Bullshit! There are major problems with this argument.
First of all, the testing is done by humans and very prone to errors. Also very prone to getting the results they want to get. There have been some noteable cases where it was found that the "odds" of a DNA match of what was tested were vastly overstated by an "expert witness" in court.
Second, while fingerprints are unique (and yet have still been found to be improperly matched by some FBI testers), DNA is not always unique. Want your life ruined by the actions of your evil twin (perhaps one you didn't even know you had if you were adopted) just because you served your country in the military and years later there was a DNA match to you?
The bottom line here is that keeping these records is a needless invasion of privacy. It was never to be used for this, but (big surprise) now it is. Who knows what it will be used for in the future? Perhaps to mine the DNA database so Monsanto can patent your genes (even if you personally would not give Monsanto that information). Perhaps to test for people with some "undesirable" genetic tendency. We at Homeland Security see from your genes that you're genetically a potential threat to national security, and so for your own good.....". In the end this is just information I (and many many others) don't want someone tracking on me, and a lot of people will elect not to serve in the military if it means that this information is taken from them and then can be used in any way in the future.
That's certainly debateable. You can only patent a machine you might build for 20 years. There is little reason why one should be able to copyright the same machine and get a perpetually growing protection if he builds the machine in software rather than hardware. But that isn't the issue in question. Copyright is intended to protect an artistic expression. In the Lexmark case, the supposedly copyrighted code isn't an artistic expression of anything, it's an invention intended for one purpose, to be a lockout mechanism that keeps others from building a device that works with the Lexmark printer. As such it is an invention, not an artistic expression, and should not be covered under the copyright law (read the link I provided). It might be something that could have been covered by a patent, but Lexmark didn't seem to go that way, they went for Copyright and I don't believe the copyright is valid. (I think there is plenty of prior art that would keep them from getting away with a patent claim, thus this try at hiding behind a copyright, but exceptions in the law don't allow it.)
So state law....Supercedes federal copyright law in North Carolina?
The thing is, it doesn't have to. Copyright law clearly has an exception for useful articles or things that provide a utilitarian function, so exactly the thing that Lexmark is trying to protect under a claim of copyright is likely voided by this exception. See more details of this here.
Note also that this same exception might well exclude the "copyrighted" code that Microsoft claims is a copyright violation in X-box mod chips. Copyright was never intended for this sort of thing, and the exception makes it pretty clear that the writers of the law didn't want copyright to be abused this way.
Try getting that from an inkjet:) Or even one of the newer hp lasers
The problem with these old beasts is that they stayed powered up and hot to be able to print quickly at any time. OK if you are in an air conditioned office and really doing a lot of printing. However, if you have one one your home system you might not even print every day, but the electricity the thing will cost you to run day in and day out (not counting extra A/C costs) will be a lot more than the cost of a newer lower power printer. The old beasts just were not very "green". Consider the number like yours still in use, and it's a lot of wasted fule and associated polution just to have a printer ideling so that it can print quickly if someone wants to print. And many people (like me) may not have printed anything all day.
should provide increased rest to Chinese
dissidents
Unfortunately, while freenet might be somewhat secure and private, it would be pretty clear by monitoring a link to an ISP that you were using Freenet. If the Chinese government were to do this they could easily identify and round up the Freenet dissidents. What can we do to help protect freedom behind the bamboo curtain? You can do your part by making sure that Freenet is also used for downloading music! Everyone knows the Chinese like to download and pirate copyrighted material. The Chinese gub'mint will not give it a second look as long as they believe it's being used for piracy and not for dissident speech. We can all do our part for freedom by making sure that Freenet becomes a popular tool for file sharing.
One hardly needs a search engine to find a slower net. My first ISP, Concentric, certainly had a slower net. They are either gone now or hiding behind a different name, but you can still get a slower net from some providers. AOL users seem amazed when they see other systems using the same modems.
Is it really necessary to send CDs out for people to install when the Google flagship page is less than 30K?
