Its not going to be a good thing. Once the patent holder has lobbied to have their version of DRM required by law, under the guise of computing security, all software will need to make use of it. At the very least, the technology will be required to get your program to run on Windows. The only way to use the technology is to pay the licensing fee. Or get sued, of course. If you don't have the money to license the DRM for your app, too bad, you won't be releasing it. This will be the end of small software companies if this worst case scenario comes true.
But remember, the music industry is apparently exempt from anti trust law. How else can they function like they do? When you have half of congress unofficially on your payroll, you're able to make your own laws.
I love it when you get a package of small cookies and it says 5 grams of fat per serving and then you see that serving size is defined as 1 cookie, like anyone would eat just one of something that is about 2 inches in diameter.
I totally agree. It seems like most people who claim to oppose genetic modification of foods, plants, etc. are basing their views mostly on fears rather than any solid evidence. This is obvious by their use of terms like "Frankenfoods". I think that modified food products should be thoroughly tested before being released into the market to make sure there are no adverse effects, but people need to remember that plant modification is nothing new. Farmers have been cross breeding plants of different DNA strains for thousands of years in order to achieve desirable properties such as resistance to insects. Genetic engineering is for the most part a more precise way to do this.
I still don't know how an entire country apparently now thinks its OK to have cameras all over the roads and to get a ticket in the mail for any petty traffic violation some machine says they committed. Its not as if there's any way to verify that the reading is accurate. Do the lawmakers and government officials actually get tickets when driving in their personal cars and pay them? I somehow doubt it, or the cameras would have come out long ago.
For large items that require title registration, you won't even have to wait until you file your taxes. They will actually send you a bill shortly after you register the item instate that was purchased out of state. At least, this is what happened when I bought a car in Indiana and immediately registered it in Chicago, IL. Mayor Daley wasn't about to wait a whole year to get his 10%, the bills for the new Soldier Field must be payed now!
If you ask the Indiana authorities, they will tell you that you have to pay in Indiana. If you ask in Illinois, I'm sure they'll tell you that you must pay there. When you point out that you're already paying in the other state, they'll go back and forth blaming each other. This is usually how bureaucracies work, so I'd say your best bet is to do what you're probably doing now and avoid the issue altogether.
None of this would be possible if this country were made up of INFORMED voters. When only a small group of senior citizens regularly vote, its inevitable that the government is accountable to nobody. Just assure the voting grannies that nobody will touch their Social Security and look forward to 4 more years.
Although this is probably sarcastic (or a Troll if you have no sense of humor), I saw a letter to the editor in the Chicago Tribune where a writer basically said that high taxes were good and that she viewed paying taxes as an "investment in society". Wow. Its amazing how much Kool-Aid some people will drink. Not that all taxes are bad but Chicago is a city where government fraud and waste are at almost epidemic levels.
Certainly, a business will sometimes have the need for people to work overtime. They must then PAY THEM for it. To say that a business should be able to work people overtime without proper compensation is the same as saying I should be able to steal merchandise from my employer if I really need something and my budget is a bit tight. Either way, theft is theft.
Get rid of the outmoded IRS and save a whole pile of money right there
And that is the reason this will never happen. Too many people have too much power since they can manipulate the tax code. This would be a lot harder to do with a national sales tax. Not to mention, politicians would have a much harder time creating special tax brackets and fighting about 'tax cuts for the rich'. That being said, I think a national sales tax is an excellent idea, provided the income tax is actually eliminated.
I believe employment law generally requires employees to be paid for time worked, no matter what. If the employee worked too many hours in a row, they must be paid for them even if it was against company policy. The employee could be reprimanded, but the company would be violating labor law in a very big way if they just docked their pay after the fact.
The solution here is an easy one, just don't work over 8 hours a day. If your boss insists that you do, then record the extra hours. If they try to fire you for it, its your lucky day. The money you'll make in the resulting lawsuit will probably be more than you made in the crap job anyway.
There is a chance it might work if the regulatory penalties for non-compliance by the monopolies were so stiff that they would decide to comply. This is why it hasn't really worked out in the phone markets. SBC in Illinois has just been paying FCC fines for the last few years as a cost of doing business. Its worth it to them to prevent any competitor from really having a shot at serving the area. Only Verizon and MCI can even afford to try, and I doubt they make money on just the local service.
