Hogwash. Life is actually pretty damn strong. Think of the people who are trapped in a flooded, frigid river for 45 minutes and survive. Think of the people who's parachute fails and they still bounce and survive on landing. Think of the people who lose limbs in accidents and still live life to the fullest - some even beyond the average person.
We are actually a very strong species with, for the most part, a great will to live. So stop talking about how fragile your life is and get out there and live.
So why don't you or Thomas Galvin go work there? Odds are they are understaff, overworked, and underpaid. That is not a fault of the process but of congress for not providing adequate funding.
It is really easy to attack them on a case by case basis but I would like to see you read and understand even 50% of what goes through their hands. Maybe this one you would understand but what if the next was for some kind of farm equipment?
Micosoft Office License Fees - $450 Visual Studio ( Development ) Fees - $2000 Windows itself License Fees - $199
Ok - That's less than $3K and that is assuming they paid retail. The real answer is in the article - the $22K also includes Unix boxes. I know we all enjoy blaming Microsoft but they are not the only one ringing up the bill here. I also think that this is typical press release inflation for the benefit on shareholders. Notice that they bury in the article the huge effort it took to rewrite the code.
First of all you are assuming that the lawyers don't work for this company directly. The company I work for has its own lawyers and they sure as hell don't go the the stock owners everytime they make a decision. This also answers your question about cost since these lawyers get paid a regular salary and so they have to justify their job by pursuing lawsuits.
Second, it is possible that these lawyers are hired by the Venture Capitalists who want to make sure that they don't lose their investment. These guys have very deep pockets and will let the lawyers do what they need to do to make money. If that includes applying for patents then so be it.
Then I challenge you to come up with a better system. The problem is not with the system but with funding. There are millions of patents that go through the system every year but only a few thousand patent clerks. There is no possible way for a patent clerk to go through an application, understand the technology involved in the patent, look for prior art, and judge whether the prior art invalidates the patent.
This is where our countries check and balances, 3 branches of government comes into play. It is up to the legal system to determine whether a patent request is valid or not. The problem is that the legal system has become a joke. The time and expense involved with pursuing these cases makes it so that the deepest pocket almost always wins.
What is the fix, you ask? Penalties for invalid patents. If you patent something and don't do an adequate job searching for prior art BEFORE applying to the PTO then you should be fined the time it took the PTO clerk to review the application, all court fees for defendants, and maybe even a punitive payment. This would mean that defendants could fight an honest battle knowing that if they come out on top they don't have to pay the mounting legal fees. It would also make these frivolous patents much more expensive.
The direction M$ wants to take the world in (not where we might want to go today,) is one where PCs boot off of a network
Actually, that is Sun Microsystem's catch line - The Network is the Computer - or at least it used to be. Sun was the one with the whole goal of going back to dummy terminals.
Of course, having only a few major vendors can hurt the consumer also. If they all start banding together against Microsoft then they start taking the shape of an Oligopoloy. Microsoft won't give them the licensing deals and these companies will use that as an excuse to raise prices $100 when it really may only cost them $50 more.
It's called a contract. Microsoft says we will sell you Windows licenses at penny's on the dollar but you can't sell computers without an OS. Dell says - duh ok - and signs the contract. Otherwise they would pay the same OEM rate that all other non-contracted vendors pay.
I don't see Microsoft "squashing Dell." Dell ranks about 20 places above Microsoft on the Fortune 500. The worst Microsoft could do is pull the really cushy agreement that Dell has and make Dell pay full OEM price. Dell would have to raise its price a little and maybe lose some customers but not be squashed.
Fair use does not apply to trademarks only copyrights. Two very different worlds. The name and image of Godzilla make up the trademark. The image of Godzilla is a copyrighted image. Trademarks are handles by the USPTO while Copyrights are handled by the Libary of Congress.
Something tells me that the revenue they see from.NET services is about 0.00000001% of the revenue they see from licensing Windows and Office. They want you to use Windows but if you choose not to they still want some of your dollar.
You do know that the pop-up's are already optional in AOL. It is just that 99.9% of people don't know about them. In AOL7 you can go to settings-preferences and choose marketing. In there is an option to disable pop-up ads as well as other forms of marketing.
If that is the case then that is something they need to do upfront. All of the people frozen now will be SOL. If anything like this is ever developed I think it will only be of use to people who are frozen after they figure out how to keep everything intact during the freeze.
What will stop a crooked couple in the future from stealing some of Ted's frozen Dna, implanting it in themselves
Well first it wouldn't take a couple to clone Ted Williams. You just need a donor egg and a fertile womb.
