How does the school district even have jurisdiction in this case? It might be libel, but unless the school actually has jurisdiction this suspension and expulsion is a load of crap.
This example is from Conneticut:
You asked what authority a local school board has to expel a student from school for conduct off school grounds. You were especially interested in whether a school board may expel a student for a sexual assault that occurs away from school.
Connecticut's school expulsion law provides for both mandatory and discretionary expulsions for out-of-school conduct (CGS 10-233d (a) (1) and (2)). School boards must expel students for carrying a weapon, or selling or distributing illegal drugs, whether the activity occurs on or off school grounds. For other types of conduct, including sexual assault, a school board has the discretion to expel a student from school.
In order to impose a discretionary expulsion for out-of-school conduct, the law requires a school board to show that the student's actions not only violate a publicized school policy but are also "seriously disruptive of the educational process.â In 1998, the Connecticut Supreme Court construed the latter phrase to mean that, to warrant expulsion, the out-of-school conduct must (1) have a direct connection to the school's operations and (2) "markedly interrupt or seriously impede" the school's daily operations.
Within these requirements, a school board may expel a student who has been convicted of an out-of-school sexual assault. Shortly after the Supreme Court ruling, a hearing officer upheld the Trumbull Board of Education's expulsion of a high school student convicted of sexually assaulting another student at an unknown location outside of school. The hearing officer found that, based on the facts of the case, allowing the convicted student to attend school would severely disrupt the educational process in the school.
Firing a weapon isn't brain surgery, it doesn't take years of practice to do it right. Just give them the gun, tell them where to point the end the bullets come out of and how to put more in, then let 'em go.
There is more to being a soldier than knowing how to fire a gun.
There is something to be said for the rigor of the old-school adventure game or hard-core tactical simulation. When you make a mistake it is "Game Over."
If H264 wasn't covered by a bunch of expensive patents, VP8 would not be needed. People could put effort in improving H264 instead.
They are.
HEVC (aka H.265) should be ready in about a year or two.
Current indications are that the new standard could provide 2x better video compression performance (i.e. around half the bitrate for a similar quality level) at the expense of significantly higher computational complexity, compared with H.264/AVC.
HEVC like H.264 is not a exclusively - or even primarily - a "web codec." The target markets include next generation HDTVs and services like Netflix and OnLive gaming.
Netflix doesn't need the PC.
It doesn't need the browser.
What it need is the content protection demanded by the major providers,
What it needs is placement of its "app" on very tablet and smartphone, Internet-enabled HDTV, set top box, video game console, DVD and Blu-Ray player.
But it has a suprisingly powerful screenplay and great performances from Robert Duvall and Bill Murray. Anyway, the producer points out that, even with a very powerful script and great leads attached, it still took over 8 years to get the movie made.
Nothing has changed.
Consider the number of significant feature films, serials, cartoons and other short subjects produced in 1939: 1939 in film
The studios are prosperous, audiences are open and generous to films in every genre.
But look at the list closely and you will find that almost everything produced had a proven track record:
Adapted from best-selling books, short stories, hit plays, musicals or silent films. None of this stuff has ever gone out of print and the original sources are still being mined for ideas seventy years later.
The appearance of a fairly large number of vigilantes, operating with at least the tacit support of the general population, means they're serving a need for justice (whether poorly or well) that the government has failed to fill.
The problem here is that it is far too easy to delude yourself into believing that the people are on your side. That you - and only you - have the right to speak for them.
The heart of the issue was the chain of ownership put forward by Fleischer Studios, which claims Paramount transferred the rights it bought from Max Fleischer to UM&M TV in 1955. That entity in turn transferred the rights in 1958 to National Telefilm Associates, which became Republic Pictures in 1986. About 10 years later, Republic Pictures transferred the exclusive copyright to Fleischer Studios.
Fleischer Studios' scenario failed to convince U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, however. She found for the plaintiffs, ruling that the company had failed to show proof for any of the purported transfers that occurred after Paramount purchased the rights.
The three-judge appeals panel agreed, 2-1.
The expiration of the rights to "Steamboat Willie" gives you the right to produce derivatives of "Steamboat Willie ---" and only "Steamboat Willie."
Eight minutes of silent-era sight gags with a synchronized sound track and a thin narrative thread.
You do not get the rights to other stories, you do you not get the rights to use Disney's distinctive - trademarked - character designs in any of their many incarnations.
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
48 million consoles.
