Move to a timeline-based release cycle rather than feature-based.
Development of major features in Perforce. The goal is to keep the head branch from going unstable very often and allows major features to stay under development if it isn't ready for -STABLE branch point. Appears CVS will still be used for the main tree.
Frequent scheduled releases will keep the bug count under control.
Current plan is to branch for 6-STABLE in the May/June 2005 time frame with 6.1/.2 etc in 4-6 month intervals thereafter.
Two very big, interesting changes. Given the very usable ports tree moving to scheduled releases for the core system makes a lot of sense. The decision to move development of major features out of the main CVS tree compliments the scheduled-release strategy. If anyone can make it work it'll be the FreeBSD team.
Congratulations on achieving 5-STABLE and best wishes on 6-CURRENT development!
I think you've missed some of the rhetoric around passing anti-P2P laws:
The bills come at a time when the music and movie industries are exerting enormous pressure on all branches of government at the federal and state levels to crack down on P2P content piracy. The industries also are pushing to portray P2P networks as dens of terrorists, child pornographers and criminals -- a strategy that would make it more palatable for politicians to pass laws against products that are very popular with their constituents.
There's also increased enforcement activity. The US Department of Justice released this announcementearlier this year. According to this article possessing obscene material is legal but not distributing it:
Under federal law, it is illegal to knowingly possess or distribute child pornography. It generally is legal to possess "obscene" materials--defined by the U.S. Supreme Court as sexually explicit materials lacking scientific, literary, artistic or political value--but illegal to distribute them. Magazines such as Hustler or Penthouse are typically not considered obscene, but legal standards vary from state to state.
Law enforcement are ramping up their efforts and soon enough folks will find that distributing GBs of hardcore material is not just illegal but might earn them a visit to the pokey where their music sharing friends can visit them after paying their settlement.
What an irony! The linked article comes from a law firm specializing in defending against ADA Title III lawsuits.
It doesn't reduce the validity of their advice but it's rather self serving to publish an article raising the alarm that ends with:
For more information, please contact Jonathan W. Greenbaum at jgreenbaum@nixonpeabody.com, Robert Carrol at rcarrol@nixonpeabody.com, or Todd Shinaman at tshinaman@nixonpeabody.com.
Rewritten it might sound like "Newsflash! Some unscrupulous law firms are suing hotels for ADA violations just to make money. Pay us to help you beat them." If they really wanted to help they'd file ethics violations against the other law firms and lobby for sensible tort reform.
The UK privacy laws require your employer to give you copies of anything they store about you. I can't remember whether it covers 3rd-party entities you don't have a "business" relationship with.
It's a good idea but here's the rub -- how do you identify them? Probably have to give them certain identifying information like name, address, phone number, ssn and who knows what else. What will they do with it? Probably store it in the DB and send it back to you.
There was a company earlier this year that was snailmail spamming me and I wanted off. To do so I had to give them some of the information above. To be effective such a law would require they not also store that identifying information. Like that's going to happen.
As others have mentioned this is about creating one RAW data format. The RAW data from the CCD or CMOS sensor is basically unprocessed information unlike PNG, JPEG and basic TIFF.
When you shoot in JPEG and even in TIFF with any current camera the internal processor applies white balance, color, contrast, sharpening and other algorithms to the data and saves it in the chosen format, typically JPEG at anywhere from a 1:2 to 1:8 loss compression ratio.
This is great for point, click, print. But for hobbyist and professional photographers this eliminates a lot of the post-shot production that can be done to the image later, even if it's a TIFF file. With a RAW image format you can apply those effects afterward, unapply them and generally tweak the output. My Nikon came with some software that allows me to set the white balance using the same algorithm the camera would do internally if I shot JPEG. But with the in-camera option if I don't like the results, tough. Sure, I can tweak it later in Photoshop but I can't fundamentally alter the effect. This is particularly frustrating for effects like white balance and sharpening. Having the RAW format, also known as the "digital negative", gives the photographer much more flexibility.
