Well it is wrong in the legal sense but I would call it right in the moral sense. Americans have the show for free on broadcasting networks. They can tape it, share the tape with friends, but can't do this digitally or can't give it to australians friends ? Yeah, that's the law, you should comply but you should also change it quickly.
Luckily I am free of the series addiction that seem to get all my colleagues, but I must say that it is very hard for those watching the series on the national network to not be spoiled by the bittorrenters who knows who gets to be killed at the end of season 1 12 months before "honest guys".
Well, the international community protests when Iran gets a potentially dangerous technology and the same international community protests when U.S. behaves in a way that ignore human rights or international laws.
Why is that so ? Because there is a belief that it is easier to make US change its behavior than to make it drop its technologies. Currently it is believed to be easier to make Iran drop its technology than to change its international stance but this opinion could very well change in the near future.
"Here are kalashnikovs, here is a land for you. Make people's live impossible here while we attack on the north front." They are not supposed to be a threat to any organized army. They are supposed to be a general critter threat.
My question is, and I don't mean to troll, what happened? From my perspective, it seems that many people almost disdain the idea of progress in culture and arts now.
The funny thing is that, approx. 1400 years after the death of Jesus we also had our period of intolerance (did you say Inquisition) and of stalling progress. The Renaissance appears to be a flourishing era because of the giant leap that has been made in paintings but in terms of sculpture, architecture or litterature, the trend was to come back to the "classic style" : an aggregation of roman and greek techniques 1000 years old and considered perfect. It is at this time also that we began to see scientists opposing Church dogmas whereas before this time scientists were often also religion scholars.
People just don't decide to blow up themselves because 80 years ago your great grandfather slapped his great grandfather. It's almost always about a current situation. And in the case of islamic terrorism, it is almost always about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But I would agree that Iraq war has given them new causes to enroll in a terrorist group.
Uh ? What about France ? The only thing I can think of are the small riots at the end of last year (yeah I know that from US it was reported as a civil war, mind you, there were 2 persons killed in two weeks) that had no connections with terrorism or islamism. In fact, a lot of Muslim leaders made public declarations that a true Muslim shouldn't participate in those events.
France has a pretty good image in the middle east nowadays, despite the fact that it also considers terrorism as one of its first security problem. But it tries to deal with it with respect to human rights.
I am giving you a figure I have heard from the people who write patents in my (French) company. Apparently, a French patent would cost you around 2000 euros. But there are no international patent office, so you have to translate it in many legalese dialects and make it approved by several offices. So add the costs for UK, US, Middle East, Asia (probably includes China, Japan, Korea as separated entities) plus a few other countries where you could plan to do business, you get a pretty big number on the bottom line.
In France, presidential elections will happen in April. Elections are organized by the Minister of the Interior. The minister is one the candidate (currently the one leading the polls) he is also a strong advocate of electronic voting. In order to be authorized, an electronic voting machine has to be inspected byt his minister but there are no precise criterions. In fact we have already used electronic voting machines that have been ruled insecure by Belgian authorities.
So yes, the parent post is funny. It's funny because it's true.
it takes approximately $150,000 to make an international patent. And a legal service to defend your rights costs a lot more.
We have to get used to this world anyway : more and more intelligent people have access to a good education. That means more and more people have great ideas. The corollary is that several people come up with the same great idea at approximately the same time. If you go further in the reasoning:
Adam, Barbara and Conrad live in different parts of the world but come up with the Great Idea X that will change the way we use wireless networks. Adam lives in US and has a lot of cash. He patents the idea, barring Barbara and Conrad of a revenue they would be (in some economico-ethics theories) entitled to.
Please allow me to take an arrogant European tone:
You americans always focus on the "who is making profit ?" aspect of the law. Is this the lil' guy ? is this the big corporation ? is it the state ? Is it the "good" person ? (That is, according to an unwritten law of ethics and morals)
The European stance on the patent system is "What system favors the exchange of ideas and the development of innovative industries ?". It is rooted in the belief that good ideas are too precious to be kept solely by an individual seeking profit.
Now the world has evolved so much that patents still allows someone to make profits from them, but does it still helps the propagation of ideas ? I am not sure of it...
Here are the informations missing from TFS:
Two extrasolar gas giant upper atmospheres were observed by the Spitzer infrared sprectrometer. It revealed mainly silicate dust and no water. That bewildered scientists who take for granted that such planets contain a high quantity of water. They extrapolate that it must be present under the dust layer.
Mod it funny but consider it insightful. A lot of non-technical people believe that one can actually prevent a user from dowloading a file while allowing him to view it. We all know this is a shallow dream but this issue is fairly important for IP holders, they think they have a real control about how and when you can view the content.
And, it looks like the EU is starting to move the same direction as the USA with respect to IP laws, so don't think you Europians will get a "walk" on this.
