At least some of the Justices, Scalia in particular, seemed troubled by how an inventor would know, at the time of inventing, how its invention might be marketed in the future. How, some of the Justices asked MGM, could the inventors of the iPod (or the VCR, or the photocopier, or even the printing press) know whether they could go ahead with developing their invention? It surely would not be difficult for them to imagine that somebody might hit upon the idea of marketing their device as a tool for infringement.
MGM's answer to this was pretty unsatisfying. They said that at the time the iPod was invented, it was clear that there were many perfectly lawful uses for it, such as ripping one's own CD and storing it in the iPod. This was a very interesting point for them to make, not least because I would wager that there are a substantial number of people on MGM's side of the case who don't think that example is one bit legal. But they've now conceded the contrary in open court, so if they actually win this case they'll be barred from challenging "ripping" in the future under the doctrine of judicial estoppel. In any event, though, MGM's iPod example did exactly what their proposed standard expressly doesn't do: it evaluated the legality of the invention based on the knowledge available to the inventor at the time, not from a post hoc perspective that asks how the invention is subsequently marketed or what business models later grow up around it.
What is fucked up is that we still refer to the US's government as a democracy when that's really no longer an appropriate term.
The United States is _not_ a democracy, it is a democratic republic. Individuals do not directly vote on all legislation, we elect representatives to legislate for us. You are correct in stating that our population is too large for a democracy to be effective, as James Madison recognized this and stated such in his Federalist Papers.
To all the people that are saying it's not feasible to run a video blog because the cost of bandwidth is too much or most people don't have the necessary bandwidth available, you need to rub both of your braincells together just a little faster:
use p2p.
A text blog can still be maintained, and the video could be made available there, whether it's streamed or a downloadable binary. You could even provide a transcript. But produce the video and release on a p2p network or three. Out of the 60 million people on kazaa, someone's likely to be interested, right?
Yes, Mac OS X Mail can help you deliver a staggering blow to spammers. Simply pull down the Mail menu, choose Junk Mail, and select Automatic. The next time you receive email, Mail will move suspect email into a Junk folder.
With that done, you're ready to deliver a real knockout punch to spammers by taking advantage of yet another potent spam-fighting weapon:
1.
Click on the Junk folder.
2.
Type Command-a to select all of the email in the Junk folder.
3.
Choose "Bounce to Sender" from the Message menu.
Mail will return the selected messages to the senders marked "User unknown," making them think your email address invalid, encouraging them to drop you from their lists, and, thus, eliminating spam at its source
And to look at a third measure, how much does human memory hold? Tom Landauer tried to estimate this some years ago and concluded that the brain held about 200 megabytes of information. [Landauer 1986]. He got this number partly by looking at the rate at which people could take in information, both by reading and by looking at pictures. He also studied estimates of the rate at which people forget things, and the amount of information adults need in order to do the tasks they normally do. His numbers (expressed in gigabits, not gigabytes), were 1.8, 3.4, 2.0, 1.4 and.5 gigabits. Averaging these and dividing by 8 yields 227 MB. Since there are between 10e12 and 10e14 neurons, this suggests that the brain contains 1,000 to 100,000 neurons for each bit of memory. Of course, much of the brain is used for perception, motor control, and the like; but even if only 1% of the brain is devoted to memory Landauer pointed out that it looks like your head accepts considerable storage inefficiency in order to be able to make effective use of the information.
Maybe Cable Companies shouldn't be in the business of providing residential internet service. I think that they've proven that they can't do it reliably or cost effectively.
In the past, some people have suggested that bandwidth be treated like a utility service. I think that's a great idea. Just like every residence is supposed to have water and electricity service and acceptable levels of reliability, a data connection should be treated the same way. This data connection can be for conventional telephone service, cable television, internet, and whatever permutations and combinations the future brings us. This way, an infrastructure can be established whereby each connection receives metered bandwidth, and the recipient can do as they please with it because they are paying for the bandwidth they use. The power and water companies don't care if you leave the faucet running all day or every light in your house on all day because you're paying them based on your consumption.
This will also have the effect of forcing the consumers to educate themselves to prevent abuse of their bandwidth. If you have a leaking faucet or toilet, it's in your best interest to fix it. If you have an unsecured WAP, then you'll end up paying for whatever bandwidth leaks out of it.
