The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act is United States federal law that creates a conditional safe harbor for internet service providers (ISPs) by shielding them from potential secondary liability for the infringing acts of others.
If Comcast can be found to be aiding and abetting infringers, they may end up being judged directly responsible for the infringement carried on by others who happen to participate in a bit torrent of infringing media. Safe harbor is granted to ISPs to prevent them from having to monitor every packet transiting their network. However the media industry is sure to claim that comcast became a participant in infringement the minute they stepped in and tried to quash these subpoenas. Watch and see.
Well it takes lawyers to say NO too. And they don't work for free.
The best they can hope for is to establish a precedent and make the nuisance subpoenas reduce in scope. Fighting a validly issued subpoena is a costly legal move. A minimum wage clerk can knock out a hundred replies to these in half an hour with automated tools. That would be the cheap approach.
So there is some financial outlay involved with this approach, and the return on that investment is probably questionable and short lived, and may blow back in their face if they lose safe harbor protection by fighting these subpoenas.
They do have some satellites in orbit, and a couple on the ground that they can still talk to, but I doubt they are relying on these for guidance. Certainly there is no fleet of GPS satellites circling the planet (although if we keep sending landers, that might not be a bad idea).
I think they rely on radar and optical maps produced by predecessors such as Mars Global Surveyor, (no longer working) and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to build camera and radar maps that they can use to set up landing approaches. See: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/multimedia/interactives/
Their site selection is discussed on the above page, as well as a ton of images.
I suspect they are limited to what is reachable from their initial orbit. They can use radar, and optical alignment on stars to establish that first orbit. And if they get that orbit established correctly the rest is probably some huge radar pattern matching exercise.
It seems just getting to the planet is like treading the needle, and getting into a 12 by 4 mile box is astounding precision.
Is a 6-wheeled rover really the most efficient shape for a land vehicle on rough terrain? I've seen videos of robots that look like snakes or caterpillars that can land in whatever direction, landing first as a ball before unwinding in the proper orientation.
Snakes have a problem with the amount of payload they can carry, and positioning that payload efficiently in the body. Its not enough to get an instrument to the surface, it has to be deployed in an orientation where it can actually function, transmit data, gain access to rocks and surfaces, and be protected from sand and other foreign material.
You've seen videos of experimental toys, none of which survived the riggers of testing, or carried any significant payload, let alone a power plant, and a computer system capable of autonomous operation.
I think the six wheel lander offers the best mix of travel capability with payload capacity. I think I trust the guys who actually build and test these things over those who watch watch videos.
Curiosity is the biggest Hail Mary play since Cassini/Huygens. It is already going to take either divine intervention or help from the Martians to get that thing down right side up and in one piece.
Oh, I don't know, after several successful landers, each employing a different strategy for descent and landing, it seems well within the limits of what we know to be possible. Seems like lots of the landers employed tricky and new methods.
Looking at the new target area, compared to the old, it seems very little more risky that what was previously planned.
Authors have a *right* to direct how their work is used.
Not content with the right to control sales, now they want you to prove you bought it in order to take the class.
What happens when roommates decide to share the book? Will they let two students register with the same book id number for the useless on-line material (which only exists to get your book ID number)?
I shared several books with a roomie in college, because we took the courses at different time of the day. The hall book-handoff was a daily ritual. We split the price of the book, and resold it splitting the proceeds.
If this scheme locks out Book IDs that were used previously, what happens to the first sale doctrine?
It would be nice if EVERYONE switched over to open jabber servers. Get off all these proprietary services.
But then, who would pay for the server loads? Server resource and network bandwidth isn't exactly free.
The server resources are in fact virtually free, and as such you will find dozens of places that run a XMPP/Jabber server for exactly zero money. They have the bandwidth and the boxes for their other business, and it costs them no more to allow other to use excess capacity.
The Meebo Bar is a major revenue-generating ad platform. Google most likely bought out Meebo for the ad market (like doubleclick) not the chat functionality.
Really? I doubt all 58 people actively using meebo could generate that much revenue.
Admittedly, I've only been around for some few weeks, but I never heard about meebo till google bought them. There are so many good multi-protocol messenger clients around for just about any platform you may wish to run. The only reason to ever use meebo was that it was browser based, but with a cell phone in every pocket how important is that?
As the first link in the summary suggests, this is probably to bolster Google +, which, by all accounts is not living up to Google's expectations.
