Could a troll filter recognise sarcasm? That might look like a troll but the context and word use make a human understand. Although saying that, most of my sarcastic comments have been modded as 'troll'...
Not to even comment on the atrocious spelling which hardly makes for a professional letter (come on, spell checkers are standard now), but a communist dictatorship? Is that like a capitalist communist? Or a democratic monarchy?
the cost of manufacturing taxol might only be $500, but researching, testing, waiting 10 years for it to be FDA-approved, marketing, paying your employees etc. are probably a little more.
Huge profits are made on drugs, as a rule, but not quite the margins that this narrow-minded diatribe seems to suggest. $1.7 Billion in sales does not mean $1.7B in profit.
This is irrelevant. I thought that the prime purpose of the American (by which I mean US, before you pedantic idiots start going on about Canada and Peru or whatever) lawyer was not to understand the law, or argue its meaning, but to take it into whatever contorted context allows them to string out a court case for as long as their client can afford, before getting them off on a technicailty.
Surely this guy should have said "IANAL, so I can easily show these glaring mistakes in the DMCA and censorship, because if IWAL (I was a lawyer) I would ignore them and concentrate on the word "the" being used in section 102.2b(3) where clearly the word "a" would be necessary to convict my client"
I don't understand the whole IP thing. It's been taken too far when life is involved, unless it is totally circumscribed in a way that it cannot breed or be autonomous.
As is common on/., I will take this too far with an analogy. I create a computer virus of sorts that does no harm. In fact, it benefits the user as it increases security, connection speed, CPU usage, HDD space and a thousand other things. No one complains about it. However, being a virus, it replicates and benefits everyone. If I have patented it, can I sue everyone who unknowingly gets infected for royalties?
If Microsoft (or any other commercial company) was to include code that distributed software amongst computers without the users' knowledge, would that be the same? How about if someone wrote a virus which distributes proprietary code among computers, so the original patent/whatever holder has no part in the distribution - but can he still sue all those who now have it on their PC?
If a company takes a blood sample from me, and sequences some of my genes, and patents them, then legally do I lose all rights to that gene (oh wait.. that's been done already).
Patent laws, copyright, IP - these are ridiculous concepts to nature. They can not and should not be applied, there are too many grey areas. Interestingly, the first guy who thought of selective breeding could have made a killing if only the US patent office was around then. But then, I could probably try it now and they'd grant it.
Read the article. It is cheap as hell now that it has been discontinued. Would you want to stick in your new shiny laptop knowing you might never see it again?
Maybe this is HP/CPQ being the good guys. They are bluffing. They know fine well that if this goes to court, the DCMA will be exposed as illegal and unconstitutional and it, along with DRM, Palladium, M$, Hollings et al will disappear up their own arses.
I can't find Japan on my map of Europe. Is it maybe one of those Eastern European countries that's always changing its boundaries and warring with NATO or whatever?
That's for other reasons - safety, etc. If your modded car's brakes don't work, other peole (and yourself) are at risk.
If you decide to paint your car a different colour, you need to tell the drving licensing people (at least here in the UK) so that the car can be tracked (e.g. if it is used in a crime or whatever) but that doesn't make it illegal.
If you put in leather seats, a new radio or whatever - no one cares.
Similarly, if I paint my PS2 pink, that's no-one's business but mine (although I'm sure it would still raise some objections...). If I take off the top, likewise. If I mod it - I have no contract with Sony, just an exchange of cash with a retailer.
If I play some pirated games - that's another matter. They would have no chance of coming down on you for playing region-coded things - you have paid for both the game and the PS or PS2.
I think the case here is the pleading guilty - he could have gone down for the pirated games, and he could have been at risk for allowing a method to bypass copy protection, although he could have argued the whole region thing or whatever. But as it never got tested in court, it's all speculation. It means nothing except the opportunity for Sony to make modding sound illegal, although in truth it's still a grey area.
As an aside, I am still pretty pissed off that I own a legitimate computer, a legitimate DVD drive, and legit DVDs. I even own PowerDVD (bundled with my drive) for windows. But it illegal to DeCSS these under the DCMA as I run linux - there is quite frankly no way that can hold up in court (obviously I watch them - videolan) but until tested in court it remains the law. Here in the UK, actually, I don't know - no DCMA)
when I say losing rights as a consumer I wasn't really thinking about the exact definition - you are right, it is as a citizen. I think they are unfortunately becoming more and more interchangable...
The whole testing by judging thing is severely fecked up. The problem is self-interest getting laws passed - enough money in the right hands will get anything done. The US law system is out of control and the rest of the world tends to follow - interestingly, though, here in the UK some of the 'no win, no fee' law firms are going bust because the awards over here just aren't big enough, and so few cases actually win due to a little common sense by the legal heirarchy (makes a nice change).
