE owns the rights, that little firm has long since been out of business.
This is why these laws were originally made. to protect the creators, the innovators the little guys if you will. How can any of us possibly consider throwing away their hard earned rights just because they did not have the express purpose of "enriching my(your) life."
Well, forcing us to have a security feature is only part of a more common and frightening trend. It's becoming harder and harder for even those who really know cars to do anything to them. As a good example, several European manufacturors no longer allow repair manuals to be published for their models, usually forcing dealer maintenance for all but the most minor of needs.
I drive an Acura, and have in the past spent about US$20-$40 and
And yes, of course I could drive a KIA, but I'd rather drive a car that I can really enjoy driving without requiring dealer assistance everytime my oil needs to be changed, or a set of keys gets lost.
I agree. None of these gidgets would usefully deter such offenses, and they would be an awful waste of money that many many people just don't have to spend on a car. That's money that someone would spend of better brakes, or an air bag which is much more likely to save someone's life. Drunk driving is of course not acceptable, but we have to bring ourselves as a society to realize that, not just throw away convienience to prevent those people who want to abuse their freedoms from doing so.
Maybe this means harsher punishments, or more advertising, heck, most states don't even require drivers education! I don't have the answer, but I'm pretty well certain that that level of "security" isn't it.
Slashdot Mirror
So, I say this from the perspective of someone who's actually done research on TeraHertz Imaging, which is what this is. You really can't see that much. I've seen a number of pictures of people of a couple of different body types, and in none of them could you see anything remotely nipple-like. You could see the larger forms of genitals, but not especially well. Also, the imaging doesn't respond to visible colors, just densities, so everything's just sort of flat and grey. You look more or less like the silver surfer, and heck, he's a "kid's" comic book character.
What you could see well were things like ceramic knives and explosives hidden under clothes that would otherwise be undetectable.
And at least for me, I'd rather have this than a full pat down any day of the week.
Hanging out your phone from a car, bus or (shock!) train is pretty dangerous stuff, maybe superman will find this thing handy.
I envision this, and I think they do to, as a turbine at the end of a long thin cable, probably with a magnetic mount. You'd stick it to the top of your car or the side of a bus, close the window, and be good to go. Assumedly, you could also stick it to the side of a house on a windy day.
Read the post. Blizzard specifically admitted that at any time the original owner could re-take the account, and that there was no way to prevent this. If he bought from a store or e-bay, etc. where the original owner is anonymous, this certainly isn't an option.
The place you bought it from owes you a refund. Most stores I go to now won't buy back any game that has a CD key tied to online play/accounts.
My girlfriend worked at a EBworld a few years ago. I don't know that it was company policy, but it was certainly known by the store manager that they often bought and sold Phantasy Star Online, which was associated with the Dreamcast serial number and could NEVER be transferred.
Apparently the stores you go to are more honest about it, but its definatly not uncommon for this to happen. Besides, it's expressly stated that you should be able to resell this in the EULA, which is perhaps the more relevant point.
Maybe you shouldn't let 12 year olds buy 'Hitman' on their own. I'm ok with that. I wouldn't rent 'Exit to Eden' to a 15 year old either.
But a year in prison? That's flat out excessive.
As much as I hate the man, that's not a valid point. The dept. of Homeland Security plans were started during the Clinton Administration. Furthermore, though I can't be sure of this last point, I've been told that Bush actually opposed the DHS at first.
But see this is a large part of my point. If all you are paying for is the content, then you are leasing. Because unless you are buying the rights entirely, you don't own anything. The only person who can 'own' information is the copy right holder. In the car-home-production example, it's still owned by ford, and thus they still have the right to control it and it's uses, whether they feel like sharing or not. I've tried to bring up this point before to lots of different people on all sides of the issue. Before anything can be acomplished, we have to decide whether we want to own a specific object, or whether we are simply paying for the right to listen for a while, like when you rent a movie. It may very well suck, but we cannot have the best of both worlds, and neither can the media companies.
