[...] dont worry! thanks to capitalism, you'll soon be able to bribe someone even on a low budget! Bribe Agencies will allow many people to concentrate their money into one bribe which can be sent to any participating politician (i.e all of them).
Mmm... Maybe you should try to get a patent on that idea. Actually, something like a method of helping politicians make decisions, using a computer network in order to let a variable amount of money be transferred from an user account to the politician's one. Not sure on the writing though; I don't think it is confusing enough.
What I can't believe is that nobody has brought any Matrix conection yet! As much as I enjoy the movie with every view, I can't help a smile when we are compared to batteries, and now...
Anyway, in the case of real batteries, we transform one kind of energy into another, preferrably one that "is there" into a new one that we can use. For example, you can get the energy of the sun, which is already there, and there is only an initial cost involved, but little to no maintenance. Carbon: you have to dig for it first, then burn it. Nuclear: very hard to get, but you retrieve lots of energy when you got it. Living batteries? Maybe in the case of bacteria, which feeds from another bacteria, but the human body would not be very efficient, methinks...
Uh - I just checked the article again to find someone else has posted a Matrix reference already. Shit!
If it is, or it *can* *be*, implemented on a computer bought "off the shelf" and optionally modified only by parts bought "off the shelf" [e.g. "I added an eithernet card"] then it can not be patented.
Actually, I have been pleasently surprised by the suggestion made by Arlene McCarthy:
An invention must teach a new way to use "controllable forces of nature" (really) and have an "industrial application".
Should this be the case, there would not be such a huge issue about software patents, as patents would only go to a combination of (new) hardware + (new) software... Actually, this would only imply that hardware manufacturers might have a choice of patenting algorythms which come interesting when applied to a new piece of hardware they try to develop. But then, it would not be that difficult to trick the patents office to believe that a previously existing piece of software has been created to handle a new hardware when properly disguised, and then, could this patent be applied to software completely unrelated to the companion hardware?
As everything in life, patents could work fine when used according to the original spirit: help inventors protect their creation and earn some benefit out of it for a reasonable period of time, but particulars rarely get patents: it is the companies they work for who get the useful patents, so that patents have only helped big companies to get bigger, and in the case of software, it has helped smaller companies be bought by bigger companies. And now, it is US big software companies who want software patents in Europe as well... I don't think they would accept anything less than what they already have in USA: They just want their patents to be practical in Europe as well.
The battle is far from being won, and I think that the only good strategical way would be to move the battle to USA, and make them reconsider the way patents are used there, and how patents have helped Microsoft become the huge unstopable monster it is now.
...he violated one of eBay's rules, which states that "eBay prohibits the listing of items or products to be delivered electronically through the Internet"...
But... A few weeks ago I read some news (probably in/.) about a guy who was selling virtual goods that only make sense when you are playing certain videogames. Then, it would look like eBay are a bit biased regarding that rule... Maybe it has to do with the fact that we are talking about music in internet, which may bring things like RIAA into play. Maybe it was Apple that did not like the experiment, and asked eBay to remove the auction. Something simmilar happens in Google from time to time as well.
I am an amateur musician, and I have a huge CD collection. Said that, I have stopped buying certain bands because their CDs are coming out with copy-control, or even worse formats.
Months ago I returned Martin Gore's new CD, which I had previously downloaded 3 months before it got officially released, and even got it burned onto a CD-R for my personal enjoyment before I could buy a copy at the store. This way it was easier to realize that the original CD sounded badly when compared to the MP3s, when it normally should be right the opposite! Needless to say I returned the CD and decided not to buy any other crippled CD, as I consider them all defective.
There are many webpages with good arguments why you should not buy crippled CDs, and some people have already posted some of these. Just to name a few:
Consumers have the right of making a copy for their personal use. Aware of this fact, blank CDs manufacturer are forced to pay additional taxes to music companies (in Spain it has become effective since the 1st of September, and it is the SGAE which collects this revolutionary tax), and so are practically enforcing this right, but then they don't want us to use this right - which they make us pay for; it is not a free right!
You get a format which may not be playable in future equipment you buy. Companies will want us to believe that future hardware will be better and more suited to play crippled media. Wrong: Future hardware will support a fraction of crippled media, and actually the public is becoming increasingly interested in being able to play MP3s on their regular equipment. Hardware able to play MP3 (and so, able to read CDs as data) will normally have difficult or be simply unable to play crippled CDs.
