Also, a "mashup" or other remix or modification, if done for the purpose of parody (and I can't for the life of me think why else someone would do such a thing with this video), is covered under "fair use." (IANAL, YMMV, BLA, BLA, BLA)
Amazon getting this patent does not neccesarily stop others from using it and paying whatever royalties Amazon charges them. Or perhaps more likely, another company with an array of patents has its attorneys look through and find where Amazon is infringing on one, and then they sign a cross-license agreement with Amazon so both companies get to use both patents, and neither company is in the embarrassing position of having to actually pay royalty money to the other.
Nothing about patents surprises me. Ten years ago I saw where an engineer bet his manager he could get a patent on the addition of a resistor to a circuit that obviously had no function. His manager didn't believe it and signed off on it just to prove him wrong, and the USPTO in its infinite wisdom approved the patent.
Does court have the right to force use of Windows? The court is NOT forcing him to use Windows, any more than they are forcing him to take showers. He is perfectly free not to use a computer.
You'll buy a brand new battery pack at great expense, "top off" the charge at home, drive far enough to totally discharge it, then have to swap it out with a "fully charged" pack that has gone through 497 of its estimated 500 charge/discharge cycles and it moves you less than half the distance of a new battery pack. Seems like a bum deal to me.
The music was never "yours" except in the sense that you chose what to buy from what was commercially available, as is still the case.
The music was and is (so far, but less so now, in many ways) the property of the composers and performers who made it. Some performers signed contracts with Satan's minions to become popular, but still, the rights are not owned by consumers. Certainly technology has almost made copyright laws moot, but that's another (yet related) issue.
I still listen to music, but much of it is straight from the musicians who put it on Soundclick, Myspace, and their own websites. They give away mp3's of their music, but if I like it enough I buy their CD to get a better quality recording. The RIAA has no control over any of this.
Years ago I read comp.risks weekly or whenever the newsgroup postings came out, but after several months I noticed the trust I had of anything that had anything to do with computers was getting less... and less...
"Dell, HP and Lenovo claimed it was possible to buy naked PCs from their company -- but our attempts to follow their guidance to buy one proved impossible."
Obvious questions deserve obvious answers: Because Microsoft pays Dell to put a "Microsoft Office 30-day trial" on their new systems, and Open Office will pay them nothing.
It's more obvious (or perhaps pervasive) than that. Microsoft's agreements have historically kept sellers/resellers from offering competing products if they want to have Microsoft software installed or available. If Dell installed or offered OpenOffice, Dell would quickly only have Linux to offer as an OS. It comes with dealing with a near-monopoly - Microsoft can pretty much set the rules any way it wants.
Quoting the page from the text link "individually marked copies:"
Real World Experience Company individually marks each pre-release (critic's release, radio release) in order to identify source leaks to the Internet. Pre-release watermarking has become an industry practice and fewer leaks now stem from watermarked copies sent to authorized recipients.
So they make pre-release CD-R's, each with the same music recording but with a different watermark, keep track of which watermark goes to which person... so how does this stop pirating of the mass-produced CD (which if it has a watermark, all copies have the same watermark) on the day of release?
How does it stop a pirate copy being made earlier in the process, before the watermarked copies are made?
Will commercial labels go to mass burning of CD-R's just to make a unique watermark for each copy? How is this going to stop a pirate from paying cash for a retail copy and making copies that can only be traced to a cash sale?
Dither noise used for lowering bit length is at such a low level (about -96 dBFS to go to 16 bits, and noise-shaped dither isn't a whole lot higher and is even less audible) that I fail to see where it would have any effect. A much higher level of noise (-40 to -50) might work, but would be audible on quiet passages.
WAIT A SEC, WITH ALL THE HYPERCOMPRESSION THESEDAYS, THERE ARE NO QUIET PASSAGES. JUST ADD WIDEBAND NOISE AT -12 DBFS TO ANY COMMERCIAL RECORDING AND BE DONE WITH THE STINKIN' WATERMARK.
OBLIGATORY EXAMPLE GOOGLE "WHAT IF GOD SMOKED" AND CLICK I FEEL LUCKY. IT'S SO LOUD I THINK IT MAY BE INTENDED AS A PARODY OF HYPERCOMPRESSION.
Are you using theory with the meaning used in common language (where the meaning is similar to hypothesis), or are you using its meaning in science? I don't know if you're ignorant of the separate meanings, or you're intentionally trying to confuse them, but the "only a theory" phrase is a trick creationists try to use against "evilutionists."
So, we take $15*12=$180. Office 2003 Small Business can be had for as little as $145. If you use Office at least once a month, then 'pay as you go' is simply not cheaper. Yet another example of 'cheaper is not always cheaper.'
Microsoft is glad to get $15 per month rather than $145 total from people who see $145 as "costing too much" or "I can't afford to pay all that money at once." This is the same very profitable business model as TV and appliance rental "services."
A meeting is for taking those ideas and throwing them out there, and seeing whose idea sticks.
This reminds me of throwing a certain substance against the wall and seeing what sticks. It's as good a description of the meetings I've attended as anything.