Disable graphics and google loads in no time flat. Realistically, if you can't use google with your existing tools then you can't use any links a search engine would get you.
They are also considering trying to persuade computer sellers in developing countries to install the program on machines."
Hell with that, if any software should be pre-installed, it should be stuff the bulk of the customers are asking for, not something the developer persuaded the sellers to install. We all know the problems that kind of thing causes, and such bloat would be worse here, since the program is clearly called large and systems for developing countries are likely to cut corners and have small disks.
If they really want to do something useful, they should build an e-mail based portal. That way someone with e-mail could get anything they want, not just a search, but then submit a link from the search and have the result e-mailed back. Or submit the link for the program (this or any program) and have it e-mailed to you, that way it wouldn't need to be pre-installed and could be easily updated. There are actually still people who have more access to e-mail than to the Web, such an e-mail portal would be of good use, and would better address what this project claims to be trying to address.
So why can't they do something like
that here in the States? What's holding them back - red tape, technical issues?
What's holding them back here? Greed. Why should your local telco offer you 12 mbs, VoIP and DVD movies for $21 when they can gouge you for $50 for ADSL alone, and not even guarantee a 1.5mbs download? And they sure don't want it including quality VoIP. Can someone else other then the telco offer it? Not if they have to get the wires from the telco, same problem. That pretty much leaves the cable companies. But then the system who have to co-exist with the existing cable signal, and even if it does do you really expect the cable company to offer this speed and these services a this price when it has a history of getting a lot more for a lot less? Both the local telcos and the cable companies have local monopolies, and have a history of increasing rates that exceed inflation and are extremely hard to justify when you know the facts behind them.
Alt-F1, Alt-F2... I can switch between root and myself in about 1/8 of a secord or less. Its amazing really. I bit longer to switch between console and X.
Of course this represents prior art. So how in the world did the patent ever get issued, or even applied for (since it would clearly be invalidated as soon as one tries to enforce it)?????
However, at a fundamental level, were there any better BASICs at that time ie. ones with proper structured...
Many years before the C64, even before the VIC 20, Noth Start came out with a fantastic Basic for their S-100 system. This Basic was by far better than C64 basic, or any M$ Basic. It was still Basic, so it had the go to statements and other issues of the language, but once you programmed in North Star basic you understood how bad M$ basic was.
Could this be a sign that a serious contender
for President.... has his head screwed on right about copyright law?"
So what if he does? The president is the head of the Executive branch, not a member of the Legislative branch. He does not make the laws. And his veto can't undo the dammage that has already been done. And while we could do a lot better with an elected president than with Bush, one issue hardly means the man would be a suitable leader or not destroy us with other policies.
The ringtone, inaudible to humans, has a range of three feet, and functions just like any other ring-tone from your cell.
Just what everyone needs, a ring tone that is inaudible and repells mosquitoes only when the phone rings. How are you expected to answer the phone, whit until the bugs stop attacking you and decide from that someone must be calling?
they'll be paying some of their gross income to MS. Does this make sense to anyone?
It not only makes no sense, but it costs them dearly (several years ago I was involved with a OEM product that needed a DOS. Microsoft was contacted and wanted $100 a copy for DOS, more that the upgrade cost of MSDOS on the market at the time. They would not flex at all. We went with DR-DOS for much less.)
In addition to M$ raping them on the OS cost, they completely give up access to source code for their own box! And they open themselves for anything that M$ might do to them. I expect they are too small of fish for M$ to bother with them (although they would seem to have to have negoiated a version of XP that does not need product activation, unless they activate each new machine to themselves at assembly), but if they ever got large enough to survive you can expect something to turn up in XP that would wreek havoc with the console. And this would even be much more deniable for M$ than all the other times they've done it to competitors from DR-DOS to IBM and beyond, with no penality for such actions so far.
This company will not be around long, don't buy a box from them that depends on their continued existance to use. And that is just another reason the company will not be around long.
What a strange story. I find it very hard to believe that anyone could be putting Win XP in a home console that they intend to sell for a fair price. You know M$ isn't giving them a sweetheart deal on the pricing of this software.