As for the broken paper bag analogy, that's really not applicable. Of course you'll get a new bag from the grocery store, but if you bought stuff in jars and it broke after you left the store, then by 'act of god' or whatever, some of your property was destroyed, and the store is Not liable for a replacement.
If we can't reasonably accept the downside to way of looking at things, then nothing will ever get accomplished. We must be rational and find the scheme in which everyone is at least satisfied, because there is no way that all parties can get everything that they want. Hence the word "Compromise".
PS. Whatever you thought you paid for, whatever you want to pay for, whatever you think you should have to pay for, does not make that what you actually paid for.
Not to troll or anything, but is this really a matter of fair use? I suppose it makes sense that he's demonstrating a system to back up a movie collection in the event of scratching, but dvd's are pretty resistant to superficial damage anyways, and can usually be fixed with a 2-dollar kit.
/. (for liability, warranties, etc.) and if your car should somehow melt or be snapped in half, you don't get a free replacement. Part of owning something is taking care of it.
Of course If you leave them in a car they can melt... but we've been likening software and media to cars for as long as I've read
It seems to me that while not the ONLY use, the far more common use of such a capability will be copying and distributing movies. Even without the distribution, and assuming that that FBI warning makes an exception for personal copying (Newsflash: It Doesn't) people will still be using this far away for illicit purposes. While it's fine to record a broadcast, not to mention already easy to do so, there really isn't any good reason why we need to be able to copy DVDs. Is there?
I'm not entirely certain, but I'm fairly sure that it's not illegal (yet) to recieve such data. What I am sure of is that the moment you try to USE that data, you've just commited, say, credit card fraud, which is a felony carrying some years of jail time for each count.
You can't possibly know real public Transit pain until you've tried to get from anywhere to ANYwhere on Atlanta's "MARTA" It's really rather useless. Well, no, it goes to the airport. But that's about it. For a city the size of Atlanta, it's only got two lines. TWO! Supposedly you can get most places by getting off a train and taking buses, but the routes are so convoluted that the one time I tried to use them It took almost as much time as it would have to walk. And on top of all this, it costs $1.75, vs most cities' 50-80cents.
The way it has been explained to me, and which I fully agree with, is that with any of the recent forms of digital encoding, one of the biggest ways of saving space is to take a zone of the picture that is say, bluish-grey, like the sky, and then instead of including that same color over and over again each sample, a line of code is simply put in that tells the player:
1: be bluish grey here
2: hold that color for x seconds
The problem with this is that very subtle changes in light/color are lost, making backgrounds etc. look plastic-y and unnaturally constant. Film in whichever form, captures the actual color every time, ensuring the expression of every little nuance no matter how small.
Now, you might think that noone would every notice some tiny tiny difference in blue, and admittedly, if you showed them such a scene, I doubt anyone could say "that cloud isn't changing enough!" But the processing parts of the human brain tell their humans an amazing amount of information that doesn't register consciously, and it leads to that same feeling of "somethings off, it looks wierd, but I don't know why..."
Well, not the first, but one of them. They're are a lot of people out there that can get a cable modem from their cousin's friend's roomate who found it in a barn auction, that's probably made by connect-o-corp. Or possibly they just got the cheapest thing they could find in the bargain bin of Computer City, barely understanding enough to realize that they at least think they're saving some money by doing it themselves. AT&T is just protecting themselves from these sors of people who really don't understand that there is a definite difference in quality and support between devices on the market.
Plus, they probably figure that those people who really DO know what they're doing, and want a better modem, would be willing to pay a small extra fee (though 7$/month is too much. maybe 25 a year?) in order to use their own. Another possibility is to have a list of 'supported' modems, but that's hard to implement, more work for them, and leaves you stuck if you have an obscure modem, or one that was just released and 'not yet supported'.
Conclusion: Understandable, but too expensive.
