mother nature she "loves" you, specifically she loves to attempt to kill you at every chance she gets, that's why we develop technology to enforce the restraining order against her.
That is one of the funniest things I've read lately.
What is with you people? Can't you recognize a JOKE when you see one? And why don't you read Harris' letter, in which you would have realized that he was saying the same thing you are.
Interesting. You complain that I'm being too judgmental, yet immediately put me into a compartment conveniently labeled "typical American". Come back to me when you have some idea what a typical American is, my hypocritical friend, if you ever manage to successfully define what that means. Matter of fact, don't bother coming back.
In any event, when someone leaves an organization and takes key patents with them it is usually not good for that organization, because they no longer control critical assets required for their future survival. In such cases, that usually means that the organization failed to protect its interests, and the fact this woman is promising that she will make parts available at coast is just rhetoric: you can choose to believe it if you wish, but that doesn't mean it will happen that way. That's the only point I was trying to make, genius. Deal with it.
There are many ways to keep the risk of corruption low. Hell, if you know the CRC of the original, valid table and have a live backup of the file available in case the primary is damaged, you can avoid problems like this. A better approach is to CRC individual records in the file: if one is found to be corrupt as the firing sequence is proceeding, restore it from a backup file and continue. If that doesn't work, skip the corrupt record and continue with show.
Running a fireworks show is not a high availability application (I mean, it only has to run once for a few minutes) but it is a mission-critical app in that it damn well has to run successfully. In such an environment, you run a hot backup system with a watchdog timer and some kind of automatic switchover of the control outputs. The backup system constantly monitors the run state of the primary, so if the primary controller faults out the backup will take over seamlessly. For something as costly as a fireworks show, this would be a reasonable approach, and in fact is commonly used in industry.
Let's face it: when it comes to computers shit happens... sometimes it's the hardware, sometimes the software, and in an environment such as this you have to account for both.
Much as I hate to say it, it sounds like that OLPC group didn't consult an attorney to have a proper contract drawn up between all parties. Not that I RTFA or anything.
Okay, instead of a wall at the bottom of your driveway you have a motorized gate with a numeric keypad. You need a code to open the gate so you can drive your car, but the people who own the road won't give it to you. You could easily download a road-gate-code-cracker, but that's been made illegal.
Possibly he does not. Some people, a lot of people, want to be told what to think, want someone, anyone, to keep all the bad stuff away from them, all the bad thoughts out of their pretty little heads. I think it's some kind of a longing for a return to early childhood, I don't know. But he's right about one thing: ideas have power. The problem is, being afraid of exposure to ideas can enable other people to have power over you. Personally, I think it's better to accept that life has an ugly side and make your own judgments about right and wrong, than have some arbitrary and untrustworthy agency put a pair of electronic rose-colored glasses atop your head and make those decisions for you.
But that's just me. Joe Australian may have a different opinion, although I've always had this idea in my head of Australians being a fiercely independent people. I'd be sorry to hear that's not true.
Well, that will occasionally shut up one of the more mindless ones, it's true, but not because they've accepted your point of view as valid. It's just that they can't figure out how to wrap their minds around the contradiction: eventually they will resolve the conflict by simply ignoring it. The more experienced models will find a comeback along the lines of "only God can instill a moral sense" or some such. The GP is right, you can't win. A closed mind is a truly remarkable thing... unfortunately it's a commodity item.
In other words, they've been milking the oldies for so long they can't imagine any other way to make money from music. What happens if I have an old VHS recording that I want to shift to a DVD... seems to me the same issues would apply. Hell, what if I have a book that I want to convert to an electronic format so I can shift it to my portable reader. The outcome of the RIAA's crusade will have effects well beyond music.
Fair use is often cited as a reason why people can supposedly do whatever they want with purchased media.
No, fair use is cited as the reason that people can do what they want with purchased media for their own use (the law actually has many other applications, but that's what is most relevant here.) Not too many people I know, and not many on Slashdot, believe that fair use implies a license to commit copyright infringement on a massive scale, because it doesn't. Whether or not you believe that Fair Use doctrine applies to ripping music for personal use (and that is open to interpretation, I agree), the Audio Home Recording Act explicitly does, so far as I can tell. The RIAA agreed to that in exchange for fees levied upon blank media sales. Now they want to renege on that agreement: the bastards want it both ways. Screw them, and their horses too, and I hope their building falls down on them.
However, fair use is NOT a law.
The United States Federal Government would disagree with you on that point.