That sounds like a lot of education. How can that be accomplished? Part of it is available in most public schools. It's called "Home Economics". In addition to learning basic sewing, cooking, cleaning, and typing skills, students should also be presented basic information about home networking. The students can then bring this information home and educate their parents. The other part of the education solution lies with the equipment producers. They should provide more information with their products about setting up a secure home network. This is in addition to products already available like personal firewall software and "Idiot's guide to.." publications.
This could also help with adoption of IPv6. Just like every phone line gets a telephone number, every data line will get an IP address.
two different schools of thought here - internet access as a publicly provided service (akin to water, sewer, power, gas...), and government as an internet access provider.
LADWP wants to provide "carrier's carrier" service. My interpretation of this is such - LADWP provides residents with a connection which allows them to choose which carrier they want to use (the article lists "MCI, Telseon and smaller ISPs like MediaNet", for example).
This is analogous to energy deregulation - consumers are given the option to choose who generates their power, and the utility delivers it. This is why there are two parts to your electric bill - cost of energy generation (which the consumer can shop for), and cost of energy transmission (which is what the utility company charges the consumer to deliver the power that they bought).
Maybe the LADWP is onto something - that will bring them more money. Residents will most likely end up paying for "bandwidth delivery" and also "internet access" on the same bill, from LADWP with a line item for their chosen ISP.
I feel this will result in the end user paying more for internet access. If this access is faster and more reliable, then great. But why does the price go up? A quick google search returns this pdf from the Southern California Gas Company - 3040.pdf. Looking through SoCalGas' website, this document is a rejected advice letter, but the contents are still interesting. This document introduces a new SoCalGas rate schedule, Schedule No. G-FIG, "Fiber Optic Cable in Gas Pipelines" and is asking the Public Utilities Commission of the State of California to authorize SoCalGas to "place fiber optic cable in SoCalGas' active gas pipelines under tarrified rates, terms and conditions under new Schedule No. G-FIG." This document also informs the Commission how SoCalGas will finance this service that it plans on providing. SoCalGas would charge the carriers (ISPs) for access to place fiber in the pipelines. The carrier would be charged for this access, as well as for the fiber and the installation of the fiber. No doubt the carrier will pass these charges on to the consumer, like the phone and cable companies do when their costs go up (either by market activity or regulation). I leave speculation as to increased quality and reliability of Internet Service to the reader.
*Conspiracy Theory Alert*
Another interesting document on the SoCalGas website is their "List of Service Providers - Pursuant to Rule IV.C.2". One Provider listed has the name AOL Utility Corp. The California Public Utilities Commission describes them as an electric service provider. The Customer Service Contact has a yahoo.com email address.
*End Conspiracy Theory Alert*
I might be wrong on this, but a MD can hold about 160MB of data - it uses ATRAC compression (the native MD audio format) to hold 74 minutes of music. If this player reads mp3s natively, I might just be tempted to get one. If it takes the mp3 stream and compresses it again (with a loss of sound quality - mp3 and ATRAC are both lossy compression formats) than it doesn't seem worth the bother, I'd be just as happy with an MD player/recorder and a CD player with a digital output.
:: anyone who visits a "jukebox" site and thinks that his/her listening habits is being not being monitored is naive. i mean, what happens when you listen to a real jukebox?
: Normally, you walk in, sit down, maybe by $PRODUCT the place sells, and listen. You might expect the owner to recognise you if you have been there before - but you don't normally expect him to ask you questions about who you are and where you have just come from, and you definitely don't expect the manufacturer of the jukebox to have the right to do so....
you mean you've never noticed the option to play "the most popular song" (the most played song of that day/week/whatever) on a jukebox? There's plenty of information to keep track of in a jukebox. The artists get paid royalties when their music gets played on a jukebox. The people running the jukebox naturally want to put music in it that people will listen to (more money for them if they do), so wouldn't they want to know what the most played songs/artists/music types are?
after reading the article I get this feeling that going to school in the US is all about the money, that and nothing else.
exactly. It's very competitive. You're not just going to college, you're buying a brand name, like you were buying sneakers or cars. I personally don't think that the particular institution has much to do with the quality of the education received. It has to do with how much effort is put into receiving the education. You could go to the best school in the world, but if you did only the bare minimum to get by, then how good was your education? Conversely, you could go to a school of (perceived) lower quality and study your ass off, do all sorts of research projects for your professors and become absolutely brilliant. Sadly, there are some people who would judge you solely by the name of the school on your diploma.
