This is a wrong analogy. I can illustrate this with one just as bad.;) Let's say you leave a parked car without immobiliser and 1000$ lock outside - just with the simple lock that came preinstalled, with full knowledge that one of the millions of people who live in the same city might decide to break into your car (if not in one of thousands of other poorly protected cars) and run someone over or use the car for bank robbery. If that happens, do you think you are partially responsible for whatever happens?
I certainly don't think so.:) We can conclude that when you leave something, which might potentially be used for something illegal, your normal reaction to that should range from "Yeah. So what?" to "Oh! My bad!" I believe we can successfully argue that for leaving unprotected computer on the Net it should be closer to the former.
In this case, the hotel is using a trademark of OCLC, and it is just as clear-cut as if you were to start selling Twinkies and Ding-Dongs.
Yes, it's completely clear-cut. The hotel is totally within their rights to call the system by its name. If they sell Smirnoff vodka in their bar, they can call it "Smirnoff". If they have CNN showing on a TV in the hall they can call it "CNN". If they have XBoxes in rooms, they can call them "XBoxes". And if they happen to use DDC for classification, they have the right to clearly say that. They do not claim their own hotel is DDC-hotel. They just say, in very plain language, that for every major category in DDC there is a floor in the hotel and for every secondary one there is a room. If the Library hotel used a different system and called it DDC, I could see the merit in this case, but they clearly use the correct DDC and so "Dewey Decimal System" the only correct way to call it.
It must have been at least five times higher (600bps) in order to get the 30Gb they mention in the articles. And since it probably started transmitting lots of valuable info only halfway into the mission, it might have been as high as 1200bps on average, which means something like 2400bps (my first modem!) or even higher occasionally.
Initially I read the Slashdot comments only and was under the impression that the DDC's lawsuit may have some merit. But after visiting the hotel's site I was completely fucking outraged at the American IP legal climate...
Here is what I found. The hotel uses something which very much resembles the original DDC classification, which is in public domain. As the site states, "Each of the ten guestroom floors of the Library is dedicated to one of the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System: Social Sciences, Literature, Languages, History, Math & Science, General Knowledge, Technology, Philosophy, The Arts and Religion. Each of the sixty exquisitely appointed accommodations have been individually adorned with a collection of art and books relevant to one distinctive topic within the category of floor it belongs to.".
It's simply fucking insane that DDC is suing the hotel for that. I mean, WTF?! They claim trademark infridgement? They use the basic classification which is probably the same as original one, created 130 years ago and is now in public domain. If they use it, they are completely within their rights to call it "Dewey Decimal System" because that's what it is. And it's not like the hotel is in any competition with DDC. Nor any customers will be confused that the hotel is somehow affiliated with DDC. Stupid lawsuit and the whole concept of IP should be trashed. It's long overdue.
The good thing about cataloguing and searching books is that they are relatively well structured. You can't really talk about abstracts for web-pages, can you?:) Web-pages vary from books to news articles, from thumbnail galleries to MP3 linklists, from online-shop sections to net-art, from forum messages to pop-up ads. Catalogues won't work very well for 100% of pages, until we have somewhat capable AI, that's why we have to rely on full-text search. With books you can have the best of both worlds - search tools that would automatically take into account the context of your full-text search and also provide you text snippets, tables of contents and abstracts when you browse the catalogue.
Stealth IP is bad, but the problem is bigger. No matter what anyone says, two-letter combinations should not "belong" to anyone. Even if ISO said from the very beginning "we own" these, they should still be immediately anally raped and then shot. Look, country codes are not, cannot be and should not be "property", in whatever sense you ascribe to this word. ISO has no right to claim that they own these codes - neither now, nor when they first compiled the list.
The question is whether there is any way those aminoacids could attain a more complex form of internal organisation, or if they remain stuck at that basic level.
