Look up "inrush current". Wear and damage due to switching devices on and off all the time is not limited to mechanical devices. You can get high voltages when turning a device off, as well.
Old TVs certainly did have standby. It was called "instant on".
Modern devices barely last five years before needing replacing.
Generally because of obselescence, not failure. Or because of a failure that, in an older device in former times, would have been worth repairing. Those old TVs and radios and VCRs were not maintenance free, as the repairman for my parent's 1969 color TV could attest. My current CRT TVs are all 10 years are older (and the large ones have instant-on), but I don't use them much any more because I've replaced the main one with an LCD TV.
The RIAA has found its own team of lawyers is no match for individual citizens with no legal resources whatsoever, and it therefore needs to bring in the terrible (as in "Ivan the") power of the state to defeat them. If that doesn't work, what is the poor RIAA going to do then?
But I think it is possible (legally) to make an argument to the effect of "I didn't do it, but if I did it was fair use". For instance, I believe in one case the argument was made that a copy of a program in computer RAM was not a reproduction for the purposes of copyright law, but if it was, it was fair use.
If "fair use" is your only argument, you probably have conceded (at least implicitly) that you committed the act of reproduction, distribution, public performance, etc, that took place. But you are not admitting to infringement, any more than you are admitting to murder if you claim to have fatally shot a person in self-defense.
Currently, Fair Use is something that you never, ever want to have to invoke in a court of law. It's the last chance defense to be used only once you've been determined as having definitely infringed upon the copyright holder. By definition, it means admitting guilt to infringing. The author is proposing radically strengthening the current system by adding several specifically-named considerations - one of which is specifically stated as non-commercial personal use. Using the strengthened definitions, you give people more of a safety net in which to say, "Yes, I infringed upon the copyright holder in order to make a copy of the musical recording for use on another device for my own convenience, which is specifically allowed as a non-commercial, personal use in section blah of blah blah blah etc..."
Fair use does not mean "admitting guilt" to infringing. First of all, most copyright cases are civil, so there's no "guilt" involved. Second, fair use only becomes an issue if the plaintiff has already shown (or the defense admitted) that the defendant has in fact committed one of the acts specified as reserved to the copyright holder. But if it is fair use, it is NOT infringement; to say that "I infringed but it's fair use" is nonsense.
On the other hand, setting the bible in type is a substantial job of work, as is performing a piece of classical music, or translating a book from a foreign language. It could easily be argued that this work is just as deserving of copyright protection as the original creation. Just taking a photograph does not require so much effort.
Could be argued and has been argued. Fortunately, one of the few areas the US hasn't screwed up on copyright is that the courts have rejected the "sweat of the brow" theory.
Translations of existing works are protected because they are by necessity creative works; there is no mechanical process which can produce a decent translation. Setting an existing Bible in type produces no additional copyright (though laying it out may -- but even then, the copyright extends only to the layout). Taking a photograph of a work in such a manner as to reproduce it accurately may require substantial effort, but it still produces no new copyright.
It was Robert Heinlein who quipped "Man is not a rational animal. Man is a rationalizing animal". Looks like if one wanted to use that as a distinction of humanity, one is out of luck.
It's also an issue if you're tall or short. Weight goes up as the cube of your size, but the BMI only goes up by the square.
Well, that's only true if people scaled up linearly in all directions with height. I'm not sure what the BMI assumption (weight proportional to square of height) would be physically, but it hardly matters because it is nonsense. People come in different shapes. I'm 5'7", but my torso is pretty much average sized, I just have short legs. Thus I'm going to be naturally heavier than someone who is the same height but more or less scaled down in all directions. BMI fails to take shape into account. BMI even fails to take the rather large difference in shape between men and women into account... and I'd wager there's larger variations of shape among women than there are among men.
In the US, at least, we allow diet products made with an incredible array of extremely unhealthy crap in the name of having fewer calories and lower fat... including allowing artificial sweeteners that are illegal in places like Canada
Aspartame: Legal in Canada & US
Sucralose: Legal in Canada & US
Acesulfame Potassium: Legal in Canada & US
Cyclamate: Legal in Canada, banned in the US
Saccharin: Legal in the US, banned in Canada, but tastes like crap anywhere.
The same Congress would be screaming if a foreign corporation refused to provide US authorities information on someone the US decided was a "person of interest".
Applying a technical solution to social/political problem should always be the last resort.
Why? I'm a geek. Technical solutions are what I do. I don't have social or political solutions, nor (if I had such) am I in any position to implement them. If I can't implement a technical solution, I probably can't solve the problem.
I thought the whole point of "Social Networking" was to be socialiable??!!
No, the point of "Social Networking" is to find people JUST LIKE YOU, only in a much larger area than you can cover with traditional networking.
One of the great aspects of the Internet was anyone could take part, no matter your race, religion, colour or *age* everyone is equal behind the keyboard.
That was just Usenet (before it was dominated by binaries).