69 million PSN accounts. 17 million PlayStation Home accounts. 4 million MOVE controllers.
The PS3 Slim was introduced in 2009.
Meaning that more than half of all PS3 consoles have been sold without so much as a whisper of support for the OtherOS, SACD, or PS2 emulation.
On the other hand, the five year old PS3 remains feature competitive with high end DVD and Blu-Ray players.
It supports 1080p Netflix streams with 5.1 theater surround sound.
It supports Hulu Plus in HD.
It supports Sony's new Music Unlimited service. 6 million tracks. $4-$10/mo.
--- and it plays games.
These are the features which sell the product.
I have yet to see anyone post hard numbers - credible numbers - for Linux installs or homebrew gaming on the PS3.
I would not be in the least surprised if there were more kids watching their twentieth re-play of "Monsters vs Aliens" in stereographic 3D on their Dad's Bravia HDTV.
The average consumer isn't being screwed by Sony, and that's the point. The average consumer buys a PS3 to play games and movies they buy from the shops. The average consumer doesn't care (or likely didn't even know) what OtherOS etc was.
The numbers are telling:
48 million PS3 consoles.
69 million PSN accounts. 17 million PlayStation Home accounts.
4 million MOVE controllers. (Stats from the Wikipedia)
To win this game you've got to show that the OtherOS has a larger constituency than SACD audio or PS2 gaming on the PS3.
If there are more kids watching "Monsters vs Aliens" in 3D on their Dad's 65" Samsung than geeks installing Yellow Dog Linux on the PS3 Fat, you have a problem.
The light that either of these globes give off just isn't as nice and comforting as a good ol' incandescent globe. It's cold, harsh, and monochromatic.
It's not a new problem.
Dover publishes a reprint of a 1911 Sears Builder's Catalog, in which gas and electric lighting co-exist.
Your choice of artificial illumination affects your choice of window design and treatment. Colors, wallpaper designs, fabrics, textures and so on. Nothing may look quite right when you make changes - and it can be an expensive problem to fix.
DONT buy sony. dont let anyone around you, buy sony.
This brave stand accomplishes nothing unless you are a real force in the market.
PS3 base. 48 million units.
The PS3 Slim has sold very well - without SACD, PS2 or OtherOS support of any kind.
PSN. 69 million accounts. PlayStation Home 17 million accounts
MOVE controller 4 million units Source.
Every new game, every Blu-Ray rental or Netflix stream is a vote for the firmware upgrade - a vote of confidence in the PS3 as a video game console and home entertainment center.
Nowhere have I seen real numbers - hard numbers - posted for the OtherOS or for homebrew gaming. Numbers that can be taken into court.
How is this news for nerds? More like News for Office Drones!
The "office drone" is worth $6 billion each quarter to Microsoft.
You mght want to think about what that means when you are trying to develop and promote an alternative office suite or an integrated office system.
That means that consumers spent more than $1 billion on Office last quarter. According to investor relations director Bill Koefoed, a lot of those sales are upgrades in place from Office 2003, but consumers are also buying Office 2010 when they buy new PCs -- or upgrading from the free Starter Edition that comes with many new computers.
Businesses are still the main customer for Office, however, and they spent nearly $4.6 billion on it and related products during the quarter.
The big question is whether anyone would even notice the difference between 16-bit and 24-bit files on a portable player
The bigger question is why the geek thinks Apple wouldn't like to cut itself a slice of the high end audio market?
Denon sells a dock for the iPhone.
Why not an iTunes app on the Denon home theater receiver? The Panasonic or Samsung HDTV or theater sound bar? Pandora is there. Rhapsody is there. Why not iTunes?
Its not that 24 bits of data makes the sound better. It actually does not. What is does is give your audio more room to breathe in the numeric realm of digital audio. Remember, we are talking about numbers, calculations, not analog waveforms. With 24 bits of data demarcing your recording medium, its is possible to record extremely dynamic music, with very quiet soft passages and extraordinary loud passages. Quiet passages will be less likely struggling to stay above the noise floor on your system. One can record with no compression. You can record at lower levels, with more headroom. This ensures that the occasional peak is not truncated at the top and it will give converters some room the breathe. Because you are not pushing the limits of your bandwidth, your instruments will sound clearer, and the vocals may sound "cleaner", the song will mix better and there will be less noise. So its not that 24 bit recordings sound better. In fact they may sound just as bad or worse than 16 bit. But 24 bits gives the recordist a noise floor and headroom to create an excellent recording. Its a tool, and in the right hand, it can blow you away, audio wise.