The irony is that Bill may loose money on every X-box he sells, but he would make money on every Phantom his competitor sells! This just sounds like such bad business on the company's part to me that I now really believe that either the thing is an investor scam or the company is so mismanaged as to make their survival unlikely. No point in getting any console if the company is about to go under.
And who in their right mind would release a game console when they can't see or change the basic OS that drives it? If this thing ever was successful, they have given M$ the perfect way to kill them. Given the M$ history of sabotaging everything from DR-DOS to Open-GL, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that you don't put the enemy's secret software in your expensive product that competes directly with theirs.
Ironically, I was able to make a copy of the CD with my phillips burner that then played fine on her stereo.
Moral of the story: copy protected CD's hurt consumers.
The real moral, if this is the total story, is that the label and the stores don't care. As far as they know they just made another sale. The CD should have been returned to the store (after you made your copy) as not suitable for it's indended use and you should have received a full refund. That way copy protection hurts the people it should and when this happens enough it might go away.
Glad to see notebooks focusing on Linux, but I don't see this as a particularly good deal in the current market. To support that statement, this spring I bought an HP notebook for $850 after rebates (and I got a load of other free stuff after rebates with it including an inkjet printer and a wireless pcmcia card). I've since seen that same computer and a slighter faster HP model from the same family for $799 (without the free add-ons). Here's a comparison between the two systems:
HP notebook has a 15 inch screen, VIA a 12.1 display (both have the same max resolution).
HP notebook has an Athlon XP 1.8 (1.5 gig clock frequency) cpu, the VIA notebook has a much more limited VIA C3 933mhz cpu.
The HP uses PC2100 notebook memory and supports up to 1 gig. The VIA uses PC133 memory and supports up to 768 meg. Both come with 256 meg standard.
The HP came with a 30 gig hard drive, the VIA comes with a 20 gig drive.
The HP uses an ATI video chip and can share up to 64 memory. The VIA uses a Savage video chip that can share 32 meg.
The HP came with a combo DVD reader/CD-RW writer; the VIA lists the CD drive as optional!
I'll give credit to the VIA in that it has USB 2 and firewire; the model of HP notebook I'm using does not have firewire (it is an option) and as far as I know USB 2 is not available (it has USB 1.1, 2 outlets).
Also to the VIA's credit is that it has a compact flash slot as well as a PCMCIA slot, the HP has only PCMCIA.
Both have a LAN connector, but additionally the HP has a built in modem (handy on a notebook when you travel) and SVGA video out (as well as the normal mouse and VGA out porrts). The VIA has no mention of a modem or a video out connector.
HP also threw in a free (after rebate) USB floppy drive, neither system comes with a floppy.
The VIA is much lighter, so if you're looking for a light notebook rather than a PDA it might be a good choice, but as a general notebook you can get a lot more of a notebook than this even after paying the Microsoft tax (the HP comes with XP home). The HP does support Linux just fine; I use Knoppix with it all the time. Only conflict I've seen is with the free wireless PCMCIA card that was thrown in the deal, and the VIA doesn't come with wireless hardware, so if you get a wireless pcmcia card that will work with Linux on the VIA it will likely work on the HP as well.
So it's good to hear that people are offering Linux notebooks, but I would much rather see HP offer their notebooks with Linux or no OS at all and take what they give Microsoft off the price. Just because VIA is offering a notebook with Linux does not make it a good deal.
The article did reference a site by John Young that it says is still on-line, but I can't find any URL for it, on line or shut down. Does anyone know where that site is???
Hopefully the RIAA wont object to me distributing thumbnails of music as MP3's
I agree completely, who called this funny ? The Thumbnails in question were not just images of a small part of the picture, they were images of the entire picture, but at a smaller size, and so obviously at a lower quality (lower resolution). Although the RIAA likes to promote the lie that an MP3 is as good as an original recording because it serves their purpose, this just isn't true. An MP3 is lower quality (even when you've paid 99 cents per song for it, and even if you've bought a full ablum of perhaps 18 songs at 99 cents each).