A lot of effort should be put forth before you even get to college. Unlike most products, you can't really take it for a 'test drive'. Not all learning occurs within the classroom. Can't stand being in class all the time? Try looking at schools with a cooperative education program. Don't like living in the city? (or the middle of nowhere?) That's good to figure out too.
A lot of the people that I go to school with chose the institution because of the financial aid packages they were awarded. Some got full merit scholarships. Others received need based aid. Most of the ones receiving need based aid got (considerably) less their second year than they did their first, and less still in the third year. Be aware of that. Be prepared to speak up. Be able to present your case for maintaining your level of aid to the the financial aid office (doing well in class certainly doesn't hurt).
The big difference is though, that the (at least private) universities see themselves as a business, and such strive to provide the best service to their students
I don't think that that's the case. The business of any business is the business of making money. Inherently, this means that students are revenue units. Choose your school wisely. Caveat emptor.
from the article - Health care has the potential to be a huge online industry,
I'd much rather see a doctor in person (regardless of how long I'd have to wait in line), but maybe I'm misinterpreting the article. Is anybody on/. working in the 'health care' industry? Could you clue me in?
It isn't necessary to be able to guess a person or company's name to guess his/its domain name; that's what search engines are for.
Why not? I love intelligent web design. I got an email the other day from a mailing list I subscribed to (for the band Shootyz Groove; highly recommended, btw) and it mentioned a show on HBO called Reverb. I've never heard of it. So I typed www.hbo.com/reverb into the address bar of my browser and baaam! I was there. I think that it's important for companies to be able to have a domain name that is the same (or similar) to their "bricks and mortar" name (in hindsight, HBO was a bad example there. sorry). I didn't much care to jump through hoops and search engines to find the web site for Strawberries (a music store). I didn't have much luck with a cursory search so I said fugheddaboutit and just made a note-to-self the next time I was actually in the store (and I said "duh! should've figured that one out myself").
As for the record companies holding the trademark on the name of an artist... that's a different rant entirely.
I think that they have pushed the release date back. I believe that the original (Japanese) release date was Jan. 23 2000 (it was some 1-2-3 gimmick... 1/23...) and the article says the release date is March 4 (maybe another gimmick... 3/4?)
shipping your books from Amazon.com creates wear-and-tear on the roads, but you don't pay for that
Sure you are. Isn't that what you pay shipping and handling for? The company that is used to ship your purchase charges a fee that will cover the costs of shipping it - fuel for the vehicle to ship it, labor for the vehicle operator, tolls that the vehicle will be assessed...
I'd like to search for other ways to indirectly tax Internet transactions. A fuel tax springs to mind
what about your company's product? how would a fuel tax apply to something that your customers are downloading?
I realized something one day (several years ago, before the hype about TPM began in earnest) about the Star Wars movies, and it made me like them just a little more. There will never be any product placement in the movies. Sure, there will be spin-off products (hell, I loved the toys and action figures when I was a kid. in fact, I still do), but we're not going to see Han Solo kick back a Bud Light (well, Billy Dee Williams was selling Colt.45 for a while...) at the cantina in Mos Eisley and proclaim that it's the best beer in the galaxy. And we'll never have a lightsaber duel interrupted on account of a Hasbro lightsaber needing new Duracells.
I wasn't a big fan of Episode I. I thought that it was long. And slow. Specifically, the pod race seemed to drag on forever. Sure it's an important event that has a direct impact on the plot (Anakin wins his freedom by winning the race and can therefore leave Tatooine and begin his Jedi training) but I felt that there was too much time spent on it. It's as if the movie was built explicitly as a vehicle to sell the Nofriendo 64 pod racer game. [slightly off topic] there is a thread in the fourm over at Ars Technica about an article that postulates that Darth Vader may not be Luke's father, rather Obi-Wan is Luke's father...
Slashdot Mirror
It isn't IDN that's broken, it's users who don't read carefully before clicking a button.
oh the irony
The United States is _not_ a democracy, it is a democratic republic. Individuals do not directly vote on all legislation, we elect representatives to legislate for us. You are correct in stating that our population is too large for a democracy to be effective, as James Madison recognized this and stated such in his Federalist Papers.
are you sure you don't mean Iridium?
