I don't know about Danish or EU law. But in the U.S. the intent of the law is (supposed) to be as important as the letter.
Here a court has a third option. The court can determine that the law is unclear and therefore it is impossible to determine what is and is not legal under it. This makes it invalid pending clarification from lawmakers. They can also narrow this conclusion to apply to a specific clause of the law or to certain applications.
"Just think about it logically, most places have some sort of criminal speeding law, there is no way any piece of tech could be the primary piece of evidence in a criminal trial if it had such a huge margin of error."
The accuracy of laser guns for speed tracking has not been established in court. As a result many courts will dismiss a ticket if a laser gun is used. See this:
There is more to the error rate than the gun. If you know your speedometer is broken then its on you but something like a tire diameter change can cause the reading to be off.
I love how people pretend that sleep mode (let alone hibernate) actually works reliably on desktops. Five years ago you couldn't even count on it working reliably with all laptops!
Hibernate is so unreliable that Microsoft actually provides a warning that it doesn't work with all machines. Sleep mode varies from system to system but in a classroom full of machines you can count on a number of them not sleeping or not waking up when a key is pressed on a regular basis. It won't even be the same machines.
This is a big problem on a network that needs every machine awake when they roll out updates in the middle of the night. Otherwise you will spend a lot more dealing with teachers who think machines are broken when they won't wake up and updates that didn't apply properly.
The schools policy was to never turn pc's off so there is no 8-10hrs they would be off.
Even if they did allow the pc's to be turned off you have to remember that the updates would be rolled out at night and that power management doesn't work properly on many desktop pc's. There is definitely some overhead involved in explaining to teachers how to handle all the pc's that don't wake up from sleep mode properly.
"I don't know if you know this or not, but for more than 10 years now when a computer isn't doing anything, it generally goes to sleep. In sleep mode, even the most ancient, piss-poor power management cuts the power consumption of the PC by a large fraction."
Sleep mode certainly didn't function properly on most desktop computers ten years ago and it is only marginally better today in that desktops still don't work a lot of the time but laptops generally do.
You would run the same image, on the same model stock pc and in a room of twenty at least three or four of them wouldn't wake up from sleep or wouldn't go into sleep. It won't even be the same three or four pc's each time!
or for the previous administrator who authorized to have lied when asked... shit goes down hill. Even a former employee may not want to be held responsible for what the district considers a million dollar plus bad decision.
hr goon: yes I am calling to verify employment for x between blah and blah blah.
school: yes he worked here during that time.
hr goon: and how would you rate his performance and accomplishments?
school: he authorized a million dollar plus search for aliens. Otherwise he was an exemplary employee which is why we ultimately decided not to file charges.
Small correction here. Microsoft claims they believe they had permission. This wouldn't be the first time Microsoft was caught with their hands in the cookie jar when they thought nobody was looking.
Microsoft would make this claim regardless of whether they just figured they could get away with it or it was a simple oversight, or if the claim is actually what anyone in the company really believes.
"Even so, it seems pretty silly to have to re-negotiate the contract with this guy, with new royalties to continue using his font, every time MS rolls out a new version of the Windows OS."
How is it any more silly than having to pay Microsoft all over again every time you roll out a new desktop with XP? Or for coke to have to negotiate a new agreement to use Pepsi's name every time they roll out a new advertising campaign?
For the company trying to claim as much revenue as possible for their font, it makes perfect sense to get as much as possible in exchange for as small a rights grant as possible.
If the situation were reversed Microsoft wouldn't want to give a blanket license, they probably wouldn't even give a blanket license per product release. They would probably try to score a royalty on every single copy.
'But it IS "done unto them" on a regular and consistent basis in China.'
There are other nations in the world besides China. China produces things, the US doesn't produce anything but IP anymore. The US has a lot more to lose by setting a precedent of ignoring its reciprocal IP agreements than China does. Then most nations do.
If we ignore our agreements with China today then we are giving every nation in the world a good reason to stop recognizing our IP.
"Unless I'm severely mistaken about what you're saying, it's already been done on to them."
China is not the only nation in the world nor the only nation western nations have IP treaties with. If nations welch on their IP treaties what is to stop other nations with more to gain from ignoring IP than they have to lose following China's example?
It may or may not have been a submarine case. I have already given an example as to exactly how they could have missed it. There are other scenerios.