So we're not talking about just little snippets of music here, it can certainly be argued that small MP3 files of much larger audio files are audio thumbnails of the songs in question; at least until the court gets around to defining how much smaller a thumbnail has to be to keep with-in the fair use understanding, or (as will likely happen) for them to restrict this ruling to photos only, or to exclude media with audio, or to overturn the ruling entirely.
Until they do, time to start downloading the thumbnail of the latest Terminator movie!
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, the testing is done by humans and very prone to errors. Also very prone to getting the results they want to get. There have been some noteable cases where it was found that the "odds" of a DNA match of what was tested were vastly overstated by an "expert witness" in court.
Second, while fingerprints are unique (and yet have still been found to be improperly matched by some FBI testers), DNA is not always unique. Want your life ruined by the actions of your evil twin (perhaps one you didn't even know you had if you were adopted) just because you served your country in the military and years later there was a DNA match to you?
The bottom line here is that keeping these records is a needless invasion of privacy. It was never to be used for this, but (big surprise) now it is. Who knows what it will be used for in the future? Perhaps to mine the DNA database so Monsanto can patent your genes (even if you personally would not give Monsanto that information). Perhaps to test for people with some "undesirable" genetic tendency. We at Homeland Security see from your genes that you're genetically a potential threat to national security, and so for your own good .....". In the end this is just information I (and many many others) don't want someone tracking on me, and a lot of people will elect not to serve in the military if it means that this information is taken from them and then can be used in any way in the future.
paper cuts don't count
Yea, I was really expecting troll or flamebait! Amazing what some people will mod up! Certainly goes to show some problems with the moderation system.
That's certainly debateable. You can only patent a machine you might build for 20 years. There is little reason why one should be able to copyright the same machine and get a perpetually growing protection if he builds the machine in software rather than hardware. But that isn't the issue in question. Copyright is intended to protect an artistic expression. In the Lexmark case, the supposedly copyrighted code isn't an artistic expression of anything, it's an invention intended for one purpose, to be a lockout mechanism that keeps others from building a device that works with the Lexmark printer. As such it is an invention, not an artistic expression, and should not be covered under the copyright law (read the link I provided). It might be something that could have been covered by a patent, but Lexmark didn't seem to go that way, they went for Copyright and I don't believe the copyright is valid. (I think there is plenty of prior art that would keep them from getting away with a patent claim, thus this try at hiding behind a copyright, but exceptions in the law don't allow it.)
The thing is, it doesn't have to. Copyright law clearly has an exception for useful articles or things that provide a utilitarian function, so exactly the thing that Lexmark is trying to protect under a claim of copyright is likely voided by this exception. See more details of this here.
Note also that this same exception might well exclude the "copyrighted" code that Microsoft claims is a copyright violation in X-box mod chips. Copyright was never intended for this sort of thing, and the exception makes it pretty clear that the writers of the law didn't want copyright to be abused this way.
The problem with these old beasts is that they stayed powered up and hot to be able to print quickly at any time. OK if you are in an air conditioned office and really doing a lot of printing. However, if you have one one your home system you might not even print every day, but the electricity the thing will cost you to run day in and day out (not counting extra A/C costs) will be a lot more than the cost of a newer lower power printer. The old beasts just were not very "green". Consider the number like yours still in use, and it's a lot of wasted fule and associated polution just to have a printer ideling so that it can print quickly if someone wants to print. And many people (like me) may not have printed anything all day.
Unfortunately, while freenet might be somewhat secure and private, it would be pretty clear by monitoring a link to an ISP that you were using Freenet. If the Chinese government were to do this they could easily identify and round up the Freenet dissidents. What can we do to help protect freedom behind the bamboo curtain? You can do your part by making sure that Freenet is also used for downloading music! Everyone knows the Chinese like to download and pirate copyrighted material. The Chinese gub'mint will not give it a second look as long as they believe it's being used for piracy and not for dissident speech. We can all do our part for freedom by making sure that Freenet becomes a popular tool for file sharing.