Yeah, I saw it as version 1.0 as well. Oh, just wondering, Does Spain ever get cold enough for quilts?
I would imagine this mechanism would last about a month on your average teen-ager's bed before it is hopelessly tangled and derailed by blue jeans left laying on the bed, power cords to devices, guitars, and porn magazines hidden in the track-way covers.
What's needed is something to tip the teenager out onto the floor, along with any cloths and paraphernalia, and food wrapper, hoist the bed vertical, shake it out, fold the entire bed up into the wall so said teenager can't simply fall back in.
It states in the Constitution that the purpose of issuing a patent is "to promote the useful arts and sciences". This is the raison d'etre and is taken quite at face value by judges juries and Congress.
You make the assumption that patents began and end with the US Constitution. Nothing could be further from the truth. Patents predated the constitution by about 300 years. Go read up on the history of patents some time.
I already addressed this fiction in the message you responded to. Do you think with Franklin sitting in on the drafting of the constitution there would be no economic protection for inventions?
Please stop quoting some throw-away text in the constitution as if it were world wide gospel.
Patents are not issued to help inventors make money or profit from their invention. They're issued to further progress in the useful arts and sciences.
That's nonsense, pretty much quoted from the Constitution, but which even the founding fathers didn't really believe. No other country had such language in their law. Great Britain's patent and copyright laws were strictly revenue oriented from the start (well over 300 years ago).
Most of the greatest works of art, literature, music, and inventions never enjoyed patent or copyright protection until about 200 years ago (far less in most countries), and it was ALWAYS assumed that anything you invented would be also made by others in short order. Yet there is scarce evidence of any withholding of works or inventions from this time.
In fact it is precisely BECAUSE OF PATENTS that inventions and creative works are withheld, kept secret, and locked up.
Patents have ALWAYS been about the money. Its fiction to believe they promote the science or arts, and it has always been fiction.
In Angry Bird-like industries, where they have an actual monopoly on that game and a virtual monopoly on games of similar ilk, the slowness is actually legislated in. Essentially, anywhere there are patents and copyrights slowness tends to be institutionalized.
Some of this is by design. Creators should be able to profit from their work for a while, which is why we have patent / copyright laws.
So there is no capability for the market to operate in these areas, as society has already decided that it should not. In infrastructure heavy sectors, the barriers are natural, in IP heavy sectors barriers are largely legal.
So there will be no end-user price reduction. (Hell, its free on Android, so unless you expect to be paid to download it, it can't get much cheaper).
This move to Ireland is strictly a tax avoidance move by the owners, and will help their Yacht fund. Further, its probably a bluff, trying to secure some tax breaks from Finland, because you don't uproot 400 people (or even the 100 people you really want to keep) just to avoid some taxes.
Figures for Rovio total revenue suggest about $95 million in total revenue (2011). After paying wages and plant costs, their earnings (before taxes) was $58.7 dollars, which suggests they are banking 65% of their total intake.
Paying 12% Ireland tax rates will save them around 7 Million bucks per year in taxes over the Finland rate.
Since you could probably move the company lock stock and server farm for $7Mil, the multi-year payout would be significant, but not earth shattering. Angry Birds has about run its course, and unless they have a stable of additional games in the pipe-line there may not be any long term advantage in moving.
Just as important for microsoft is their positioning versus these other companies, and whether buying one or the other as a defensive play is worth it. What would be the cost to Microsoft if one of these other companies bought RIM or Nokia instead, particularly the effect on their patent portfolios?
Don't you need to look at the age of the patents involved? Most of RIMs magic came a long time ago, pre-cellphone days.
I'm often seen walking down the street listening to their podcast grinning like a total idiot. I have several years worth to catch up on. Maybe I better order something from their Shameless Products division before those disappear as well.
Wouldn't one assume an attacker would work thru all short combinations first?
If so the hypothetical password of "$" would be found shortly after the first 62 (aZ-zZ + 0-9), depending on the order of your special characters.
Aren't these brute force attacks done pretty much sequentially? Why would they chug thru all 9 character combs when the likelihood is that most passwords will be less than 9?
Hindsight seems to be a key element to these predictions of cracking speed.
On the other hand.... Forever is a long time. There is no reasonable expectation of forever in any legal contract for goods or services in any industry I'm aware of. Even contracts for burial plots do not last much more than 200 years.
Soo...what happens in year 201? Do they figure you're finished with it?
Please specify where these industry standards can be found. I'm pretty new at this programming stuff, having only been at it for 30 years and I haven't run across any universal industry standards document yet, so I'm all ears.