Switzerland and Spain are doing great with OSS in government.
I think the key word here is "government."
The geek can be a little too enarmoured of the mandate from on high, the bone tossed to your coalition partners or to some notion of political correctness.
When you look at a broader spectrum of users the picture can change dramatically:
I find it curious that Linux on the desktop should be so well accepted in some markets (especially Latin America) and resisted so vigorously in others. Anyway, this is sad news, whatever the reasons.
Statcounter publishes free global breakdowns of its webstats - and, to be perfectly honest about it, the numbers for Linux range from dismal to also-ran.
A public figure is someone who has actively sought, in a given matter of public interest, to influence the resolution of the matter. In addition to the obvious public figure---a government employee, a senator, a presidential candidate---someone may be a limited-purpose public figure. A limited-purpose public figure is one who (a) voluntarily participates in a discussion about a public controversy, and (b) has access to the media to get his or her own view across. One can also be an involuntary limited-purpose public figure --- for example, an air traffic controller on duty at time of fatal crash was held to be an involuntary, limited-purpose public figure, due to his role in a major public occurrence.
I don't know how quite how you frame an academic and author like Tolkien as the center of any great "public" controversy or event.
I think you do have a problem if you mimic the distinctive cover designs and typefaces of Tolkien's books. The cynic in me dislikes the notion of using fictionalized biography to shore up your literary criticism.
I know the Tolkien estate profits off of Lord of the Rings, but I don't see how that encourages new works.
"Dungeons & Dragons"
The game profited enormously from the discovery of Tolkien by collegians in the mid-sixties --- and to this day, the bog-standard fantasy RPG remains Middle-Earth in very thin disguise.
I have no great love for derivatives.
Heinlein's sub-light speed space "arks" were crafted with particular care to make them plausible. But his genius is shown in the Howard families - who have a compelling reason to build such a thing, or to steal one ---
and he didn't need to introduce a single Cylon into his story to set things in motion.
That is a lesson worth learning.
The geek has been obsessed with Star Trek: TOS for 46 years.
The chances are really quite good that if he doodles a starship it will look like Kirk's Enterprise. The chances are even better that his Star Trek fan flick will be a meticulous re-creation of sets and props.
But won't be treading any new ground.
Cordwainer Smith's "Think Blue, Count Two" anticipates TNGs Holodeck and a cybernetic technology that seems eerily on target now.
The illusions - the characters and stories - animated and performed by the laminated mouse brain hidden deep within the ship have one purpose only: to keep the crew and passengers sane during the interminable outbound passage.
The median human life span in Smith's universe was 400 years and the last long run exposed a level of violence and perversion in humanity that hadn't been exposed for close on to 10,000 years.
The fan can't re-configure a story like this as a "Star Trek" episodes because, in any of a dozen ways it will break canon. The fan is too close to the original to do that, and his audience even more so.
Yes, this is illegal under DMCA. But DMCA anti-circumvention provisions are an abomination in the first place, and if there is any chance to throw them out as unconstitutional, it's well worth donating.
There is the possbility that a win by Sony will anchor the DMCA even more solidly in place.
Slashdot Mirror
How does the school district even have jurisdiction in this case? It might be libel, but unless the school actually has jurisdiction this suspension and expulsion is a load of crap.
This example is from Conneticut:
You asked what authority a local school board has to expel a student from school for conduct off school grounds. You were especially interested in whether a school board may expel a student for a sexual assault that occurs away from school.
Connecticut's school expulsion law provides for both mandatory and discretionary expulsions for out-of-school conduct (CGS 10-233d (a) (1) and (2)). School boards must expel students for carrying a weapon, or selling or distributing illegal drugs, whether the activity occurs on or off school grounds. For other types of conduct, including sexual assault, a school board has the discretion to expel a student from school.
In order to impose a discretionary expulsion for out-of-school conduct, the law requires a school board to show that the student's actions not only violate a publicized school policy but are also "seriously disruptive of the educational process.â In 1998, the Connecticut Supreme Court construed the latter phrase to mean that, to warrant expulsion, the out-of-school conduct must (1) have a direct connection to the school's operations and (2) "markedly interrupt or seriously impede" the school's daily operations.
