Actually I pay about 35 per month for internet access (about 40 US$). I live in Portugal.
Yes, the limits are low, but are on the higher side of you can get here at this price (some other typical offerings give you 3GB/month traffic, which can be national or international, at the same price). Thats what you get for having a very uncompetitive market, where the same company owns the incumbent telco, the main cable provider and the leader ADSL provider (and of course, the biggest ISP):-(
The trouble with charging by the bit, as the article mentioned, is that inter-ISP or international traffic is much more expensive. It costs your ISP almost nothing to download stuff within their internal network, but if your ISP is paying for a link across the Atlantic or Pacific then downloads over that can be very expensive.
And that is why my ISP (who already uses metered per-GB prices) distinguishes between "national" traffic (for which i can use 20GB/month without paying more, and only pay a little more for GB) and "international" traffic (with a 1GB/month cap, and heavy cost for additional traffic).
This is not really that good for the end user (you have to be very discerning to where you download from if you are doing big downloads, but is doable.
The truth is Frontpage (which I, even if I must reboot in Windows to do so) is much more... It's a true website management app.
If I would find a free ir open source project capable of doing all of the following:
Allowing easy creaton of webpages BUT also the ability to insert raw HTML and change (on the fly) the HTML and have it refleted on the WYSIWYG editor.
Allow to change the appearance and "feel" of all the webpages on a single instruction, even if that means to alter lots of CSS and other files.
Allow to custumize said appearance on a page by page level, but also be able to apply some characteristics to a big group of pages (like shared borders).
Distinguish between the physical and logical layout of a web site, and be able to change each individually and have that changes propagated to all the other pages affected by it. And have true support for the logical layout (navigation bars and the like).
Allow the interaction of several people on the same project (with logs, todo-lists, etc.)
When a tool that can do these tasks is available (or even in beta stage of development) I will switch (gladly, because FP has some serious drawbacks too). But until then, there is no real choice for me, and FP is a good enough tool for the job.
PS: Of course most of these tasks can be made explicitly with several different open-source tools... I know how to do them. But that is no good if you end-up wasting 30 minutes to do something that "just works" in FP.
In Europe Mickey and Goofy are much funnier. Mickey is a smart detective type character.
Well, this is true, but only in part... You are referring to the Disney Comics, which are the most vibrant part of Disney "Classic" characters usage at the moment (apart from the TV show House of Mouse).
I do like what the Italian authors did with Mickey (Mickey Mouse Mistery Magazine and so on), but the norm is not uniform in Europe. Danish (Egmont) production places less emphasis on Dectective Mickey and produces much more bland stories.
But the true authors that created the detective "persona" for Mickey were Americans... Floyd Gottfredson and Paul Murry are the ones who created the Mickey you like.
Still, it is true that without Disney Comics in the US (luckily that is about to stop) Europe moved ahead in the use of the classic Disney characters. The Italians, as I said, are the ones mostly to watch (if you can read Italian, I suggest the magazine MickeyX that overhauls Mickey in a "terror comics"-like environment).
Could it be possible to send MORE information from the server to the client but doing so that with the valid information would also be sent non-existent details (to be weeded out by the client?). That would mean that the task of the
decoders would be harder, since they would need to find the useful info after decoding the protocol...
I'm not sure it would be easy (and don't know how to stop the spy to using the same information that the game has to invalidate the erroneous data), but I believe it could be an aditional layer of protection.
Not supposed to last X years...
on
Borrowing ROMs
·
· Score: 1
I was under the impression that the law protecting individual backups (we know that we can't share those backups, granted) was precisely to guarantee the use of the product regardless of the problems that may affect the original media.
You are saying that the individual backups are wrong (since the products have a defined lifetime, that apparently the creator can choose) or that although they are allowed, and I could do it myself, if I hadn't done it I lost the ability to do it later?
the objective function: z = (sum(i=1..n) (c_i * x_i)) + v
and the constraints: sum(i=1..n) a_ij * x_i) ( or = ) b_j,
for all j = 1.. m,
where l_i = x_i = u_i for i = 1..n
this (that is what you stated) is the general LP problem formulation.
