A million lines of some high level programming language CAN be built in the real world. The fact that we choose to use general purpose processors to execute the logic does not eliminate the fact that we could in fact represent that logic with silicon and copper. Why this escapes people who ostensibly do this for a living is a mystery.
He cruise-missiled Afghanistan... and it's funny you should mention him being too busy with Monica. The Republican attacks came out AGAINST the military action he did take, because it distracted from Monica! Hellllo....
It was EISENHOWER who got us into Vientam, not Kennedy, and it was Nixon who was responsible for three-quarters of the death and destruction (ok, perhaps we should say it was Kissinger), not Johnson.
I'm not looking for anyone to save the country, I'm just pointing out who was at the helm during its greatest fuckups.
"Kennedy started the Vietnam War."
HUH?
Farking EISENHOWER got our military into Vietnam for godssake. He's the one who started the whole "Domino Theory" in 1954, creating "South Vietnam." Seventy-five percent of the casualties in the war were suffered under Nixon.
My point was that the "Democrats are bad" argument posed by a certain poster was rather unfounded as the Dems have been at the helm during the greatest crises and the greatest economic recoveries. The Republicans have been in power during the greatest political and military clusterfucks and economic contractions...so one could argue that saying "Democrats are bad, we can't afford another one" is simply based in fantasy. Carter had a better economic record than Daddy Bush, for godssake, and he's the Republican's punching bag for economics.
The Carter administration had its problems, to say the least, but in economic terms, he left office with real gains in GDP of 14% never experiencing contraction. Reagan left up 25%, with two years of contraction and a tripled national debt. Bush I left up a pathetic 5%--one third the gains of Carter, the last year with contraction and 38% more debt. Together, Reagan and Bush increased the national debt by 430%. Clinton left with an economy having gained 33% and not a single year of contraction, admittedly the debt increased the same as under Bush I, but over twice the time. Nixon-Ford left with a net gain of 14%, with two years of contraction and 56% more debt, compared to Kennedy-Johnson over the same amount of time leaving with gains of 43% with no contraction and only 20% more debt. Roosevelt in nine years managed to leave with an economy 226% larger than that he inheirited from Hoover, who commandeered a 25% contraction.
Are we seeing a pattern here?
Even if we credit Reagan and Bush with expansion--they increased the debt by over three trillion dollars in doing it. When Bush left office, the economy was 7.1 trillion. Over the whole of ReaganBush, the economy grew by 38%--by increasing the debt to practically 50% of GDP. Terrific. What an accomplishment.
Aside from the fact that DMCA simply codifies into US law the components of an extensive list of WIPO treaties (which go back over one hundred years), WIPO was ratified by a Republican Congress, the DMCA was written by a Republican Congress and WIPO entered into force in the United States in 2002 during a Republican Congress and a Republican Presidency. The DMCA is distinctly _not_ Clinton's fault, even if he ultimately signed it.
As far as Enron goes, one word: Harken. 'Nuff said.
Yeah, the Wilson, Hoover, F.D. Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and Clinton administrations were just terrible, what with ending WWI, ending WWII, creating the United Nations, establishing Social Security and Medicare, presiding over the greatest economic expansion in the history of the world. They were such tyrants. *cough*
Polite? Your opening volley was an accusation of smoking crack. Miss Manners, you're not. But, I digress.
If the use of the term "copyright" confuses the issue, let's refer to it as "the right to copy." This bill certainly limits "your right to copy" someone's database. "Right to Copy" v "Copy right."
Wow. You'd really have to be smoking crack to see the similarity there.
In the rest of your argument you go around in circles saying how the bill does not confer ownership of individual datums and then inexplicably how it confers complete ownership. Suffice it to say that until you can establish whether you think that is true or not, there's no sense arguing about it.
It may not be built on crime, but it is quite definitely built on tort. Who's next? Silvio Berlusconi?
Gates may receive his honorary knighthood, but no one is under any obligation to respect it or congratulate him for it any more than they are with regard to his wealth, or for that matter any more than they are required to kneel before the Queen. Titles of nobility, especially of the honorary variety, entitle the recipient to nothing from anyone but the party awarding the title.
Their free speech rights could be retained if they simply had their own server (read: "press"). At $100/month, you "freedom of the press" is pretty damned easy to secure. They would still have the uphill legal battle to contend with, but the central problem under scrutiny is the arbitrary "veto" of any complainant.
This "my free speech should come for free at the expense of others" idea is just silly. You want freedom of the press? Get your own press. $100/month is pretty cheap insurance for that right. If that truly was beyond their means (which it might have been, since the university in question costs $36,090 per year), why not just forward on the information to Internalmemos.com?
