Its like asking why someone decided to explore the north pole, because no one had been there before.
While, on its face, this argument makes sense, in light of today's technology, not really.
Today, we have the ability to send unmanned probes that can give us detailed information about the various physical parameters of some uncharted frontier. Gone are the days when the only way you could explore something is via physically being there.
Also, while I realise you chose North Pole only for illustrative purposes, there's a difference between a group of 6-7 explorers backed by a 50-strong support crew and a project which requires billions of dollars of taxpayer's money and thousands of employees dedicated to the task.
but it doesn't say to much about us lot as erm.. a species
I'll take the bait posed by your cultural ignorance.
In India, the concept of a nuclear family hsan't taken hold among the masses.
Why ?
1) A billion people in that much land.
2) Taking care of elders is a vital edict of the culture. You don't send them off to "elderly nursing homes."
3) Just because he lives them with them doesn't mean he's financially dependent on them. Likely the other way around.
Brazil has some of it's plants patented by foreign companies, that used breachs in their country of origin to patent these plants as medicines as if they had discovered it's medicinal properties... someday I'll discover that some IP fscked company has patented guava-tree leafs as a medicine for stomachache and that is an inovative use, but that is as fact known in Brazil since the days of my grand-grand mother
The exact thing has happened to India. Ayurvedic medicine consisting of herbs has been patented in US whereas these compositions have been known in India for centuries.
If you truely think it's a pointless endeavour, then the rate at which they accomplish it is totally irrelevant and they shouldn't bother at all.
Like I said, here, I'm not considering the goal irrespective of the practicality of the methodology.
Given that there are finite scientists, finite resources, finite dollars and certainly finite time in the span of our lifetimes, it is better suited to set feasible goals (atleast for scientists !!!)
What you're describing are not challenges to it's "pointedness," but rather a problem with the feasibility.
I don't always consider a goal irrespective of the modus operandi used to achieve it. In this case, the goal when looked at ideally isn't pointless, but practically looking at the expenses,manpower,resources vs. feasibility angle, it is a pointless endeavour.
Better suited would be to isolate a certain section of the animal kingdom regionally and then solely concentrate there and completely try to catalog it. Maybe that's how they're planning to work this out. In that case, it would make more sense.
"Because we are human and have the desire for knowledge while it's still possible to know?"
The project certainly is a noble goal. But given the
1)unimaginable amount of data
2)the spread of this data
3)the self-imposed timeframe
4)Manpower and resources required and subsequently the expenditure
I see it as an essentially pointless endavour. That's all.
They don't want to keep track of current status, what they _want_ is a snapshot of the way things are now, before humans screw things up anymore than they already have.
Feasibility-wise, this would be pretty difficult.
By the time, you enter the last species in the database, thousands if not more, would have evolved or adapted in some way from the time they were archived.
There is hardly much point to the _point_ of the endavour. At best, it would be an archive of past splendor of life on Earth.
I'm not sure how keeping track of future changes would be trivial. How do you keep track of physiological changes in 50000 insect species over the whole globe ?
I would say that having the DMCA in place makes these companies feel more empowered to enact copy protection than before the DMCA.
Maybe. But it would have been enacted in any case.
Additionally they will be using the DMCA and not standard copyright law to prossecute circumventions.
Although I agree with this, the Slashdot story is about effect of DMCA so far. And with respect to Joe Sixpack, my answer still remains: none
Note that I too, like the hordes on Slashdot, am against the DMCA. Just that the public hasn't really been affected so far. Until Step 4 in your post starts to effectively be implemented, nothing substantial will change.
All this will provide is a snapshot of the Earth's diverse species at a certain time, if successful.
How do they propose to go into the deep reaches of the Amazon basin or into northern Canada/Siberia ?
What about the minor localized species that exist now, but will be extinct in 20 years ? How do they plan to keep track of E V E R Y species and their current status ?
I see this as an idealistic endavour but not feasible.
It would be better to document the species that have more or less a direct impact on human living conditions and track them in detail. But I suppose that's already been done to a good extent.
For instance copy protection is being pushed pretty heavily now.
The example you describe hasn't anything to do with the DMCA as such. It's a company trying to introduce copy-protection. By and large, that's separate from the DMCA. What is illegal now is trying to circumvent this protection. And your Dad isn't going to get caught or stopped if he tries to get some shareware utility to rip the CD properly. So, he isn't affected by the DMCA, just the copy-protection. That copy-protection exists primarily due to the popularity of P2P file-sharing and not due to the DMCA backing it.