The problem with these laws is that, no matter how well-intentioned a law, and how morally right or wrong something is, some overpaid suit will get paid million$ to pick holes in the absolute literal interpretation, disregarding the actual truth and implication, cf. OJ Simpson.
One of the beauties of the US constitution is its vagueness but overall morality (let's ignore the gun bearing bit) - this protects the innocent but probably a few guilty too (Actually, then we can include the gun bit..). It's a shame that the derived laws contain wording that can be (mis)interpreted in any way by the right (wrong) people.
Society is at serious risk of falling apart and apathy, ignorance and avarice seem to be driving it.
This is a load of shite. This self-interested "study" is being used to push through laws with incredible reach and implication, relying on a complete unawareness of Joe Public.
It is amazing that this can happen. We could lose most of our rights as consumers because of this, based on no real facts. I only hope a judge will see through the lies in court when cases start coming to them.
It looks like these laws will go through though; you never hear headlines in the regular press about any of this sort of stuff - no-one is going to go against it that has any real clout (i.e. FSF are, as far as I can see, impotent).
We'll see if it really does affect things the way/. are saying it will though - are they going to arrest every open source user / contributer? I think that'll be hard to push in court. Though I suppose it won't be possible anyway if DRM stops it being installed / downloaded in the first place...
offtopic? How the hell is that offtopic? Volvo chooses MS for their car, expected Slashdot scuffle ensues, I make witty comment which relates to a prior discussion about Linux vs. Windows and "no-one ever being fired for choosing MS", someone mods it down for being offtopic. the fact that it is ontopic means therefore that the moderator is offtopic.
The whole point I'm trying to make is that the process, physiologically, is known as ventilation. This is medical fact. Regardless of its meaning with regard to buildings, ventilation refers to what you are calling respiration in medicine / physiology. That is the point I am trying to make.
Exactly. You respire. You don't respirate. Such a word does not exist. Hence a respirator is a stupid word, whereas you do ventilate, and hence a ventilator makes sense.
As usual, every other country in the world calls it one thing, and the US calls it something else. Why is that?
For the same reason that there are orthopaedic surgeons, cardiologists, general surgeons, general physicians, endocrinologists, rheumatologists, haematologists, respiratory physicians (for some reason they are called pulmonologists in the US, though that is the worst mangling of words since "respirator". It is a ventilator here (UK). You don't respirate, you ventilate. How stupid is that?)
The in-house doc will be some sort of generalist, probably with a special interest in "winter medicine" (i.e. altered physiology in cold conditions, and illnesses particular to such conditions).
They all have basic grounding in all areas of medicine, but could never safely practise on their own outside their specialty. Just the same as I couldn't take apart a car engine on my own, but with a video link a mechanic could talk me through it because I know how to use basic tools. It really is that simple.
I'm sure they've looked into it - if their sales went up when filesharing became popular, then that's probably the cause. Remember that word of mouth is very important - people not only are IM'ing all over the world, they are doing voice chat - in my experience, if someone is playing a song over their connection and I like it, I ask what it is. Or they might just talk about what music they like listening to in a chatroom for want of any more stimulating conversation. But the bottom line is that more people are exposed to the work, and so more people buy it.
The problem with the record companies is that they don't say "Look, our sales have gone up 300%", they say "Our sales have only gone up 300% but 500% more people are listening to the music" - they see the people who are not paying as a problem rather than acknowledging the extra exposure's benefit.
If they implemented DRM then sales would go up slightly (you could download songs rather than just albums, it would be east to do so) band 100% of listeners would pay for it (ok, maybe not 100%), but if they don't, they may make more money but quite possibly only a minority of people will pay for it.
Who knows though - maybe if, in the future, everyone has CD-RW, cable internet, and their HiFi is served from their HDD, filesharing could actually be a real threat.
Agreed. The problem with what is happening here is that reasonable and fair use is being blocked. But the "good thing" is that an awful lot of "unfair" and illegal use is being blocked too.
Most of the bandwidth that the ISPs are worried about is being used by a minority of heavy downloaders. They are a business, they have every right to be agitated by this. This is just the simplest way for them to cut out a lot of heavy users of whom (almost guaranteed) very few are legitimately using that bandwidth.
Sure, in the process a lot of legitimate downloaders might have a few problems, but they feel they are doing it for the "greater good" (and a big part of "greater" to them means "their own") but the point is that most users will be affected very little or not at all.
It is true to say a bandwidth cap/meter would be fairer - this would allow legitimate users to use their ports as they want and warez users would have to fork out for extra - but as I said they are a business. The likelihood is that they have looked at what they could do and worked out the most cost effective / efficient way of doing things (although they may be wrong).