You say that there are some good reasons for mass mailings and yet you suggest we eliminate the possibility to do them by technical means. This smells awfully like DRM. I don't want to lose the possibility to send anonymous e-mails when I really need it. I don't want the possibility to mass-mail completely eliminated either. Both things are some of the freedoms that we currently enjoy. To remove them just in order to solve the spam problem is unacceptable to me.
A better analogy would be not seat belt laws, but murder laws. Buying and using a gun is legal, but killing someone is usually (but not always) not. Instead of crafting a technological solution that would prevent use of guns, we accept the risks, but reserve the right to punish the wrongdoers. That's precisely what we need to do with spam, not to completely cripple e-mail (which is also impossible to do on such a large scale).
The point is that the kids should not have had access to that game.
The point is that kids killed someone and should serve a term in jail, where they must be taught the lessons the parents didn't teach them. The fact that they played a violent game has little relevance. Yes, it might have influenced them, but the reponsiblity can't be shifted this way. If you eat bad airline food, become angry and kill someone, should we blame the airline? No, we shouldn't, even if there is a clear link between two events, simply because people have free will and should be responsible for what they do.
You may be joking, but this is actually a great idea. I am sure, a lot of people would be glad to have a company provide them with a balanced diet, taking care of all related issues. No more worrying about your weight or about losing it, just eat in McDonalds 3 times every day.
In some countries it's neither. In Russia we use one (10^0), thousand (10^3), million (10^6), milliard (10^9, like in the UK), trillion (10^12, like in the US).
Actually sensational journalists are right. Look, do you think that a train derailing and killing a hundred people should be reported? OK, I thought so. Asteroid marked 1 on Torino scale has a 1 in a million chance to collide with Earth and to destroy a continent, killing 2 billion people in the process. The expected value of damage to the humankind is thus a couple billion dollars and 2 thousand people. Do you still think this should not be reported? Do you still think this is not dangerous and scary?
To be even more exact: TOroidalnaya KAmera s MAgnitnimi Katushkami [toroidal] [chamber] [with magentic coils]. And actually my first variant "TOroidal KAmera with MAgnetic field" might be correct. One version is that originaly it was called TOKAMAG, but G was changed into K to avoid associations with magic.
I haven't read the white paper, but if this technology is similar to other e-ink ones, then it's impossible to merge two frames. The pixels can only show one colour at a time and so when you switch to a new frame, the old one have to disappear. So I believe the response time must be a non-issue.
I dunno, but at Price.Ru you can find plenty of PCs for $200+ and plenty of monitors for $100+. That's $300-350 for a new off-the-shelf computer and you don't even need a new name for that. There surely must be a way to make a functional computer for $200. That would be worth mentioning, not a $400 low-end PC.
I would say (if we start from a blank page) it's much more reasonable to pay artists approximately for the period it takes them to create the next product. And unless you spend decades creating a monumental masterpiece, like LOTR, you don't deserve being paid for 50+ years. As your example with fixing cars shows, that just doesn't make any economic sense. So in my opinion, 50 years is more than fair, actually it's unfair to the public, because public domain loses too much.
In some countries (e.g. in Russia) copyright is non-transferrable. You can sell some of the rights, but copyright (author's rights) belongs to you until the work passes into public domain.
Russia has other cool things about copyrights. For example, all films older than 30 years are already in the public domain. Want a 100% legal 300Gb HDD filled with "The Best of Hollywood (1900-1970)" for the price of HDD + 1$/movie? Drop me a note.:) Want to set up a 10$/month subscription server in Russia serving full DVD-quality films to users? Go ahead - it's 100% legal and beneficial to the society as a bonus. Want to make a music video using Disney's Bambi or Snowwhite? No problem and the best thing you don't have to pay a penny to Disney.:)
SBC looks like a business with decent long-term prospects. I don't think its top-managers and shareholders very much appreciate another speculation opportunity. Long-term prospects probably concern them more. Another facet of the publicity may seem more important - attracting more customers with a strong stance on privacy, but it will backfire terribly if SBC loses the case. All in all, it seems to me that SBC has a real concern about the customers and is simply dedicated enough to do everything within their reach to protect them.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, not all privacy has the same importance. If some of SBC clients are in danger, protecting their info is more important than not placing home information as ARIN's requirement for getting a static IP. And note that they forwarded their customer's concerns to ARIN and that requirement seems to be shot down. In that case SBC was also concerned about retaining customers and avoiding bad PR - companies won't protect your privacy just because you have a right to it, they need an additional stimulus - the risk of losing existing or potential clients. The good thing about SBC is that they recognise that privacy is important for their clients and attempt to provide it to them.