Just the same, the article notes, there have been no major problems and (compared to other OS launches) Leopard kicked off fairly well.
I don't know about that. I haven't gotten my copy of Leopard yet. The people who I know who have had things go fairly smoothly. But so have the people who upgraded to Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon -- just minor problems. IIRC, Debian had a release a little while ago and there were no major problems with that either. I don't recall any major problems with Panther, Leopard, Edgy, or Feisty either. Perhaps "a few minor problems" is NORMAL for OS releases, and total disasters <cough>Vista</cough> are the exception.
(Oh, and anyone who used the Unsanity APE and didn't remove it before upgrading really ought to know better. The similarity of "haxies" to "hacks" isn't just marketing. Nor is the company name)
Carol Gotbaum killed herself. End of story. Tangled herself up in a chain and strangled because she overreacted and pitched a fit.
Yeah, that's the pravda. That's what all government-trusting right-thinking people will believe. So they won't be deterred by the incident. Then again, they aren't supposed to be; they aren't going to cause trouble in the first place. Those who _don't_ trust the government realize that the story is about as likely as the old KGB suicide ("Obvious suicide. He shot himself. In the back of the head. Twice."). So they will be deterred. Quite clever that way, actually.
Hey, just because you can't handle credit cards and mortgage debt doesn't mean others can't. I probably AM spending more with credit cards than I would with cash, but it's not because I don't feel the pain. Actually I'm so miserly I feel the pain twice, once when I charge the card and once when I pay the bill. The reason I spend more with credit cards is because cash doesn't work so well with online vendors, and a lot of the stuff I get online I simply wouldn't get if I had to purchase everything with cash in person.
The credit card companies are good at their game, but they only have to win most of the time. If I want to (and I do) I can beat them. When they have an "no interest for 6 months" promotion, I'll charge everything to that card, transfer balances to it, then pay off the entire bill before the big increase comes. You know how they punish me for getting free use of their money for several months? By offering a credit line increase. It's not personal for them, it's just algorithms, and they aren't optimized to make sure e_veryone_ loses.
As for mortgages... hey, I'm the one who was shaking my head when people were buying ARMs when interest rates were at an all time low. I got a 15-year fixed instead.
I'm pretty sure the inflated supply order is a standard scam. Because they sent you something unsolicited, you're perfectly within your rights to keep their stuff and not pay them.
Techies who burn themselves boiling water don't curse the stove manufacturer, pot manufacturer, or water company for screwing things up. And they usually don't repeat the steps with which they burned themselves, over and over again, despite having it pointed out that this is what is causing the burns.
If you do nothing, 80% of the people attack you for doing nothing, 2% of people call you a fascist anyway. If anything goes wrong, 99% of people blame you.
If you do something reasonable, 40% of the people attack you for not doing enough, 3% of the people call you a fascist. If anything goes wrong, 99% of people blame you.
If you act like a fascist, 20% of the people attack you for not doing enough, 6% of the people call you a fascist. If anything goes wrong, 99% of the people blame you.
Clearly, the optimum behavior is to act like a fascist.
Sure there are outliers, people put on watch lists they shouldn't. It'll get smoothed out eventually, but it's not like they're being dragged out into the street and shot "to set example for the other jews" or whatever godwinninian example you are trying to set.
Tell it to Carol Gotbaum. The message being "complain too loud and you'll be 'accidentally' killed".
I say having my laundry looked over is a small price to pay to fly 3000 miles in 6 hours to visit some friends.
This attitude can pretty much justify anything the government wants to do. I believe Thomas Hobbes used it to do just that.
e) You come up with a new claim based on technology which is not novel at the time you come up with the claim, but want the benefit of the filing date of your original application.
It is also worth noting that each and every one of the omitted ones in that list is well big enough to have their own patents to annihilate SanDisk or has enough resources to invalidate the patent(s) in question, which would be a bad thing for them at this point.
So does LG Electronics. Some of the others likely do as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Old TVs certainly did have standby. It was called "instant on".
Generally because of obselescence, not failure. Or because of a failure that, in an older device in former times, would have been worth repairing. Those old TVs and radios and VCRs were not maintenance free, as the repairman for my parent's 1969 color TV could attest. My current CRT TVs are all 10 years are older (and the large ones have instant-on), but I don't use them much any more because I've replaced the main one with an LCD TV.
The RIAA has found its own team of lawyers is no match for individual citizens with no legal resources whatsoever, and it therefore needs to bring in the terrible (as in "Ivan the") power of the state to defeat them. If that doesn't work, what is the poor RIAA going to do then?
Disclaimer time: I'm not a lawyer.
But I think it is possible (legally) to make an argument to the effect of "I didn't do it, but if I did it was fair use". For instance, I believe in one case the argument was made that a copy of a program in computer RAM was not a reproduction for the purposes of copyright law, but if it was, it was fair use.
If "fair use" is your only argument, you probably have conceded (at least implicitly) that you committed the act of reproduction, distribution, public performance, etc, that took place. But you are not admitting to infringement, any more than you are admitting to murder if you claim to have fatally shot a person in self-defense.
