Let's look at the numbers: 652,000 songs If we assume there are 20 tracks on an album (that's a large number, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt), that gives us 32,600 albums. Now, let's assume that every artist puts out an average of 5 albums.
Using these numbers, we'd find that this ONE guy has successfully collected the entire repertoire of 6,520 different artists.
The storage space required for all those songs (stored as mp3s) would easily be in excess of 2TB.
I seriously doubt the RIAA looked at every single file to verify it was in fact a complete, *unique* song within the collection, and that the copyright to every song belonged to them. For them to do so remotely would require them to download continuously for ~23 days at 1MB/s.
I think this comment from the linked article sums it up best:
John Bonsor, of Starr, a Scottish rocketry group is puzzled. "I don't understand what is happening. He has been using cheap rockets, has a mixed bag of success and disaster and has achieved less than many others have working from their garage. It is ridiculous to claim that he leads the field, except in the number of crashes."
Combined with his obvious propensity to make false statements (e.g. saying he was sponsored by NASA) I think we can only hope he wins the Darwin award with style, if he actually launches.
Really? Did you actually read the weblog in question? Here's a quote from the second paragraph (no pun intended):
The beautiful but deeply agitated face of this second superpower is the worldwide peace campaign, but the body of the movement is made up of millions of people concerned with a broad agenda that includes social development, environmentalism, health, and human rights.
Sounds like an anti-war movement to me, especially when they use the words "peace campaign" in the description.
Right...So you're saying I should pay money to evaluate whether I want to buy something?
Because in practice you can't sell CDs for the same price you buy them, new or used.
In Japan, I used to rent CDs as a palatable method of evaluating music before I bought it. However, here in the good 'ol US of A, the RIAA in their infinite wisdom got legislation passed which prevents this. Thanks to them, I'm basically forced to buy it or "steal" it.
contracts, on the other hand, represent the exact opposite of free market economics. Government contracting does not represent voluntary association but coercion: The consumer (you and I) do not choose for ourselves whether or not to patronize these businesses.
In this case, the customer is the government. That's why they are called government contractors, and not citizen contractors. And, yes the government contracting market (by law) is pretty damned free. Anyone is free to bid on upcoming contracts. If you have a small company, there are a number of SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) contracts available every year, from every department related to the government. The linked SBIR page is about NASA's SBIRs, but there are literally a total of thousands available from DoT, DoD, NIH, NIST, NIMA, etc. If you're a big company, then you go through a similar, yet more formal process to bid on contracts. As is the case with most government-related things, there's more paperwork to complete, and in some cases due to the sensitive nature of the contract, you might be required to have some level of security clearance before you can bid, but other than that it is really wide open. I happen to know of a few recent large contracts that have been competitively bid on by very small companies, so small businesses are not just limited to SBIRs (which are capped at $1M, I believe).
In relation to your statement:
consumer (you and I) do not choose for ourselves whether or not to patronize these businesses. We choose between paying our taxes, leaving the country, or going to jail.
You clearly don't remember history class in high school, or maybe you didn't take it yet. We live in a republic. We elect representatives to make key decisions for us...that's the whole point of a republic. If you don't like the decisions being made, well, that's the citizen's fault for electing a bad decision maker. You are perfectly free to vote, write letters to your representatives, write articles in the newspaper, put up a blog, participate in protests and rallies, and bitch and moan on/. to express your opinion. But please don't complain that you are being coerced and that you have no choice, because you do.
There was a good article on cheating in internet games in Game Developer Magazine a while back. I've found the article online, but you probably need to susbcribe to read it:
A few years ago in Japan, they took all the mobile phone numbers (each provider basically had their own area code, at that point), and changed the phone numbers such that EVERY cell phone number began with 090.
The transition wasn't that difficult for people to adjust to. There was a really simple rule to follow for anyone's number. If it used to begin with 010, for example, the new number would be 090-1-[rest of number].
The benefit to this is that in Japan, it's *very* easy for people to tell if a phone number is a mobile number, and that has a direct impact on the cost of making a call. Here in the US, it would also make it easy to tell telemarketers "you cannot call any number with this prefix" rather than the current "you cannot call any mobile number" system, which invariably results in errant calls from autodialers. And, it would make transferring phone numbers from one provider to another even easier, since they are all pulling numbers from the same pool, so to speak.
That is standard patent boiler-plate. Every single patent uses the first claim as an overview of the device or method, then subsequent claims (which you left out) specify the method in which the first claim is accomplished.
A different anti-overclocking device that also uses a method of measuring and comparing the clock speed would reference this patent, then describe how it differs from the specific methods used therein. Hell, the patent in question even references other patents from which claim 1 is derived, such as this one.
