Being european doesn't make it good though - it seems as if USA and the EU are competing for the title of "worst knowledge legislation". Any "advantages" one party might have is quickly "harmonized" away.
A well-written introduction to how it came this far is "Information Feudalism" by Drahos and Braithwaite.
...the (current) patent system... is used as a tool to put sticks in the wheels of the competitors.
It's not a bug - it's a feature. Businesses want monopolies, so we set up this type of deal called a "patent" that lets them have one in return for financing and disclosing an invention.
The problem is that we're in many cases showing really poor tradesmanship: We give away monopolies for inventions that we would have had for free anyway. (Or we give excessively broad monopolies for barely non-trivial inventions.)
I shouldn't have to expatiate on why monopolies are mostly bad, and government granting them for free to corporations outside democratic control even worse. Go read Adam Smith.
The problem with switching carriers is you have to switch phones
In Denmark your phone company has to give you the simlock code after 6 months at most. Why don't you make a similar rule? In my experience it's a lot simpler than "swap pages" could ever hope to be.
In Denmark we've had number portability for several years. My current cell number has been through 3 different providers. IMO it's been a huge benefit to competition. For instance, I recently switched provider during a price battle that cut my phone bill in half. (My old one followed through most of the way, but they'd never have done it without number portability)
They are obliged to extend number portability to work between cell and fixed line phones this april which I'm not so sure is a good idea - I like to know where I' calling because of pricing.
Best current rates in Denmark are about 10c/min, SMS's are 3-4c apiece with no subscription. Some expect the price to fall even lower within the next year. The government agency on IT and Communication runs a helpful
price guide to internet and phone providers. Of course all the providers interoperate, so you can just switch sim cards to switch provider and you can call and SMS anyone.
Several providers offer subsidized phones that can be very cheap, but they're not allowed to simlock it to their network for longer than 6 months. It's not illegal to have the simlock prematurely unlocked and it is offered publicly for 15-20 Euro. (You might get better rates elsewhere). Your contract will however be enforceable, so you'll pay subscription fees. I used this possibility recently to use my phone with a german provider during my stay there. (It's illegal in Germany though - I sent my phone from Germany to Denmark to have it unlocked - go call the police)
The heart of the problem is that the RIAA can do this at all. The major labels are using copyright and their huge portfolio to stunt technological development and skew the software and hardware market. A reasonable compulsory licensing scheme would solve that. Why can't we do it when
the russians can
Apple does EXACTLY WHAT EVERYONE SAID THEY WANTED and they still get fucked over.
No they don't. What I want is
this. Download legally in your favourite format, free previews and every major artist represented due to compulsory licensing. I don't think they pay the artists very well (how could they at 1c/MB?) and their HTML is non-standard, but it's the best starting point I've seen till now.
Nice. Will look into that:-)
I use Pico a bit because it's the nicest console editor i know, but on some machines I've symlinked it to nano (yay freedom!)
Well, actually pico (or nano) does just that. You can use ^J to realign, but it's not nice.
Besides, most Free editors don't wrap lines at all - after all they're made by coders for coders and code shouldn't wrap. I use Nedit, the exception:-)
Oh, btw: Emacs sucks! (Better start the flamewar now)
This press release from danish govt. agency Open public Information Online (OIO) has more info.
Read the patent license for yourself. (The license for the schemas themselves is basically BSD)
Also this (danish)
Computerworld article quoted MS EMEA boss Patrick de Smedt calling Interoperability a "holy grail", an "advantage to the ordinary consumer" and Competition "a very important part of our strategy." The quotes have now been removed again (why??)
This is a real problem. However I think it may perhaps be circumvented by having a MSOfficeOpenOffice converter under a BSD-like license. The combination of the BSD'd plugin and eg. OpenOffice might however infringe patents if they were too closely integrated. Murky legal waters. Ugh:-(
That sounds like a perfectly good explanation (/me opens tinfoil-hat faceplate). On the other hand - who is this "publisher" and why did the article get pulled right now? (/me shuts faceplate again, looks nervously over shoulder)
Has it ever occured to you that we - in the first world[*] - are possibly hugely overpaid?
At least when I think of people working 14h days in sweatshops just to "not starve" I suddenly shiver at the thought of what my life would be like if wealth was evenly distributed.