I don't really think you ever read anything about linear programming (your text book, perhaps), or you would recognize it instantly (you still could not know how to present the dual problem, though that is also trivial).
Why not? Because the receiver doesn't pay the cost of SPAM, the sender does. If you want to send me a SMS you must pay the cost (about 5 cents or a little less in volume in my country). So it won't be the same threat level as email spam.
In the same vein, you don't really have telephone/cellphone SPAM at the same level you have email SPAM, since it costs the sender, not the receiver, to make a call in most "sane" countries.
The real threat is the "SPAMadvertiser" that thinks it can make money and not bear the risks/costs. If s/he must bear the costs, I don't believe the same "genious" will be doing much of it...
4 - When a law is adopted in the USA, often EU politicians accept it blindly. "If it works for them it'll be good for us too."
The reason for adopting such laws isn't just "monkee see, monkee do". There is powerfull lobbying here in the EU also, by the same parties that impose the US legislation.
Also, the US is not above using "trade pacts" and "trade war" threats to impose its views. Probably a country that wouldn't follow the US lead on this way, would be labeled as "encouraging piracy", and fined according to WTO rules.
Obviously the fact that you can't move troops (namely special operation forces) by land with the same stealth and celerity you can by air is in no way related to the refuse by the US/UK to use land transportation for "humanitarian aid", I assume...
That said, in reality, air drops are much safer to the ones doing the drop than land carrying. In general, when deliverin food by land the main problem is not that the food may be diverted to the troops (if there is so little of them that it won't get to the troops also, it surely wont get to the general population), the main problem is that the ones doing the delivery may be captured and used as hostages by either side of the conflict.
Still, as anyone knows, the ruling powers can (and usually do) open air corridors for delivery of humanitarian help (if it is on their best interest to do so, of course). Only if you want to do MORE than just send humanitarian help do you need to destroy all the anti-aircraft support.
I wouldn't use U7 but G8 to the SNMP strings. True, SNMP is more used in Unix (mostly because the availability of client support on those systems and because it is NEEDED to support management of an heterogenous network), but is also present in Windows, and the vulnerability stated is one of configuration, not of particular vulnerability of the protocol or implementation.
I think its misleading to place it as a *Nix problem, since probably most devices being subject to attack will not even be running any widely known OS (more likely they will be printers, routers and the like).
What I think it should be done is a combination of things:
Find out exactly who was directly involved in the attacks, and bring them to justice. Enlist the support of the several countries in the world to do so. You will find that if the evidence is convincing, no country will dare oppose it, and most will go out of their way to help.
This war is really a social and cultural one. It can be won only by improving the living conditions of the people there (and in other parts of the world). You help take away those irritants, and you will see that the number of people that will support terrorism will drop... hard.
Will this end terrorism? No, it won't, but then, neither will the "war" thats been talked about. It may help however to limit the threat to a manageable level (and I place a lot more faith in such a solution to achieve it than just conventional warfare).
Hi, I also live in.be and was wondering what the current state is on DMCA kinde laws here
Do you have any idee ? or know where to find the information ?
We're having a DCMA sooner or later as per European Directive 2001/29/EC. Never a directive was so much lobbied in Brussels and so little talked over outside the EU parliament. You got to love the free press in Europe, which prefered to talk about either the English royals or some food scare of the month... If we are lucky we can help to limit somewhat the damages of its transcription to the national legislations, check the EuroRights site.
I was under the impression that the countries that do not recognize Taiwan recognize the One China doctrine, and P. R. of China as a sovereign nation that includes Taiwan.
As China subscribes to the Berne convention (at least) and probably also to WIPO (if they don't do it now, at least will when it enters the WTO),
wouldn't copyright claims be valid also on Taiwan?
In practice, isn't any form of legalized IP monopolies (including patent protection) enforced in Taiwan?
...but the plain fact is, in 99% of cases, a monopoly can only stay a monopoly if they treat the customers reasonably well.