To all the people that are saying it's not feasible to run a video blog because the cost of bandwidth is too much or most people don't have the necessary bandwidth available, you need to rub both of your braincells together just a little faster:
use p2p.
A text blog can still be maintained, and the video could be made available there, whether it's streamed or a downloadable binary. You could even provide a transcript. But produce the video and release on a p2p network or three. Out of the 60 million people on kazaa, someone's likely to be interested, right?
Mac OS X mail
that's from the Feb 6 2003 issue of Apple eNews
MSNBC has been calling itself "America's News Channel" for at least two weeks. That turns my stomach.
In the past, some people have suggested that bandwidth be treated like a utility service. I think that's a great idea. Just like every residence is supposed to have water and electricity service and acceptable levels of reliability, a data connection should be treated the same way. This data connection can be for conventional telephone service, cable television, internet, and whatever permutations and combinations the future brings us. This way, an infrastructure can be established whereby each connection receives metered bandwidth, and the recipient can do as they please with it because they are paying for the bandwidth they use. The power and water companies don't care if you leave the faucet running all day or every light in your house on all day because you're paying them based on your consumption.
This will also have the effect of forcing the consumers to educate themselves to prevent abuse of their bandwidth. If you have a leaking faucet or toilet, it's in your best interest to fix it. If you have an unsecured WAP, then you'll end up paying for whatever bandwidth leaks out of it.
That sounds like a lot of education. How can that be accomplished? Part of it is available in most public schools. It's called "Home Economics". In addition to learning basic sewing, cooking, cleaning, and typing skills, students should also be presented basic information about home networking. The students can then bring this information home and educate their parents. The other part of the education solution lies with the equipment producers. They should provide more information with their products about setting up a secure home network. This is in addition to products already available like personal firewall software and "Idiot's guide to.." publications.
This could also help with adoption of IPv6. Just like every phone line gets a telephone number, every data line will get an IP address.
LADWP wants to provide "carrier's carrier" service. My interpretation of this is such - LADWP provides residents with a connection which allows them to choose which carrier they want to use (the article lists "MCI, Telseon and smaller ISPs like MediaNet", for example).
This is analogous to energy deregulation - consumers are given the option to choose who generates their power, and the utility delivers it. This is why there are two parts to your electric bill - cost of energy generation (which the consumer can shop for), and cost of energy transmission (which is what the utility company charges the consumer to deliver the power that they bought).
Maybe the LADWP is onto something - that will bring them more money. Residents will most likely end up paying for "bandwidth delivery" and also "internet access" on the same bill, from LADWP with a line item for their chosen ISP.
I feel this will result in the end user paying more for internet access. If this access is faster and more reliable, then great. But why does the price go up? A quick google search returns this pdf from the Southern California Gas Company - 3040.pdf. Looking through SoCalGas' website, this document is a rejected advice letter, but the contents are still interesting. This document introduces a new SoCalGas rate schedule, Schedule No. G-FIG, "Fiber Optic Cable in Gas Pipelines" and is asking the Public Utilities Commission of the State of California to authorize SoCalGas to "place fiber optic cable in SoCalGas' active gas pipelines under tarrified rates, terms and conditions under new Schedule No. G-FIG." This document also informs the Commission how SoCalGas will finance this service that it plans on providing. SoCalGas would charge the carriers (ISPs) for access to place fiber in the pipelines. The carrier would be charged for this access, as well as for the fiber and the installation of the fiber. No doubt the carrier will pass these charges on to the consumer, like the phone and cable companies do when their costs go up (either by market activity or regulation). I leave speculation as to increased quality and reliability of Internet Service to the reader.
*Conspiracy Theory Alert*
Another interesting document on the SoCalGas website is their "List of Service Providers - Pursuant to Rule IV.C.2". One Provider listed has the name AOL Utility Corp. The California Public Utilities Commission describes them as an electric service provider. The Customer Service Contact has a yahoo.com email address.
*End Conspiracy Theory Alert*
-the packet man
the RC5 algorithm uses 32-bit rotate operations, which is part of the hardware instruction set for Intel and AMD chips (and PowerPC chips too).
I might be wrong on this, but a MD can hold about 160MB of data - it uses ATRAC compression (the native MD audio format) to hold 74 minutes of music. If this player reads mp3s natively, I might just be tempted to get one. If it takes the mp3 stream and compresses it again (with a loss of sound quality - mp3 and ATRAC are both lossy compression formats) than it doesn't seem worth the bother, I'd be just as happy with an MD player/recorder and a CD player with a digital output.