I know, we do have lots of options to expand total human wealth[**], so it's not a zero-sum game but still... what if?
[*] I assume most slashdotters are from "developed" countries.
[**] E.g. not killing, maiming and robbing each other
Freedesktop.org has specified a standard that does What You Want(tm):
Apps that follow these guidelines give users a simple mental model to
understand what's going on. PRIMARY is the current selection. Middle
button pastes the current selection. CLIPBOARD is just like on
Mac/Windows. You don't have to know about PRIMARY if you're a newbie.
audit trails and security systems will be in place to verify that the software used in production is identical to the tested and audited software, and to verify that the data actually counted is the data cast by voters in polling places.
It doesn't say exactly what procedures will be in place, but AFAICT they've done everything The Right Way(TM) until now, so I suppose they'll handle this as well.
I like to vote while knocking the bottom out of my toilet with my wireless laptop.
Bad idea. A physically closed booth is the only place to ensure secret elections.
For instance, voting from home is wide open to vote buying. I can't sell my vote today, because the buyer isn't allowed in the booth with me to check that he gets his moneys worth. If I could vote from home he'd demand to see me cast my vote before he paid out. He might even threaten me...
Only after the last oil rig has been sunk
Only after the last supertanker has called port
Only after last gas station has closed
Only then will you find Greenpeace doesn't sell beer at night
Slashdot Mirror
It's known as the database directive.
Being european doesn't make it good though - it seems as if USA and the EU are competing for the title of "worst knowledge legislation". Any "advantages" one party might have is quickly "harmonized" away.
A well-written introduction to how it came this far is "Information Feudalism" by Drahos and Braithwaite.
...the (current) patent system ... is used as a tool to put sticks in the wheels of the competitors.
It's not a bug - it's a feature. Businesses want monopolies, so we set up this type of deal called a "patent" that lets them have one in return for financing and disclosing an invention.
The problem is that we're in many cases showing really poor tradesmanship: We give away monopolies for inventions that we would have had for free anyway. (Or we give excessively broad monopolies for barely non-trivial inventions.)
I shouldn't have to expatiate on why monopolies are mostly bad, and government granting them for free to corporations outside democratic control even worse. Go read Adam Smith.
It's reassuring to see that even such a great literate as Umberto Eco can make stupid mistakes:
... more or less 14 centuries later Victor Hugo ... narrated the story of a priest
Plato was writing
Plato died ca. 347 BC, Victor Hugo wrote in the 19th century, so it's 22 not 14.
Take that as a cautonary note for next time you feel smart: you're just one neuronal glitch away from stupidity...
The problem with switching carriers is you have to switch phones
In Denmark your phone company has to give you the simlock code after 6 months at most. Why don't you make a similar rule? In my experience it's a lot simpler than "swap pages" could ever hope to be.
In Denmark we've had number portability for several years. My current cell number has been through 3 different providers. IMO it's been a huge benefit to competition. For instance, I recently switched provider during a price battle that cut my phone bill in half. (My old one followed through most of the way, but they'd never have done it without number portability) They are obliged to extend number portability to work between cell and fixed line phones this april which I'm not so sure is a good idea - I like to know where I' calling because of pricing.
Best current rates in Denmark are about 10c/min, SMS's are 3-4c apiece with no subscription. Some expect the price to fall even lower within the next year. The government agency on IT and Communication runs a helpful price guide to internet and phone providers. Of course all the providers interoperate, so you can just switch sim cards to switch provider and you can call and SMS anyone.
Several providers offer subsidized phones that can be very cheap, but they're not allowed to simlock it to their network for longer than 6 months. It's not illegal to have the simlock prematurely unlocked and it is offered publicly for 15-20 Euro. (You might get better rates elsewhere). Your contract will however be enforceable, so you'll pay subscription fees. I used this possibility recently to use my phone with a german provider during my stay there. (It's illegal in Germany though - I sent my phone from Germany to Denmark to have it unlocked - go call the police)
One day they'll figure out that computers have made the marginal revenue for producing a song ~= $0.
Everyone has figured that out by now, even the RIAA. They just want a little more money than that.
Apple fixes, but RIAA says game over.