Well, first of all, it needs to be decided which things constitute a licensed items, and which things constitute sold objects. When we buy the cd, do we own the music/software/whatever, or have we just paid for certain rights of use. If the first, then you can listen at will, sell to a friend, modify for your own uses etc. But there wouldn't be any copying really. You can't copy a car. If you lose or damage your cd, you'd have to buy another one. If you own a DVD and want to watch on a VCR, then you'd have to buy the tape version as well.
On the other hand, if it was a license, then you'd pay once, or perhaps recurringly, and not be able to distribute, modify, etc. but because you have paid for the RIGHT to use the material, and not the material itself, if the cd was ever lost, or broken, etc. then the provider would have to provide another, or at least, it would be perfectly legal to burn a copy of a friend's disc.
The problem is that both parties want the "best" of both worlds. Consumers want to be able to modify something they have bought, and sell it on to someone else once they're done with it. The producers on the other hand, want you to have to buy over and over again, and then don't want you to do anything other than their "approved" uses.
In the end, one or the other must be picked, or perhaps a whole new paradigm for dealing with this new problems can be found, but until we can state concretely what the items in dispute actually are, we will never be able to regulate them or their sales/leasings.
I have also seen some press releases on this that cite the list of games as:
'Fear Effect,' 'Doom,' 'Mortal Combat' and 'The Resident Of Evil Creek'.
I don't know if this is a failure of the reporting media, or an example of the court obviously not caring enough to get it right. Does anyone else know something about this?
As much as I agree with the large part of those points, the whole last paragraph basically is flawed. Is copyright law currently being abbused horribly by the corporate media? YES. Is patent law being abused by certain bad apple software makers? YES. Are thes things in such bad shape that they should be done away with? Absolutely not! Think about those same artists freely releasing their music for you to listen to. Let's assume no copyright law. Let's assume a recording company has little if any morality (stifles a snicker). Let's watch as this company claims that they or one of their artists wrote the song, and proceeds to play it all over the country, drawing a huge crowd using the company's marketing capital. Let's watch as any two bit crook with a printing press print out their own editions of "Lord of the Rings" or "Harry Potter" stripping the writer or their family of the credit and royalties that they do deserve. Let's watch as some corrupt company prints that new hit book without ever giving a cent to the truly gifted(assumedly) author, causing him or her to work 10 hours a day to feed his or her children, perhaps finishing one book in a lifetime instead of a world enriching library like Shakespeare's or Asimov's. And patents? Think small business. What if a small firm of mechanical engineers creates a lightweight engine that can power 300 hp for 50 mpg. Let's say they spent 4 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars geting it right. And let's watch as adopts this technology to revolutionize their line of cars, and because NOONE owns the rights, that little firm has long since been out of business. This is why these laws were originally made. to protect the creators, the innovators the little guys if you will. How can any of us possibly consider throwing away their hard earned rights just because they did not have the express purpose of "enriching my(your) life."
Well, forcing us to have a security feature is only part of a more common and frightening trend. It's becoming harder and harder for even those who really know cars to do anything to them. As a good example, several European manufacturors no longer allow repair manuals to be published for their models, usually forcing dealer maintenance for all but the most minor of needs.
I drive an Acura, and have in the past spent about US$20-$40 and And yes, of course I could drive a KIA, but I'd rather drive a car that I can really enjoy driving without requiring dealer assistance everytime my oil needs to be changed, or a set of keys gets lost.
I agree. None of these gidgets would usefully deter such offenses, and they would be an awful waste of money that many many people just don't have to spend on a car. That's money that someone would spend of better brakes, or an air bag which is much more likely to save someone's life. Drunk driving is of course not acceptable, but we have to bring ourselves as a society to realize that, not just throw away convienience to prevent those people who want to abuse their freedoms from doing so. Maybe this means harsher punishments, or more advertising, heck, most states don't even require drivers education! I don't have the answer, but I'm pretty well certain that that level of "security" isn't it.