Good for you. Maybe not everyone has access to the source code of the operating system they run. Like, say...Microsoft OS owners, who make up 95% of the OS market. Even when a fix is already available, we get enough problems with servers not being up-to-date with patches, causing trouble even for those who are up-to-date due to network overloading, down email, etc.
Giving the malicious script kiddies of the world a golden opportunity to spread havoc before a fix is available is inviting far worse problems than what we've already seen. How would you like some 15-year-old kid to threaten your entire business because he can download a script to crack your server, and you can do nothing to prevent it except shutting down your business until a patch is released?
Even setting that aside, let's assume that everyone has the source code to the OS they are running, and a vulnerability is released. What percentage of the guys that have *already* proven they can't keep their systems up-to-date are going to be up for poring over the source code of their OS to fix every single vulnerability that is released in a timely fashion. Until a public patch is also released a lot of sysadmins aren't going to be able to do jack, because they were not hired as system programmers, and possibly don't even know the first thing about C programming. They were hired as system administrators. They can set up email, printers, adminstrate users, network usage, etc. But kernel hacking is pretty low on the priority list for most sysadmins.
But it IS pretty obvious! If you wanted to design a circuit that detected overclocking, the first thing you'd think of would be to measure the clock speed and compare against the "proper" speed (how the "proper" speed is protected against change is another good question).
I think you don't really understand the definition of "obvious" as it applies to patents.
The specific method used is NOT obvious. There are common factors between different possible methods, as you pointed out, such as the need to measure the external clock, and compare it somehow. Specifically how those things are accomplished, and a number of other factors, are what is patented. This is like saying I can invent a new can opener, because any can opener has to cut into the can and then open it. Well, duh. What I'm patenting is how my method uniquely extends upon, or somehow differs from other methods of opening the can. Some might use a large butcher knife hanging from a string, some might use a laser. In either case the method can be patented because they are unique and non-obvious in their specific implementation.
For a really excellent book about the devopment of technology, and indirectly how this relates to patents, read The Evolution of Useful Things by Henry Petroski.
Typically phoenetics are used. Each key is tied to a subset of phoenetics, similar to the way we have multiple letters on English cell phones. When you enter a combination of phoenetics, the "predictive input" system provides you a ranked list of the possible matches, that you can select from. This is roughly the same way one enters Chinese or Japanese text using a full-sized keyboard on a computer.
Do you have a credit card or a checking account? Chances are your bank have multiple sources of income as well. They collect fees and interest on debt from you, they collect direct marketing revenue from advertisers, and they also sell your information to 3rd parties (unless you explicitly opted out).
Actually the Chinese and Japanese languages lend themselves better to text messaging. I suspect that's why it is so much more popular in Asia, along with the fact that it's still a nightmare to send messages between providers in the US (i.e. dumbass wireless companies shooting themselves in the foot).
The difference is that a single character typically represents an "idea" rather than a sound, although there are some cases of the latter, as well. When you can make most words in your language by combining at most 3-4 characters, it is much more efficient to express yourself in writing compared to English, whose average word length is 5 (according to my typing teacher from high school). Added on to that, Asian languages don't use a lot of the "superfluous" words you find in English like definite articles, pronouns, etc. Also, a lot more of the content is picked up by context and left "unwritten".
So, packing all of these language "features" together means that it takes a lot less writing to express exactly the same concept. As a point of reference, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is 752 pages in English (paperback edition), and 210 pages in simplified Chinese (also paperback).
p.s. a side note on "predictive text input"
US cell phones have "predictive text input", Chinese and Japanese phones have this as well, and for a much longer time. It is a necessary component of entering any kind of text into a digital device in Asia, and has been constantly researched and developed basically since those languages were available on computers. If you want to try this out, and you have Windows 2000 or XP, try installing the IME for Chinese or Japanese, and playing with it.
A nice side effect of this is that you get rid of fake originating server identification in headers, as a fake header would lead to no message body.
I guess I don't understand how this gets rid of fake headers. If a link to the original message body is included as part of the header, couldn't you just spoof that (to be appropriately linked) as well?
The problem is that journalists reporting live on events as they occur is that it's a great way to tell the enemy exactly where we are and what we are planning. This really does pose a safety risk to the guys on the ground. If the reporting isn't controlled to some extent, this is essentially giving the enemy free information that they would otherwise use spies to collect.
I'm perfectly happy with having reporters present, but restricting them from reporting operational details until after the operations are complete. The last thing I want to see on the news is some guy reporting live with a detailed map of Baghdad pinpointing his location, and the location of troops, which I've already seen a couple of times today.