: Normally, you walk in, sit down, maybe by $PRODUCT the place sells, and listen. You might expect the owner to recognise you if you have been there before - but you don't normally expect him to ask you questions about who you are and where you have just come from, and you definitely don't expect the manufacturer of the jukebox to have the right to do so....
you mean you've never noticed the option to play "the most popular song" (the most played song of that day/week/whatever) on a jukebox? There's plenty of information to keep track of in a jukebox. The artists get paid royalties when their music gets played on a jukebox. The people running the jukebox naturally want to put music in it that people will listen to (more money for them if they do), so wouldn't they want to know what the most played songs/artists/music types are?
exactly. It's very competitive. You're not just going to college, you're buying a brand name, like you were buying sneakers or cars. I personally don't think that the particular institution has much to do with the quality of the education received. It has to do with how much effort is put into receiving the education. You could go to the best school in the world, but if you did only the bare minimum to get by, then how good was your education? Conversely, you could go to a school of (perceived) lower quality and study your ass off, do all sorts of research projects for your professors and become absolutely brilliant. Sadly, there are some people who would judge you solely by the name of the school on your diploma.
A lot of effort should be put forth before you even get to college. Unlike most products, you can't really take it for a 'test drive'. Not all learning occurs within the classroom. Can't stand being in class all the time? Try looking at schools with a cooperative education program. Don't like living in the city? (or the middle of nowhere?) That's good to figure out too.
A lot of the people that I go to school with chose the institution because of the financial aid packages they were awarded. Some got full merit scholarships. Others received need based aid. Most of the ones receiving need based aid got (considerably) less their second year than they did their first, and less still in the third year. Be aware of that. Be prepared to speak up. Be able to present your case for maintaining your level of aid to the the financial aid office (doing well in class certainly doesn't hurt).
caveat emptor
I don't think that that's the case. The business of any business is the business of making money. Inherently, this means that students are revenue units. Choose your school wisely. Caveat emptor.
eof
from the article - Health care has the potential to be a huge online industry,
I'd much rather see a doctor in person (regardless of how long I'd have to wait in line), but maybe I'm misinterpreting the article. Is anybody on /. working in the 'health care' industry? Could you clue me in?
two is too many. and three is right out.
doh! the url for Strawberries - www.strawberriesonline.com
Why not? I love intelligent web design. I got an email the other day from a mailing list I subscribed to (for the band Shootyz Groove; highly recommended, btw) and it mentioned a show on HBO called Reverb. I've never heard of it. So I typed www.hbo.com/reverb into the address bar of my browser and baaam! I was there. I think that it's important for companies to be able to have a domain name that is the same (or similar) to their "bricks and mortar" name (in hindsight, HBO was a bad example there. sorry). I didn't much care to jump through hoops and search engines to find the web site for Strawberries (a music store). I didn't have much luck with a cursory search so I said fugheddaboutit and just made a note-to-self the next time I was actually in the store (and I said "duh! should've figured that one out myself").
As for the record companies holding the trademark on the name of an artist... that's a different rant entirely.
I think that they have pushed the release date back. I believe that the original (Japanese) release date was Jan. 23 2000 (it was some 1-2-3 gimmick... 1/23...) and the article says the release date is March 4 (maybe another gimmick... 3/4?)
Sure you are. Isn't that what you pay shipping and handling for? The company that is used to ship your purchase charges a fee that will cover the costs of shipping it - fuel for the vehicle to ship it, labor for the vehicle operator, tolls that the vehicle will be assessed...
I'd like to search for other ways to indirectly tax Internet transactions. A fuel tax springs to mind
what about your company's product? how would a fuel tax apply to something that your customers are downloading?
thread at ars
I wasn't a big fan of Episode I. I thought that it was long. And slow. Specifically, the pod race seemed to drag on forever. Sure it's an important event that has a direct impact on the plot (Anakin wins his freedom by winning the race and can therefore leave Tatooine and begin his Jedi training) but I felt that there was too much time spent on it. It's as if the movie was built explicitly as a vehicle to sell the Nofriendo 64 pod racer game. [slightly off topic] there is a thread in the fourm over at Ars Technica about an article that postulates that Darth Vader may not be Luke's father, rather Obi-Wan is Luke's father...