I feel that it is going to be a despicable "blood for votes" campaign. I believe that the November election's is the only reason that Bush is pushing it so hard.
As computers become faster and programmers improve chess algorithms, we will reach a point where no human can beat the top computer player.
There are two types of play:
Tactical play which is fairly straight forward and usually involves an immediate advantage. The thought process might go something like: If I take his pawn on e4 he can take it back with his rook but then my knight can fork his rook and queen. If he sees the fork and doesn't take back I'll be a pawn up.
Strategic (or positional) play which is far less straight forward and usually involves a more subtle advantage. The thought process might go something like: If I trade my knight for his bishop we'll have bishops of opposite colors and with this pawn structure I'll be able to draw even though he is a pawn up...
Computer's are very good at tactical play. Basically they look at every legal move and legal reply. The faster the computer is the farther ahead it can look. Then it's a simple matter to count pieces. The number of possible positions rises exponentially with each move so computer speed becomes a limiting factor. With various branch pruning algorithms we still need to make a computer go a lot faster just to allow the computer to think ahead one extra ply for a given time period.
Positional play is a lot harder to program. For one thing, most of us suck at it so we couldn't tell a program how to do it. But even so there are master chess players who can program and others who have been willing to work with programmers and the result is that the algorithms for positional chess are maturing. It will only be a matter of time until the advances in positional chess algorithms and the brute force of very fast computers make it impossible for humans to beat computer programs.
But don't feel bad. For a human to compete against a computer in some kind of 'best in the world' contest is a little like letting a hydraulic jack enter a weight lifting contest.
"Congress "could have made this statute clearer," he said.
"This statute is not organised as being consistent with the argument for either side."
The judge said he would try to rule quickly, but lawyers on both sides could not estimate when a decision might arrive."
The only way that I can think of that a Judge could rule quickly in a case where the laws are convoluted and unclear is to rule that the law is ambiguous. This would essentially throw the case out of court.
However from the tone of his statement it looks like he is going to make an honest effort to interpret the law. If so I don't see how a fair and speedy decision is possible.
"Also named in it and in the suit that followed were the owner of the mailing list, the owners of several informational sites about the lawsuit, the owners of other forums where the lawsuit was discussed, the attorney for the defense, and several sites that merely ran banner ads promoting the defense fund set up for the lawsuit."
Added to the list is the Mother's Uncle's friend's boss who admitted reading the Slashdot article about the suit.
"It is our duty as citizens to disobey unjust laws and to push them through the judicial system to the Supreme Court. It is counterproductive to that duty to prop up the unjust laws with exceptions and clarifications."
I agree with most of your post the above quote is WAY WRONG!
It is never our duty to disobey laws. Period. End of story. It is our duty to work to change unjust laws.
The problem with telling people to disobey laws that they feel are unjust is that often this is a subjective call. What I consider unjust you may not. It is truly irresponsible to suggest that people disobey laws that they don't like.
"Moreover, Mr. Rogan is promoting extra fees for applications that make more than 20 claims and a new $1,250 charge to pay for the patent examination process"
After seeing the effects of software patents on innovation, I'm no fan of them. The artical wasn't about software patents exclusively but that is where my interests are.
It seems to me that raising fees will greatly inhibit the small developer companies far more than say a software company that holds a monopoly share of the market.
I don't like the idea of software patents because they are used as a weapon by large corporations to kill competition. If we must have them then let's not give the monopoly power(s) an exclusive ability to apply.
I disagree. The bnetd server allows friends to connect and play. You can never tell with the Blizzards server.
"Its just a way that allows other unscrupulous folks to interfere and interact with Blizzards IP in a way that they have not authorized."
The folks who developed bnetd are not "unscrupulous" and the software that they developed in no way interferes with Blizzard's IP. Further, while Blizzard has cliamed DMCA violations most agree that their argument is weak to nonexistant.
"Perhaps the next time someone decides to make an add on for a video game or any existing piece of commercial software they will more astutely analyze the situation to make sure they aren't running afowl of any copyrights or tresspassing on anyone's IP."
This software isn't an addon and it in no way runs afowl of any copyright law. It it entirely new code not owned in any way by Buzzard software. Does it word with Blizzard's software? Yes. Are may word processors capable of loading Microsoft Word files? Yes. Should we go after them as well?
... like the movies get edited all the time for TV. I don't see a problem with paying someone with the skill to edit out parts of a movie that I might find offencive to purform that service as long as I have purchased a copy of the movie first.