We fought it, it finished by a draw but we will keep on fighting. Currently we are in a gray situation : software patents are forbidden but the European Patent Office deliver software patents on a daily basis. It is illegal but there are no institution to slap it and make it stop. So many companies own European Software patents, hoping they will one day have a legal value. I am not aware of one actually used in trial...
The year is 2007. We now have space probes that take care of themselves, better and better speech recognition, insightful search engines, spam filters, autonomous vehicles (see the DARPA challenge),
Scheduling capacities well beyond the possibility of the human brain are used in internet traffic routing, compiler optimizations, project management, delivery services, air traffic (in some places).
There are free services available on Internet which can roughly translate a document (Hey, you can at least grab the sense of that chinese spec) or sum up a document.
In fact, understanding the natural language is the only thing that is missing to call today's programs intelligent. HAL the computer exists, it pilots the Galileo probe. It is just unable to speak in English. It has a definite set of goals, of possible actions, it makes observations and does the planning of its actions in order to fulfill its mission. Give it a bigger ship, a few hibernation pods and a human crew. Give it the goal "you must reach the monolith without the crew knowing it" and you would see today's algorithms in their full glory coming up with a plan that involves the slaughter of the mammal units. Maybe it could even come up with a plan involving deception and lies if it had the kind of psychology knowledge that HAL seems to have.
Maybe I spend too much time on semantic-web-related pages, butmy vision of the solution would be a file containing meta-datas about the files to be installed, allowing it to be usable in a wide range of environments.
seconded
Also it would be a good idea to correct MPAA's rating which considers that one boob seen shortly makes it "not suitable for children" but where gunslinging is considered okay.
I think what he meant was that 'shortage' of bandwidth will have more limited consequence than shortage on oil. We will at least heve the same bandwidth we have today.
Plus, I really think this is FUD. Here in France, several ISPs provide their clients with video-on-demand without any reported congestion problem. And there is a huge plan to bring optical fiber everywhere to meet HD video on demand requirements.
Slashdot Mirror
Well it is wrong in the legal sense but I would call it right in the moral sense. Americans have the show for free on broadcasting networks. They can tape it, share the tape with friends, but can't do this digitally or can't give it to australians friends ? Yeah, that's the law, you should comply but you should also change it quickly.
Luckily I am free of the series addiction that seem to get all my colleagues, but I must say that it is very hard for those watching the series on the national network to not be spoiled by the bittorrenters who knows who gets to be killed at the end of season 1 12 months before "honest guys".
Well, the international community protests when Iran gets a potentially dangerous technology and the same international community protests when U.S. behaves in a way that ignore human rights or international laws.
Why is that so ? Because there is a belief that it is easier to make US change its behavior than to make it drop its technologies. Currently it is believed to be easier to make Iran drop its technology than to change its international stance but this opinion could very well change in the near future.
Not unlimited. And the OSS community is very vocal for free.
I like to remind this Malaysian saying : "Three things can't hide for long : The Sun, the Moon and the Truth"
Strange, I thought that the correct name for the battlefield weapon would be Yamoto gun. Are we sure there is no typo ?
"Here are kalashnikovs, here is a land for you. Make people's live impossible here while we attack on the north front." They are not supposed to be a threat to any organized army. They are supposed to be a general critter threat.
My question is, and I don't mean to troll, what happened? From my perspective, it seems that many people almost disdain the idea of progress in culture and arts now.
The funny thing is that, approx. 1400 years after the death of Jesus we also had our period of intolerance (did you say Inquisition) and of stalling progress. The Renaissance appears to be a flourishing era because of the giant leap that has been made in paintings but in terms of sculpture, architecture or litterature, the trend was to come back to the "classic style" : an aggregation of roman and greek techniques 1000 years old and considered perfect. It is at this time also that we began to see scientists opposing Church dogmas whereas before this time scientists were often also religion scholars.
... and I want to know : if they can use spears, can they be taught to use submachine guns ?
Don't laugh, it may very well happen.
People just don't decide to blow up themselves because 80 years ago your great grandfather slapped his great grandfather. It's almost always about a current situation. And in the case of islamic terrorism, it is almost always about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But I would agree that Iraq war has given them new causes to enroll in a terrorist group.
Uh ? What about France ? The only thing I can think of are the small riots at the end of last year (yeah I know that from US it was reported as a civil war, mind you, there were 2 persons killed in two weeks) that had no connections with terrorism or islamism. In fact, a lot of Muslim leaders made public declarations that a true Muslim shouldn't participate in those events.
France has a pretty good image in the middle east nowadays, despite the fact that it also considers terrorism as one of its first security problem. But it tries to deal with it with respect to human rights.
Correct but it doesn't fit the 150 character limits Slashdot imposes, I had to make it shorter. I prefer GBS version though...