Actually the question of bandwidth comes up quite a bit in modern warfare. I've heard stories about how available bandwidth during the Afghanistan conflict limited the use of UAV's....they require a HUGE amount of bandwidth to do all the telepresence capabilities, and the networks are already stressed with existing communications as well as "civilian" applications on the network like P2P. They would have liked to flown a couple more, but they couldn't without a risk of bringing the entire network to a halt.
Requirements documents for combat systems carefully document acceptable network and CPU usage, specifying average throughput, peak usage, etc. in attempt to avoid just these problems, but newer combat systems by design are very network-centric, and run into some of the same problems we encounter on the commercial side.
It's no different in any other circumstance. Ask for directions in a mall and you'll get pointed to the map. If you ignore the map and ask something it would answer, expect to be ignored. Nobody has respect for whiners who demand that other people solve their problems for them.
I can honestly say that I've never asked someone for directions, and had that person point to a map, even if there was one readily available. In every instance the person did their best to provide directions. Of course, I always make a point of consulting available documentation before asking questions, but that doesn't mean I still don't ask dumb questions occasionally.
Anyway getting back to what you said, I think you're giving people more credit than they deserve. Some people really do have an adolescent attitude about helping people that don't have as much knowledge or experience in a particular subject. It's like watching computer illiterate people shopping for a computer. I've seen salesmen alternately brushing those folks off because it's too much work, or taking advantage of their ignorance for their own personal gain. The same thing happens all the time in fora and chat rooms on the internet, only it's magnified a hundredfold since people feel their actions on the internet have no real life consequences.
I have a Sharp MV12W and have had no trouble sitting for many hours (usually all day in my current situation) with it on my lap, even wearing shorts.
That being said, my previous laptop (or craptop, as I like to think of it) was a Dell 8000 series. Not only did the thing weigh a metric ton, it also produced enough heat to fry eggs.
The only thing I sorta regret with my current laptop is the lack of screen real estate. However, given that the screen size on the Dell actually prohibited me from opening the thing up all the way on an airplane (unless I was in first class), and the travelling weight of my current laptop is less than half (nearly 1/3)of the Dell, it's a trade-off I'm more than willing to make.
I have always found this type of game to be rather odd. Isn't social interaction what you are supposed to be doing in real life? Why would you want to play a game of what you do in real life?
Haven't you ever played any board games, like Monopoly, Pictionary, Scattergories, etc.? They are all about social interaction, and that's why people play them. The game is just a medium to facilitate social interaction in interesting ways, just like staff meetings facilitate social interaction in abysmally boring ways. Saying that it's what you already do in real life is oversimplifying things, unless of course the game is called "post on slashdot".
As long as nothing moves. As soon as the characters start moving, I start suffering from massive cognitive dissonance, and I'm left with a feeling of "gee, that's too bad" for the creators. I guess realistic motion is too hard? I noticed the same thing in the Final Fantasy movie.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's look at the numbers: 652,000 songs
If we assume there are 20 tracks on an album (that's a large number, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt), that gives us 32,600 albums. Now, let's assume that every artist puts out an average of 5 albums.
Using these numbers, we'd find that this ONE guy has successfully collected the entire repertoire of 6,520 different artists.
The storage space required for all those songs (stored as mp3s) would easily be in excess of 2TB.
I seriously doubt the RIAA looked at every single file to verify it was in fact a complete, *unique* song within the collection, and that the copyright to every song belonged to them. For them to do so remotely would require them to download continuously for ~23 days at 1MB/s.
Combined with his obvious propensity to make false statements (e.g. saying he was sponsored by NASA) I think we can only hope he wins the Darwin award with style, if he actually launches.
Oh, _good_ one! Way to zing me! I'll bet you'll sleep well tonight, knowing you got me on that one.
Really? Did you actually read the weblog in question? Here's a quote from the second paragraph (no pun intended):
Sounds like an anti-war movement to me, especially when they use the words "peace campaign" in the description.
Right...So you're saying I should pay money to evaluate whether I want to buy something?
Because in practice you can't sell CDs for the same price you buy them, new or used.
In Japan, I used to rent CDs as a palatable method of evaluating music before I bought it. However, here in the good 'ol US of A, the RIAA in their infinite wisdom got legislation passed which prevents this. Thanks to them, I'm basically forced to buy it or "steal" it.