Well, I'm not really sure about this... the way I see it, it doesn't need to treat its costumers well, just over the threshold (whatever it is) that will lead the consumers to change. Couple that with absence of competitors (or of significant competitors, or even of knowledge about significant competitors) and the barriers to change can be very high indeed.
In my view, (as is supposed to be the case in Europe) the government should step in whenever there is abuse of dominant position, iregardless of if the public has or not the alternative to unseat the dominant position - as we know, it is different to have an abstract right, and quite another to exercise that right.
The last time I read the Berne convention, copyright was supposed to protect the "expression" of an idea, not the idea itself. So, if someone remembers your work, that is not and should not be, a copyright infringment, unless the whole of the expression of your work is being reproduced. Nor should it require some sort of compensation.
Let us remember that copyright was created not as a way to generate an endless stream of revenue to the holders of "intelectual property", but as a way to adequately compensate the authors of intelectual works, by granting them a time-limited monopoly on the selling of their works. Moreover, several restrictions were placed on this monopoly (the most blatant of which the right of "fair-quote" or "fair-use").
Most of the copyright legislation that is being approved on these days is heavily influenced by the "copyright owners" (an expression that wasn't even on the first drafts of the convention - the idea was that the authors would be the owners of the copyright, as in the french expression "droit's d'auteur" - author rights). It has sucessfully removed some limitations that were placed on copyright and extended the monopoly duration (the several copyright duration expansion acts). All this, needless to say, at the expenses of the users of the works, and frequently without any real benefit to the authors (would you prefer that only the grandchildren of your editors benefit from your works, or should their grand-grandchildren also benefit? - thats the amount of benefit that copyright extension gives to the authors)...
Now, another attack is being waged on another limitation on the monopoly - the right to resale. Just business as usual, and if the public stays indiferent as usual, more money will end up lining the producers pockets... again with negligible effect on the real authors of the works.
Notice what is patented: a means to index and retrieve information in the music CDs. They are not claiming that the content of the Database is solely theirs (they wouldn't do it with a patent, anyway) they are claiming that they thought out / bought out the idea of creating such a database and accessing through a computer network.
The solution would be to find prior art that shows that to be untrue, but I don't know if anyone really came up with that idea before the (then free) CDDB folks.
That is really a bad kind of patent (not unlike one-click and the like) but since the US Patent Office is accepting them and noone seems to have power to stop them, it will not be the last of those.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I pay about 35 per month for internet access (about 40 US$). I live in Portugal.
:-(
Yes, the limits are low, but are on the higher side of you can get here at this price (some other typical offerings give you 3GB/month traffic, which can be national or international, at the same price). Thats what you get for having a very uncompetitive market, where the same company owns the incumbent telco, the main cable provider and the leader ADSL provider (and of course, the biggest ISP)
And that is why my ISP (who already uses metered per-GB prices) distinguishes between "national" traffic (for which i can use 20GB/month without paying more, and only pay a little more for GB) and "international" traffic (with a 1GB/month cap, and heavy cost for additional traffic).
This is not really that good for the end user (you have to be very discerning to where you download from if you are doing big downloads, but is doable.
If I would find a free ir open source project capable of doing all of the following:
- Allowing easy creaton of webpages BUT also the ability to insert raw HTML and change (on the fly) the HTML and have it refleted on the WYSIWYG editor.
- Allow to change the appearance and "feel" of all the webpages on a single instruction, even if that means to alter lots of CSS and other files.
- Allow to custumize said appearance on a page by page level, but also be able to apply some characteristics to a big group of pages (like shared borders).
- Distinguish between the physical and logical layout of a web site, and be able to change each individually and have that changes propagated to all the other pages affected by it. And have true support for the logical layout (navigation bars and the like).
- Allow the interaction of several people on the same project (with logs, todo-lists, etc.)