God knows that the movie industry doesn't like it when we record movies from a television broadcast. Our fair use rights be damned.
"Thus, in order for this to be legal, I'd have to give them permission first."
By running P2P software and sharing files you have implied an invitation. He has every right to use the access that you have provided.
It would be different if your P2P software requested a password. However, most P2P software would not be covered by this law any more than a web server in Maryland.
"Mr. Smith. We understand that you popped a CD out of a player that was glued shut. This is a violation of the DMCA. We are authorized to confiscate all equipment used to violate this law. Which hand did you use to pop the device open?"
"Wasn't there once a time when the purpose of an academic institution was to foster an enviornment in which its students could learn and grow and come up with ideas that would benefit the world? Now, they are just reduced to trying to make intelectual property?"
I don't see anything about creating intellectual property in the email. The university is trying to stop the infringement of copyright. I find it amazing that anyone can twist that into something negative.
Oh my God! They're not going to let the students break the law using university equipment! The bastards!
"there not going after the *pirates* as such, all the copyright material I share is as a off site backup for those people who may have corrupt or stolen CD's and want to retrive a copy from archive."
I've seen this kind of "hidden agenda" crap lots of times. The University of Waterloo is not reversing its position.
UW President Johnston started taking heat so he backed up a bit. If he's like the self serving assholes I've had to deal with, he'll put it on hold while he has a fair **cough, cough** study and then declair that a deal with Microsoft is indeed in the best intrest of everyone.
I've seen it all before. Nothing to look at here... Move along. Move along...
Accually the Washington State law makes a requirement that the spammer should be able to identify the email address as being a Washington State email address.
In your case, only a morron wouldn't know this so the spammers really have no defense.
In the case of a Hotmail or AOL account or any account where it isn't clear that the email address is assigned to a Washington State residense, the owner of the email address can register their email account with Washington State.
Once an email account is on the list the spammers lose the excuse that they couldn't tell that it was a Washington State email address.
...of a lot of people. Sure it may hurt one really big monopolistic company but I say tough. The benefits far out weigh the drawbacks.
Right now we have a situation where a single company has their thumb on the on/off switch to innovation. They have the source code to the operating system that is run on nearly every computer in the world.
No application development company can compete against such odds. By controlling the foundation upon which all other applications run, Microsoft has a plethora of unethical weapons to kill competition at its disposal. Further, Microsoft has shown no restraint in using these unethical and outright illegal tactics.
It is time to remove the gun that is pointed at the head of developers everywhere. The platform of choice to develop applications for all people should have its source open. All developer's should be able to develop for a platform where the can be sure that there are no undocumented APIs and where no single company can "tweak" the platform to cause artificial incompatibilities designed to kill competition!
"If I give my pal Bob 1 copy of the song, say on a mix cd, that is covered under both general fair use and the specific provisions of the Audio Home Recording act."
If you gave your pal Bob a copy of any song that he didn't have a legal right to have, it would not be covered under the fair use laws. I don't know what "specific provisions" of the Audio Home Recording act you are referring to but I don't believe that any of them include giving away other peoples IP with out their consent.
I'm surprised that your post was modded as "insightful" rather than "troll."
"KDE is also going to suffer from a similar rash of programmers like windows VB programmers who thing that dragging and dropping an application together makes them every bit as valuable as someone who can lovingly craft inline assembler into their C routines for speed and keep an eye on memory utilization."
Excuse me but I program in VB and C and C++ and Kylix and Assembler and...
VB programmers are as valuable as assembler coders. It's called the right tool for the job.
Sure I could sit down and write an application in pure assembler. It would be extremely tight, fast and difficult to maintain. It would also take a very long time to code.
In the real world most of the time programmers are required to get a product out the door very quickly. This is where RAD tools come in handy. VB, Kylix, Visual C++, C++ Builder etc are extremely valuable as are the people who know how to use them.
Mandrake has always been very close to the "Bleedng edge." Up until version 8.2 I would always install it, be very impressed but find a bug that I couldn't get around. I would revert back to some other distro.
8.2 however has been rock solid for me. I'm hoping that 9.0 will also.
Slashdot Mirror
Good atempt at a troll but it failed. Someday you'll open your eyes and see the political animal for what it is...
Oh, don't get me started on the Iraq thing....
I feel that it is going to be a despicable "blood for votes" campaign. I believe that the November election's is the only reason that Bush is pushing it so hard.
"How far does the long arm of US copyright law reach?"
:-(
The US is the most powerful country in the world. We can bully almost anyone...