Companies want us to install software in PC+Windows/Macs+MacOS in order to play those CDs (those with copy control). Linux stays out of the game, because nobody uses Linux...:-P Also, I assume that hardware manufacturers are willing to pay M$ a licence rather than going the embedded Linux way...
Crippled CDs are achieved by breaking many safety rules worked out to make CDs more resistant to dust, stains, scratches and the passing of time. This is achieved using redundancy, which goes out in these inferior CDs which are not cheaper than their real counterpart.
If you can hear it, you can copy it. But maybe you will not copy if there are other CDs which can be more easily copied, and so companies prefer to make things difficult for you.
If you can copy it, pirates can copy it as well. Also, pirates will bother to make copies whenever there is money to be gotten.
Cheaper CDs bundled with extras which take respect for the consumer tend to create a consumer base that will want the real thing. Crippled format is not a bonus feature.
I think that no one has mentioned that some music companies (Universal?) stated that they would no longer label crippled CDs as crippled. Should they do that, it would make it easier to get cases into courts, but would many people bother to do so?
With all this in mind, my only conclussion is that eventual trials may do good for getting atention on this matter, but the only viable solution would be to get crippled CDs considered a dishonest and illegal practice, forcing music companies to release all their stuff in the real format.
Months I created a mailing list called Contra-Proteccion-CDs (Spanish only, sorry), just to get some attention on this issue. I think it would be a good thing if other people tried the same thing, always as a way of making local consumer asotiations aware of this problem.
Seems like they've proved that EMI made defective disks, shouldn't a recall be necessary?
Have you read/seen Fight Club? To make it simple, before making a recall a company would make an stimation of how much it would cost them to get back the product in the street, as well as how much they would eventually have to pay in concept of fines and eventual refunds due to a defective product. And hey, the book/movie brings this point regarding defective cars that would cause eventual death, not just data containers that do not correspond to what they should.
Let's freeze Bruce Willis and all the people involved in the movie, so that they can be thrown into the asteroid when it gets close; no need to defreeze'em anyway.;-)
Otherwise, we'll have Space Cowboys meets Armegeddon, which sounds simply dreadful - though Space Cowboys is way better than the other one, which stands so far as my worse movie experience ever; glad I saw it for free!
Actually, the most important effect of having a patents system would be that most small software companies will not be able to live within the system, so that they are quite likely going to be absorved.
And then, there is that issue that is not spoken as much as it should be: open source stuff in a world of patents... And many European countries are embracing open source for their own use; maybe they are not aware enough of what patented software really means.:-(
Then you get into a battle of words of the meaning "dynamic", [...] As for DOM content changing, doesn't hold either. Changing DOM content was one of the first things Netscape allowed, mostly via forms. Is changing the value of a form element truly "Dynamic" HTML?
I don't mean changin values in forms (you don't need the full power of DOM to do that), but changing anything present in a web page via the DOM model, which contains everything you can see on screen. I mean, there are wordprocessors out there programmed in JavaScript, so that content is generated dynamically. Have a look at this code:
if (myVar == "dyn") { document.write('<p>Dynamic paragraph.</p>'); }
You can see that this <p> block may or may not appear in the webpage depending of certain condition, be it the passing of time, the content of a form, the position of the mouse... Whatever you want. That's what I mean by DOM.
Only in the real sense of the meaning "dynamic", and not in the way it has achieved popularity, as Dynamic HTML in level 4 browser (colourfull stuff flying around).
That would be the popular definition of dynamic content among non programmers, wouldn't it? Most people reading this are programmers/interested in programming, so we both agree that we are talking of the other dynamic meaning. Anyway... You can get flashy content via DHTML, so it could be considered a subset anyway.
DHTML was coined, as the combination of HTML providing structure, CSS providing presentation, and JavaScript providing logic.
If you just use HTML and JavaScript, you're simply doing a plain HTML page with logic (like form checkers).
Nope... DHTML also happens whenever HTML is generated via JavaScript sentences, or DOM content gets changed during runtime (i.e. via JavaScript execution - ok, or any other script language), rather than just checked, as you suggest. So, DHTML should be thought as Dynamic HTML, as opposed to (static) HTML.