Could be argued and has been argued. Fortunately, one of the few areas the US hasn't screwed up on copyright is that the courts have rejected the "sweat of the brow" theory.
Translations of existing works are protected because they are by necessity creative works; there is no mechanical process which can produce a decent translation. Setting an existing Bible in type produces no additional copyright (though laying it out may -- but even then, the copyright extends only to the layout). Taking a photograph of a work in such a manner as to reproduce it accurately may require substantial effort, but it still produces no new copyright.
...for providing a perfect reason for encrypting that will even satisfy some small fraction of the "if you have nothing to hide..." crowd.
It was Robert Heinlein who quipped "Man is not a rational animal. Man is a rationalizing animal". Looks like if one wanted to use that as a distinction of humanity, one is out of luck.
Well, that's only true if people scaled up linearly in all directions with height. I'm not sure what the BMI assumption (weight proportional to square of height) would be physically, but it hardly matters because it is nonsense. People come in different shapes. I'm 5'7", but my torso is pretty much average sized, I just have short legs. Thus I'm going to be naturally heavier than someone who is the same height but more or less scaled down in all directions. BMI fails to take shape into account. BMI even fails to take the rather large difference in shape between men and women into account... and I'd wager there's larger variations of shape among women than there are among men.
The same Congress would be screaming if a foreign corporation refused to provide US authorities information on someone the US decided was a "person of interest".
Why? I'm a geek. Technical solutions are what I do. I don't have social or political solutions, nor (if I had such) am I in any position to implement them. If I can't implement a technical solution, I probably can't solve the problem.
Hmm. How do you hit a company with a rolled-up newspaper? Bad Logitech! Bad!
Oh, great job, Pops. Anyone can LOSE a war.
Yeah, and I'm a white male. Guess who got the shitty end of THAT stick?
Err, no, that was YOUR parents. You dropped the ball. Where's the moon base? Where's the L4 colonies?
We're working our asses off trying to pay off the debts your generation incurred.
No, the point of "Social Networking" is to find people JUST LIKE YOU, only in a much larger area than you can cover with traditional networking.
That was just Usenet (before it was dominated by binaries).
Your generalization misses the bitter and lonely divorced men in their 50s, who had a life and lost it.
(Who, me? Not yet, anyway.)
I don't know about that. I haven't gotten my copy of Leopard yet. The people who I know who have had things go fairly smoothly. But so have the people who upgraded to Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon -- just minor problems. IIRC, Debian had a release a little while ago and there were no major problems with that either. I don't recall any major problems with Panther, Leopard, Edgy, or Feisty either. Perhaps "a few minor problems" is NORMAL for OS releases, and total disasters <cough>Vista</cough> are the exception.
(Oh, and anyone who used the Unsanity APE and didn't remove it before upgrading really ought to know better. The similarity of "haxies" to "hacks" isn't just marketing. Nor is the company name)
Hey, just because you can't handle credit cards and mortgage debt doesn't mean others can't. I probably AM spending more with credit cards than I would with cash, but it's not because I don't feel the pain. Actually I'm so miserly I feel the pain twice, once when I charge the card and once when I pay the bill. The reason I spend more with credit cards is because cash doesn't work so well with online vendors, and a lot of the stuff I get online I simply wouldn't get if I had to purchase everything with cash in person. The credit card companies are good at their game, but they only have to win most of the time. If I want to (and I do) I can beat them. When they have an "no interest for 6 months" promotion, I'll charge everything to that card, transfer balances to it, then pay off the entire bill before the big increase comes. You know how they punish me for getting free use of their money for several months? By offering a credit line increase. It's not personal for them, it's just algorithms, and they aren't optimized to make sure e_veryone_ loses. As for mortgages... hey, I'm the one who was shaking my head when people were buying ARMs when interest rates were at an all time low. I got a 15-year fixed instead.
I'm pretty sure the inflated supply order is a standard scam. Because they sent you something unsolicited, you're perfectly within your rights to keep their stuff and not pay them.
Ahh, yes, here it is:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/supplies.shtm
Techies who burn themselves boiling water don't curse the stove manufacturer, pot manufacturer, or water company for screwing things up. And they usually don't repeat the steps with which they burned themselves, over and over again, despite having it pointed out that this is what is causing the burns.
Unfortunately, it's worse than that.
If you do nothing, 80% of the people attack you for doing nothing, 2% of people call you a fascist anyway. If anything goes wrong, 99% of people blame you.
If you do something reasonable, 40% of the people attack you for not doing enough, 3% of the people call you a fascist. If anything goes wrong, 99% of people blame you.
If you act like a fascist, 20% of the people attack you for not doing enough, 6% of the people call you a fascist. If anything goes wrong, 99% of the people blame you.
Clearly, the optimum behavior is to act like a fascist.
e) You come up with a new claim based on technology which is not novel at the time you come up with the claim, but want the benefit of the filing date of your original application.