When a tool that can do these tasks is available (or even in beta stage of development) I will switch (gladly, because FP has some serious drawbacks too). But until then, there is no real choice for me, and FP is a good enough tool for the job.PS: Of course most of these tasks can be made explicitly with several different open-source tools... I know how to do them. But that is no good if you end-up wasting 30 minutes to do something that "just works" in FP.
In Europe Mickey and Goofy are much funnier. Mickey is a smart detective type character.
Well, this is true, but only in part... You are referring to the Disney Comics, which are the most vibrant part of Disney "Classic" characters usage at the moment (apart from the TV show House of Mouse).
I do like what the Italian authors did with Mickey (Mickey Mouse Mistery Magazine and so on), but the norm is not uniform in Europe. Danish (Egmont) production places less emphasis on Dectective Mickey and produces much more bland stories.
But the true authors that created the detective "persona" for Mickey were Americans... Floyd Gottfredson and Paul Murry are the ones who created the Mickey you like.
Still, it is true that without Disney Comics in the US (luckily that is about to stop) Europe moved ahead in the use of the classic Disney characters. The Italians, as I said, are the ones mostly to watch (if you can read Italian, I suggest the magazine MickeyX that overhauls Mickey in a "terror comics"-like environment).
I'm not sure it would be easy (and don't know how to stop the spy to using the same information that the game has to invalidate the erroneous data), but I believe it could be an aditional layer of protection.
How I wish I had mod points to mod you up...
I was under the impression that the law protecting individual backups (we know that we can't share those backups, granted) was precisely to guarantee the use of the product regardless of the problems that may affect the original media.
You are saying that the individual backups are wrong (since the products have a defined lifetime, that apparently the creator can choose) or that although they are allowed, and I could do it myself, if I hadn't done it I lost the ability to do it later?
You were already given the definition:
.. m, ..n
the objective function:
z = (sum(i=1..n) (c_i * x_i)) + v
and the constraints:
sum(i=1..n) a_ij * x_i) ( or = ) b_j,
for all j = 1
where l_i = x_i = u_i for i = 1
this (that is what you stated) is the general LP problem formulation.
I don't really think you ever read anything about linear programming (your text book, perhaps), or you would recognize it instantly (you still could not know how to present the dual problem, though that is also trivial).
Why not? Because the receiver doesn't pay the cost of SPAM, the sender does. If you want to send me a SMS you must pay the cost (about 5 cents or a little less in volume in my country). So it won't be the same threat level as email spam.
In the same vein, you don't really have telephone/cellphone SPAM at the same level you have email SPAM, since it costs the sender, not the receiver, to make a call in most "sane" countries.
The real threat is the "SPAMadvertiser" that thinks it can make money and not bear the risks/costs. If s/he must bear the costs, I don't believe the same "genious" will be doing much of it...
The reason for adopting such laws isn't just "monkee see, monkee do". There is powerfull lobbying here in the EU also, by the same parties that impose the US legislation.
Also, the US is not above using "trade pacts" and "trade war" threats to impose its views. Probably a country that wouldn't follow the US lead on this way, would be labeled as "encouraging piracy", and fined according to WTO rules.
Obviously the fact that you can't move troops (namely special operation forces) by land with the same stealth and celerity you can by air is in no way related to the refuse by the US/UK to use land transportation for "humanitarian aid", I assume...
That said, in reality, air drops are much safer to the ones doing the drop than land carrying. In general, when deliverin food by land the main problem is not that the food may be diverted to the troops (if there is so little of them that it won't get to the troops also, it surely wont get to the general population), the main problem is that the ones doing the delivery may be captured and used as hostages by either side of the conflict.
Still, as anyone knows, the ruling powers can (and usually do) open air corridors for delivery of humanitarian help (if it is on their best interest to do so, of course). Only if you want to do MORE than just send humanitarian help do you need to destroy all the anti-aircraft support.
I wouldn't use U7 but G8 to the SNMP strings. True, SNMP is more used in Unix (mostly because the availability of client support on those systems and because it is NEEDED to support management of an heterogenous network), but is also present in Windows, and the vulnerability stated is one of configuration, not of particular vulnerability of the protocol or implementation.