CSS simplifies greatly the process of putting content on screen, and a good DHTML programmer should have a good knowledge of CSS, but you can still go the DHTML way ignoring CSS - no matter how Klingon that sounds...;-)
Interoperability sometimes works better than denial: get the enemy to know your advantages in their own background, then let them know about yours, and create a way to make migration simpler. Interoperability helps.
We've got a desktop that works - ok, you have to choose between Gnome & KDE, but you get the point -, office like programs, even a few games... We've got everything a common user would like to have on his/her computer. Only problem relies with very specific software, and you still can try the WINE way... Two possible paths:
a)Keep offering the Windows user compatibility, so that it's easier to change OS
b)Stop offering any compatibility at all, while enhancing Linux itself because of that!
Someone suggested improving GPL by not allowing Windows to steal code from Linux. I wouldn't state it that way: just say that GPL/LGPL licensed code will not be allowed in any license that strictly forbids GPL/LGPL. That is clear and understandable, and I wonder wether this issue is already covered in GNU licenses.
This war will only be won the day new computers are shipped with a Linux choice, be it a copy of any Linux, a preinstalled choice, or whatever lets the user have a choice from the already preinstalled Windows, that the user is paying, BTW. Some companies are already doing that, but the vast majority still goes the Micro$oft way.
Finally, dear friend Billy talks to people like Aznar (Spain president), and sign contracts with governments on using Mickey soft, which means a hell lot of $$, and apparently an anti communism step (Aznar can be stated as right wing), but it is quite clear that it is exactly quite the opposite... So, I think that GNU should start doing exactly the same, and start visiting countries with open minds, informing them of Linux, which can be free for them, or even asking governments to support free software with donations, which will lately go back into them like if they had paid for a software suited for them - Germany comes to mind with their KDE support. This idea came to me after the excellent John Maddog speech during the GUADEC, commenting on how many potential users that cannot afford the Windows licensing system are waiting out there. I think that they only need that little push of finding out about Linux, and the rest will be history: world domination
Slashdot Mirror
1,660,000 pages; cool.
What I can't believe is that nobody has brought any Matrix conection yet! As much as I enjoy the movie with every view, I can't help a smile when we are compared to batteries, and now...
Anyway, in the case of real batteries, we transform one kind of energy into another, preferrably one that "is there" into a new one that we can use. For example, you can get the energy of the sun, which is already there, and there is only an initial cost involved, but little to no maintenance. Carbon: you have to dig for it first, then burn it. Nuclear: very hard to get, but you retrieve lots of energy when you got it. Living batteries? Maybe in the case of bacteria, which feeds from another bacteria, but the human body would not be very efficient, methinks...
Uh - I just checked the article again to find someone else has posted a Matrix reference already. Shit!
Actually, I have been pleasently surprised by the suggestion made by Arlene McCarthy:
Should this be the case, there would not be such a huge issue about software patents, as patents would only go to a combination of (new) hardware + (new) software... Actually, this would only imply that hardware manufacturers might have a choice of patenting algorythms which come interesting when applied to a new piece of hardware they try to develop. But then, it would not be that difficult to trick the patents office to believe that a previously existing piece of software has been created to handle a new hardware when properly disguised, and then, could this patent be applied to software completely unrelated to the companion hardware?
As everything in life, patents could work fine when used according to the original spirit: help inventors protect their creation and earn some benefit out of it for a reasonable period of time, but particulars rarely get patents: it is the companies they work for who get the useful patents, so that patents have only helped big companies to get bigger, and in the case of software, it has helped smaller companies be bought by bigger companies. And now, it is US big software companies who want software patents in Europe as well... I don't think they would accept anything less than what they already have in USA: They just want their patents to be practical in Europe as well.
The battle is far from being won, and I think that the only good strategical way would be to move the battle to USA, and make them reconsider the way patents are used there, and how patents have helped Microsoft become the huge unstopable monster it is now.
But... A few weeks ago I read some news (probably in /.) about a guy who was selling virtual goods that only make sense when you are playing certain videogames. Then, it would look like eBay are a bit biased regarding that rule... Maybe it has to do with the fact that we are talking about music in internet, which may bring things like RIAA into play. Maybe it was Apple that did not like the experiment, and asked eBay to remove the auction. Something simmilar happens in Google from time to time as well.