Ah, there's the rub. Microsoft Office was itself a replication of other people's work. Are we now to believe that was unique innovation simply because they roped in more of the market?
So all of a sudden, Wordstar, SuperCalc, Wang Writer, Multimate etc. etc. never existed and MS Office came out of a vacuum? Almost nothing that has come out of Microsoft since its inception has been truly "new." Ok, except for Microsoft Bob. Now THAT was truly innovative.
That's not to say that they haven't created anything of value, just that they didn't invent the ideas of the operating system, word processor or the spreadsheet. If you're going to slam other people for constantly retooling the round wheel, in all fairness, Microsoft has been doing nothing but that for a quarter century.
You cannot own facts, and you cannot restrict how other people use facts simply because they learned them in a phonebook you printed or you put online.
If the bill is allowing that the facts acquired by other means are free, which it does, how the hell do you establish that the facts are owned? What this bill is doing is protecting from _substantial_ copying and _commercial_ use of entire collections.
The bill is extremely clear that the copyright is NOT on the mere contents of the database, but on the collection of data itself. For instance, if you were to go door to door collecting phone numbers to compile a phone book, you would be completely free to do so. This bill aims to protect your labor in doing so in so much as someone would be liable for damages if they copied your work from your database and sold it off as their own.
If people continue to believe the bill says otherwise, there's nothing I or anyone else can do. It could not be clearer and it is a complete mystery where people are getting this paranoid notion that the bill is establishing ownership of facts. It does no such thing.
Go back to reading Philip K. Dick and get over it.
This is about as much of an invasion as if your dry cleaner called you to say that they found ebola in your boxer shorts and that you might want to throw them away now.
If you don't want them to have your personal information--DON'T GIVE IT TO THEM. Duh. If I have to give a little bit of personal information to have someone go pick up my groceries, haul them to my house for me and then call me if they find out something they delivered will kill me, fine. Oh, what a world, what a world.
...and since you still obviously haven't RTFB, you will notice that it says the following:
" (a) INDEPENDENTLY GENERATED OR GATHERED INFORMATION- This Act shall not restrict any person from independently generating or gathering information obtained by means other than extracting it from a database generated, gathered, or maintained by another person and making that information available in commerce.
"
This means that if someone has a database that says "water is wet" and it is possible for you to determine that without the help of the database in question, you are completely free to create your own damned database that includes a record "water is wet" and you are of course free to charge for access to your database.
Laws change every single day. Get used to it. If the legislature felt like it, it could reduce your copyright term to twenty seconds or to zero. NOTHING in the constitution defines the terms of copyright, it merely gives the federal legislature the authority to establish it. Similarly, there is nothing that defines exactly what rights shall be established, only that they MAY be established. You know what the constitution says about this? Here it is, every single word from Article I, Section Eight relevant to copyright:
"The Congress shall have the power..to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
THAT'S IT. All details beyond that are granted to the whims of the legislature--including the option to do nothing at all. Within that scope, Congress can define copyright however the hell they please, subject to being voted out of office. All this silliness about inventing new laws apparently being "bad" is just asinine. What the hell do you think a "legislative branch" is for? Writing old laws?
Yeah, I've gotten various flavors of linux and my own custom compiled kernels running on an old HP Omnibook 800CT and a Compaq Presario 900US--two rather finicky machines neither of which have floppy drives, the former of which couldn't remotely begin to run WinXP. The silly floppy drive issue seems like the most pathetic excuses for not getting a clean install to boot.
Then again, the "I have no idea what I'm doing and just want it to work" mentality is what Windows with it's gabillion native drivers is for, so bravo to this guy for figuring that much out.
"Though I still hope to improve my Linux competency someday, I seem not to have the patience."
One wonders, if you are going to venture into building something like this, with a confessed lack of competency and patience, would failure not be a certain outcome?
When one feels the need to document at length the oh-so-advanced topic of repeatedly screwing up the jumper settings on your hard drive, this becomes more an article on basic computer construction skills than anything about PVRs. I won't get into "the instructions said 'use a screwdriver.'" He ditched the entire linux idea because he couldn't disable the floppy seek. Please.
You will note the first paragraph of the legislation (read:proving you haven't even read page farking ONE):
(1) COLLECTIVE WORK- The term `collective work' means a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology, or encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole."