But it is not a troll case. Troll cases are brought by companies that do not produce anything and make their money off litigation. This is a company that produces graphics that is suing because another company improperly used their IP.
Even if they did submarine it to let more damages accrue it still remains that they have legitimate IP, which Microsoft was aware of, and Microsoft used it without their permission.
Actually the terms of international laws and treaties may be ignored to the point of being treated like guidelines but they are not supposed to be optional.
At least for us USians IP is the only thing we still produce. The last thing we want is other countries to stop reciprocating IP recognition.
Why? Just because its on their desktop? I doubt the suits who handle the licensing would recognize one font from another at a glance. Especially a generic font intended for operating system text as opposed to a stylish or graphical font. Without having them side by side I certainly wouldn't claim to be able to distinguish between serif, times new roman, arial, and courier.
The graphics people would know instantly but they would just assume Microsoft had a license.
I would contend that most fonts are indistinguishable from at least a half dozen other fonts.
The guys over in the mac lab would probably disagree.
I can't distinguish between all the supposed shades of blue in a large box of crayons either (or at least not without a side by side comparison).
That's what I was getting at. Fonts can be very similar and the suits who would know about the licensing likely wouldn't know one from another without a side by side comparison. The designers would know their font at a glance but likely wouldn't know the licensing terms.
Errr... I mean it is terrible that and IP abuser evil monstrosity... errr a respectable innovator like Microsoft would be the victim an IP attack like this.
You're assuming they knew. Just because the newer versions of windows have Chinese character support doesn't mean the company automatically knows its their font being used.
The designers assumed Microsoft must have a license, and the rest of the company thought they were using someone elses font.
"We've already passed that point. The only thing allowing us to continue mining the lower and lower grades is cheap abundant energy."
Obviously we have not passed that point. Cheap abundant energy does not create minerals out of thin air. There is still copper in the ground and no reason to artificially hike up the price of mining it. It isn't as if mining copper is inherently bad.
"You can only recycle what isn't being used."
True, but we will run out of space before we run out of actual in use at the moment resources. Especially for our example element, copper. The things we make with copper get recycled within 10yrs of being produced.
"The fucking part of my statement was to indicate that the population will continue to expand."
"We already did this experiment once - it was the Great Depression."
Yeah we did. The great depression wasn't about bank failure. The great depression was about a falsely inflated stock market and economy built on dreams and optimism crashing into the hard face of reality.
Not that anyone wants to look at the lessons of the great depression. That's why you see economists and others with vested interest in the stock market claiming things have turned around and the depression is over.
Optimism and fluidity can mask problems in the economy and optimism alone can sustain a booming stock market. But at the end of the day, the economy is about how many cars and loaves of bread we have not how happy we are about our currency.
Let the banks collapse, put an end to consumer credit and return to the days of ACTUAL prosperity as opposed to artificially floating prosperity between massive crashes.
"They do. In fact the US military is reliant on consumer grade GPS gear so it is unlikely they would ever turn selective availability back on.
The real distinction now is between meter resolution and centimeter resolution."
That sounds great but the summary at least says this is about launching sats to use in order to bring resolution down to 1 meter from 10 meter. I believe I had heard that full resolution GPS gave more like 6 inch resolution which is obviously much better than 1 meter.
And neither the summary nor what I had heard meshes with your claim that SA has been turned off and resolutions that are far better than what this new system is supposed to attempt to achieve.
"Only if you trust the US to not screw around with it for political reasons."
How does a system that improves accuracy of the GPS signal help you if you don't trust the signal in the first place?
Obviously the idea is to improve the accuracy of consumer devices. Who cares about France and Germany? I think the EU is building their own system, let them use that.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about Danish or EU law. But in the U.S. the intent of the law is (supposed) to be as important as the letter.
Here a court has a third option. The court can determine that the law is unclear and therefore it is impossible to determine what is and is not legal under it. This makes it invalid pending clarification from lawmakers. They can also narrow this conclusion to apply to a specific clause of the law or to certain applications.
"Just think about it logically, most places have some sort of criminal speeding law, there is no way any piece of tech could be the primary piece of evidence in a criminal trial if it had such a huge margin of error."