They might be able to do that, especially if they do not remove such feature from the system, but simply do not add it. Such as write a new access control system from scratch that would do one and only one thing - check the MAC address (or username/password) and allow Internet access.
The company that provides Internet access to all employees while they are at work, doesn't have to generate any Internet-access logs. It just runs a router/proxy that accepts all connections (subject to firewall rules) on one interface and redirects them to another interface.
That's very unlikely, but it is actually possible that one of the subpoenaed users is one of the top-managers.:) Say, privacy officer or the director of legal affairs.:) Not that there is anything wrong about that.
I find it annoying when people spell words as they hear them. Wich works in german, but not at all in english. Especially if you have a thick american accent.
Especially when the word in question is Russian. The term is a contraction of "TOroidal KAmera with MAgnetic field". "Kamera" is Russian for "chamber".
"CNN Politics, CNN Music, CNN Sports" is not diversity. It's diversification. People with the most resources should not be allowed to develop media, because... well, I though it's obvious. Look at Italy if you don't understand it.
Instead, even from purely capitalistic viewpoint, people who know how to maintain the highest ROI should be allowed to develop media. That doesn't require total concentration in the industry, since there are no real reasons for economy of scale.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a wrong analogy. I can illustrate this with one just as bad. ;) Let's say you leave a parked car without immobiliser and 1000$ lock outside - just with the simple lock that came preinstalled, with full knowledge that one of the millions of people who live in the same city might decide to break into your car (if not in one of thousands of other poorly protected cars) and run someone over or use the car for bank robbery. If that happens, do you think you are partially responsible for whatever happens?
:) We can conclude that when you leave something, which might potentially be used for something illegal, your normal reaction to that should range from "Yeah. So what?" to "Oh! My bad!" I believe we can successfully argue that for leaving unprotected computer on the Net it should be closer to the former.
I certainly don't think so.
In this case, the hotel is using a trademark of OCLC, and it is just as clear-cut as if you were to start selling Twinkies and Ding-Dongs.
Yes, it's completely clear-cut. The hotel is totally within their rights to call the system by its name. If they sell Smirnoff vodka in their bar, they can call it "Smirnoff". If they have CNN showing on a TV in the hall they can call it "CNN". If they have XBoxes in rooms, they can call them "XBoxes". And if they happen to use DDC for classification, they have the right to clearly say that. They do not claim their own hotel is DDC-hotel. They just say, in very plain language, that for every major category in DDC there is a floor in the hotel and for every secondary one there is a room. If the Library hotel used a different system and called it DDC, I could see the merit in this case, but they clearly use the correct DDC and so "Dewey Decimal System" the only correct way to call it.
It must have been at least five times higher (600bps) in order to get the 30Gb they mention in the articles. And since it probably started transmitting lots of valuable info only halfway into the mission, it might have been as high as 1200bps on average, which means something like 2400bps (my first modem!) or even higher occasionally.
Initially I read the Slashdot comments only and was under the impression that the DDC's lawsuit may have some merit. But after visiting the hotel's site I was completely fucking outraged at the American IP legal climate...