For your edification, here's the relevant portion:
Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code
107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use40
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include --
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
So Fair Use is very much the law. Whether it can be construed to mean what we all want it to mean is something entirely different. I'm not a lawyer, but perhaps some actual attorneys could enlighten us as to the the application of Fair Use to personal copies of musical tracks.
Maybe, but Fox claims to be a professional news organization. Slashdot doesn't, and in fact just takes stories from anybody... no real journalism involved. Slashdot is also pretty open about that, and doesn't claim to be anything other than what it is. Really, you should be criticizing Fox for being down at Slashdot's level.
If the RIAA can get people to think rips are "unathorized" copies they will be able to disregard fair play soon.
"Fair use" I think you mean. They'll have a hard time convincing consumers that it is morally wrong to rip their discs: ripping is a pretty entrenched idea now. People like me that started out on vinyl "ripping" to reel-to-reel will never accept there's a damned thing wrong with that. The only hope they have is getting another rewrite of copyright law pushed through Congress, which is far more likely.
More and more, I see the RIAA as a major league loose cannon, with repercussions for the studios that I have to believe they haven't fully considered. I know the studios are just biding their time, waiting to see just how much the RIAA can win for them in terms of legal precedent, copyright modifications, and alterations in public attitude towards copyright infringement. Still, I can't help but think this is going to be self-defeating in the long run. I haven't bought any big studio music in twenty five years, and I don't plan to start. They've already lost me as customer, permanently. If they keep going the way they're going (lawsuits, threats and intimidation, high prices, poor quality) they're going to lose more.
The grass may be greener on the other side, but the price to be paid for moving there is profoundly prohibitive.
As good a way of restating Guilder's Law as any. He puts the price at about a factor of ten, historically speaking, before it's worth making that investment.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, well, I was referencing one of the common Murphy's Laws. I figured everyone would get that.
mother nature she "loves" you, specifically she loves to attempt to kill you at every chance she gets, that's why we develop technology to enforce the restraining order against her.
That is one of the funniest things I've read lately.
What is with you people? Can't you recognize a JOKE when you see one? And why don't you read Harris' letter, in which you would have realized that he was saying the same thing you are.
Cripes.
Pardon me, "at cost".
Interesting. You complain that I'm being too judgmental, yet immediately put me into a compartment conveniently labeled "typical American". Come back to me when you have some idea what a typical American is, my hypocritical friend, if you ever manage to successfully define what that means. Matter of fact, don't bother coming back.
In any event, when someone leaves an organization and takes key patents with them it is usually not good for that organization, because they no longer control critical assets required for their future survival. In such cases, that usually means that the organization failed to protect its interests, and the fact this woman is promising that she will make parts available at coast is just rhetoric: you can choose to believe it if you wish, but that doesn't mean it will happen that way. That's the only point I was trying to make, genius. Deal with it.
Mother Nature is not now, nor has she ever been, looking out for us.
I would go further and say that, not only is she not looking out for us, but Mother Nature is a bitch.
Slashdot effect, probably. It makes them think we still like him.
There are many ways to keep the risk of corruption low. Hell, if you know the CRC of the original, valid table and have a live backup of the file available in case the primary is damaged, you can avoid problems like this. A better approach is to CRC individual records in the file: if one is found to be corrupt as the firing sequence is proceeding, restore it from a backup file and continue. If that doesn't work, skip the corrupt record and continue with show.
... sometimes it's the hardware, sometimes the software, and in an environment such as this you have to account for both.
Running a fireworks show is not a high availability application (I mean, it only has to run once for a few minutes) but it is a mission-critical app in that it damn well has to run successfully. In such an environment, you run a hot backup system with a watchdog timer and some kind of automatic switchover of the control outputs. The backup system constantly monitors the run state of the primary, so if the primary controller faults out the backup will take over seamlessly. For something as costly as a fireworks show, this would be a reasonable approach, and in fact is commonly used in industry.
Let's face it: when it comes to computers shit happens
I'm pretty sure that wasn't a priority.
I'm pretty sure it is now.
Much as I hate to say it, it sounds like that OLPC group didn't consult an attorney to have a proper contract drawn up between all parties. Not that I RTFA or anything.
Punish, and also "profit by". There's an entire legal profession that centers around extracting payouts from the medical system, deserved or not.
His point (which seems to have escaped you) is that many Americans aren't capable of even perceiving the problem.
And that's a problem.
That was hilarious.
So a quantum leap is a very, very tiny change, usually smaller than a nanometer.
Okay, fine. You tell that to Scott Bakula.