Why do we need a universal file format? Because every camera manufacturer out there has a different one that programmers have to figure out and photographers have to put up with (not that professionals change kit all that often). With Photoshop CS Adobe helped photographers out by putting in an excellent RAW reader but someone at a Adobe has to keep up with all these specifications. If all the camera manufacturers would adopt ONE format then Adobe AND open source developers could focus their time on the important business of digital photography -- producing excellent final photos.
Another benefit of the RAW format hinted above is that for programs like the GIMP developers waste a lot of time trying to reverse engineer these formats. As you can imagine a lot of the camera manufacturers aren't out there sharing the love with their specifications. The one format that's been best reverse engineered is the Canon RAW format with varying levels of success going down from there for Nikon, Minolta et al.
Lastly, let's not forget the benefit of having a common format for long-term archival and retrieval. Anybody out there have any binary files they can't get into any more? A common RAW format will reduce the chances of being orphaned with files you can't read.
In summary, then, this is a huge benefit for everyone as we can all focus on digital image production using a shared format and libraries and less on figuring all these formats out. The only question the article doesn't address is whether Adobe are releasing the format into the wild, as it were, or plan to setup a "toll" on it via patents.
Teaming your bots wouldn't be very profitable if they sat in too many positions on the table. In your scenario 7/8ths of the seats are held by bots meaning in every hand your always paying in a blind and 7/8ths of the time your paying in big and small blind of which the house gets a rake. Also, your human opponent and the house would get suspiscous if in every hand all players but one folded out. So you'd then have to have some of your bots call through to the flopy to a) allay suscipicion and b) increase your odds of winning at the flop. But then you're eating in to your profits as each bet the "decoy" bots place is subject to the rake. I hadn't really thought of this till now but for online poker the rake is actually a useful tool to help prevent egregious collusion.
Worse, if it's no-limit tournament the human might make it to the final two when he and the bot have the same knowledge (i.e., no collusion) and the human wins if with flush on the flop. It's just not profitable to have that many players in collusion.
Where it might be profitable would be to have 2 or 3 bots at an 8-hand table. But then you have the problem of a) you might be playing another bot team or b) the humans are colluding and smoke you.
In the long run you might be up overall, but I don't see it being hugely profitable.
I think Amazon have done it on their own. Following is my email to Amazon on the issue:
I'm very disappointed to learn that Amazon have deleted all the reviews of the book katie.com. Numerous reviewers yesterday posted comments about the book and gave it a low rating. They did so to highlight that the book's publisher and author crassly named the book after a domain they don't own ruining another woman's use of her legal property. Part of the community process of recommending books and services is to let one another know about manufacturers (in this case a publisher) who deliver substandard products or engage in disreputable business practices. As a community many of us believe what Penguin and Katherine Tarbox have done is wrong and numerous outraged book fans wrote reviews telling of the problems and rating the company and author by rating the book appropriately. I'm disappointed with Amazon for their stance on this matter and won't be using the service. --Aaron Poffenberger/blockquote
We have the same thing in the City of Houston (as mentioned in the article about SimDesk). The city took an interesting route for granting access -- you have to have a library card to get in. All the public library have terminals for easy access as well as the SimHouston site.
Going the public library route is pretty smart -- a lot of people who can't afford computers were already going to the library for information so this gives them easy access to a personal workspace and productivity tools. It also has the possible added benefit of increasing library use and hence funding. That said, I don't use it and nobody I personally know use it. No doubt because we all have computers at home and the fact the city hasn't done a great job of promoting it.
Oh yeah, did I mention not wanting to keep all my email, wordprocessing, spreadsheet and contact information on a government server? I like knowing my data is on a computer I control. Before I seriously consider signing-up for any roaming desktop product I want all my data kept in an encrypted data store that I alone have the key for. Requiring a search warrant to access my data is a good procedural requirement but like the lock on my front door I want a physical barrier to keep out the curious and opportunistic.
You're absolutely right about this -- they've already begun. Remember till just recently when wxWidgets was known as wxWindows? From the "Name Change" page:
In September 2003, Microsoft approached Julian Smart to open discussions about the wxWindows name, in relation to the 'Windows' UK trademark owned by Microsoft. The result of these discussions can be summarised as follows.
After a polite request from Microsoft, and a lot of thought on our part, we have decided to change the project's name to wxWidgets.