Moving right along when we define "information" and "database" and the exclusions thereof:
(5) DATABASE-
(A) IN GENERAL- Subject to subparagraph (B), the term `database' means a collection of a large number of discrete items of information produced for the purpose of bringing such discrete items of information together in one place or through one source so that persons may access them.
(B) EXCLUSIONS- The term database does not include any of the following:
(i) A work of authorship, other than a compilation or a collective work.
(8) INFORMATION- The term `information' means facts, data, works of authorship, or any other intangible material capable of being generated or gathered.
That is to say, a database in the sense that this legislation is concerned can be a "compilation or a collective work," which is not excluded. Something like "Wikipedia" absolutely, 100% falls under the definitions as written. While you can attach your own definitions to whatever you want, let's stick to what the bill is talking about, okay?
It seems funny that people clamor in support of Wikipedia for enforcing their copyright on what they identify as "The Free Encyclopedia." Then when a law is drafted to protect exactly that type of system, they cry foul.
So, basically, we have people screaming that people are violating the law, then screaming when laws are written to clarify the exact same laws with regard to present technology to the end that they were originally complaining. Basically, it comes off sounding like "I want to enforce my own copyrights, but I want complete indemnification from any liability in abusing other people's copyrights," which is exactly what the same people say their bogeyman of choice is doing.
The per capita GNP of the Czech Republic is about US$15,000. It is NOT a third world country, no matter how much anyone who has experienced their public water system may try to tell you. The Czech economy is rather elitist, especially now that Vaclav Klaus is running the show--he has stated openly that he thinks that maybe ten percent of the population should have a tertiary education. Thus, if you are an engineer, you're probably doing fine by American standards. You probably won't be making $140,000/year (although that is not out of the question), but it is quite likely you would be making $30-50k just as in the United States the per capita GNP is about $36k and engineers routinely make $70-80k.
Besides, if the guy can afford four or five brand new Macintosh computers, he's pretty much bought a new Prius.
We police AIR for godssake, I think we can handle the internet. This "it's the medium" crap is silly. Ever hear of a "wire tap?" Ever hear of the "postal inspector?" Christ, ALL of these mediums are policed. The internet has been policed for quite some time now as should be obvious to anyone paying attention.
Hell, all things "online" have been policed since before the Internet was available to the average consumer. BBS's in the early 80's that had less-than-legal services associated with them were raided. These silly arguments that you're somehow free to do as you please just because it's the internet betray an ignorance of both the law and the history of cyberspace in general.
Slashdot Mirror
A million lines of some high level programming language CAN be built in the real world. The fact that we choose to use general purpose processors to execute the logic does not eliminate the fact that we could in fact represent that logic with silicon and copper. Why this escapes people who ostensibly do this for a living is a mystery.
He cruise-missiled Afghanistan... and it's funny you should mention him being too busy with Monica. The Republican attacks came out AGAINST the military action he did take, because it distracted from Monica! Hellllo....
It was EISENHOWER who got us into Vientam, not Kennedy, and it was Nixon who was responsible for three-quarters of the death and destruction (ok, perhaps we should say it was Kissinger), not Johnson.
I'm not looking for anyone to save the country, I'm just pointing out who was at the helm during its greatest fuckups.
No, they had more flair and a more delicate sense of diplomacy.
"Kennedy started the Vietnam War." HUH? Farking EISENHOWER got our military into Vietnam for godssake. He's the one who started the whole "Domino Theory" in 1954, creating "South Vietnam." Seventy-five percent of the casualties in the war were suffered under Nixon.
My point was that the "Democrats are bad" argument posed by a certain poster was rather unfounded as the Dems have been at the helm during the greatest crises and the greatest economic recoveries. The Republicans have been in power during the greatest political and military clusterfucks and economic contractions...so one could argue that saying "Democrats are bad, we can't afford another one" is simply based in fantasy. Carter had a better economic record than Daddy Bush, for godssake, and he's the Republican's punching bag for economics.
Saved us from Carter?
The Carter administration had its problems, to say the least, but in economic terms, he left office with real gains in GDP of 14% never experiencing contraction. Reagan left up 25%, with two years of contraction and a tripled national debt. Bush I left up a pathetic 5%--one third the gains of Carter, the last year with contraction and 38% more debt. Together, Reagan and Bush increased the national debt by 430%. Clinton left with an economy having gained 33% and not a single year of contraction, admittedly the debt increased the same as under Bush I, but over twice the time. Nixon-Ford left with a net gain of 14%, with two years of contraction and 56% more debt, compared to Kennedy-Johnson over the same amount of time leaving with gains of 43% with no contraction and only 20% more debt. Roosevelt in nine years managed to leave with an economy 226% larger than that he inheirited from Hoover, who commandeered a 25% contraction.