On the other hand.... Forever is a long time. There is no reasonable expectation of forever in any legal contract for goods or services in any industry I'm aware of. Even contracts for burial plots do not last much more than 200 years.
Sure, a wise contractor will have a warranty duration mentioned in the contract, and specify an acceptance testing phase, after which all bugs belong to the purchaser. Any bug fixes offered after that are likely to require additional payment.
Without such a Ts Crossed and Is Dotted contract, there are only reasonable expectations to fall back on:
Both sides know that there is no such thing as bug free software. Never has been. Never will be. Expectations to the contrary are not reasonable, and never have been. Expectations of indentured servitude went out with the 13th amendment, and no contract can bring that back.
Further, rare is the software that enters service and remains unchanged for its useful life. Any warranties or assurances are lost once the code is modified, even if modified by the same developer, but especially when another developer steps in, or the purchaser themselves make changes. Even without a contract that states this, one need only point a finger at the changes made by others to divert ALL blame.
The two month time period mentioned in the story and "adequate time for testing" seem a little thin if you ask me. I would never sign a contract for custom software that was so tightly limited, and it does not sound reasonable for any project of any reasonable scope.
So without something in writing, the contractor deserves a little pain and suffering (as a stupidity penalty), but they are STILL not up the creek without a paddle, because "forever" is not reasonable, and reasonable expectations become the deciding factor. But in this case "reasonable" is no longer strictly the contractor's call, and courts may well have a say.
Slashdot Mirror
"lose safe harbor protection"
Lose what?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act
The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act is United States federal law that creates a conditional safe harbor for internet service providers (ISPs) by shielding them from potential secondary liability for the infringing acts of others.
If Comcast can be found to be aiding and abetting infringers, they may end up being judged directly responsible for the infringement carried on by others who happen to participate in a bit torrent of infringing media. Safe harbor is granted to ISPs to prevent them from having to monitor every packet transiting their network. However the media industry is sure to claim that comcast became a participant in infringement the minute they stepped in and tried to quash these subpoenas. Watch and see.
Well it takes lawyers to say NO too. And they don't work for free.
The best they can hope for is to establish a precedent and make the nuisance subpoenas reduce in scope.
Fighting a validly issued subpoena is a costly legal move. A minimum wage clerk can knock out a hundred
replies to these in half an hour with automated tools. That would be the cheap approach.
So there is some financial outlay involved with this approach, and the return on that investment is
probably questionable and short lived, and may blow back in their face if they lose safe harbor
protection by fighting these subpoenas.
Well, not exactly a supply and demand issue, unless you are talking about the supply of Funds available.
As soon as you can get a tablet or cell phone covered by medical insurance the price of those items will
go thru the roof as well.
In some markets, the price of goods expands to absorb the available funds, especially when artificial
barriers to entry keep competition to a minimum.
I take back every nasty thing I ever said about Comcast.
Well, on second thought, I temporarily suspend my badmouthing of Comcast. ...
Ok, time's up.
Book sales are not the same as software.
Step away from the TV.
Go out side.
They do have some satellites in orbit, and a couple on the ground that they can still talk to, but I doubt they are relying on these for guidance. Certainly there is no fleet of GPS satellites circling the planet (although if we keep sending landers, that might not be a bad idea).
I think they rely on radar and optical maps produced by predecessors such as Mars Global Surveyor, (no longer working) and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to build camera and radar maps that they can use to set up landing approaches. See: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/multimedia/interactives/
Their site selection is discussed on the above page, as well as a ton of images.
I suspect they are limited to what is reachable from their initial orbit. They can use radar, and optical alignment on stars to establish that first orbit. And if they get that orbit established correctly the rest is probably some huge radar pattern matching exercise.
It seems just getting to the planet is like treading the needle, and getting into a 12 by 4 mile box is astounding precision.
Is a 6-wheeled rover really the most efficient shape for a land vehicle on rough terrain? I've seen videos of robots that look like snakes or caterpillars that can land in whatever direction, landing first as a ball before unwinding in the proper orientation.
Snakes have a problem with the amount of payload they can carry, and positioning that payload efficiently in the body.
Its not enough to get an instrument to the surface, it has to be deployed in an orientation where it can actually function, transmit data, gain access to rocks and surfaces, and be protected from sand and other foreign material.
You've seen videos of experimental toys, none of which survived the riggers of testing, or carried any significant payload, let alone a power plant, and a computer system capable of autonomous operation.