Or have the implant in the form of a small forehead mounted camera and broadcast the images on a new "reality" TV show. Kind of like an unscripted Bumfights.
What exactly could those stores accomplish that could not be done with a kiosk in a shopping mall (kind of like their biggest competitor)? Like the article said, they were simply a money drain and keeping inventory in the store kind of defeats the purpose of the build to order model. Now if only Dell would get out of the super-saturated consumer electronics market and we just might see Dell and Gateway going back to competing to build the best computers (wishful thinking, I know).
The idea of making people pay to receive ads started with professional sports. People pay a lot of money to go to games where the focus is at times more on the sponsors than on the game itself. Some stadiums are so whored up with ads it distracts from the game. Once advertisers caught on to this, they realized this concept could be extended to games broadcast on TV (see ESPN fees).
Once it was clear that people would accept it, they moved on to other cable channels, stores, theme parks, and lets not forget the internet. I love how AOL users pay more for their service than anyone else with a comparable connection and then they are blasted with ads on top of it! You would think its not just slashdotters that are sick of this crap, but based on society's response to it, I really wonder.
What was the guy supposed to do, wait until they shot him? If someone comes to your door holding a gun and demanding money, that's a pretty good indication that they intend to harm you. Are you really required to hand over whatever they want and then just hope that they leave without harming you?
Not only that, but their website even has links to articles that bash Internet patents. They know exactly what they are doing, and are proud of it. I would say the founders of this firm deserve to die, but that would be going far too easy on them.
I've always thought that this type of abuse of the legal system is like socialism. It transfers wealth from the productive to the unproductive. Even if the case is not won in court, the person being sued has to spend money on defense and the lawyer pressing the bogus case is probably still getting paid in some way.
A lot of people, even some who are somewhat computer literate, will click the Report Spam button on an email from a mailing list that they no longer want to subscribe to instead of actually unsubscribing. They have no idea how much this screws up spam filtering and reporting systems.
Slashdot Mirror
Its not going to be a good thing. Once the patent holder has lobbied to have their version of DRM required by law, under the guise of computing security, all software will need to make use of it. At the very least, the technology will be required to get your program to run on Windows. The only way to use the technology is to pay the licensing fee. Or get sued, of course. If you don't have the money to license the DRM for your app, too bad, you won't be releasing it. This will be the end of small software companies if this worst case scenario comes true.
But remember, the music industry is apparently exempt from anti trust law. How else can they function like they do? When you have half of congress unofficially on your payroll, you're able to make your own laws.
I love it when you get a package of small cookies and it says 5 grams of fat per serving and then you see that serving size is defined as 1 cookie, like anyone would eat just one of something that is about 2 inches in diameter.
I totally agree. It seems like most people who claim to oppose genetic modification of foods, plants, etc. are basing their views mostly on fears rather than any solid evidence. This is obvious by their use of terms like "Frankenfoods". I think that modified food products should be thoroughly tested before being released into the market to make sure there are no adverse effects, but people need to remember that plant modification is nothing new. Farmers have been cross breeding plants of different DNA strains for thousands of years in order to achieve desirable properties such as resistance to insects. Genetic engineering is for the most part a more precise way to do this.
I still don't know how an entire country apparently now thinks its OK to have cameras all over the roads and to get a ticket in the mail for any petty traffic violation some machine says they committed. Its not as if there's any way to verify that the reading is accurate. Do the lawmakers and government officials actually get tickets when driving in their personal cars and pay them? I somehow doubt it, or the cameras would have come out long ago.
For large items that require title registration, you won't even have to wait until you file your taxes. They will actually send you a bill shortly after you register the item instate that was purchased out of state. At least, this is what happened when I bought a car in Indiana and immediately registered it in Chicago, IL. Mayor Daley wasn't about to wait a whole year to get his 10%, the bills for the new Soldier Field must be payed now!
If you ask the Indiana authorities, they will tell you that you have to pay in Indiana. If you ask in Illinois, I'm sure they'll tell you that you must pay there. When you point out that you're already paying in the other state, they'll go back and forth blaming each other. This is usually how bureaucracies work, so I'd say your best bet is to do what you're probably doing now and avoid the issue altogether.
I need to read the titles a little closer. I thought it said Scooby Doo Underwear Skewer! Easy mistake to make at almost 1 AM.