Are we seeing a pattern here?
Even if we credit Reagan and Bush with expansion--they increased the debt by over three trillion dollars in doing it. When Bush left office, the economy was 7.1 trillion. Over the whole of ReaganBush, the economy grew by 38%--by increasing the debt to practically 50% of GDP. Terrific. What an accomplishment.
...for starts when he wrote Emacs, perhaps?
Aside from the fact that DMCA simply codifies into US law the components of an extensive list of WIPO treaties (which go back over one hundred years), WIPO was ratified by a Republican Congress, the DMCA was written by a Republican Congress and WIPO entered into force in the United States in 2002 during a Republican Congress and a Republican Presidency. The DMCA is distinctly _not_ Clinton's fault, even if he ultimately signed it.
As far as Enron goes, one word: Harken. 'Nuff said.
Yeah, the Wilson, Hoover, F.D. Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and Clinton administrations were just terrible, what with ending WWI, ending WWII, creating the United Nations, establishing Social Security and Medicare, presiding over the greatest economic expansion in the history of the world. They were such tyrants. *cough*
http://www.hasbro.com/mrpotatohead/pl/page.wallpap er/dn/default.cfm
Polite? Your opening volley was an accusation of smoking crack. Miss Manners, you're not. But, I digress. If the use of the term "copyright" confuses the issue, let's refer to it as "the right to copy." This bill certainly limits "your right to copy" someone's database. "Right to Copy" v "Copy right." Wow. You'd really have to be smoking crack to see the similarity there. In the rest of your argument you go around in circles saying how the bill does not confer ownership of individual datums and then inexplicably how it confers complete ownership. Suffice it to say that until you can establish whether you think that is true or not, there's no sense arguing about it.
It may not be built on crime, but it is quite definitely built on tort. Who's next? Silvio Berlusconi?
Gates may receive his honorary knighthood, but no one is under any obligation to respect it or congratulate him for it any more than they are with regard to his wealth, or for that matter any more than they are required to kneel before the Queen. Titles of nobility, especially of the honorary variety, entitle the recipient to nothing from anyone but the party awarding the title.
Now kiss my ring.
Their free speech rights could be retained if they simply had their own server (read: "press"). At $100/month, you "freedom of the press" is pretty damned easy to secure. They would still have the uphill legal battle to contend with, but the central problem under scrutiny is the arbitrary "veto" of any complainant.
This "my free speech should come for free at the expense of others" idea is just silly. You want freedom of the press? Get your own press. $100/month is pretty cheap insurance for that right. If that truly was beyond their means (which it might have been, since the university in question costs $36,090 per year), why not just forward on the information to Internalmemos.com?
Ah, there's the rub. Microsoft Office was itself a replication of other people's work. Are we now to believe that was unique innovation simply because they roped in more of the market?
So all of a sudden, Wordstar, SuperCalc, Wang Writer, Multimate etc. etc. never existed and MS Office came out of a vacuum? Almost nothing that has come out of Microsoft since its inception has been truly "new." Ok, except for Microsoft Bob. Now THAT was truly innovative.
That's not to say that they haven't created anything of value, just that they didn't invent the ideas of the operating system, word processor or the spreadsheet. If you're going to slam other people for constantly retooling the round wheel, in all fairness, Microsoft has been doing nothing but that for a quarter century.
If the bill is allowing that the facts acquired by other means are free, which it does, how the hell do you establish that the facts are owned? What this bill is doing is protecting from _substantial_ copying and _commercial_ use of entire collections.
The bill is extremely clear that the copyright is NOT on the mere contents of the database, but on the collection of data itself. For instance, if you were to go door to door collecting phone numbers to compile a phone book, you would be completely free to do so. This bill aims to protect your labor in doing so in so much as someone would be liable for damages if they copied your work from your database and sold it off as their own.
If people continue to believe the bill says otherwise, there's nothing I or anyone else can do. It could not be clearer and it is a complete mystery where people are getting this paranoid notion that the bill is establishing ownership of facts. It does no such thing.
Go back to reading Philip K. Dick and get over it.
This is about as much of an invasion as if your dry cleaner called you to say that they found ebola in your boxer shorts and that you might want to throw them away now.
If you don't want them to have your personal information--DON'T GIVE IT TO THEM. Duh. If I have to give a little bit of personal information to have someone go pick up my groceries, haul them to my house for me and then call me if they find out something they delivered will kill me, fine. Oh, what a world, what a world.