I think the six wheel lander offers the best mix of travel capability with payload capacity. I think I trust the guys who actually build and test these things over those who watch watch videos.
Curiosity is the biggest Hail Mary play since Cassini/Huygens. It is already going to take either divine intervention or help from the Martians to get that thing down right side up and in one piece.
Oh, I don't know, after several successful landers, each employing a different strategy for descent and landing, it seems well within the limits of what we know to be possible. Seems like lots of the landers employed tricky and new methods.
Looking at the new target area, compared to the old, it seems very little more risky that what was previously planned.
Authors have a *right* to direct how their work is used.
Not content with the right to control sales, now they want you to prove you bought it
in order to take the class.
What happens when roommates decide to share the book? Will they let two students register
with the same book id number for the useless on-line material (which only exists to get your book ID number)?
I shared several books with a roomie in college, because we took the courses at different time of the day.
The hall book-handoff was a daily ritual. We split the price of the book, and resold it splitting the proceeds.
If this scheme locks out Book IDs that were used previously, what happens to the first sale doctrine?
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=im&c=apps
It would be nice if EVERYONE switched over to open jabber servers. Get off all these proprietary services.
But then, who would pay for the server loads? Server resource and network bandwidth isn't exactly free.
The server resources are in fact virtually free, and as such you will find dozens of places that run a XMPP/Jabber server for exactly zero money. They have the bandwidth and the boxes for their other business, and it costs them no more to allow other to use excess capacity.
There are many lists of these, such as https://list.jabber.at/ http://xmpp.net/ etc.
They are all inter-operable, and I routinely communicate (BOTH to and from jabber) with Google Talk or Xabber, or Kopete.
Jabber isn't just for text any more.
The Meebo Bar is a major revenue-generating ad platform. Google most likely bought out Meebo for the ad market (like doubleclick) not the chat functionality.
Really? I doubt all 58 people actively using meebo could generate that much revenue.
Admittedly, I've only been around for some few weeks, but I never heard about meebo till google bought them.
There are so many good multi-protocol messenger clients around for just about any platform you may wish
to run. The only reason to ever use meebo was that it was browser based, but with a cell phone in every
pocket how important is that?
As the first link in the summary suggests, this is probably to bolster Google +, which, by all accounts is
not living up to Google's expectations.
Yeah, I saw it as version 1.0 as well. Oh, just wondering, Does Spain ever get cold enough for quilts?
I would imagine this mechanism would last about a month on your average teen-ager's bed before it is hopelessly tangled and derailed by blue jeans left laying on the bed, power cords to devices, guitars, and porn magazines hidden in the track-way covers.
What's needed is something to tip the teenager out onto the floor, along with any cloths and paraphernalia, and food wrapper, hoist the bed vertical, shake it out, fold the entire bed up into the wall so said teenager can't simply fall back in.
Driving thru is not the same as rolling thru (the California stop), and the op did mention no cars remotely visible on any adjoining roads.
Many decades ago, stopping at stop signs was optional in the case where there was unobstructed view and no traffic in any direction.
If you live in a big city, this never applies to you. But in rural areas and farm land its very common to have such intersections.
It states in the Constitution that the purpose of issuing a patent is "to promote the useful arts and sciences". This is the raison d'etre and is taken quite at face value by judges juries and Congress.
You make the assumption that patents began and end with the US Constitution.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Patents predated the constitution by about 300 years.
Go read up on the history of patents some time.
I already addressed this fiction in the message you responded to. Do you think with Franklin sitting in on the drafting of the constitution there would be no economic protection for inventions?
Please stop quoting some throw-away text in the constitution as if it were world wide gospel.
Patents are not issued to help inventors make money or profit from their invention. They're issued to further progress in the useful arts and sciences.
That's nonsense, pretty much quoted from the Constitution, but which even the founding fathers didn't really believe. No other country had such language in their law. Great Britain's patent and copyright laws were strictly revenue oriented from the start (well over 300 years ago).
Most of the greatest works of art, literature, music, and inventions never enjoyed patent or copyright protection until about 200 years ago (far less in most countries), and it was ALWAYS assumed that anything you invented would be also made by others in short order. Yet there is scarce evidence of any withholding of works or inventions from this time.
In fact it is precisely BECAUSE OF PATENTS that inventions and creative works are withheld, kept secret, and locked up.