Apologies to all wxWindows users, and developers of wxWindows-related projects, for the short-term discomfort caused by the name change.
I believe them that the request was made politely. I think Microsoft have learned that asking nicely at first goes a long way -- nicely being with a big smile and a check.
Despite whatever any of us may perceive or think about Microsoft it's not an evil corporate hell-bent on destroying GNU/Linux or Free Software. Microsoft does direct all their energy towards preserving themselves and building the Windows franchise. If the must destroy Linux en route then they will. It's very similar to Torvalds noting that the goal of Linux is not to destroy Windows but merely and unintended consequence. What we have are two ideologically driven organizations that just happen to be going in opposite directions on the same tracks. There may be a collision or one or both will branch to other tracks.
For now patents in general are a challenge and threat to Free Software and in the near future Microsoft may fire the first shot.
Chances are if you have a valid and serious complaint you'll wind up settling out of court. Do what the big corps do when they settle out of court -- get a binding non-disclosure with significant penalties added to the settlement for failure to adhere to the terms of the agreement. Sure, they're will be a record of you suing but no details as to the outcome.
If you do win at court have your lawyer ask the judge to seal the records. Cite the potential for discrimination by other doctors as the reason. If the case is open and shut you might just get the case sealed.
I work in a very Windows shop but still manage to use OS X. How? The box under my desk is Windows XP Professional with remote desktop enabled. I run my Powerbook in dual screen mode (xinerama mode in X). On the external monitor I run Microsoft's Remote Desktop and on the laptop screen runs OS X. You can get a Linux remote desktop client at rdesktop.org. Bring in a Linux box, install it and connect up. This has worked for me for several years (including back when I used VNC to the Windows box). With this setup you can obey the rules about not installing any unapproved software and still work with your favorite OS. A couple of keys:
1) Stay low profile, solve as many of your own problems as possible. There have always been a few of us running Macs at work. We had one guy who insisted on trying to force MIS to actively support us. He almost wrecked it for all of us before he left.
2) Don't boast or advertise. Just get your work done.
This may not work for you but it's something worth considering before doing anything drastic.
I checked out the calculator and found that record values typically range from $0.50 to $10.00. Couple of bonus records:
Education: $12.00
Employment: $13.00
Workers Comp: $18.00
Bankruptcy: $26.50
Court records bring in some big dough:
Lawsuits: $2.95
Sex Offendors: $13.00
Felonies: $16.00
But the biggest payoff comes for Military Records: $35.00.
When I got out of the military in the early 90s we were strongly encouraged to take our DD-214 (summary of military records) and submit them to the county clerk when we got back home so they'd become public record, that way if we ever lost it we could go look it up. I'm REAL GLAD(tm) I worked with Privacy Act information for my whole career and developed a healthy reluctance to hand out the juicy tidbits contained on my DD-214, e.g., SS#, DOB, education, and of course your whole military career.
This sounds all well and good but there are so many ways to defeat this: encoding using different formats or different bit rates, segmenting files, flipping random bits, truncating silent sections from the front and back of the track, adding "throw-away" garbage to the end of the track and I'm sure numerous others.
It's also predicated on the idea that the hashes exist. Taking the first example of encoding at different bit rates and using different formats. Who's responsible for providing a reasonably exhaustive and authoritative list of the hashes? If Sharman et al. implement these schemes do they get bullet-proof immunity from criminal and civil liabilities?
Also, who says users will continue to use these "spyware" enabled P2P products once it becomes widely known that blocking has been enabled?
There are just too many excpetions to this idea to be really workable.
I agree with the informal email but I would a) send copies of the offending code from your product and a copy of the GPL, and b) a link to the FSF GPL FAQ. I would send the email to their General Counsel. You should word the letter in a conciliatory way and OFFER them the opportunity to remove the offending code. Do NOT tell them they must now releaes all their source code to the public. That will freak them out and cause them to into defense mode. Also, DO NOT ASK for money at all at this point -- they'll assume it's a shakedown.
It sounds like your goal is to get them to respect your license. Approach them with firm honesty and you may get what you're looking for. If that doesn't work then YOU have whether you want to fight it with lawyers. The cheapest way out would be to assign your copyright to the FSF and let them (as the legal copyright holders) handle it.