Within these requirements, a school board may expel a student who has been convicted of an out-of-school sexual assault. Shortly after the Supreme Court ruling, a hearing officer upheld the Trumbull Board of Education's expulsion of a high school student convicted of sexually assaulting another student at an unknown location outside of school. The hearing officer found that, based on the facts of the case, allowing the convicted student to attend school would severely disrupt the educational process in the school.
EXPULSION FOR CONDUCT OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL
Firing a weapon isn't brain surgery, it doesn't take years of practice to do it right. Just give them the gun, tell them where to point the end the bullets come out of and how to put more in, then let 'em go.
There is more to being a soldier than knowing how to fire a gun.
There is something to be said for the rigor of the old-school adventure game or hard-core tactical simulation. When you make a mistake it is "Game Over."
When are we going to get an interface that is totally configurable to user preferences?
Never.
Multiple configurations are a nightmare to support.
Half your clerical support may be volunteers or temps who must be prepared to take any desk and be productive.
Working outside the default configuration wastes their time and yours.
I will watch the youtube videos just to make extra work for Sony - even if it's only a second or two of their time
The only time you'll be wasting is your own.
Sony is casting its nets for the big fish. The first at Geohot's door.
I don't own a PS3. Oh, and I'm Canadian.
I can't say I'm surprised.
If H264 wasn't covered by a bunch of expensive patents, VP8 would not be needed. People could put effort in improving H264 instead.
They are.
HEVC (aka H.265) should be ready in about a year or two.
Current indications are that the new standard could provide 2x better video compression performance (i.e. around half the bitrate for a similar quality level) at the expense of significantly higher computational complexity, compared with H.264/AVC.
High Efficiency Video Coding / HEVC / H.265 : Beyond H.264
HEVC like H.264 is not a exclusively - or even primarily - a "web codec." The target markets include next generation HDTVs and services like Netflix and OnLive gaming.
Netflix doesn't need the PC.
It doesn't need the browser.
What it need is the content protection demanded by the major providers,
What it needs is placement of its "app" on very tablet and smartphone, Internet-enabled HDTV, set top box, video game console, DVD and Blu-Ray player.
The only reason a court would be gathering such information is to stifle free speech.
Free speech is not the freedom to libel and slander the innocent. Free speech is not the freedom to make threats with impunity.
The anonymous speaker can be legitimately exposed.
But it has a suprisingly powerful screenplay and great performances from Robert Duvall and Bill Murray. Anyway, the producer points out that, even with a very powerful script and great leads attached, it still took over 8 years to get the movie made.
Nothing has changed.
Consider the number of significant feature films, serials, cartoons and other short subjects produced in 1939: 1939 in film
The studios are prosperous, audiences are open and generous to films in every genre.
But look at the list closely and you will find that almost everything produced had a proven track record:
Adapted from best-selling books, short stories, hit plays, musicals or silent films. None of this stuff has ever gone out of print and the original sources are still being mined for ideas seventy years later.
The appearance of a fairly large number of vigilantes, operating with at least the tacit support of the general population, means they're serving a need for justice (whether poorly or well) that the government has failed to fill.
The problem here is that it is far too easy to delude yourself into believing that the people are on your side. That you - and only you - have the right to speak for them.
Now I will grant that this guy should be punished, BUT
There is always a "but" when a geek is sentenced to do hard time.
Gotta love the punitive vs retributive approach to justice in the West.
Some lessons are only learned the hard way.
The heart of the issue was the chain of ownership put forward by Fleischer Studios, which claims Paramount transferred the rights it bought from Max Fleischer to UM&M TV in 1955. That entity in turn transferred the rights in 1958 to National Telefilm Associates, which became Republic Pictures in 1986. About 10 years later, Republic Pictures transferred the exclusive copyright to Fleischer Studios. Fleischer Studios' scenario failed to convince U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, however. She found for the plaintiffs, ruling that the company had failed to show proof for any of the purported transfers that occurred after Paramount purchased the rights. The three-judge appeals panel agreed, 2-1.
Court Says Right to Betty Boop Is Anyone's Guess
A footnote here:
The expiration of the rights to "Steamboat Willie" gives you the right to produce derivatives of "Steamboat Willie ---" and only "Steamboat Willie."
Eight minutes of silent-era sight gags with a synchronized sound track and a thin narrative thread.
You do not get the rights to other stories, you do you not get the rights to use Disney's distinctive - trademarked - character designs in any of their many incarnations.
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
48 million consoles.
69 million PSN accounts. 17 million PlayStation Home accounts.
4 million MOVE controllers.
The PS3 Slim was introduced in 2009.