Well, the DMCA so far hasn't made a discernible difference in everyday life.
Sure, the FatWallet fiasco demonstrates the "inaneness" of the law but it hasn't affected Joe Sixpack yet.
It does affect those who directly fall in the face or corporations which generally tend to continue generating revenue from existing products instead of adapting/improving them*
*Note that this is not a slam against all these corporations. R&D is a bitch.
And how exactly did they "choose" this model ?
Oh, and BTW what 'model' ?
Are you suggesting they raise their prices on printers ? or lower their prices on cartridges ?
I don't think any company would want to do the former. As for the latter, they probably have overheads (like research) that the cheap 3rd-party manufacturers don't have.
Let me speculate here. I suppose Lexmark probably doesn't derive as much of its profit from the printers themselves as from the sales of cartridges, since depending on usage, you'll have to replace catridge more often than the printer. Consequently, the ability to use 3rd-party cartridges cuts into that revenue stream.
Best thing would be to work out an agreement where Lexmark allows anyone's cartridge to be used and Lexmark gets some licensing fees or whatever.
Except that the President is a politician foremost.
You would think that after all his political experience, he would have a stronger foundation as an orator, especially since he's the Commander-in-Chief.
Slashdot Mirror
The same ppl who brought you the SoftQuadro(4) hack. One that allows you to use Quadro drivers on geforce cards. Unwinder 'at' Guru3d.com
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1042
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=&t
Its like asking why someone decided to explore the north pole, because no one had been there before.
While, on its face, this argument makes sense, in light of today's technology, not really.
Today, we have the ability to send unmanned probes that can give us detailed information about the various physical parameters of some uncharted frontier. Gone are the days when the only way you could explore something is via physically being there.
Also, while I realise you chose North Pole only for illustrative purposes, there's a difference between a group of 6-7 explorers backed by a 50-strong support crew and a project which requires billions of dollars of taxpayer's money and thousands of employees dedicated to the task.
but it doesn't say to much about us lot as erm.. a species
I'll take the bait posed by your cultural ignorance.
In India, the concept of a nuclear family hsan't taken hold among the masses.
Why ?
1) A billion people in that much land.
2) Taking care of elders is a vital edict of the culture. You don't send them off to "elderly nursing homes."
3) Just because he lives them with them doesn't mean he's financially dependent on them. Likely the other way around.
Who in his right mind would like to have his brain fondled by a MS product?
Err.. the depressed and suicidal.
Brazil has some of it's plants patented by foreign companies, that used breachs in their country of origin to patent these plants as medicines as if they had discovered it's medicinal properties... someday I'll discover that some IP fscked company has patented guava-tree leafs as a medicine for stomachache and that is an inovative use, but that is as fact known in Brazil since the days of my grand-grand mother
The exact thing has happened to India. Ayurvedic medicine consisting of herbs has been patented in US whereas these compositions have been known in India for centuries.
I had a new controller coming up...
So, I guess its back to "Open, Sesame" now.
RIAA : Great. Now, who's running Kazaa ?
Does this mean they're going to show the curly brackets ?
I guess any more and you're looking at claims of IP infringement by other companies. *sigh*
If you truely think it's a pointless endeavour, then the rate at which they accomplish it is totally irrelevant and they shouldn't bother at all.
Like I said, here, I'm not considering the goal irrespective of the practicality of the methodology.
Given that there are finite scientists, finite resources, finite dollars and certainly finite time in the span of our lifetimes, it is better suited to set feasible goals (atleast for scientists !!!)
What you're describing are not challenges to it's "pointedness," but rather a problem with the feasibility.
I don't always consider a goal irrespective of the modus operandi used to achieve it. In this case, the goal when looked at ideally isn't pointless, but practically looking at the expenses,manpower,resources vs. feasibility angle, it is a pointless endeavour.
Better suited would be to isolate a certain section of the animal kingdom regionally and then solely concentrate there and completely try to catalog it. Maybe that's how they're planning to work this out. In that case, it would make more sense.
"Because we are human and have the desire for knowledge while it's still possible to know?"
The project certainly is a noble goal. But given the
1)unimaginable amount of data
2)the spread of this data
3)the self-imposed timeframe
4)Manpower and resources required and subsequently the expenditure
I see it as an essentially pointless endavour. That's all.