You don't have to be a lazy parent to want autoskip. It's a technology that extends a parent's ability to care for their children without having to always be physically next to them. It's not much different from the baby monitors parents put in the nursery. The reality of life is that we can't (and shouldn't) spend our every waking minute with our children but we do want to (and should) establish some borders. Little Susie wants to cut out paper dolls while Tommy wants to watch his favorite PARENT APPROVED show. Janie is having a sleepover with some of her friends. Mom and dad don't want to hover but do want to exert some influence over what they watch and how many commercials they see. Does that make them lazy wanting only to "let the television raise [their] children" for them?
And yes, your're right, most 3-year olds are savvy enough to push the skip button -- will they? Depends how interesting the commercial looks to them. There's a lot of good programming on television that doesn't involve action figures or related dolls. Unfortunately broadcasters sandwhich the shows with way too much advertising and often inappropriate advertising for the show itself. That's where autoskip becomes useful.
You either have no children or are trolling to call someone a lazy parent for wanting autoskip technology "for the children." And again, you're right about "for the children" being often misused. I meant the phrase itself as a joke (note to self, next time put the wink in). But I'm serious about the application of the technology as another tool to help parents raise their children.
For the children. Seriously. Anyone with small children knows that all the adverts placed in children's television really isn't good for them -- or their parents. The non-stop barrage of advertising really undermines a parents ability to teach their children moderation and selective consumption. With a PVR set to auto-skip adverts it would be a lot easier to limit their exposure to so much commercialism. Of course we have to expect they'll be exposed to some degree and MUST meet our obligations to teach them to be smart consumers but a little auto skip would help in that task. (Even more we should focus on teaching our children to be PRODUCERS.)
Of course this is why the media industry sued ReplayTV into oblivion. Cut out the ads and you significantly cut their revenue and ability to produce the shows. Too bad cable/satellite TV isn't more like the current state of satellite radio -- way fewer ads per program hour! Paying for cable TV seems to only get me more ads targeted to my demographic group.
Don't forget the final book, That Hideous Strength, ties into middle earth. There's the passage where Merlin has just arrived at Ransom's house and is quizzing Ransom to determine whether he really is the Pendragon:
(snip)
"Your Masters let you play with dangerous toys", he said. "Tell me, slave, what is Numinor?"
"The true West," said Ransom.
(snip)
I remember reading somewhere Lewis had read drafts of some of the LOTR manuscripts (perhaps from the Inklings days) or perhaps it comes from having read The Hobbit.
The choice on where to build the reactor currently stands between Japan and France, but apparantly, the U.S. is opposing a french site because France opposed the war in Iraq.
Not to mention the French sensibly rejected calling it the "Freedom Reactor".
It all depends on the goal of the acquisition. If it's Warren Buffett and Berkshire-Hathaway it seems to always work. Buffett looks to acquire good companies with excellent management and then leaves them alone to do what they do best -- generate cash for the bottom line. When it's two companies in the same or similar market consolidating then the results are almost always horrible.
In this case we need to know what EMC really wants from the VMWare product line. If I had to guess I'd say they're making an enterprise play and will put their prospects at 50/50. Only time will tell.
In the US schools and churches do pay (or at least are supposed to). I don't know exactly how much but I think my church budgets around $1000/annually so we can not only "perform" these copyrighted hymns but also so that we can make our own photocopies of them to pass around to the various "performers" (whether adults or children). What really burns is that I've seen numerous pieces of sheet music with the (c) symbol printed on hymns that are clearly in the public domain...sometimes it's borderline legit because a modern composer has set the hymn to a new arrangement of the music (hmm...can we say derivative work). The problem is that most churches and schools are so afraid of a lawsuit they would rather pay the blanket fee to cover the modern stuff and get the public domain stuff as part of the bargain.