I am an amateur musician, and I have a huge CD collection. Said that, I have stopped buying certain bands because their CDs are coming out with copy-control, or even worse formats.
Months ago I returned Martin Gore's new CD, which I had previously downloaded 3 months before it got officially released, and even got it burned onto a CD-R for my personal enjoyment before I could buy a copy at the store. This way it was easier to realize that the original CD sounded badly when compared to the MP3s, when it normally should be right the opposite! Needless to say I returned the CD and decided not to buy any other crippled CD, as I consider them all defective.
There are many webpages with good arguments why you should not buy crippled CDs, and some people have already posted some of these. Just to name a few:
With all this in mind, my only conclussion is that eventual trials may do good for getting atention on this matter, but the only viable solution would be to get crippled CDs considered a dishonest and illegal practice, forcing music companies to release all their stuff in the real format.
Months I created a mailing list called Contra-Proteccion-CDs (Spanish only, sorry), just to get some attention on this issue. I think it would be a good thing if other people tried the same thing, always as a way of making local consumer asotiations aware of this problem.
Have you read/seen Fight Club? To make it simple, before making a recall a company would make an stimation of how much it would cost them to get back the product in the street, as well as how much they would eventually have to pay in concept of fines and eventual refunds due to a defective product. And hey, the book/movie brings this point regarding defective cars that would cause eventual death, not just data containers that do not correspond to what they should.
(Music) companies only care about benefit.
Let's freeze Bruce Willis and all the people involved in the movie, so that they can be thrown into the asteroid when it gets close; no need to defreeze'em anyway. ;-)
Otherwise, we'll have Space Cowboys meets Armegeddon, which sounds simply dreadful - though Space Cowboys is way better than the other one, which stands so far as my worse movie experience ever; glad I saw it for free!
Actually, the most important effect of having a patents system would be that most small software companies will not be able to live within the system, so that they are quite likely going to be absorved.
And then, there is that issue that is not spoken as much as it should be: open source stuff in a world of patents... And many European countries are embracing open source for their own use; maybe they are not aware enough of what patented software really means. :-(
Nope... DHTML also happens whenever HTML is generated via JavaScript sentences, or DOM content gets changed during runtime (i.e. via JavaScript execution - ok, or any other script language), rather than just checked, as you suggest. So, DHTML should be thought as Dynamic HTML, as opposed to (static) HTML.
CSS simplifies greatly the process of putting content on screen, and a good DHTML programmer should have a good knowledge of CSS, but you can still go the DHTML way ignoring CSS - no matter how Klingon that sounds... ;-)
Some people fight... Some people don't.
Interoperability sometimes works better than denial: get the enemy to know your advantages in their own background, then let them know about yours, and create a way to make migration simpler. Interoperability helps.
a)Keep offering the Windows user compatibility, so that it's easier to change OS
b)Stop offering any compatibility at all, while enhancing Linux itself because of that!
Someone suggested improving GPL by not allowing Windows to steal code from Linux. I wouldn't state it that way: just say that GPL/LGPL licensed code will not be allowed in any license that strictly forbids GPL/LGPL. That is clear and understandable, and I wonder wether this issue is already covered in GNU licenses.
This war will only be won the day new computers are shipped with a Linux choice, be it a copy of any Linux, a preinstalled choice, or whatever lets the user have a choice from the already preinstalled Windows, that the user is paying, BTW. Some companies are already doing that, but the vast majority still goes the Micro$oft way.
Finally, dear friend Billy talks to people like Aznar (Spain president), and sign contracts with governments on using Mickey soft, which means a hell lot of $$, and apparently an anti communism step (Aznar can be stated as right wing), but it is quite clear that it is exactly quite the opposite... So, I think that GNU should start doing exactly the same, and start visiting countries with open minds, informing them of Linux, which can be free for them, or even asking governments to support free software with donations, which will lately go back into them like if they had paid for a software suited for them - Germany comes to mind with their KDE support. This idea came to me after the excellent John Maddog speech during the GUADEC, commenting on how many potential users that cannot afford the Windows licensing system are waiting out there. I think that they only need that little push of finding out about Linux, and the rest will be history: world domination