As computers become faster and programmers improve chess algorithms, we will reach a point where no human can beat the top computer player.
There are two types of play:
Tactical play which is fairly straight forward and usually involves an immediate advantage. The thought process might go something like: If I take his pawn on e4 he can take it back with his rook but then my knight can fork his rook and queen. If he sees the fork and doesn't take back I'll be a pawn up.
Strategic (or positional) play which is far less straight forward and usually involves a more subtle advantage. The thought process might go something like: If I trade my knight for his bishop we'll have bishops of opposite colors and with this pawn structure I'll be able to draw even though he is a pawn up...
Computer's are very good at tactical play. Basically they look at every legal move and legal reply. The faster the computer is the farther ahead it can look. Then it's a simple matter to count pieces. The number of possible positions rises exponentially with each move so computer speed becomes a limiting factor. With various branch pruning algorithms we still need to make a computer go a lot faster just to allow the computer to think ahead one extra ply for a given time period.
Positional play is a lot harder to program. For one thing, most of us suck at it so we couldn't tell a program how to do it. But even so there are master chess players who can program and others who have been willing to work with programmers and the result is that the algorithms for positional chess are maturing. It will only be a matter of time until the advances in positional chess algorithms and the brute force of very fast computers make it impossible for humans to beat computer programs.
But don't feel bad. For a human to compete against a computer in some kind of 'best in the world' contest is a little like letting a hydraulic jack enter a weight lifting contest.
"Congress "could have made this statute clearer," he said.
"This statute is not organised as being consistent with the argument for either side."
The judge said he would try to rule quickly, but lawyers on both sides could not estimate when a decision might arrive."
The only way that I can think of that a Judge could rule quickly in a case where the laws are convoluted and unclear is to rule that the law is ambiguous. This would essentially throw the case out of court.
However from the tone of his statement it looks like he is going to make an honest effort to interpret the law. If so I don't see how a fair and speedy decision is possible.
"Also named in it and in the suit that followed were the owner of the mailing list, the owners of several informational sites about the lawsuit, the owners of other forums where the lawsuit was discussed, the attorney for the defense, and several sites that merely ran banner ads promoting the defense fund set up for the lawsuit."
Added to the list is the Mother's Uncle's friend's boss who admitted reading the Slashdot article about the suit.
"It is our duty as citizens to disobey unjust laws and to push them through the judicial system to the Supreme Court. It is counterproductive to that duty to prop up the unjust laws with exceptions and clarifications."
I agree with most of your post the above quote is WAY WRONG!
It is never our duty to disobey laws. Period. End of story. It is our duty to work to change unjust laws.
The problem with telling people to disobey laws that they feel are unjust is that often this is a subjective call. What I consider unjust you may not. It is truly irresponsible to suggest that people disobey laws that they don't like.
"Moreover, Mr. Rogan is promoting extra fees for applications that make more than 20 claims and a new $1,250 charge to pay for the patent examination process"
After seeing the effects of software patents on innovation, I'm no fan of them. The artical wasn't about software patents exclusively but that is where my interests are.
It seems to me that raising fees will greatly inhibit the small developer companies far more than say a software company that holds a monopoly share of the market.
I don't like the idea of software patents because they are used as a weapon by large corporations to kill competition. If we must have them then let's not give the monopoly power(s) an exclusive ability to apply.
"There's nothing "great" about this project."
I disagree. The bnetd server allows friends to connect and play. You can never tell with the Blizzards server.
"Its just a way that allows other unscrupulous folks to interfere and interact with Blizzards IP in a way that they have not authorized."
The folks who developed bnetd are not "unscrupulous" and the software that they developed in no way interferes with Blizzard's IP. Further, while Blizzard has cliamed DMCA violations most agree that their argument is weak to nonexistant.
"Perhaps the next time someone decides to make an add on for a video game or any existing piece of commercial software they will more astutely analyze the situation to make sure they aren't running afowl of any copyrights or tresspassing on anyone's IP."
This software isn't an addon and it in no way runs afowl of any copyright law. It it entirely new code not owned in any way by Buzzard software. Does it word with Blizzard's software? Yes. Are may word processors capable of loading Microsoft Word files? Yes. Should we go after them as well?
... like the movies get edited all the time for TV. I don't see a problem with paying someone with the skill to edit out parts of a movie that I might find offencive to purform that service as long as I have purchased a copy of the movie first.
God knows that the movie industry doesn't like it when we record movies from a television broadcast. Our fair use rights be damned.
"Thus, in order for this to be legal, I'd have to give them permission first."