This fear of lawsuits is so strong that many corporations won't even challenge a false copyright. Have you picked up a copy of Shakespeare and looked at the backside of the title page? What's there but a (c) declaration by the publisher. On what? They clearly have a coyright on the modern introduction but not on the plays and sonnets. Brooklyn Law School published an article about this disturbing trend entitled "False Copyrights" about publishers that claim copyright on public domain works. The fear of lawsuits (or aversion to paying to lititage) has driven many universities and publishers to begin denying fair-use rights of students, faculty and authors. In many cases universities are agreeing to royalty licenses when fair use would allow them to use the materials. Publishers are requiring authors to get explicit written permission to quote the works of other authors when fair use would grant them a priori permission.
I don't really have a problem with churches and schools paying standard tarrifs on copyright songs (we make them buy text books) but I absolutely draw the line at chilling fair use through fear of litigation and will not stand for publishers that claim copyright on public domain works.
Great idea! We should do an "Ask Slashdot" to the USPTO. Why don't you take the next step and start "Patent Examiner Blog". I'm serious and not trolling. Take us through a month in the life of a patent examiner. I know I'd read it daily. I'm sure due to privacy restrictions you probably can't get into too much detail but if we're ignorant and you and your co-workers know people are griping this much get out there and make a serious effort to open the process up and help us see the value the USPTO provides.
Don't forget an inefficient tax code that encourages inefficient behavior. A lot of people justify owning an SUV as a business expense. Small businesses can deduct the cost of any vehicle with more than 6000 lbs towing capacity -- like many SUVs. The code was originally put in place by congress as a deduction for farmers when they took away the business car deduction. Back then the only vehicles that met the requirements were trucks. There was little on the market we'd consider an SUV other than the Suburban and no self-respecting small business person would take clients out in one of those, right? But as you note times and fads change. What was a limited-use deduction is now a huge loophole.
For example, in my defense against a simple traffic violation, my lawyer entered in the pleadings several defenses along the lines of "Section X of Motor Vehicle Code violates the US Constitution" and "Section X of Motor Vehicle Code is selectively enforced by Police such that its enforcement is waived, estopped or otherwise barred as a matter of equity".
Finally someone found another use for those Quicken Home Lawyer CDs.
Slashdot Mirror
- Move to a timeline-based release cycle rather than feature-based.
- Development of major features in Perforce. The goal is to keep the head branch from going unstable very often and allows major features to stay under development if it isn't ready for -STABLE branch point. Appears CVS will still be used for the main tree.
- Frequent scheduled releases will keep the bug count under control.
- Current plan is to branch for 6-STABLE in the May/June 2005 time frame with 6.1/.2 etc in 4-6 month intervals thereafter.
Two very big, interesting changes. Given the very usable ports tree moving to scheduled releases for the core system makes a lot of sense. The decision to move development of major features out of the main CVS tree compliments the scheduled-release strategy. If anyone can make it work it'll be the FreeBSD team.Congratulations on achieving 5-STABLE and best wishes on 6-CURRENT development!
There's also increased enforcement activity. The US Department of Justice released this announcementearlier this year. According to this article possessing obscene material is legal but not distributing it:
Law enforcement are ramping up their efforts and soon enough folks will find that distributing GBs of hardcore material is not just illegal but might earn them a visit to the pokey where their music sharing friends can visit them after paying their settlement.
It doesn't reduce the validity of their advice but it's rather self serving to publish an article raising the alarm that ends with:
Rewritten it might sound like "Newsflash! Some unscrupulous law firms are suing hotels for ADA violations just to make money. Pay us to help you beat them." If they really wanted to help they'd file ethics violations against the other law firms and lobby for sensible tort reform.Man, what was I thinking!
It's a good idea but here's the rub -- how do you identify them? Probably have to give them certain identifying information like name, address, phone number, ssn and who knows what else. What will they do with it? Probably store it in the DB and send it back to you.
There was a company earlier this year that was snailmail spamming me and I wanted off. To do so I had to give them some of the information above. To be effective such a law would require they not also store that identifying information. Like that's going to happen.
When you shoot in JPEG and even in TIFF with any current camera the internal processor applies white balance, color, contrast, sharpening and other algorithms to the data and saves it in the chosen format, typically JPEG at anywhere from a 1:2 to 1:8 loss compression ratio.