The accuracy of laser guns for speed tracking has not been established in court. As a result many courts will dismiss a ticket if a laser gun is used. See this:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Beating-a-Lidar-Speeding-Ticket---How-Lidar-Laser-Accuracy-Has-Been-Legally-Questioned&id=3242955
There is more to the error rate than the gun. If you know your speedometer is broken then its on you but something like a tire diameter change can cause the reading to be off.
I love how people pretend that sleep mode (let alone hibernate) actually works reliably on desktops. Five years ago you couldn't even count on it working reliably with all laptops!
Hibernate is so unreliable that Microsoft actually provides a warning that it doesn't work with all machines. Sleep mode varies from system to system but in a classroom full of machines you can count on a number of them not sleeping or not waking up when a key is pressed on a regular basis. It won't even be the same machines.
This is a big problem on a network that needs every machine awake when they roll out updates in the middle of the night. Otherwise you will spend a lot more dealing with teachers who think machines are broken when they won't wake up and updates that didn't apply properly.
The schools policy was to never turn pc's off so there is no 8-10hrs they would be off.
Even if they did allow the pc's to be turned off you have to remember that the updates would be rolled out at night and that power management doesn't work properly on many desktop pc's. There is definitely some overhead involved in explaining to teachers how to handle all the pc's that don't wake up from sleep mode properly.
"I don't know if you know this or not, but for more than 10 years now when a computer isn't doing anything, it generally goes to sleep. In sleep mode, even the most ancient, piss-poor power management cuts the power consumption of the PC by a large fraction."
Sleep mode certainly didn't function properly on most desktop computers ten years ago and it is only marginally better today in that desktops still don't work a lot of the time but laptops generally do.
You would run the same image, on the same model stock pc and in a room of twenty at least three or four of them wouldn't wake up from sleep or wouldn't go into sleep. It won't even be the same three or four pc's each time!
or for the previous administrator who authorized to have lied when asked... shit goes down hill. Even a former employee may not want to be held responsible for what the district considers a million dollar plus bad decision.
hr goon: yes I am calling to verify employment for x between blah and blah blah.
school: yes he worked here during that time.
hr goon: and how would you rate his performance and accomplishments?
school: he authorized a million dollar plus search for aliens. Otherwise he was an exemplary employee which is why we ultimately decided not to file charges.
hr goon: okay then, thank you for your time.
profit?
Can someone remind me why ANYONE needs to do something about a private non-profit expressing views that haven't been vetted via the scientific method?
"Microsoft had permission. Or thought they did"
Small correction here. Microsoft claims they believe they had permission. This wouldn't be the first time Microsoft was caught with their hands in the cookie jar when they thought nobody was looking.
Microsoft would make this claim regardless of whether they just figured they could get away with it or it was a simple oversight, or if the claim is actually what anyone in the company really believes.
"Even so, it seems pretty silly to have to re-negotiate the contract with this guy, with new royalties to continue using his font, every time MS rolls out a new version of the Windows OS."
How is it any more silly than having to pay Microsoft all over again every time you roll out a new desktop with XP? Or for coke to have to negotiate a new agreement to use Pepsi's name every time they roll out a new advertising campaign?
For the company trying to claim as much revenue as possible for their font, it makes perfect sense to get as much as possible in exchange for as small a rights grant as possible.
If the situation were reversed Microsoft wouldn't want to give a blanket license, they probably wouldn't even give a blanket license per product release. They would probably try to score a royalty on every single copy.
"No, it isn't.
As I suspect, you didn't actually have a point, you were just taking a cheap shot at MS.
Sad."
As I suspected, you didn't actually have a point. You just took a cheap shot at China.
Pointing out that one of the parties is a hypocrite does not impact the validity of their claims. So you were right about not having a (valid) point.
'But it IS "done unto them" on a regular and consistent basis in China.'
There are other nations in the world besides China. China produces things, the US doesn't produce anything but IP anymore. The US has a lot more to lose by setting a precedent of ignoring its reciprocal IP agreements than China does. Then most nations do.
If we ignore our agreements with China today then we are giving every nation in the world a good reason to stop recognizing our IP.
"Unless I'm severely mistaken about what you're saying, it's already been done on to them."
China is not the only nation in the world nor the only nation western nations have IP treaties with. If nations welch on their IP treaties what is to stop other nations with more to gain from ignoring IP than they have to lose following China's example?