Second, there is a lot of nurture involved with human development. There is nothing saying that Ted Williams' clone will become a super star baseball player. Just look at Mickey Mantle's kids.
Third, with the way this country is heading you will have to take Ted's head to another country because Human Cloning will not be legal in the US.
I should just copy this post so that I don't have to retype it when someone doesn't know what a derivative work is. Only the original creator or someone he delegates can create a derivative work under copyright law. Circular 14 from the US Copyright Office clarifies everything.
Fair use is a much fuzzier topic but I would agree that it is one thing to modify your own copy and something totally different to distibute it (for free or pay) en masse.
a) I know why the article made the comparison. If all I did here was rehash what the article said then I might as well not post. I merely added my insight into the situation.
b)Real has given away its basic player since the beginning so I don't see how they can make the claim that Microsoft undercut them.
c)99.999% of all software is not very good at 1.0. That is why we have 1.1's,1.5's and 2.0's. One could argue that Mozilla is good at 1.0 but even they have released 1.1 beta. The hope is that they get it right eventually. Microsoft got it right with 6.4. It is by far a superior product to anything Real has put out. Unfortunately, Microsoft went the route of most commercial companies and didn't let a good app lie.
d)When I installed AOL on my girlfriend's computer it forced me to install Real. Real then took over her file associations. Now how Real compensated AOL for the placement I don't know but the point is that Microsoft enemies can work together to fight the behemoth.
The article compares Microsoft's battle with Real to their past battle with Netscape. It is an intersting comparison since both battles I believe were a combination of Microsoft's maneuvering and the other companies failure to put out an adequate product. Real has consistently put out bloated, resource-hogging, spywaring, bug-ridden software.
RealOne is a huge improvement over previous products but you still have to be careful with it re-associating itself with certain file types. I think what has helped Real, though, is the fact the Windows Media Player really peaked at 6.4 and has itself become bloated.
If your broadband account is just giving you access and one email address then you are getting ripped. Go our to dslreports.com and find a better ISP. At $60 per month, Speakeasy offers 608/128 ADSL with 2 email addresses, 10 MB storage and 2 static IP addresses so you can host all the sites you ever want (and they allow it). They also have unlimited dial up if you travel or if your dsl goes down (which doesn't happen as often anymore).
Are you sure it is the sound card? If you are using an ATI card it is because you updated to the latest drivers. Downgrade one version and everything will work perfectly. This was my problem and I can now play Neverwinter Nights for hours on end without ever crashing. If you continue to have problems I recommend reading the forums on the bioware website.
You are going on the assumption that growth will continue as it has. As the computer industry has found out, technology may continue to advance at the same pace but consumner demand is not. My girlfriend continues to use her 3 year old 450 Mhz Dell (with Windows 2000). Contrary to popular slashdot belief, she doesn't crash, she never restarts and she never gets viruses. She doesn't play games so she has all the speed she needs. We have 768 Kbps SDSL and I have not once heard her say she wished we had faster. She is the typical end user. People like her will drive demand not you and me.
Give it a few years when everyone has a 10Gbps connection
How do you define a few years? 5, 10, 50? Don't hold your breath for speed even near that. As it is, the broadband industry has started raising prices making even getting 1 Mbps cost prohibitive.
It's been said many times before but in order for broadband to take off in the regular consumer market (not you or me) there will have to a real killer ap. DivX is far from being that killer ap.
I have downloaded a few movies but I find renting from Blockbuster a much more worthwhile endeavor. When I rent I still get the high quality video (I don't have HDTV, though) and dolby digital sound. I also get to watch all of the extras that are included in most DVD's (something the music industry rarely does). At the end of the day, the movies I really would like to own aren't (officially) on DVD yet anyway (Star Wars, Indiana Jones)
Ah so I misunderstood your first post. You are saying that the DMCA protects Google and the such. A pro-DMCA post is not common in these parts.
Also note - linking users to an online location containing infringing material or infringing activity. Indexing is only part of the second part. In its essence it talks about protecting providers that contain any links to infringing material as long as they have no knowledge yada yada yada.
Exactly how does this apply to the current situation? It talks about limitation of liabilty for ISP's. The first is about caching which is not related at all to the topic and the second talks about hosting or linking to information that is in violation of copyright laws. I am assuming that the information on the NPR site is not in violation.