Here is what I found. The hotel uses something which very much resembles the original DDC classification, which is in public domain. As the site states, "Each of the ten guestroom floors of the Library is dedicated to one of the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System: Social Sciences, Literature, Languages, History, Math & Science, General Knowledge, Technology, Philosophy, The Arts and Religion. Each of the sixty exquisitely appointed accommodations have been individually adorned with a collection of art and books relevant to one distinctive topic within the category of floor it belongs to.".
It's simply fucking insane that DDC is suing the hotel for that. I mean, WTF?! They claim trademark infridgement? They use the basic classification which is probably the same as original one, created 130 years ago and is now in public domain. If they use it, they are completely within their rights to call it "Dewey Decimal System" because that's what it is. And it's not like the hotel is in any competition with DDC. Nor any customers will be confused that the hotel is somehow affiliated with DDC. Stupid lawsuit and the whole concept of IP should be trashed. It's long overdue.
The good thing about cataloguing and searching books is that they are relatively well structured. You can't really talk about abstracts for web-pages, can you? :) Web-pages vary from books to news articles, from thumbnail galleries to MP3 linklists, from online-shop sections to net-art, from forum messages to pop-up ads. Catalogues won't work very well for 100% of pages, until we have somewhat capable AI, that's why we have to rely on full-text search. With books you can have the best of both worlds - search tools that would automatically take into account the context of your full-text search and also provide you text snippets, tables of contents and abstracts when you browse the catalogue.
Stealth IP is bad, but the problem is bigger. No matter what anyone says, two-letter combinations should not "belong" to anyone. Even if ISO said from the very beginning "we own" these, they should still be immediately anally raped and then shot. Look, country codes are not, cannot be and should not be "property", in whatever sense you ascribe to this word. ISO has no right to claim that they own these codes - neither now, nor when they first compiled the list.
The question is whether there is any way those aminoacids could attain a more complex form of internal organisation, or if they remain stuck at that basic level.
You say that there are some good reasons for mass mailings and yet you suggest we eliminate the possibility to do them by technical means. This smells awfully like DRM. I don't want to lose the possibility to send anonymous e-mails when I really need it. I don't want the possibility to mass-mail completely eliminated either. Both things are some of the freedoms that we currently enjoy. To remove them just in order to solve the spam problem is unacceptable to me.
A better analogy would be not seat belt laws, but murder laws. Buying and using a gun is legal, but killing someone is usually (but not always) not. Instead of crafting a technological solution that would prevent use of guns, we accept the risks, but reserve the right to punish the wrongdoers. That's precisely what we need to do with spam, not to completely cripple e-mail (which is also impossible to do on such a large scale).
The point is that the kids should not have had access to that game.
The point is that kids killed someone and should serve a term in jail, where they must be taught the lessons the parents didn't teach them. The fact that they played a violent game has little relevance. Yes, it might have influenced them, but the reponsiblity can't be shifted this way. If you eat bad airline food, become angry and kill someone, should we blame the airline? No, we shouldn't, even if there is a clear link between two events, simply because people have free will and should be responsible for what they do.
McDonald's will decide your every dietary intake.
You may be joking, but this is actually a great idea. I am sure, a lot of people would be glad to have a company provide them with a balanced diet, taking care of all related issues. No more worrying about your weight or about losing it, just eat in McDonalds 3 times every day.
In some countries it's neither. In Russia we use one (10^0), thousand (10^3), million (10^6), milliard (10^9, like in the UK), trillion (10^12, like in the US).
Clock speeds seem to be rounded usually. I don't think Intel will sell P4 3.82GHz, they will probably call them 3.8GHz.
Actually sensational journalists are right. Look, do you think that a train derailing and killing a hundred people should be reported? OK, I thought so. Asteroid marked 1 on Torino scale has a 1 in a million chance to collide with Earth and to destroy a continent, killing 2 billion people in the process. The expected value of damage to the humankind is thus a couple billion dollars and 2 thousand people. Do you still think this should not be reported? Do you still think this is not dangerous and scary?