By running P2P software and sharing files you have implied an invitation. He has every right to use the access that you have provided.
It would be different if your P2P software requested a password. However, most P2P software would not be covered by this law any more than a web server in Maryland.
Maybe when they stop trying to kill the bnetd project I'll consider buying from them again.
I can't help it. I just have a hard time giving my money to a company that is trying to kill a great open source project by using the DMCA.
So until they stop what they're doing to the bnetd group, I say fuck 'em!
The Feds are cracking down! I'm going straight home and delete my pirated copy of KDE3!
"Mr. Smith. We understand that you popped a CD out of a player that was glued shut. This is a violation of the DMCA. We are authorized to confiscate all equipment used to violate this law. Which hand did you use to pop the device open?"
"Wasn't there once a time when the purpose of an academic institution was to foster an enviornment in which its students could learn and grow and come up with ideas that would benefit the world? Now, they are just reduced to trying to make intelectual property?"
I don't see anything about creating intellectual property in the email. The university is trying to stop the infringement of copyright. I find it amazing that anyone can twist that into something negative.
Oh my God! They're not going to let the students break the law using university equipment! The bastards!
"there not going after the *pirates* as such, all the copyright material I share is as a off site backup for those people who may have corrupt or stolen CD's and want to retrive a copy from archive."
ROFLMAO!
I didn't steal it... I stole it...
I've seen this kind of "hidden agenda" crap lots of times. The University of Waterloo is not reversing its position.
UW President Johnston started taking heat so he backed up a bit. If he's like the self serving assholes I've had to deal with, he'll put it on hold while he has a fair **cough, cough** study and then declair that a deal with Microsoft is indeed in the best intrest of everyone.
I've seen it all before. Nothing to look at here... Move along. Move along...
Accually the Washington State law makes a requirement that the spammer should be able to identify the email address as being a Washington State email address.
In your case, only a morron wouldn't know this so the spammers really have no defense.
In the case of a Hotmail or AOL account or any account where it isn't clear that the email address is assigned to a Washington State residense, the owner of the email address can register their email account with Washington State.
Once an email account is on the list the spammers lose the excuse that they couldn't tell that it was a Washington State email address.
Right now we have a situation where a single company has their thumb on the on/off switch to innovation. They have the source code to the operating system that is run on nearly every computer in the world.
No application development company can compete against such odds. By controlling the foundation upon which all other applications run, Microsoft has a plethora of unethical weapons to kill competition at its disposal. Further, Microsoft has shown no restraint in using these unethical and outright illegal tactics.
It is time to remove the gun that is pointed at the head of developers everywhere. The platform of choice to develop applications for all people should have its source open. All developer's should be able to develop for a platform where the can be sure that there are no undocumented APIs and where no single company can "tweak" the platform to cause artificial incompatibilities designed to kill competition!
Nope. I don't find anything about giving away the media that you use to friends. If you could point out the paragraph it would help.
Fair use allows you to make copies that you use but not give away.
The act can be found at http://www.hrrc.org/html/ahra.html
I don't find the section to which you refer. Perhaps you can point it out?
"If I give my pal Bob 1 copy of the song, say on a mix cd, that is covered under both general fair use and the specific provisions of the Audio Home Recording act."
If you gave your pal Bob a copy of any song that he didn't have a legal right to have, it would not be covered under the fair use laws. I don't know what "specific provisions" of the Audio Home Recording act you are referring to but I don't believe that any of them include giving away other peoples IP with out their consent.
DRM that's a no brainer to crack maybe?
I'm surprised that your post was modded as "insightful" rather than "troll."
"KDE is also going to suffer from a similar rash of programmers like windows VB programmers who thing that dragging and dropping an application together makes them every bit as valuable as someone who can lovingly craft inline assembler into their C routines for speed and keep an eye on memory utilization."
Excuse me but I program in VB and C and C++ and Kylix and Assembler and...
VB programmers are as valuable as assembler coders. It's called the right tool for the job.
Sure I could sit down and write an application in pure assembler. It would be extremely tight, fast and difficult to maintain. It would also take a very long time to code.
In the real world most of the time programmers are required to get a product out the door very quickly. This is where RAD tools come in handy. VB, Kylix, Visual C++, C++ Builder etc are extremely valuable as are the people who know how to use them.
Mandrake has always been very close to the "Bleedng edge." Up until version 8.2 I would always install it, be very impressed but find a bug that I couldn't get around. I would revert back to some other distro.
8.2 however has been rock solid for me. I'm hoping that 9.0 will also.