Patents have ALWAYS been about the money. Its fiction to believe they promote the science or arts, and it has always been fiction.
In Angry Bird-like industries, where they have an actual monopoly on that game and a virtual monopoly on games of similar ilk, the slowness is actually legislated in. Essentially, anywhere there are patents and copyrights slowness tends to be institutionalized.
Some of this is by design. Creators should be able to profit from their work for a while, which is why we have patent / copyright laws.
So there is no capability for the market to operate in these areas, as society has already decided that it should not. In infrastructure heavy sectors, the barriers are natural, in IP heavy sectors barriers are largely legal.
So there will be no end-user price reduction. (Hell, its free on Android, so unless you expect to be paid to download it, it can't get much cheaper).
This move to Ireland is strictly a tax avoidance move by the owners, and will help their Yacht fund. Further, its probably a bluff, trying to secure some tax breaks from Finland, because you don't uproot 400 people (or even the 100 people you really want to keep) just to avoid some taxes.
Figures for Rovio total revenue suggest about $95 million in total revenue (2011). After paying wages and plant costs, their earnings (before taxes) was $58.7 dollars, which suggests they are banking 65% of their total intake.
Paying 12% Ireland tax rates will save them around 7 Million bucks per year in taxes over the Finland rate.
Since you could probably move the company lock stock and server farm for $7Mil, the multi-year payout would be significant, but not earth shattering.
Angry Birds has about run its course, and unless they have a stable of additional games in the pipe-line there may not be any long term advantage in moving.
Ta-hoochapie!
Just as important for microsoft is their positioning versus these other companies, and whether buying one or the other as a defensive play is worth it. What would be the cost to Microsoft if one of these other companies bought RIM or Nokia instead, particularly the effect on their patent portfolios?
Don't you need to look at the age of the patents involved?
Most of RIMs magic came a long time ago, pre-cellphone days.
IF windows 8 tanks?
What is this "IF" word? An acronym for Inevitable Future?
Sad.
I'm often seen walking down the street listening to their podcast grinning like a total idiot.
I have several years worth to catch up on. Maybe I better order something from their Shameless Products division before those disappear as well.
Wouldn't one assume an attacker would work thru all short combinations first?
If so the hypothetical password of "$" would be found shortly after the first 62 (aZ-zZ + 0-9), depending on the order of your special characters.
Aren't these brute force attacks done pretty much sequentially? Why would they chug thru all 9 character combs when the likelihood is that most passwords will be less than 9?
Hindsight seems to be a key element to these predictions of cracking speed.
On the other hand....
Forever is a long time. There is no reasonable expectation of forever in any legal contract for goods or services in any
industry I'm aware of. Even contracts for burial plots do not last much more than 200 years.
Soo...what happens in year 201? Do they figure you're finished with it?
braainnnss...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cemetery#Re-use_of_graves
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13357909
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,527134,00.html
Please specify where these industry standards can be found.
I'm pretty new at this programming stuff, having only been at it for 30 years and I haven't run across any universal industry standards document yet, so I'm all ears.
On the other hand....
Forever is a long time. There is no reasonable expectation of forever in any legal contract for goods or services in any
industry I'm aware of. Even contracts for burial plots do not last much more than 200 years.
Sure, a wise contractor will have a warranty duration mentioned in the contract, and specify an acceptance testing phase, after which
all bugs belong to the purchaser. Any bug fixes offered after that are likely to require additional payment.
Without such a Ts Crossed and Is Dotted contract, there are only reasonable expectations to fall back on:
Both sides know that there is no such thing as bug free software. Never has been. Never will be.
Expectations to the contrary are not reasonable, and never have been.
Expectations of indentured servitude went out with the 13th amendment, and no contract can bring that back.
Further, rare is the software that enters service and remains unchanged for its useful life. Any warranties or assurances
are lost once the code is modified, even if modified by the same developer, but especially when another developer
steps in, or the purchaser themselves make changes. Even without a contract that states this, one need only
point a finger at the changes made by others to divert ALL blame.
The two month time period mentioned in the story and "adequate time for testing" seem a little thin if you ask me.
I would never sign a contract for custom software that was so tightly limited, and it does not sound reasonable for any project of any reasonable scope.
So without something in writing, the contractor deserves a little pain and suffering (as a stupidity penalty), but they are STILL not up the creek without a paddle, because "forever" is not reasonable, and reasonable expectations become the deciding factor. But in this case "reasonable" is no longer strictly the contractor's call, and courts may well have a say.