Another thought - could they be under pressure from the recording industry? Does their service make them an accessory in the same way that Napster represented a central server which could be closed down?
How does this happen? Surely by it's very nature OpenGL should not have IP attached?
I thought that the writers of a standard which was designed to be open in its implemetation would be more careful so as not to include other companies' ideas in their product, whether it be Microsoft's of anyone else's.
Obviously intellectual property, as opposed to trademarks, patents and copyrights (i.e. ideas as opposed to actual code) is a fairly large, often equivocal area, but it seems that this, however innocent, could set a dangerous precedent. Microsoft is a business, and they are there to maximise profits. They have proved that they often use very unfair and illegal means to get to this end in the past, and this just seems to be a potential area of abuse once their lawyers get hold of it.
As one other poster pointed out, the study doesn't give any causal relationship here; it could easily be that those with low social skills play more video games hence the correlation, rather than those that play games decrease their social skills. A better way to do such a study would be to take two large, matched groups and monitor their social skills, then have them go do their business for x years and then re-test them, and see if there is an effect.
The vagueness is misleading too. What actual effects does this have on people? Are their social skills appreciably affected? How?
There are so many variables at work here it is hard to begin on criticism. I very much doubt my social skills have been affected by my gaming. The only time I have played games a lot is during university - four player Goldeneye with my friends, often over a few beers, invariably extremely social and far far more productive than the four to six of us sitting watching cable. At least two hours a night, every night. On the other hand, maybe our higher education and relatively high social class was in our favour - maybe ( I am just postulating, not trolling) lower social classes play more video games and the increase in social skills they get from them is offset by the decrease in grey matter caused by their unemployment / unfulfilling job / substance abuse / one of another 10000 things this study has completely ignored?
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine a beowulf cluster...
Huge profits are made on drugs, as a rule, but not quite the margins that this narrow-minded diatribe seems to suggest. $1.7 Billion in sales does not mean $1.7B in profit.
Surely this guy should have said "IANAL, so I can easily show these glaring mistakes in the DMCA and censorship, because if IWAL (I was a lawyer) I would ignore them and concentrate on the word "the" being used in section 102.2b(3) where clearly the word "a" would be necessary to convict my client"
As is common on /., I will take this too far with an analogy. I create a computer virus of sorts that does no harm. In fact, it benefits the user as it increases security, connection speed, CPU usage, HDD space and a thousand other things. No one complains about it. However, being a virus, it replicates and benefits everyone. If I have patented it, can I sue everyone who unknowingly gets infected for royalties?
If Microsoft (or any other commercial company) was to include code that distributed software amongst computers without the users' knowledge, would that be the same? How about if someone wrote a virus which distributes proprietary code among computers, so the original patent/whatever holder has no part in the distribution - but can he still sue all those who now have it on their PC?
If a company takes a blood sample from me, and sequences some of my genes, and patents them, then legally do I lose all rights to that gene (oh wait.. that's been done already).
Patent laws, copyright, IP - these are ridiculous concepts to nature. They can not and should not be applied, there are too many grey areas. Interestingly, the first guy who thought of selective breeding could have made a killing if only the US patent office was around then. But then, I could probably try it now and they'd grant it.
It is fucking brilliant. I wish I had some mod points but I seem to have lost all karma and it is now just "positive". Pourquoi?
If you decide to paint your car a different colour, you need to tell the drving licensing people (at least here in the UK) so that the car can be tracked (e.g. if it is used in a crime or whatever) but that doesn't make it illegal.
If you put in leather seats, a new radio or whatever - no one cares.
Similarly, if I paint my PS2 pink, that's no-one's business but mine (although I'm sure it would still raise some objections...). If I take off the top, likewise. If I mod it - I have no contract with Sony, just an exchange of cash with a retailer.
If I play some pirated games - that's another matter. They would have no chance of coming down on you for playing region-coded things - you have paid for both the game and the PS or PS2.
I think the case here is the pleading guilty - he could have gone down for the pirated games, and he could have been at risk for allowing a method to bypass copy protection, although he could have argued the whole region thing or whatever. But as it never got tested in court, it's all speculation. It means nothing except the opportunity for Sony to make modding sound illegal, although in truth it's still a grey area.
As an aside, I am still pretty pissed off that I own a legitimate computer, a legitimate DVD drive, and legit DVDs. I even own PowerDVD (bundled with my drive) for windows. But it illegal to DeCSS these under the DCMA as I run linux - there is quite frankly no way that can hold up in court (obviously I watch them - videolan) but until tested in court it remains the law. Here in the UK, actually, I don't know - no DCMA)
The whole testing by judging thing is severely fecked up. The problem is self-interest getting laws passed - enough money in the right hands will get anything done. The US law system is out of control and the rest of the world tends to follow - interestingly, though, here in the UK some of the 'no win, no fee' law firms are going bust because the awards over here just aren't big enough, and so few cases actually win due to a little common sense by the legal heirarchy (makes a nice change).