Unfortunately, this only works for rednecks and (other) STUPID criminals. Any scientist worth having the job title would recognize they're putting a colander on his head and pushing the "copy" button on a copier with a sheet saying "He's Lying!" on the glass.
Already, some (like William Dutton of the Oxford Internet Institute) are asking whether even this sanitized experiment is ethical.
The ethical concerns in both the real and virutal experiments appear quite close, as the goal, whether the "victim" is an animated charicature or a human actor screaming as if in pain (or not, as if dead), is to manipulate the emotions of the test volunteer while seeing how far he or she will go in hurting others "in the name of science." Outside of scientific tests, emotional manipulation of course has a long history, and advertising has always been full of it (no pun intended, but if the shoe fits...). Interesting examples of such strong emotional manipulation are in several of the stories in the book "The Mind's I" by Dennett and Hoftsadter, and there's a controversial example in the UN anti-landmine video at http://stoplandmines.org.
In another test, they put subjects in a room and told them in a few minutes they would get some pen and paper and would have to write a 100 words on the worst thing they ever did in there life. A camera was placed in front of them before they would have to start writing (they never actually wrote the paper). While they were waiting the results were almost identical, pulse went up, subjects started sweating, but some did not. I can not remember the number, but remember being shocked by how high the number of these sort of people that exist.
I have to agree somewhat with the AC's response here. You (or perhaps those interpreting the test) are making a complex psychological conclusion from a simple physiological reaction. I don't think I'd sweat, but not for anything to do with what I may or may not have done, but because I know I would not write anything more than some trivially bad thing I've done (or something trivial I made up - I see no reason to be honest in answering such a question, and many good reasons to be dishonest).
It was enough to make me think that I must have encountered one in my life. People free of the encumbrances of guilt about any action and compassion for others can be capable of anything.
Lots of people, probably MOST people, can be capable of anything when circumstances push them hard enough. That was the point (or rather the outcome) of the original Milgram experiment.
That said, there are indeed true psychos who can shamelessly do evil things with little or no prompting.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, a "mashup" or other remix or modification, if done for the purpose of parody (and I can't for the life of me think why else someone would do such a thing with this video), is covered under "fair use." (IANAL, YMMV, BLA, BLA, BLA)
(Even though highly illegal in the US because it is 'propaganda')
My goodness! If this were enforced, it would SHUT DOWN most of broadcast AND cable television!
So Slashdot is the new Usenet...
Can I just nail a WD drive to the church door?
Amazon getting this patent does not neccesarily stop others from using it and paying whatever royalties Amazon charges them. Or perhaps more likely, another company with an array of patents has its attorneys look through and find where Amazon is infringing on one, and then they sign a cross-license agreement with Amazon so both companies get to use both patents, and neither company is in the embarrassing position of having to actually pay royalty money to the other.
Nothing about patents surprises me. Ten years ago I saw where an engineer bet his manager he could get a patent on the addition of a resistor to a circuit that obviously had no function. His manager didn't believe it and signed off on it just to prove him wrong, and the USPTO in its infinite wisdom approved the patent.
An article with a little history of the idea, discussion of cooling (you need lots of water and/or a chiller outside the box to get rid of heat) and such:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=B1027B68-E7F2-99DF-352186A04761EB7F&page=1
This is surely not the first such article of its kind, and likely what the OP is afraid of happening if he gives or pays-to-take some his ewaste to some Random E-reycler:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/11/18/electronics.trash.ap/index.html
Does court have the right to force use of Windows?
The court is NOT forcing him to use Windows, any more than they are forcing him to take showers. He is perfectly free not to use a computer.
You'll buy a brand new battery pack at great expense, "top off" the charge at home, drive far enough to totally discharge it, then have to swap it out with a "fully charged" pack that has gone through 497 of its estimated 500 charge/discharge cycles and it moves you less than half the distance of a new battery pack. Seems like a bum deal to me.
The race has a car with a Penguin drawn on the hood?
Give me a break!
The music was never "yours" except in the sense that you chose what to buy from what was commercially available, as is still the case.
The music was and is (so far, but less so now, in many ways) the property of the composers and performers who made it. Some performers signed contracts with Satan's minions to become popular, but still, the rights are not owned by consumers. Certainly technology has almost made copyright laws moot, but that's another (yet related) issue.
I still listen to music, but much of it is straight from the musicians who put it on Soundclick, Myspace, and their own websites. They give away mp3's of their music, but if I like it enough I buy their CD to get a better quality recording. The RIAA has no control over any of this.
Years ago I read comp.risks weekly or whenever the newsgroup postings came out, but after several months I noticed the trust I had of anything that had anything to do with computers was getting less ... and less ...
This woman's gonna sue Google too!
"Dell, HP and Lenovo claimed it was possible to buy naked PCs from their company -- but our attempts to follow their guidance to buy one proved impossible."
Obvious questions deserve obvious answers:
Because Microsoft pays Dell to put a "Microsoft Office 30-day trial" on their new systems, and Open Office will pay them nothing.