I am giving you a figure I have heard from the people who write patents in my (French) company. Apparently, a French patent would cost you around 2000 euros. But there are no international patent office, so you have to translate it in many legalese dialects and make it approved by several offices. So add the costs for UK, US, Middle East, Asia (probably includes China, Japan, Korea as separated entities) plus a few other countries where you could plan to do business, you get a pretty big number on the bottom line.
In France, presidential elections will happen in April. Elections are organized by the Minister of the Interior. The minister is one the candidate (currently the one leading the polls) he is also a strong advocate of electronic voting. In order to be authorized, an electronic voting machine has to be inspected byt his minister but there are no precise criterions. In fact we have already used electronic voting machines that have been ruled insecure by Belgian authorities.
So yes, the parent post is funny. It's funny because it's true.
it takes approximately $150,000 to make an international patent. And a legal service to defend your rights costs a lot more.
:
:
We have to get used to this world anyway : more and more intelligent people have access to a good education. That means more and more people have great ideas. The corollary is that several people come up with the same great idea at approximately the same time. If you go further in the reasoning
Adam, Barbara and Conrad live in different parts of the world but come up with the Great Idea X that will change the way we use wireless networks. Adam lives in US and has a lot of cash. He patents the idea, barring Barbara and Conrad of a revenue they would be (in some economico-ethics theories) entitled to.
Please allow me to take an arrogant European tone
You americans always focus on the "who is making profit ?" aspect of the law. Is this the lil' guy ? is this the big corporation ? is it the state ? Is it the "good" person ? (That is, according to an unwritten law of ethics and morals)
The European stance on the patent system is "What system favors the exchange of ideas and the development of innovative industries ?". It is rooted in the belief that good ideas are too precious to be kept solely by an individual seeking profit.
Now the world has evolved so much that patents still allows someone to make profits from them, but does it still helps the propagation of ideas ? I am not sure of it...
Here are the informations missing from TFS :
Two extrasolar gas giant upper atmospheres were observed by the Spitzer infrared sprectrometer. It revealed mainly silicate dust and no water. That bewildered scientists who take for granted that such planets contain a high quantity of water. They extrapolate that it must be present under the dust layer.
Mod it funny but consider it insightful. A lot of non-technical people believe that one can actually prevent a user from dowloading a file while allowing him to view it. We all know this is a shallow dream but this issue is fairly important for IP holders, they think they have a real control about how and when you can view the content.
And, it looks like the EU is starting to move the same direction as the USA with respect to IP laws, so don't think you Europians will get a "walk" on this.
...
We fought it, it finished by a draw but we will keep on fighting. Currently we are in a gray situation : software patents are forbidden but the European Patent Office deliver software patents on a daily basis. It is illegal but there are no institution to slap it and make it stop. So many companies own European Software patents, hoping they will one day have a legal value. I am not aware of one actually used in trial
The year is 2007. We now have space probes that take care of themselves, better and better speech recognition, insightful search engines, spam filters, autonomous vehicles (see the DARPA challenge),
Scheduling capacities well beyond the possibility of the human brain are used in internet traffic routing, compiler optimizations, project management, delivery services, air traffic (in some places).
There are free services available on Internet which can roughly translate a document (Hey, you can at least grab the sense of that chinese spec) or sum up a document.
In fact, understanding the natural language is the only thing that is missing to call today's programs intelligent. HAL the computer exists, it pilots the Galileo probe. It is just unable to speak in English. It has a definite set of goals, of possible actions, it makes observations and does the planning of its actions in order to fulfill its mission. Give it a bigger ship, a few hibernation pods and a human crew. Give it the goal "you must reach the monolith without the crew knowing it" and you would see today's algorithms in their full glory coming up with a plan that involves the slaughter of the mammal units. Maybe it could even come up with a plan involving deception and lies if it had the kind of psychology knowledge that HAL seems to have.
Hmmmm... Did I just propose to make another package format ? I just shouldn't post on monday morning...
Maybe I spend too much time on semantic-web-related pages, butmy vision of the solution would be a file containing meta-datas about the files to be installed, allowing it to be usable in a wide range of environments.
Seriously, I know Microsoft is supposed to be evil and all, but even Disney does this.
Since when did Disney become a goody corporation ?
seconded
Also it would be a good idea to correct MPAA's rating which considers that one boob seen shortly makes it "not suitable for children" but where gunslinging is considered okay.
They didn't say what causes the waves !
Everybody knows this is Great Cthulhu snoring in his sleep
Now please lose 2D6 sanity points
Pen and Paper RPGs are the only way to go. Tell the GM you want to power game or just grab a copy of Amber :-)
I think what he meant was that 'shortage' of bandwidth will have more limited consequence than shortage on oil. We will at least heve the same bandwidth we have today.
Plus, I really think this is FUD. Here in France, several ISPs provide their clients with video-on-demand without any reported congestion problem. And there is a huge plan to bring optical fiber everywhere to meet HD video on demand requirements.
penguins and tuna !