The problem with these laws is that, no matter how well-intentioned a law, and how morally right or wrong something is, some overpaid suit will get paid million$ to pick holes in the absolute literal interpretation, disregarding the actual truth and implication, cf. OJ Simpson.
One of the beauties of the US constitution is its vagueness but overall morality (let's ignore the gun bearing bit) - this protects the innocent but probably a few guilty too (Actually, then we can include the gun bit..). It's a shame that the derived laws contain wording that can be (mis)interpreted in any way by the right (wrong) people.
Society is at serious risk of falling apart and apathy, ignorance and avarice seem to be driving it.
It is amazing that this can happen. We could lose most of our rights as consumers because of this, based on no real facts. I only hope a judge will see through the lies in court when cases start coming to them.
It looks like these laws will go through though; you never hear headlines in the regular press about any of this sort of stuff - no-one is going to go against it that has any real clout (i.e. FSF are, as far as I can see, impotent).
We'll see if it really does affect things the way /. are saying it will though - are they going to arrest every open source user / contributer? I think that'll be hard to push in court. Though I suppose it won't be possible anyway if DRM stops it being installed / downloaded in the first place...
So, sir, you are offtopic. I mod you -5 (idiot)
As usual, every other country in the world calls it one thing, and the US calls it something else. Why is that?
The in-house doc will be some sort of generalist, probably with a special interest in "winter medicine" (i.e. altered physiology in cold conditions, and illnesses particular to such conditions).
They all have basic grounding in all areas of medicine, but could never safely practise on their own outside their specialty. Just the same as I couldn't take apart a car engine on my own, but with a video link a mechanic could talk me through it because I know how to use basic tools. It really is that simple.
The problem with the record companies is that they don't say "Look, our sales have gone up 300%", they say "Our sales have only gone up 300% but 500% more people are listening to the music" - they see the people who are not paying as a problem rather than acknowledging the extra exposure's benefit.
If they implemented DRM then sales would go up slightly (you could download songs rather than just albums, it would be east to do so) band 100% of listeners would pay for it (ok, maybe not 100%), but if they don't, they may make more money but quite possibly only a minority of people will pay for it.
Who knows though - maybe if, in the future, everyone has CD-RW, cable internet, and their HiFi is served from their HDD, filesharing could actually be a real threat.
Most of the bandwidth that the ISPs are worried about is being used by a minority of heavy downloaders. They are a business, they have every right to be agitated by this. This is just the simplest way for them to cut out a lot of heavy users of whom (almost guaranteed) very few are legitimately using that bandwidth.
Sure, in the process a lot of legitimate downloaders might have a few problems, but they feel they are doing it for the "greater good" (and a big part of "greater" to them means "their own") but the point is that most users will be affected very little or not at all.
It is true to say a bandwidth cap/meter would be fairer - this would allow legitimate users to use their ports as they want and warez users would have to fork out for extra - but as I said they are a business. The likelihood is that they have looked at what they could do and worked out the most cost effective / efficient way of doing things (although they may be wrong).
Another thought - could they be under pressure from the recording industry? Does their service make them an accessory in the same way that Napster represented a central server which could be closed down?
I thought that the writers of a standard which was designed to be open in its implemetation would be more careful so as not to include other companies' ideas in their product, whether it be Microsoft's of anyone else's.
Obviously intellectual property, as opposed to trademarks, patents and copyrights (i.e. ideas as opposed to actual code) is a fairly large, often equivocal area, but it seems that this, however innocent, could set a dangerous precedent. Microsoft is a business, and they are there to maximise profits. They have proved that they often use very unfair and illegal means to get to this end in the past, and this just seems to be a potential area of abuse once their lawyers get hold of it.
I think he meant to say to and not too. That is part of the humour. P.
The vagueness is misleading too. What actual effects does this have on people? Are their social skills appreciably affected? How?
There are so many variables at work here it is hard to begin on criticism. I very much doubt my social skills have been affected by my gaming. The only time I have played games a lot is during university - four player Goldeneye with my friends, often over a few beers, invariably extremely social and far far more productive than the four to six of us sitting watching cable. At least two hours a night, every night. On the other hand, maybe our higher education and relatively high social class was in our favour - maybe ( I am just postulating, not trolling) lower social classes play more video games and the increase in social skills they get from them is offset by the decrease in grey matter caused by their unemployment / unfulfilling job / substance abuse / one of another 10000 things this study has completely ignored?
On a similar note - seen that onion.com article "M$ copyrights ones, zeroes"?. Fscking hilarious