Meaning that more than half of all PS3 consoles have been sold without so much as a whisper of support for the OtherOS, SACD, or PS2 emulation.
On the other hand, the five year old PS3 remains feature competitive with high end DVD and Blu-Ray players.
It supports 1080p Netflix streams with 5.1 theater surround sound.
It supports Hulu Plus in HD.
It supports Sony's new Music Unlimited service. 6 million tracks. $4-$10/mo.
--- and it plays games.
These are the features which sell the product.
I have yet to see anyone post hard numbers - credible numbers - for Linux installs or homebrew gaming on the PS3.
I would not be in the least surprised if there were more kids watching their twentieth re-play of "Monsters vs Aliens" in stereographic 3D on their Dad's Bravia HDTV.
The 30% is the cut that Microsoft takes from every app on the WP7 marketplace (same as Apple does with their app store)
You need to place the app somewhere or open your own store.
Most wholesalers, I suspect, would be comfortable with a 70/30 split on sales at the five and dime.
no doubt the button to reset this feature to defaults (and remove any blacklisting) will be hidden seven layers deep in complex "Options" dialogs
Tools>Safety>Tracking Protection>Disable
The average consumer isn't being screwed by Sony, and that's the point. The average consumer buys a PS3 to play games and movies they buy from the shops. The average consumer doesn't care (or likely didn't even know) what OtherOS etc was.
The numbers are telling:
48 million PS3 consoles.
69 million PSN accounts. 17 million PlayStation Home accounts.
4 million MOVE controllers. (Stats from the Wikipedia)
To win this game you've got to show that the OtherOS has a larger constituency than SACD audio or PS2 gaming on the PS3.
If there are more kids watching "Monsters vs Aliens" in 3D on their Dad's 65" Samsung than geeks installing Yellow Dog Linux on the PS3 Fat, you have a problem.
The light that either of these globes give off just isn't as nice and comforting as a good ol' incandescent globe. It's cold, harsh, and monochromatic.
It's not a new problem.
Dover publishes a reprint of a 1911 Sears Builder's Catalog, in which gas and electric lighting co-exist.
Your choice of artificial illumination affects your choice of window design and treatment. Colors, wallpaper designs, fabrics, textures and so on. Nothing may look quite right when you make changes - and it can be an expensive problem to fix.
DONT buy sony. dont let anyone around you, buy sony.
This brave stand accomplishes nothing unless you are a real force in the market.
PS3 base. 48 million units.
The PS3 Slim has sold very well - without SACD, PS2 or OtherOS support of any kind.
PSN. 69 million accounts.
PlayStation Home 17 million accounts
MOVE controller 4 million units Source.
Every new game, every Blu-Ray rental or Netflix stream is a vote for the firmware upgrade - a vote of confidence in the PS3 as a video game console and home entertainment center.
Nowhere have I seen real numbers - hard numbers - posted for the OtherOS or for homebrew gaming. Numbers that can be taken into court.
How is this news for nerds? More like News for Office Drones!
The "office drone" is worth $6 billion each quarter to Microsoft.
You mght want to think about what that means when you are trying to develop and promote an alternative office suite or an integrated office system.
That means that consumers spent more than $1 billion on Office last quarter. According to investor relations director Bill Koefoed, a lot of those sales are upgrades in place from Office 2003, but consumers are also buying Office 2010 when they buy new PCs -- or upgrading from the free Starter Edition that comes with many new computers.
Businesses are still the main customer for Office, however, and they spent nearly $4.6 billion on it and related products during the quarter.
Office Saves Microsoft's Bacon For The Second Straight Quarter
The big question is whether anyone would even notice the difference between 16-bit and 24-bit files on a portable player
The bigger question is why the geek thinks Apple wouldn't like to cut itself a slice of the high end audio market?
Denon sells a dock for the iPhone.
Why not an iTunes app on the Denon home theater receiver? The Panasonic or Samsung HDTV or theater sound bar? Pandora is there. Rhapsody is there. Why not iTunes?