Hmmm..."Upper Management and the Bean Counters" sounds like a good name for a band....
Hello, Dave Barry! I love your column. I never knew you posted on slashdot as cybermace5.
None of this would be possible if this country were made up of INFORMED voters. When only a small group of senior citizens regularly vote, its inevitable that the government is accountable to nobody. Just assure the voting grannies that nobody will touch their Social Security and look forward to 4 more years.
Although this is probably sarcastic (or a Troll if you have no sense of humor), I saw a letter to the editor in the Chicago Tribune where a writer basically said that high taxes were good and that she viewed paying taxes as an "investment in society". Wow. Its amazing how much Kool-Aid some people will drink. Not that all taxes are bad but Chicago is a city where government fraud and waste are at almost epidemic levels.
Certainly, a business will sometimes have the need for people to work overtime. They must then PAY THEM for it. To say that a business should be able to work people overtime without proper compensation is the same as saying I should be able to steal merchandise from my employer if I really need something and my budget is a bit tight. Either way, theft is theft.
Get rid of the outmoded IRS and save a whole pile of money right there
And that is the reason this will never happen. Too many people have too much power since they can manipulate the tax code. This would be a lot harder to do with a national sales tax. Not to mention, politicians would have a much harder time creating special tax brackets and fighting about 'tax cuts for the rich'. That being said, I think a national sales tax is an excellent idea, provided the income tax is actually eliminated.
I believe employment law generally requires employees to be paid for time worked, no matter what. If the employee worked too many hours in a row, they must be paid for them even if it was against company policy. The employee could be reprimanded, but the company would be violating labor law in a very big way if they just docked their pay after the fact.
The solution here is an easy one, just don't work over 8 hours a day. If your boss insists that you do, then record the extra hours. If they try to fire you for it, its your lucky day. The money you'll make in the resulting lawsuit will probably be more than you made in the crap job anyway.
There is a chance it might work if the regulatory penalties for non-compliance by the monopolies were so stiff that they would decide to comply. This is why it hasn't really worked out in the phone markets. SBC in Illinois has just been paying FCC fines for the last few years as a cost of doing business. Its worth it to them to prevent any competitor from really having a shot at serving the area. Only Verizon and MCI can even afford to try, and I doubt they make money on just the local service.
Or have the implant in the form of a small forehead mounted camera and broadcast the images on a new "reality" TV show. Kind of like an unscripted Bumfights.
What exactly could those stores accomplish that could not be done with a kiosk in a shopping mall (kind of like their biggest competitor)? Like the article said, they were simply a money drain and keeping inventory in the store kind of defeats the purpose of the build to order model. Now if only Dell would get out of the super-saturated consumer electronics market and we just might see Dell and Gateway going back to competing to build the best computers (wishful thinking, I know).
These are the types of jobs where it is perfectly acceptable to quit by not showing up. Like you would really want to use them as a reference anyway.
The idea of making people pay to receive ads started with professional sports. People pay a lot of money to go to games where the focus is at times more on the sponsors than on the game itself. Some stadiums are so whored up with ads it distracts from the game. Once advertisers caught on to this, they realized this concept could be extended to games broadcast on TV (see ESPN fees).
Once it was clear that people would accept it, they moved on to other cable channels, stores, theme parks, and lets not forget the internet. I love how AOL users pay more for their service than anyone else with a comparable connection and then they are blasted with ads on top of it! You would think its not just slashdotters that are sick of this crap, but based on society's response to it, I really wonder.
What was the guy supposed to do, wait until they shot him? If someone comes to your door holding a gun and demanding money, that's a pretty good indication that they intend to harm you. Are you really required to hand over whatever they want and then just hope that they leave without harming you?
Not only that, but their website even has links to articles that bash Internet patents. They know exactly what they are doing, and are proud of it. I would say the founders of this firm deserve to die, but that would be going far too easy on them.
Sorry, there is prior art.
I've always thought that this type of abuse of the legal system is like socialism. It transfers wealth from the productive to the unproductive. Even if the case is not won in court, the person being sued has to spend money on defense and the lawyer pressing the bogus case is probably still getting paid in some way.
A lot of people, even some who are somewhat computer literate, will click the Report Spam button on an email from a mailing list that they no longer want to subscribe to instead of actually unsubscribing. They have no idea how much this screws up spam filtering and reporting systems.