It's more obvious (or perhaps pervasive) than that. Microsoft's agreements have historically kept sellers/resellers from offering competing products if they want to have Microsoft software installed or available. If Dell installed or offered OpenOffice, Dell would quickly only have Linux to offer as an OS. It comes with dealing with a near-monopoly - Microsoft can pretty much set the rules any way it wants.
Umm, because we want free stuff?
There's this really old song from way back in the LP era named "You can't always get what you want."
Quoting the page from the text link "individually marked copies:"
Real World Experience
Company individually marks each pre-release (critic's release, radio release) in order to identify source leaks to the Internet. Pre-release watermarking has become an industry practice and fewer leaks now stem from watermarked copies sent to authorized recipients.
So they make pre-release CD-R's, each with the same music recording but with a different watermark, keep track of which watermark goes to which person... so how does this stop pirating of the mass-produced CD (which if it has a watermark, all copies have the same watermark) on the day of release?
How does it stop a pirate copy being made earlier in the process, before the watermarked copies are made?
Will commercial labels go to mass burning of CD-R's just to make a unique watermark for each copy? How is this going to stop a pirate from paying cash for a retail copy and making copies that can only be traced to a cash sale?
Dither noise used for lowering bit length is at such a low level (about -96 dBFS to go to 16 bits, and noise-shaped dither isn't a whole lot higher and is even less audible) that I fail to see where it would have any effect. A much higher level of noise (-40 to -50) might work, but would be audible on quiet passages.
WAIT A SEC, WITH ALL THE HYPERCOMPRESSION THESEDAYS, THERE ARE NO QUIET PASSAGES. JUST ADD WIDEBAND NOISE AT -12 DBFS TO ANY COMMERCIAL RECORDING AND BE DONE WITH THE STINKIN' WATERMARK.
OBLIGATORY EXAMPLE GOOGLE "WHAT IF GOD SMOKED" AND CLICK I FEEL LUCKY. IT'S SO LOUD I THINK IT MAY BE INTENDED AS A PARODY OF HYPERCOMPRESSION.
Yes, some people still live in the middle ages:o ries/2007/02/16/0216metlegevolve.html
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/legis07/st
I don't know that I'd call a theory a fact.
Are you using theory with the meaning used in common language (where the meaning is similar to hypothesis), or are you using its meaning in science? I don't know if you're ignorant of the separate meanings, or you're intentionally trying to confuse them, but the "only a theory" phrase is a trick creationists try to use against "evilutionists."
A creationist posting to Slashdot. Fascinating.
So, we take $15*12=$180. Office 2003 Small Business can be had for as little as $145. If you use Office at least once a month, then 'pay as you go' is simply not cheaper. Yet another example of 'cheaper is not always cheaper.'
Microsoft is glad to get $15 per month rather than $145 total from people who see $145 as "costing too much" or "I can't afford to pay all that money at once." This is the same very profitable business model as TV and appliance rental "services."
A meeting is for taking those ideas and throwing them out there, and seeing whose idea sticks.
This reminds me of throwing a certain substance against the wall and seeing what sticks. It's as good a description of the meetings I've attended as anything.
Then they could have the results come out just the way they wanted:
http://www.snopes.com/legal/colander.htm
Unfortunately, this only works for rednecks and (other) STUPID criminals. Any scientist worth having the job title would recognize they're putting a colander on his head and pushing the "copy" button on a copier with a sheet saying "He's Lying!" on the glass.
Already, some (like William Dutton of the Oxford Internet Institute) are asking whether even this sanitized experiment is ethical.
The ethical concerns in both the real and virutal experiments appear quite close, as the goal, whether the "victim" is an animated charicature or a human actor screaming as if in pain (or not, as if dead), is to manipulate the emotions of the test volunteer while seeing how far he or she will go in hurting others "in the name of science."
Outside of scientific tests, emotional manipulation of course has a long history, and advertising has always been full of it (no pun intended, but if the shoe fits...). Interesting examples of such strong emotional manipulation are in several of the stories in the book "The Mind's I" by Dennett and Hoftsadter, and there's a controversial example in the UN anti-landmine video at http://stoplandmines.org.
In another test, they put subjects in a room and told them in a few minutes they would get some pen and paper and would have to write a 100 words on the worst thing they ever did in there life. A camera was placed in front of them before they would have to start writing (they never actually wrote the paper). While they were waiting the results were almost identical, pulse went up, subjects started sweating, but some did not. I can not remember the number, but remember being shocked by how high the number of these sort of people that exist.
I have to agree somewhat with the AC's response here. You (or perhaps those interpreting the test) are making a complex psychological conclusion from a simple physiological reaction. I don't think I'd sweat, but not for anything to do with what I may or may not have done, but because I know I would not write anything more than some trivially bad thing I've done (or something trivial I made up - I see no reason to be honest in answering such a question, and many good reasons to be dishonest).
It was enough to make me think that I must have encountered one in my life. People free of the encumbrances of guilt about any action and compassion for others can be capable of anything.
Lots of people, probably MOST people, can be capable of anything when circumstances push them hard enough. That was the point (or rather the outcome) of the original Milgram experiment.
That said, there are indeed true psychos who can shamelessly do evil things with little or no prompting.