Seriously, is the argument for real?
...and since you still obviously haven't RTFB, you will notice that it says the following:
" (a) INDEPENDENTLY GENERATED OR GATHERED INFORMATION- This Act shall not restrict any person from independently generating or gathering information obtained by means other than extracting it from a database generated, gathered, or maintained by another person and making that information available in commerce.
"
This means that if someone has a database that says "water is wet" and it is possible for you to determine that without the help of the database in question, you are completely free to create your own damned database that includes a record "water is wet" and you are of course free to charge for access to your database.
Laws change every single day. Get used to it. If the legislature felt like it, it could reduce your copyright term to twenty seconds or to zero. NOTHING in the constitution defines the terms of copyright, it merely gives the federal legislature the authority to establish it. Similarly, there is nothing that defines exactly what rights shall be established, only that they MAY be established. You know what the constitution says about this? Here it is, every single word from Article I, Section Eight relevant to copyright:
"The Congress shall have the power..to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
THAT'S IT. All details beyond that are granted to the whims of the legislature--including the option to do nothing at all. Within that scope, Congress can define copyright however the hell they please, subject to being voted out of office. All this silliness about inventing new laws apparently being "bad" is just asinine. What the hell do you think a "legislative branch" is for? Writing old laws?
Welcome to democracy, kids.
Then again, the "I have no idea what I'm doing and just want it to work" mentality is what Windows with it's gabillion native drivers is for, so bravo to this guy for figuring that much out.
One wonders, if you are going to venture into building something like this, with a confessed lack of competency and patience, would failure not be a certain outcome?
When one feels the need to document at length the oh-so-advanced topic of repeatedly screwing up the jumper settings on your hard drive, this becomes more an article on basic computer construction skills than anything about PVRs. I won't get into "the instructions said 'use a screwdriver.'" He ditched the entire linux idea because he couldn't disable the floppy seek. Please.
(1) COLLECTIVE WORK- The term `collective work' means a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology, or encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole."
Moving right along when we define "information" and "database" and the exclusions thereof:
(5) DATABASE-
(A) IN GENERAL- Subject to subparagraph (B), the term `database' means a collection of a large number of discrete items of information produced for the purpose of bringing such discrete items of information together in one place or through one source so that persons may access them.
(B) EXCLUSIONS- The term database does not include any of the following:
(i) A work of authorship, other than a compilation or a collective work.
(8) INFORMATION- The term `information' means facts, data, works of authorship, or any other intangible material capable of being generated or gathered.
That is to say, a database in the sense that this legislation is concerned can be a "compilation or a collective work," which is not excluded. Something like "Wikipedia" absolutely, 100% falls under the definitions as written. While you can attach your own definitions to whatever you want, let's stick to what the bill is talking about, okay?
It seems funny that people clamor in support of Wikipedia for enforcing their copyright on what they identify as "The Free Encyclopedia." Then when a law is drafted to protect exactly that type of system, they cry foul.
So, basically, we have people screaming that people are violating the law, then screaming when laws are written to clarify the exact same laws with regard to present technology to the end that they were originally complaining. Basically, it comes off sounding like "I want to enforce my own copyrights, but I want complete indemnification from any liability in abusing other people's copyrights," which is exactly what the same people say their bogeyman of choice is doing.
Pot v. Kettle, 2004.
Ah, yes, the "in his country" argument.
The per capita GNP of the Czech Republic is about US$15,000. It is NOT a third world country, no matter how much anyone who has experienced their public water system may try to tell you. The Czech economy is rather elitist, especially now that Vaclav Klaus is running the show--he has stated openly that he thinks that maybe ten percent of the population should have a tertiary education. Thus, if you are an engineer, you're probably doing fine by American standards. You probably won't be making $140,000/year (although that is not out of the question), but it is quite likely you would be making $30-50k just as in the United States the per capita GNP is about $36k and engineers routinely make $70-80k.
Besides, if the guy can afford four or five brand new Macintosh computers, he's pretty much bought a new Prius.
We police AIR for godssake, I think we can handle the internet. This "it's the medium" crap is silly. Ever hear of a "wire tap?" Ever hear of the "postal inspector?" Christ, ALL of these mediums are policed. The internet has been policed for quite some time now as should be obvious to anyone paying attention.
Hell, all things "online" have been policed since before the Internet was available to the average consumer. BBS's in the early 80's that had less-than-legal services associated with them were raided. These silly arguments that you're somehow free to do as you please just because it's the internet betray an ignorance of both the law and the history of cyberspace in general.