That's a good point. Sony and Microsoft lose money on consoles that are never used to play purchased games.
[Okay, *you* come up with a better car analogy]
Okay, instead of a wall at the bottom of your driveway you have a motorized gate with a numeric keypad. You need a code to open the gate so you can drive your car, but the people who own the road won't give it to you. You could easily download a road-gate-code-cracker, but that's been made illegal.
Get me?
Possibly he does not. Some people, a lot of people, want to be told what to think, want someone, anyone, to keep all the bad stuff away from them, all the bad thoughts out of their pretty little heads. I think it's some kind of a longing for a return to early childhood, I don't know. But he's right about one thing: ideas have power. The problem is, being afraid of exposure to ideas can enable other people to have power over you. Personally, I think it's better to accept that life has an ugly side and make your own judgments about right and wrong, than have some arbitrary and untrustworthy agency put a pair of electronic rose-colored glasses atop your head and make those decisions for you.
But that's just me. Joe Australian may have a different opinion, although I've always had this idea in my head of Australians being a fiercely independent people. I'd be sorry to hear that's not true.
Well, that will occasionally shut up one of the more mindless ones, it's true, but not because they've accepted your point of view as valid. It's just that they can't figure out how to wrap their minds around the contradiction: eventually they will resolve the conflict by simply ignoring it. The more experienced models will find a comeback along the lines of "only God can instill a moral sense" or some such. The GP is right, you can't win. A closed mind is a truly remarkable thing ... unfortunately it's a commodity item.
Yeah, and if your boss really pisses you off just browse around redtube.com for a while. That'll really shake things up.
Nah, it won't be incinerated, but will be renamed 'Old York', probably in arabic.
Nah. Mandarin.
In other words, they've been milking the oldies for so long they can't imagine any other way to make money from music. What happens if I have an old VHS recording that I want to shift to a DVD ... seems to me the same issues would apply. Hell, what if I have a book that I want to convert to an electronic format so I can shift it to my portable reader. The outcome of the RIAA's crusade will have effects well beyond music.
Fair use is often cited as a reason why people can supposedly do whatever they want with purchased media.
No, fair use is cited as the reason that people can do what they want with purchased media for their own use (the law actually has many other applications, but that's what is most relevant here.) Not too many people I know, and not many on Slashdot, believe that fair use implies a license to commit copyright infringement on a massive scale, because it doesn't. Whether or not you believe that Fair Use doctrine applies to ripping music for personal use (and that is open to interpretation, I agree), the Audio Home Recording Act explicitly does, so far as I can tell. The RIAA agreed to that in exchange for fees levied upon blank media sales. Now they want to renege on that agreement: the bastards want it both ways. Screw them, and their horses too, and I hope their building falls down on them.
However, fair use is NOT a law.
The United States Federal Government would disagree with you on that point.
For your edification, here's the relevant portion:
Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code
107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use40
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include --
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
So Fair Use is very much the law. Whether it can be construed to mean what we all want it to mean is something entirely different. I'm not a lawyer, but perhaps some actual attorneys could enlighten us as to the the application of Fair Use to personal copies of musical tracks.
Maybe, but Fox claims to be a professional news organization. Slashdot doesn't, and in fact just takes stories from anybody ... no real journalism involved. Slashdot is also pretty open about that, and doesn't claim to be anything other than what it is. Really, you should be criticizing Fox for being down at Slashdot's level.
If the RIAA can get people to think rips are "unathorized" copies they will be able to disregard fair play soon.
"Fair use" I think you mean. They'll have a hard time convincing consumers that it is morally wrong to rip their discs: ripping is a pretty entrenched idea now. People like me that started out on vinyl "ripping" to reel-to-reel will never accept there's a damned thing wrong with that. The only hope they have is getting another rewrite of copyright law pushed through Congress, which is far more likely.
More and more, I see the RIAA as a major league loose cannon, with repercussions for the studios that I have to believe they haven't fully considered. I know the studios are just biding their time, waiting to see just how much the RIAA can win for them in terms of legal precedent, copyright modifications, and alterations in public attitude towards copyright infringement. Still, I can't help but think this is going to be self-defeating in the long run. I haven't bought any big studio music in twenty five years, and I don't plan to start. They've already lost me as customer, permanently. If they keep going the way they're going (lawsuits, threats and intimidation, high prices, poor quality) they're going to lose more.
The grass may be greener on the other side, but the price to be paid for moving there is profoundly prohibitive.
As good a way of restating Guilder's Law as any. He puts the price at about a factor of ten, historically speaking, before it's worth making that investment.