This is great for point, click, print. But for hobbyist and professional photographers this eliminates a lot of the post-shot production that can be done to the image later, even if it's a TIFF file. With a RAW image format you can apply those effects afterward, unapply them and generally tweak the output. My Nikon came with some software that allows me to set the white balance using the same algorithm the camera would do internally if I shot JPEG. But with the in-camera option if I don't like the results, tough. Sure, I can tweak it later in Photoshop but I can't fundamentally alter the effect. This is particularly frustrating for effects like white balance and sharpening. Having the RAW format, also known as the "digital negative", gives the photographer much more flexibility.
Why do we need a universal file format? Because every camera manufacturer out there has a different one that programmers have to figure out and photographers have to put up with (not that professionals change kit all that often). With Photoshop CS Adobe helped photographers out by putting in an excellent RAW reader but someone at a Adobe has to keep up with all these specifications. If all the camera manufacturers would adopt ONE format then Adobe AND open source developers could focus their time on the important business of digital photography -- producing excellent final photos.
Another benefit of the RAW format hinted above is that for programs like the GIMP developers waste a lot of time trying to reverse engineer these formats. As you can imagine a lot of the camera manufacturers aren't out there sharing the love with their specifications. The one format that's been best reverse engineered is the Canon RAW format with varying levels of success going down from there for Nikon, Minolta et al.
Lastly, let's not forget the benefit of having a common format for long-term archival and retrieval. Anybody out there have any binary files they can't get into any more? A common RAW format will reduce the chances of being orphaned with files you can't read.
In summary, then, this is a huge benefit for everyone as we can all focus on digital image production using a shared format and libraries and less on figuring all these formats out. The only question the article doesn't address is whether Adobe are releasing the format into the wild, as it were, or plan to setup a "toll" on it via patents.
Worse, if it's no-limit tournament the human might make it to the final two when he and the bot have the same knowledge (i.e., no collusion) and the human wins if with flush on the flop. It's just not profitable to have that many players in collusion.
Where it might be profitable would be to have 2 or 3 bots at an 8-hand table. But then you have the problem of a) you might be playing another bot team or b) the humans are colluding and smoke you.
In the long run you might be up overall, but I don't see it being hugely profitable.
Going the public library route is pretty smart -- a lot of people who can't afford computers were already going to the library for information so this gives them easy access to a personal workspace and productivity tools. It also has the possible added benefit of increasing library use and hence funding. That said, I don't use it and nobody I personally know use it. No doubt because we all have computers at home and the fact the city hasn't done a great job of promoting it.
Oh yeah, did I mention not wanting to keep all my email, wordprocessing, spreadsheet and contact information on a government server? I like knowing my data is on a computer I control. Before I seriously consider signing-up for any roaming desktop product I want all my data kept in an encrypted data store that I alone have the key for. Requiring a search warrant to access my data is a good procedural requirement but like the lock on my front door I want a physical barrier to keep out the curious and opportunistic.
Despite whatever any of us may perceive or think about Microsoft it's not an evil corporate hell-bent on destroying GNU/Linux or Free Software. Microsoft does direct all their energy towards preserving themselves and building the Windows franchise. If the must destroy Linux en route then they will. It's very similar to Torvalds noting that the goal of Linux is not to destroy Windows but merely and unintended consequence. What we have are two ideologically driven organizations that just happen to be going in opposite directions on the same tracks. There may be a collision or one or both will branch to other tracks.
For now patents in general are a challenge and threat to Free Software and in the near future Microsoft may fire the first shot.
If you do win at court have your lawyer ask the judge to seal the records. Cite the potential for discrimination by other doctors as the reason. If the case is open and shut you might just get the case sealed.
1) Stay low profile, solve as many of your own problems as possible. There have always been a few of us running Macs at work. We had one guy who insisted on trying to force MIS to actively support us. He almost wrecked it for all of us before he left.
2) Don't boast or advertise. Just get your work done.
This may not work for you but it's something worth considering before doing anything drastic.
- Bankruptcy: $26.50
Court records bring in some big dough:- Felonies: $16.00
But the biggest payoff comes for Military Records: $35.00.When I got out of the military in the early 90s we were strongly encouraged to take our DD-214 (summary of military records) and submit them to the county clerk when we got back home so they'd become public record, that way if we ever lost it we could go look it up. I'm REAL GLAD(tm) I worked with Privacy Act information for my whole career and developed a healthy reluctance to hand out the juicy tidbits contained on my DD-214, e.g., SS#, DOB, education, and of course your whole military career.