They don't want to keep track of current status, what they _want_ is a snapshot of the way things are now, before humans screw things up anymore than they already have.
Feasibility-wise, this would be pretty difficult.
By the time, you enter the last species in the database, thousands if not more, would have evolved or adapted in some way from the time they were archived.
There is hardly much point to the _point_ of the endavour. At best, it would be an archive of past splendor of life on Earth.
I'm not sure how keeping track of future changes would be trivial. How do you keep track of physiological changes in 50000 insect species over the whole globe ?
I would say that having the DMCA in place makes these companies feel more empowered to enact copy protection than before the DMCA.
Maybe. But it would have been enacted in any case.
Additionally they will be using the DMCA and not standard copyright law to prossecute circumventions.
Although I agree with this, the Slashdot story is about effect of DMCA so far. And with respect to Joe Sixpack, my answer still remains: none
Note that I too, like the hordes on Slashdot, am against the DMCA. Just that the public hasn't really been affected so far. Until Step 4 in your post starts to effectively be implemented, nothing substantial will change.
All this will provide is a snapshot of the Earth's diverse species at a certain time, if successful.
How do they propose to go into the deep reaches of the Amazon basin or into northern Canada/Siberia ?
What about the minor localized species that exist now, but will be extinct in 20 years ? How do they plan to keep track of E V E R Y species and their current status ?
I see this as an idealistic endavour but not feasible.
It would be better to document the species that have more or less a direct impact on human living conditions and track them in detail. But I suppose that's already been done to a good extent.
For instance copy protection is being pushed pretty heavily now.
The example you describe hasn't anything to do with the DMCA as such. It's a company trying to introduce copy-protection. By and large, that's separate from the DMCA. What is illegal now is trying to circumvent this protection. And your Dad isn't going to get caught or stopped if he tries to get some shareware utility to rip the CD properly. So, he isn't affected by the DMCA, just the copy-protection. That copy-protection exists primarily due to the popularity of P2P file-sharing and not due to the DMCA backing it.
Well, the DMCA so far hasn't made a discernible difference in everyday life.
Sure, the FatWallet fiasco demonstrates the "inaneness" of the law but it hasn't affected Joe Sixpack yet.
It does affect those who directly fall in the face or corporations which generally tend to continue generating revenue from existing products instead of adapting/improving them*
*Note that this is not a slam against all these corporations. R&D is a bitch.
Just because Lexmark chose a bad business model
And how exactly did they "choose" this model ?
Oh, and BTW what 'model' ?
Are you suggesting they raise their prices on printers ? or lower their prices on cartridges ?
I don't think any company would want to do the former. As for the latter, they probably have overheads (like research) that the cheap 3rd-party manufacturers don't have.
Seriously, this is stupid.
Let me speculate here. I suppose Lexmark probably doesn't derive as much of its profit from the printers themselves as from the sales of cartridges, since depending on usage, you'll have to replace catridge more often than the printer. Consequently, the ability to use 3rd-party cartridges cuts into that revenue stream.
Best thing would be to work out an agreement where Lexmark allows anyone's cartridge to be used and Lexmark gets some licensing fees or whatever.
Now I can't legally print the memo on my Lexmark to warn employees to not use 3rd-party cartridges.
Except that the President is a politician foremost.
You would think that after all his political experience, he would have a stronger foundation as an orator, especially since he's the Commander-in-Chief.
" Stroustrup's 3rd edition is a sure cure for insomnia."
Maybe it should be renamed from C++ to C(leep)++
"You're right that "there's nothing like holding and reading a real book by the bedside or on the go", but you cant grep a dead tree, can you? :)"
That would indeed be most useful for technical and reference books. But somehow I don't tend to read those by the bedside.
"...and after a preset number of days, the eBook will lock out the current reader so another patron can check it out."
in conjunction with
"...including the ability to download books onto PCs and PDAs and create a portable eBook that can be read even when patrons are offline."
I'm assuming that the portable eBook created will be encoded with a 'lock' date.
I think it will work on a modest scale. It will be broken and pirated quickly.
But frankly, there's nothing like holding and reading a real book by the bedside or on the go.
ePaper, where are you ?
"So what was the question? :)"
Maybe this sentence in the writeup -
I'm curious as to why a large fee is the only option.
A rhetorical question, if you ask me.