In this case, the customer is the government. That's why they are called government contractors, and not citizen contractors. And, yes the government contracting market (by law) is pretty damned free. Anyone is free to bid on upcoming contracts. If you have a small company, there are a number of SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) contracts available every year, from every department related to the government. The linked SBIR page is about NASA's SBIRs, but there are literally a total of thousands available from DoT, DoD, NIH, NIST, NIMA, etc. If you're a big company, then you go through a similar, yet more formal process to bid on contracts. As is the case with most government-related things, there's more paperwork to complete, and in some cases due to the sensitive nature of the contract, you might be required to have some level of security clearance before you can bid, but other than that it is really wide open. I happen to know of a few recent large contracts that have been competitively bid on by very small companies, so small businesses are not just limited to SBIRs (which are capped at $1M, I believe).
In relation to your statement:
You clearly don't remember history class in high school, or maybe you didn't take it yet. We live in a republic. We elect representatives to make key decisions for us...that's the whole point of a republic. If you don't like the decisions being made, well, that's the citizen's fault for electing a bad decision maker. You are perfectly free to vote, write letters to your representatives, write articles in the newspaper, put up a blog, participate in protests and rallies, and bitch and moan on /. to express your opinion. But please don't complain that you are being coerced and that you have no choice, because you do.
How to Hurt the Hackers: The Scoop on Internet Cheating and How You Can Combat It
A few years ago in Japan, they took all the mobile phone numbers (each provider basically had their own area code, at that point), and changed the phone numbers such that EVERY cell phone number began with 090.
The transition wasn't that difficult for people to adjust to. There was a really simple rule to follow for anyone's number. If it used to begin with 010, for example, the new number would be 090-1-[rest of number].
The benefit to this is that in Japan, it's *very* easy for people to tell if a phone number is a mobile number, and that has a direct impact on the cost of making a call. Here in the US, it would also make it easy to tell telemarketers "you cannot call any number with this prefix" rather than the current "you cannot call any mobile number" system, which invariably results in errant calls from autodialers. And, it would make transferring phone numbers from one provider to another even easier, since they are all pulling numbers from the same pool, so to speak.
What irony? That's where the term derives from.
That is standard patent boiler-plate. Every single patent uses the first claim as an overview of the device or method, then subsequent claims (which you left out) specify the method in which the first claim is accomplished.
A different anti-overclocking device that also uses a method of measuring and comparing the clock speed would reference this patent, then describe how it differs from the specific methods used therein. Hell, the patent in question even references other patents from which claim 1 is derived, such as this one.
Good for you. Maybe not everyone has access to the source code of the operating system they run. Like, say...Microsoft OS owners, who make up 95% of the OS market. Even when a fix is already available, we get enough problems with servers not being up-to-date with patches, causing trouble even for those who are up-to-date due to network overloading, down email, etc.
Giving the malicious script kiddies of the world a golden opportunity to spread havoc before a fix is available is inviting far worse problems than what we've already seen. How would you like some 15-year-old kid to threaten your entire business because he can download a script to crack your server, and you can do nothing to prevent it except shutting down your business until a patch is released?
Even setting that aside, let's assume that everyone has the source code to the OS they are running, and a vulnerability is released. What percentage of the guys that have *already* proven they can't keep their systems up-to-date are going to be up for poring over the source code of their OS to fix every single vulnerability that is released in a timely fashion. Until a public patch is also released a lot of sysadmins aren't going to be able to do jack, because they were not hired as system programmers, and possibly don't even know the first thing about C programming. They were hired as system administrators. They can set up email, printers, adminstrate users, network usage, etc. But kernel hacking is pretty low on the priority list for most sysadmins.
I think you don't really understand the definition of "obvious" as it applies to patents.
The specific method used is NOT obvious. There are common factors between different possible methods, as you pointed out, such as the need to measure the external clock, and compare it somehow. Specifically how those things are accomplished, and a number of other factors, are what is patented. This is like saying I can invent a new can opener, because any can opener has to cut into the can and then open it. Well, duh. What I'm patenting is how my method uniquely extends upon, or somehow differs from other methods of opening the can. Some might use a large butcher knife hanging from a string, some might use a laser. In either case the method can be patented because they are unique and non-obvious in their specific implementation.
For a really excellent book about the devopment of technology, and indirectly how this relates to patents, read The Evolution of Useful Things by Henry Petroski.
Typically phoenetics are used. Each key is tied to a subset of phoenetics, similar to the way we have multiple letters on English cell phones. When you enter a combination of phoenetics, the "predictive input" system provides you a ranked list of the possible matches, that you can select from. This is roughly the same way one enters Chinese or Japanese text using a full-sized keyboard on a computer.
Do you have a credit card or a checking account? Chances are your bank have multiple sources of income as well. They collect fees and interest on debt from you, they collect direct marketing revenue from advertisers, and they also sell your information to 3rd parties (unless you explicitly opted out).