"It's a troll case period"
It may or may not have been a submarine case. I have already given an example as to exactly how they could have missed it. There are other scenerios.
But it is not a troll case. Troll cases are brought by companies that do not produce anything and make their money off litigation. This is a company that produces graphics that is suing because another company improperly used their IP.
Even if they did submarine it to let more damages accrue it still remains that they have legitimate IP, which Microsoft was aware of, and Microsoft used it without their permission.
Actually the terms of international laws and treaties may be ignored to the point of being treated like guidelines but they are not supposed to be optional.
At least for us USians IP is the only thing we still produce. The last thing we want is other countries to stop reciprocating IP recognition.
Which is ridiculous. You should be able to shoot the mugger whether he has a weapon or not.
"they would have to know"
Why? Just because its on their desktop? I doubt the suits who handle the licensing would recognize one font from another at a glance. Especially a generic font intended for operating system text as opposed to a stylish or graphical font. Without having them side by side I certainly wouldn't claim to be able to distinguish between serif, times new roman, arial, and courier.
The graphics people would know instantly but they would just assume Microsoft had a license.
Do unto others is fine and dandy. Somehow I doubt ignoring IP recognition treaties is something any western nation wants done unto them.
I would contend that most fonts are indistinguishable from at least a half dozen other fonts.
The guys over in the mac lab would probably disagree.
I can't distinguish between all the supposed shades of blue in a large box of crayons either (or at least not without a side by side comparison).
That's what I was getting at. Fonts can be very similar and the suits who would know about the licensing likely wouldn't know one from another without a side by side comparison. The designers would know their font at a glance but likely wouldn't know the licensing terms.
Yesss... du du du, duh du dut dut Hammertime....
Errr... I mean it is terrible that and IP abuser evil monstrosity... errr a respectable innovator like Microsoft would be the victim an IP attack like this.
In China of all places ROFLMFAO
If the case is legit and the rest of the world has IP agreements with them (pretty sure they do) then this should be upheld.
The hypocrisy of China is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
You're assuming they knew. Just because the newer versions of windows have Chinese character support doesn't mean the company automatically knows its their font being used.
The designers assumed Microsoft must have a license, and the rest of the company thought they were using someone elses font.
"We've already passed that point. The only thing allowing us to continue mining the lower and lower grades is cheap abundant energy."
Obviously we have not passed that point. Cheap abundant energy does not create minerals out of thin air. There is still copper in the ground and no reason to artificially hike up the price of mining it. It isn't as if mining copper is inherently bad.
"You can only recycle what isn't being used."
True, but we will run out of space before we run out of actual in use at the moment resources. Especially for our example element, copper. The things we make with copper get recycled within 10yrs of being produced.
"The fucking part of my statement was to indicate that the population will continue to expand."
That concludes our conversation.
"We already did this experiment once - it was the Great Depression."
Yeah we did. The great depression wasn't about bank failure. The great depression was about a falsely inflated stock market and economy built on dreams and optimism crashing into the hard face of reality.
Not that anyone wants to look at the lessons of the great depression. That's why you see economists and others with vested interest in the stock market claiming things have turned around and the depression is over.
Optimism and fluidity can mask problems in the economy and optimism alone can sustain a booming stock market. But at the end of the day, the economy is about how many cars and loaves of bread we have not how happy we are about our currency.
Let the banks collapse, put an end to consumer credit and return to the days of ACTUAL prosperity as opposed to artificially floating prosperity between massive crashes.
"They do. In fact the US military is reliant on consumer grade GPS gear so it is unlikely they would ever turn selective availability back on.
The real distinction now is between meter resolution and centimeter resolution."
That sounds great but the summary at least says this is about launching sats to use in order to bring resolution down to 1 meter from 10 meter. I believe I had heard that full resolution GPS gave more like 6 inch resolution which is obviously much better than 1 meter.
And neither the summary nor what I had heard meshes with your claim that SA has been turned off and resolutions that are far better than what this new system is supposed to attempt to achieve.
"Only if you trust the US to not screw around with it for political reasons."
How does a system that improves accuracy of the GPS signal help you if you don't trust the signal in the first place?
Obviously the idea is to improve the accuracy of consumer devices. Who cares about France and Germany? I think the EU is building their own system, let them use that.