One hardly needs a search engine to find a slower net. My first ISP, Concentric, certainly had a slower net. They are either gone now or hiding behind a different name, but you can still get a slower net from some providers. AOL users seem amazed when they see other systems using the same modems.
Disable graphics and google loads in no time flat. Realistically, if you can't use google with your existing tools then you can't use any links a search engine would get you.
They are also considering trying to persuade computer sellers in developing countries to install the program on machines."
Hell with that, if any software should be pre-installed, it should be stuff the bulk of the customers are asking for, not something the developer persuaded the sellers to install. We all know the problems that kind of thing causes, and such bloat would be worse here, since the program is clearly called large and systems for developing countries are likely to cut corners and have small disks.
If they really want to do something useful, they should build an e-mail based portal. That way someone with e-mail could get anything they want, not just a search, but then submit a link from the search and have the result e-mailed back. Or submit the link for the program (this or any program) and have it e-mailed to you, that way it wouldn't need to be pre-installed and could be easily updated. There are actually still people who have more access to e-mail than to the Web, such an e-mail portal would be of good use, and would better address what this project claims to be trying to address.
What's holding them back here? Greed. Why should your local telco offer you 12 mbs, VoIP and DVD movies for $21 when they can gouge you for $50 for ADSL alone, and not even guarantee a 1.5mbs download? And they sure don't want it including quality VoIP. Can someone else other then the telco offer it? Not if they have to get the wires from the telco, same problem. That pretty much leaves the cable companies. But then the system who have to co-exist with the existing cable signal, and even if it does do you really expect the cable company to offer this speed and these services a this price when it has a history of getting a lot more for a lot less? Both the local telcos and the cable companies have local monopolies, and have a history of increasing rates that exceed inflation and are extremely hard to justify when you know the facts behind them.
Of course this represents prior art. So how in the world did the patent ever get issued, or even applied for (since it would clearly be invalidated as soon as one tries to enforce it)?????
Many years before the C64, even before the VIC 20, Noth Start came out with a fantastic Basic for their S-100 system. This Basic was by far better than C64 basic, or any M$ Basic. It was still Basic, so it had the go to statements and other issues of the language, but once you programmed in North Star basic you understood how bad M$ basic was.
So what if he does? The president is the head of the Executive branch, not a member of the Legislative branch. He does not make the laws. And his veto can't undo the dammage that has already been done. And while we could do a lot better with an elected president than with Bush, one issue hardly means the man would be a suitable leader or not destroy us with other policies.
Just what everyone needs, a ring tone that is inaudible and repells mosquitoes only when the phone rings. How are you expected to answer the phone, whit until the bugs stop attacking you and decide from that someone must be calling?
There is no gamble here. The question is stated wrong, it should be What To Do When They Go Bankrupt
It not only makes no sense, but it costs them dearly (several years ago I was involved with a OEM product that needed a DOS. Microsoft was contacted and wanted $100 a copy for DOS, more that the upgrade cost of MSDOS on the market at the time. They would not flex at all. We went with DR-DOS for much less.)
In addition to M$ raping them on the OS cost, they completely give up access to source code for their own box! And they open themselves for anything that M$ might do to them. I expect they are too small of fish for M$ to bother with them (although they would seem to have to have negoiated a version of XP that does not need product activation, unless they activate each new machine to themselves at assembly), but if they ever got large enough to survive you can expect something to turn up in XP that would wreek havoc with the console. And this would even be much more deniable for M$ than all the other times they've done it to competitors from DR-DOS to IBM and beyond, with no penality for such actions so far.
This company will not be around long, don't buy a box from them that depends on their continued existance to use. And that is just another reason the company will not be around long.
The irony is that Bill may loose money on every X-box he sells, but he would make money on every Phantom his competitor sells! This just sounds like such bad business on the company's part to me that I now really believe that either the thing is an investor scam or the company is so mismanaged as to make their survival unlikely. No point in getting any console if the company is about to go under.