The heart of the problem is that the RIAA can do this at all. The major labels are using copyright and their huge portfolio to stunt technological development and skew the software and hardware market. A reasonable compulsory licensing scheme would solve that. Why can't we do it when the russians can
Apple does EXACTLY WHAT EVERYONE SAID THEY WANTED and they still get fucked over.
No they don't. What I want is this. Download legally in your favourite format, free previews and every major artist represented due to compulsory licensing. I don't think they pay the artists very well (how could they at 1c/MB?) and their HTML is non-standard, but it's the best starting point I've seen till now.
Nice. Will look into that :-)
I use Pico a bit because it's the nicest console editor i know, but on some machines I've symlinked it to nano (yay freedom!)
Well, actually pico (or nano) does just that. You can use ^J to realign, but it's not nice.
:-)
Besides, most Free editors don't wrap lines at all - after all they're made by coders for coders and code shouldn't wrap. I use Nedit, the exception
Oh, btw: Emacs sucks! (Better start the flamewar now)
The free market (with lots of little independent companies that buy sell and trade goods) creates a mutually profitable self organizing system
The object of this "free market" is defined by copyright law, hence controlled by government. How then can you call it a free market?
here (temporarily)
Bandwidth sponsored by danish research funding.
LoRS Tools are on Freshmeat
The download link works ok - it seems the slashdotting has merely taken out dynamic HTML generation, not the bandwidth.
Apparently it's under a BSD License - IMHO quite suitable for a publicly funded project. (Flamewar ensues...)
This press release from danish govt. agency Open public Information Online (OIO) has more info.
Read the patent license for yourself. (The license for the schemas themselves is basically BSD)
Also this (danish) Computerworld article quoted MS EMEA boss Patrick de Smedt calling Interoperability a "holy grail", an "advantage to the ordinary consumer" and Competition "a very important part of our strategy." The quotes have now been removed again (why??)
This is a real problem. However I think it may perhaps be circumvented by having a MSOfficeOpenOffice converter under a BSD-like license. The combination of the BSD'd plugin and eg. OpenOffice might however infringe patents if they were too closely integrated. Murky legal waters. Ugh :-(
That sounds like a perfectly good explanation (/me opens tinfoil-hat faceplate). On the other hand - who is this "publisher" and why did the article get pulled right now? (/me shuts faceplate again, looks nervously over shoulder)
I tend to believe that daily@timeinc.net never existed - in fact, it's probably just me going insane...
Please everyone: Follow the link to the pulled article. When it returns the 404 page, type "George Orwell" into the search box.
Someone at Time should take notice. (And no, we have never been at war with Oceania...)
Has it ever occured to you that we - in the first world[*] - are possibly hugely overpaid?
... what if?
At least when I think of people working 14h days in sweatshops just to "not starve" I suddenly shiver at the thought of what my life would be like if wealth was evenly distributed.
I know, we do have lots of options to expand total human wealth[**], so it's not a zero-sum game but still
[*] I assume most slashdotters are from "developed" countries.
[**] E.g. not killing, maiming and robbing each other
+1 happy citizen in all canadian cities.
Freedesktop.org has specified a standard that does What You Want(tm):
Apps that follow these guidelines give users a simple mental model to understand what's going on. PRIMARY is the current selection. Middle button pastes the current selection. CLIPBOARD is just like on Mac/Windows. You don't have to know about PRIMARY if you're a newbie.
From the very informative ACT FAQ
It doesn't say exactly what procedures will be in place, but AFAICT they've done everything The Right Way(TM) until now, so I suppose they'll handle this as well.
I like to vote while knocking the bottom out of my toilet with my wireless laptop.
Bad idea. A physically closed booth is the only place to ensure secret elections.
For instance, voting from home is wide open to vote buying. I can't sell my vote today, because the buyer isn't allowed in the booth with me to check that he gets his moneys worth. If I could vote from home he'd demand to see me cast my vote before he paid out. He might even threaten me...
maybe a computer should at least keep the software code to themselves (patent it so no one else could use it
The legal term you're looking for is "copyright".
Only after the last oil rig has been sunk
Only after the last supertanker has called port
Only after last gas station has closed
Only then will you find Greenpeace doesn't sell beer at night