Its not that 24 bits of data makes the sound better. It actually does not. What is does is give your audio more room to breathe in the numeric realm of digital audio. Remember, we are talking about numbers, calculations, not analog waveforms. With 24 bits of data demarcing your recording medium, its is possible to record extremely dynamic music, with very quiet soft passages and extraordinary loud passages. Quiet passages will be less likely struggling to stay above the noise floor on your system. One can record with no compression. You can record at lower levels, with more headroom. This ensures that the occasional peak is not truncated at the top and it will give converters some room the breathe. Because you are not pushing the limits of your bandwidth, your instruments will sound clearer, and the vocals may sound "cleaner", the song will mix better and there will be less noise. So its not that 24 bit recordings sound better. In fact they may sound just as bad or worse than 16 bit. But 24 bits gives the recordist a noise floor and headroom to create an excellent recording. Its a tool, and in the right hand, it can blow you away, audio wise.
16 Bit vs. 24 Bit Audio
Switzerland and Spain are doing great with OSS in government.
I think the key word here is "government."
The geek can be a little too enarmoured of the mandate from on high, the bone tossed to your coalition partners or to some notion of political correctness. When you look at a broader spectrum of users the picture can change dramatically:
Switzerland
Spain
I find it curious that Linux on the desktop should be so well accepted in some markets (especially Latin America) and resisted so vigorously in others. Anyway, this is sad news, whatever the reasons.
Statcounter publishes free global breakdowns of its webstats - and, to be perfectly honest about it, the numbers for Linux range from dismal to also-ran.
South America
Argentina
Brazil
Europe
Finland
Germany
The most significant thing about both Apple and Microsoft is that both began with the stand-alone PC for the non-technical end user.
The PC that was often sold directly to the end-user.
There is some truth to the notion that the PC worked its way into the enterprise by stealth - from the bottom-up rather than from the top down -
and that the geek, when looked at closely, tends to be a top-down sort of guy.
Imagine an elderly person in their home when the heat goes out, in those cold temperatures that can become life threatening very quickly
The elderly and the disabled are least likely to drop the land line.
The cell phone is too small and too easily mislaid. They most likely qualify for the "Lifeline" rate - five dollars or so a month, no more.
The 911 call will go through in any case so long as the line remains disconnected.
Tolkein was/is a public figure
I am not so sure about that.
A public figure is someone who has actively sought, in a given matter of public interest, to influence the resolution of the matter. In addition to the obvious public figure---a government employee, a senator, a presidential candidate---someone may be a limited-purpose public figure. A limited-purpose public figure is one who (a) voluntarily participates in a discussion about a public controversy, and (b) has access to the media to get his or her own view across. One can also be an involuntary limited-purpose public figure --- for example, an air traffic controller on duty at time of fatal crash was held to be an involuntary, limited-purpose public figure, due to his role in a major public occurrence.
Who Is A Public Figure
I don't know how quite how you frame an academic and author like Tolkien as the center of any great "public" controversy or event.
I think you do have a problem if you mimic the distinctive cover designs and typefaces of Tolkien's books. The cynic in me dislikes the notion of using fictionalized biography to shore up your literary criticism.
I know the Tolkien estate profits off of Lord of the Rings, but I don't see how that encourages new works.
"Dungeons & Dragons"
The game profited enormously from the discovery of Tolkien by collegians in the mid-sixties --- and to this day, the bog-standard fantasy RPG remains Middle-Earth in very thin disguise.
I have no great love for derivatives.
Heinlein's sub-light speed space "arks" were crafted with particular care to make them plausible. But his genius is shown in the Howard families - who have a compelling reason to build such a thing, or to steal one ---
and he didn't need to introduce a single Cylon into his story to set things in motion.
That is a lesson worth learning.
The geek has been obsessed with Star Trek: TOS for 46 years.
The chances are really quite good that if he doodles a starship it will look like Kirk's Enterprise. The chances are even better that his Star Trek fan flick will be a meticulous re-creation of sets and props.
But won't be treading any new ground.
Cordwainer Smith's "Think Blue, Count Two" anticipates TNGs Holodeck and a cybernetic technology that seems eerily on target now.
The illusions - the characters and stories - animated and performed by the laminated mouse brain hidden deep within the ship have one purpose only: to keep the crew and passengers sane during the interminable outbound passage.
The median human life span in Smith's universe was 400 years and the last long run exposed a level of violence and perversion in humanity that hadn't been exposed for close on to 10,000 years.
The fan can't re-configure a story like this as a "Star Trek" episodes because, in any of a dozen ways it will break canon. The fan is too close to the original to do that, and his audience even more so.
Yes, this is illegal under DMCA. But DMCA anti-circumvention provisions are an abomination in the first place, and if there is any chance to throw them out as unconstitutional, it's well worth donating.
There is the possbility that a win by Sony will anchor the DMCA even more solidly in place.