And who in their right mind would release a game console when they can't see or change the basic OS that drives it? If this thing ever was successful, they have given M$ the perfect way to kill them. Given the M$ history of sabotaging everything from DR-DOS to Open-GL, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that you don't put the enemy's secret software in your expensive product that competes directly with theirs.
Moral of the story: copy protected CD's hurt consumers.
The real moral, if this is the total story, is that the label and the stores don't care. As far as they know they just made another sale. The CD should have been returned to the store (after you made your copy) as not suitable for it's indended use and you should have received a full refund. That way copy protection hurts the people it should and when this happens enough it might go away.
Yea, illegal in several states. Damn those consumer protection laws!
HP notebook has a 15 inch screen, VIA a 12.1 display (both have the same max resolution).
HP notebook has an Athlon XP 1.8 (1.5 gig clock frequency) cpu, the VIA notebook has a much more limited VIA C3 933mhz cpu.
The HP uses PC2100 notebook memory and supports up to 1 gig. The VIA uses PC133 memory and supports up to 768 meg. Both come with 256 meg standard.
The HP came with a 30 gig hard drive, the VIA comes with a 20 gig drive.
The HP uses an ATI video chip and can share up to 64 memory. The VIA uses a Savage video chip that can share 32 meg.
The HP came with a combo DVD reader/CD-RW writer; the VIA lists the CD drive as optional!
I'll give credit to the VIA in that it has USB 2 and firewire; the model of HP notebook I'm using does not have firewire (it is an option) and as far as I know USB 2 is not available (it has USB 1.1, 2 outlets).
Also to the VIA's credit is that it has a compact flash slot as well as a PCMCIA slot, the HP has only PCMCIA.
Both have a LAN connector, but additionally the HP has a built in modem (handy on a notebook when you travel) and SVGA video out (as well as the normal mouse and VGA out porrts). The VIA has no mention of a modem or a video out connector.
HP also threw in a free (after rebate) USB floppy drive, neither system comes with a floppy.
The VIA is much lighter, so if you're looking for a light notebook rather than a PDA it might be a good choice, but as a general notebook you can get a lot more of a notebook than this even after paying the Microsoft tax (the HP comes with XP home). The HP does support Linux just fine; I use Knoppix with it all the time. Only conflict I've seen is with the free wireless PCMCIA card that was thrown in the deal, and the VIA doesn't come with wireless hardware, so if you get a wireless pcmcia card that will work with Linux on the VIA it will likely work on the HP as well.
So it's good to hear that people are offering Linux notebooks, but I would much rather see HP offer their notebooks with Linux or no OS at all and take what they give Microsoft off the price. Just because VIA is offering a notebook with Linux does not make it a good deal.
Of course it's a taxpayer ripoff. Thank goodness we're not getting all the government we're paying for.
The article did reference a site by John Young that it says is still on-line, but I can't find any URL for it, on line or shut down. Does anyone know where that site is???
I agree completely, who called this funny ? The Thumbnails in question were not just images of a small part of the picture, they were images of the entire picture, but at a smaller size, and so obviously at a lower quality (lower resolution). Although the RIAA likes to promote the lie that an MP3 is as good as an original recording because it serves their purpose, this just isn't true. An MP3 is lower quality (even when you've paid 99 cents per song for it, and even if you've bought a full ablum of perhaps 18 songs at 99 cents each).
So we're not talking about just little snippets of music here, it can certainly be argued that small MP3 files of much larger audio files are audio thumbnails of the songs in question; at least until the court gets around to defining how much smaller a thumbnail has to be to keep with-in the fair use understanding, or (as will likely happen) for them to restrict this ruling to photos only, or to exclude media with audio, or to overturn the ruling entirely.
Until they do, time to start downloading the thumbnail of the latest Terminator movie!
Good first step, but that's far from the only Linksys device running Linux. Where are the sources for the other devices?
John: HI... I'm John. ..... err, whoever you are.
ADDA Crowd: Hi,