Slashdot Mirror
Hogwash. Life is actually pretty damn strong. Think of the people who are trapped in a flooded, frigid river for 45 minutes and survive. Think of the people who's parachute fails and they still bounce and survive on landing. Think of the people who lose limbs in accidents and still live life to the fullest - some even beyond the average person.
We are actually a very strong species with, for the most part, a great will to live. So stop talking about how fragile your life is and get out there and live.
Nothing is absolute in this world and no lawyer or law professor would ever use anything as absolute as always. To every rule there is an exception.
So why don't you or Thomas Galvin go work there? Odds are they are understaff, overworked, and underpaid. That is not a fault of the process but of congress for not providing adequate funding.
It is really easy to attack them on a case by case basis but I would like to see you read and understand even 50% of what goes through their hands. Maybe this one you would understand but what if the next was for some kind of farm equipment?
Micosoft Office License Fees - $450
Visual Studio ( Development ) Fees - $2000
Windows itself License Fees - $199
Ok - That's less than $3K and that is assuming they paid retail. The real answer is in the article - the $22K also includes Unix boxes. I know we all enjoy blaming Microsoft but they are not the only one ringing up the bill here. I also think that this is typical press release inflation for the benefit on shareholders. Notice that they bury in the article the huge effort it took to rewrite the code.
First of all you are assuming that the lawyers don't work for this company directly. The company I work for has its own lawyers and they sure as hell don't go the the stock owners everytime they make a decision. This also answers your question about cost since these lawyers get paid a regular salary and so they have to justify their job by pursuing lawsuits.
Second, it is possible that these lawyers are hired by the Venture Capitalists who want to make sure that they don't lose their investment. These guys have very deep pockets and will let the lawyers do what they need to do to make money. If that includes applying for patents then so be it.
Then I challenge you to come up with a better system. The problem is not with the system but with funding. There are millions of patents that go through the system every year but only a few thousand patent clerks. There is no possible way for a patent clerk to go through an application, understand the technology involved in the patent, look for prior art, and judge whether the prior art invalidates the patent.
This is where our countries check and balances, 3 branches of government comes into play. It is up to the legal system to determine whether a patent request is valid or not. The problem is that the legal system has become a joke. The time and expense involved with pursuing these cases makes it so that the deepest pocket almost always wins.
What is the fix, you ask? Penalties for invalid patents. If you patent something and don't do an adequate job searching for prior art BEFORE applying to the PTO then you should be fined the time it took the PTO clerk to review the application, all court fees for defendants, and maybe even a punitive payment. This would mean that defendants could fight an honest battle knowing that if they come out on top they don't have to pay the mounting legal fees. It would also make these frivolous patents much more expensive.
The direction M$ wants to take the world in (not where we might want to go today,) is one where PCs boot off of a network
Actually, that is Sun Microsystem's catch line - The Network is the Computer - or at least it used to be. Sun was the one with the whole goal of going back to dummy terminals.
Of course, having only a few major vendors can hurt the consumer also. If they all start banding together against Microsoft then they start taking the shape of an Oligopoloy. Microsoft won't give them the licensing deals and these companies will use that as an excuse to raise prices $100 when it really may only cost them $50 more.
It's called a contract. Microsoft says we will sell you Windows licenses at penny's on the dollar but you can't sell computers without an OS. Dell says - duh ok - and signs the contract. Otherwise they would pay the same OEM rate that all other non-contracted vendors pay.
I don't see Microsoft "squashing Dell." Dell ranks about 20 places above Microsoft on the Fortune 500. The worst Microsoft could do is pull the really cushy agreement that Dell has and make Dell pay full OEM price. Dell would have to raise its price a little and maybe lose some customers but not be squashed.
Here is a TESS search for the Godzilla trademark. You can look through there and see what they have trademarks on.
Excuse me? It's a clear case of fair use.
Fair use does not apply to trademarks only copyrights. Two very different worlds. The name and image of Godzilla make up the trademark. The image of Godzilla is a copyrighted image. Trademarks are handles by the USPTO while Copyrights are handled by the Libary of Congress.
Something tells me that the revenue they see from .NET services is about 0.00000001% of the revenue they see from licensing Windows and Office. They want you to use Windows but if you choose not to they still want some of your dollar.
You do know that the pop-up's are already optional in AOL. It is just that 99.9% of people don't know about them. In AOL7 you can go to settings-preferences and choose marketing. In there is an option to disable pop-up ads as well as other forms of marketing.
If that is the case then that is something they need to do upfront. All of the people frozen now will be SOL. If anything like this is ever developed I think it will only be of use to people who are frozen after they figure out how to keep everything intact during the freeze.