It's also predicated on the idea that the hashes exist. Taking the first example of encoding at different bit rates and using different formats. Who's responsible for providing a reasonably exhaustive and authoritative list of the hashes? If Sharman et al. implement these schemes do they get bullet-proof immunity from criminal and civil liabilities?
Also, who says users will continue to use these "spyware" enabled P2P products once it becomes widely known that blocking has been enabled?
There are just too many excpetions to this idea to be really workable.
It sounds like your goal is to get them to respect your license. Approach them with firm honesty and you may get what you're looking for. If that doesn't work then YOU have whether you want to fight it with lawyers. The cheapest way out would be to assign your copyright to the FSF and let them (as the legal copyright holders) handle it.
And yes, your're right, most 3-year olds are savvy enough to push the skip button -- will they? Depends how interesting the commercial looks to them. There's a lot of good programming on television that doesn't involve action figures or related dolls. Unfortunately broadcasters sandwhich the shows with way too much advertising and often inappropriate advertising for the show itself. That's where autoskip becomes useful.
You either have no children or are trolling to call someone a lazy parent for wanting autoskip technology "for the children." And again, you're right about "for the children" being often misused. I meant the phrase itself as a joke (note to self, next time put the wink in). But I'm serious about the application of the technology as another tool to help parents raise their children.
Of course this is why the media industry sued ReplayTV into oblivion. Cut out the ads and you significantly cut their revenue and ability to produce the shows. Too bad cable/satellite TV isn't more like the current state of satellite radio -- way fewer ads per program hour! Paying for cable TV seems to only get me more ads targeted to my demographic group.
Not to mention the French sensibly rejected calling it the "Freedom Reactor".
In this case we need to know what EMC really wants from the VMWare product line. If I had to guess I'd say they're making an enterprise play and will put their prospects at 50/50. Only time will tell.
This fear of lawsuits is so strong that many corporations won't even challenge a false copyright. Have you picked up a copy of Shakespeare and looked at the backside of the title page? What's there but a (c) declaration by the publisher. On what? They clearly have a coyright on the modern introduction but not on the plays and sonnets. Brooklyn Law School published an article about this disturbing trend entitled "False Copyrights" about publishers that claim copyright on public domain works. The fear of lawsuits (or aversion to paying to lititage) has driven many universities and publishers to begin denying fair-use rights of students, faculty and authors. In many cases universities are agreeing to royalty licenses when fair use would allow them to use the materials. Publishers are requiring authors to get explicit written permission to quote the works of other authors when fair use would grant them a priori permission.
I don't really have a problem with churches and schools paying standard tarrifs on copyright songs (we make them buy text books) but I absolutely draw the line at chilling fair use through fear of litigation and will not stand for publishers that claim copyright on public domain works.
Great idea! We should do an "Ask Slashdot" to the USPTO. Why don't you take the next step and start "Patent Examiner Blog". I'm serious and not trolling. Take us through a month in the life of a patent examiner. I know I'd read it daily. I'm sure due to privacy restrictions you probably can't get into too much detail but if we're ignorant and you and your co-workers know people are griping this much get out there and make a serious effort to open the process up and help us see the value the USPTO provides.
Don't forget an inefficient tax code that encourages inefficient behavior. A lot of people justify owning an SUV as a business expense. Small businesses can deduct the cost of any vehicle with more than 6000 lbs towing capacity -- like many SUVs. The code was originally put in place by congress as a deduction for farmers when they took away the business car deduction. Back then the only vehicles that met the requirements were trucks. There was little on the market we'd consider an SUV other than the Suburban and no self-respecting small business person would take clients out in one of those, right? But as you note times and fads change. What was a limited-use deduction is now a huge loophole.
Finally someone found another use for those Quicken Home Lawyer CDs.
buying^h^h^h^h donating to a politician at any level is exempt from sales tax.
Drivers license
Picture of Melinda and children
Weekly allowance in the amount of $15.3 million