I think its misleading to place it as a *Nix problem, since probably most devices being subject to attack will not even be running any widely known OS (more likely they will be printers, routers and the like).
- Find out exactly who was directly involved in the attacks, and bring them to justice. Enlist the support of the several countries in the world to do so. You will find that if the evidence is convincing, no country will dare oppose it, and most will go out of their way to help.
- This war is really a social and cultural one. It can be won only by improving the living conditions of the people there (and in other parts of the world). You help take away those irritants, and you will see that the number of people that will support terrorism will drop... hard.
Will this end terrorism? No, it won't, but then, neither will the "war" thats been talked about. It may help however to limit the threat to a manageable level (and I place a lot more faith in such a solution to achieve it than just conventional warfare).Hi, I also live in .be and was wondering what the current state is on DMCA kinde laws here
Do you have any idee ? or know where to find the information ?
We're having a DCMA sooner or later as per European Directive 2001/29/EC. Never a directive was so much lobbied in Brussels and so little talked over outside the EU parliament. You got to love the free press in Europe, which prefered to talk about either the English royals or some food scare of the month... If we are lucky we can help to limit somewhat the damages of its transcription to the national legislations, check the EuroRights site.
I was under the impression that the countries that do not recognize Taiwan recognize the One China doctrine, and P. R. of China as a sovereign nation that includes Taiwan.
As China subscribes to the Berne convention (at least) and probably also to WIPO (if they don't do it now, at least will when it enters the WTO),
wouldn't copyright claims be valid also on Taiwan?
In practice, isn't any form of legalized IP monopolies (including patent protection) enforced in Taiwan?
Well, I'm not really sure about this... the way I see it, it doesn't need to treat its costumers well, just over the threshold (whatever it is) that will lead the consumers to change. Couple that with absence of competitors (or of significant competitors, or even of knowledge about significant competitors) and the barriers to change can be very high indeed.
In my view, (as is supposed to be the case in Europe) the government should step in whenever there is abuse of dominant position, iregardless of if the public has or not the alternative to unseat the dominant position - as we know, it is different to have an abstract right, and quite another to exercise that right.
The last time I read the Berne convention, copyright was supposed to protect the "expression" of an idea, not the idea itself. So, if someone remembers your work, that is not and should not be, a copyright infringment, unless the whole of the expression of your work is being reproduced. Nor should it require some sort of compensation.
Let us remember that copyright was created not as a way to generate an endless stream of revenue to the holders of "intelectual property", but as a way to adequately compensate the authors of intelectual works, by granting them a time-limited monopoly on the selling of their works. Moreover, several restrictions were placed on this monopoly (the most blatant of which the right of "fair-quote" or "fair-use").
Most of the copyright legislation that is being approved on these days is heavily influenced by the "copyright owners" (an expression that wasn't even on the first drafts of the convention - the idea was that the authors would be the owners of the copyright, as in the french expression "droit's d'auteur" - author rights). It has sucessfully removed some limitations that were placed on copyright and extended the monopoly duration (the several copyright duration expansion acts). All this, needless to say, at the expenses of the users of the works, and frequently without any real benefit to the authors (would you prefer that only the grandchildren of your editors benefit from your works, or should their grand-grandchildren also benefit? - thats the amount of benefit that copyright extension gives to the authors)...
Now, another attack is being waged on another limitation on the monopoly - the right to resale. Just business as usual, and if the public stays indiferent as usual, more money will end up lining the producers pockets... again with negligible effect on the real authors of the works.
Notice what is patented: a means to index and retrieve information in the music CDs. They are not claiming that the content of the Database is solely theirs (they wouldn't do it with a patent, anyway) they are claiming that they thought out / bought out the idea of creating such a database and accessing through a computer network.
The solution would be to find prior art that shows that to be untrue, but I don't know if anyone really came up with that idea before the (then free) CDDB folks.
That is really a bad kind of patent (not unlike one-click and the like) but since the US Patent Office is accepting them and noone seems to have power to stop them, it will not be the last of those.