What will stop a crooked couple in the future from stealing some of Ted's frozen Dna, implanting it in themselves
Well first it wouldn't take a couple to clone Ted Williams. You just need a donor egg and a fertile womb.
Second, there is a lot of nurture involved with human development. There is nothing saying that Ted Williams' clone will become a super star baseball player. Just look at Mickey Mantle's kids.
Third, with the way this country is heading you will have to take Ted's head to another country because Human Cloning will not be legal in the US.
I should just copy this post so that I don't have to retype it when someone doesn't know what a derivative work is. Only the original creator or someone he delegates can create a derivative work under copyright law. Circular 14 from the US Copyright Office clarifies everything.
Fair use is a much fuzzier topic but I would agree that it is one thing to modify your own copy and something totally different to distibute it (for free or pay) en masse.
a) I know why the article made the comparison. If all I did here was rehash what the article said then I might as well not post. I merely added my insight into the situation.
b)Real has given away its basic player since the beginning so I don't see how they can make the claim that Microsoft undercut them.
c)99.999% of all software is not very good at 1.0. That is why we have 1.1's,1.5's and 2.0's. One could argue that Mozilla is good at 1.0 but even they have released 1.1 beta. The hope is that they get it right eventually. Microsoft got it right with 6.4. It is by far a superior product to anything Real has put out. Unfortunately, Microsoft went the route of most commercial companies and didn't let a good app lie.
d)When I installed AOL on my girlfriend's computer it forced me to install Real. Real then took over her file associations. Now how Real compensated AOL for the placement I don't know but the point is that Microsoft enemies can work together to fight the behemoth.
The article compares Microsoft's battle with Real to their past battle with Netscape. It is an intersting comparison since both battles I believe were a combination of Microsoft's maneuvering and the other companies failure to put out an adequate product. Real has consistently put out bloated, resource-hogging, spywaring, bug-ridden software.
RealOne is a huge improvement over previous products but you still have to be careful with it re-associating itself with certain file types. I think what has helped Real, though, is the fact the Windows Media Player really peaked at 6.4 and has itself become bloated.
If your broadband account is just giving you access and one email address then you are getting ripped. Go our to dslreports.com and find a better ISP. At $60 per month, Speakeasy offers 608/128 ADSL with 2 email addresses, 10 MB storage and 2 static IP addresses so you can host all the sites you ever want (and they allow it). They also have unlimited dial up if you travel or if your dsl goes down (which doesn't happen as often anymore).
Are you sure it is the sound card? If you are using an ATI card it is because you updated to the latest drivers. Downgrade one version and everything will work perfectly. This was my problem and I can now play Neverwinter Nights for hours on end without ever crashing. If you continue to have problems I recommend reading the forums on the bioware website.
You are going on the assumption that growth will continue as it has. As the computer industry has found out, technology may continue to advance at the same pace but consumner demand is not. My girlfriend continues to use her 3 year old 450 Mhz Dell (with Windows 2000). Contrary to popular slashdot belief, she doesn't crash, she never restarts and she never gets viruses. She doesn't play games so she has all the speed she needs. We have 768 Kbps SDSL and I have not once heard her say she wished we had faster. She is the typical end user. People like her will drive demand not you and me.
Give it a few years when everyone has a 10Gbps connection
How do you define a few years? 5, 10, 50? Don't hold your breath for speed even near that. As it is, the broadband industry has started raising prices making even getting 1 Mbps cost prohibitive.
It's been said many times before but in order for broadband to take off in the regular consumer market (not you or me) there will have to a real killer ap. DivX is far from being that killer ap.
I have downloaded a few movies but I find renting from Blockbuster a much more worthwhile endeavor. When I rent I still get the high quality video (I don't have HDTV, though) and dolby digital sound. I also get to watch all of the extras that are included in most DVD's (something the music industry rarely does). At the end of the day, the movies I really would like to own aren't (officially) on DVD yet anyway (Star Wars, Indiana Jones)
Ah so I misunderstood your first post. You are saying that the DMCA protects Google and the such. A pro-DMCA post is not common in these parts.
Also note - linking users to an online location containing infringing material or infringing activity. Indexing is only part of the second part. In its essence it talks about protecting providers that contain any links to infringing material as long as they have no knowledge yada yada yada.
Exactly how does this apply to the current situation? It talks about limitation of liabilty for ISP's. The first is about caching which is not related at all to the topic and the second talks about hosting or linking to information that is in violation of copyright laws. I am assuming that the information on the NPR site is not in violation.