To be even more exact: TOroidalnaya KAmera s MAgnitnimi Katushkami [toroidal] [chamber] [with magentic coils]. And actually my first variant "TOroidal KAmera with MAgnetic field" might be correct. One version is that originaly it was called TOKAMAG, but G was changed into K to avoid associations with magic.
I haven't read the white paper, but if this technology is similar to other e-ink ones, then it's impossible to merge two frames. The pixels can only show one colour at a time and so when you switch to a new frame, the old one have to disappear. So I believe the response time must be a non-issue.
I dunno, but at Price.Ru you can find plenty of PCs for $200+ and plenty of monitors for $100+. That's $300-350 for a new off-the-shelf computer and you don't even need a new name for that. There surely must be a way to make a functional computer for $200. That would be worth mentioning, not a $400 low-end PC.
I would say (if we start from a blank page) it's much more reasonable to pay artists approximately for the period it takes them to create the next product. And unless you spend decades creating a monumental masterpiece, like LOTR, you don't deserve being paid for 50+ years. As your example with fixing cars shows, that just doesn't make any economic sense. So in my opinion, 50 years is more than fair, actually it's unfair to the public, because public domain loses too much.
In some countries (e.g. in Russia) copyright is non-transferrable. You can sell some of the rights, but copyright (author's rights) belongs to you until the work passes into public domain.
:) Want to set up a 10$/month subscription server in Russia serving full DVD-quality films to users? Go ahead - it's 100% legal and beneficial to the society as a bonus. Want to make a music video using Disney's Bambi or Snowwhite? No problem and the best thing you don't have to pay a penny to Disney. :)
Russia has other cool things about copyrights. For example, all films older than 30 years are already in the public domain. Want a 100% legal 300Gb HDD filled with "The Best of Hollywood (1900-1970)" for the price of HDD + 1$/movie? Drop me a note.
SBC looks like a business with decent long-term prospects. I don't think its top-managers and shareholders very much appreciate another speculation opportunity. Long-term prospects probably concern them more. Another facet of the publicity may seem more important - attracting more customers with a strong stance on privacy, but it will backfire terribly if SBC loses the case. All in all, it seems to me that SBC has a real concern about the customers and is simply dedicated enough to do everything within their reach to protect them.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, not all privacy has the same importance. If some of SBC clients are in danger, protecting their info is more important than not placing home information as ARIN's requirement for getting a static IP. And note that they forwarded their customer's concerns to ARIN and that requirement seems to be shot down. In that case SBC was also concerned about retaining customers and avoiding bad PR - companies won't protect your privacy just because you have a right to it, they need an additional stimulus - the risk of losing existing or potential clients. The good thing about SBC is that they recognise that privacy is important for their clients and attempt to provide it to them.
They might be able to do that, especially if they do not remove such feature from the system, but simply do not add it. Such as write a new access control system from scratch that would do one and only one thing - check the MAC address (or username/password) and allow Internet access.
The company that provides Internet access to all employees while they are at work, doesn't have to generate any Internet-access logs. It just runs a router/proxy that accepts all connections (subject to firewall rules) on one interface and redirects them to another interface.
That's very unlikely, but it is actually possible that one of the subpoenaed users is one of the top-managers. :) Say, privacy officer or the director of legal affairs. :) Not that there is anything wrong about that.
I find it annoying when people spell words as they hear them. Wich works in german, but not at all in english. Especially if you have a thick american accent.
Especially when the word in question is Russian. The term is a contraction of "TOroidal KAmera with MAgnetic field". "Kamera" is Russian for "chamber".
"CNN Politics, CNN Music, CNN Sports" is not diversity. It's diversification. People with the most resources should not be allowed to develop media, because... well, I though it's obvious. Look at Italy if you don't understand it.
Instead, even from purely capitalistic viewpoint, people who know how to maintain the highest ROI should be allowed to develop media. That doesn't require total concentration in the industry, since there are no real reasons for economy of scale.
There is a Wired article: Look Ma, No Projection Screen with some details about two companies and an interesting photo.