Actually the Chinese and Japanese languages lend themselves better to text messaging. I suspect that's why it is so much more popular in Asia, along with the fact that it's still a nightmare to send messages between providers in the US (i.e. dumbass wireless companies shooting themselves in the foot).
The difference is that a single character typically represents an "idea" rather than a sound, although there are some cases of the latter, as well. When you can make most words in your language by combining at most 3-4 characters, it is much more efficient to express yourself in writing compared to English, whose average word length is 5 (according to my typing teacher from high school). Added on to that, Asian languages don't use a lot of the "superfluous" words you find in English like definite articles, pronouns, etc. Also, a lot more of the content is picked up by context and left "unwritten".
So, packing all of these language "features" together means that it takes a lot less writing to express exactly the same concept. As a point of reference, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is 752 pages in English (paperback edition), and 210 pages in simplified Chinese (also paperback).
p.s. a side note on "predictive text input"
US cell phones have "predictive text input", Chinese and Japanese phones have this as well, and for a much longer time. It is a necessary component of entering any kind of text into a digital device in Asia, and has been constantly researched and developed basically since those languages were available on computers. If you want to try this out, and you have Windows 2000 or XP, try installing the IME for Chinese or Japanese, and playing with it.
I think I've lost my AniMarbles.
I guess I don't understand how this gets rid of fake headers. If a link to the original message body is included as part of the header, couldn't you just spoof that (to be appropriately linked) as well?
The problem is that journalists reporting live on events as they occur is that it's a great way to tell the enemy exactly where we are and what we are planning. This really does pose a safety risk to the guys on the ground. If the reporting isn't controlled to some extent, this is essentially giving the enemy free information that they would otherwise use spies to collect.
I'm perfectly happy with having reporters present, but restricting them from reporting operational details until after the operations are complete. The last thing I want to see on the news is some guy reporting live with a detailed map of Baghdad pinpointing his location, and the location of troops, which I've already seen a couple of times today.
Actually the question of bandwidth comes up quite a bit in modern warfare. I've heard stories about how available bandwidth during the Afghanistan conflict limited the use of UAV's....they require a HUGE amount of bandwidth to do all the telepresence capabilities, and the networks are already stressed with existing communications as well as "civilian" applications on the network like P2P. They would have liked to flown a couple more, but they couldn't without a risk of bringing the entire network to a halt.
Requirements documents for combat systems carefully document acceptable network and CPU usage, specifying average throughput, peak usage, etc. in attempt to avoid just these problems, but newer combat systems by design are very network-centric, and run into some of the same problems we encounter on the commercial side.
I can honestly say that I've never asked someone for directions, and had that person point to a map, even if there was one readily available. In every instance the person did their best to provide directions. Of course, I always make a point of consulting available documentation before asking questions, but that doesn't mean I still don't ask dumb questions occasionally.
Anyway getting back to what you said, I think you're giving people more credit than they deserve. Some people really do have an adolescent attitude about helping people that don't have as much knowledge or experience in a particular subject. It's like watching computer illiterate people shopping for a computer. I've seen salesmen alternately brushing those folks off because it's too much work, or taking advantage of their ignorance for their own personal gain. The same thing happens all the time in fora and chat rooms on the internet, only it's magnified a hundredfold since people feel their actions on the internet have no real life consequences.
I believe the original poster meant to say "patent" instead of "copyright".
That being said, my previous laptop (or craptop, as I like to think of it) was a Dell 8000 series. Not only did the thing weigh a metric ton, it also produced enough heat to fry eggs.
The only thing I sorta regret with my current laptop is the lack of screen real estate. However, given that the screen size on the Dell actually prohibited me from opening the thing up all the way on an airplane (unless I was in first class), and the travelling weight of my current laptop is less than half (nearly 1/3)of the Dell, it's a trade-off I'm more than willing to make.
Haven't you ever played any board games, like Monopoly, Pictionary, Scattergories, etc.? They are all about social interaction, and that's why people play them. The game is just a medium to facilitate social interaction in interesting ways, just like staff meetings facilitate social interaction in abysmally boring ways. Saying that it's what you already do in real life is oversimplifying things, unless of course the game is called "post on slashdot".
As long as nothing moves. As soon as the characters start moving, I start suffering from massive cognitive dissonance, and I'm left with a feeling of "gee, that's too bad" for the creators. I guess realistic motion is too hard? I noticed the same thing in the Final Fantasy movie.
but will it run cygwin? I can't stand windows without having cygwin installed. ;-)