you accept this "knock" which lets him browse your songs, and you can browse his as well. you swap a couple of songs and move along, perhaps w/o knowing who you just exchanged songs with.
Then you play one of the MP3s which you got off his ipod, which exploits a buffer overrun in the ipod's MP3 codec. When the bus passes by a WiFi hotspot the exploit's embedded P2P server connects to thousands of users worldwide. As you step off the bus, you get a "knock" on the back of the head from the RIAA's jack-booted shock troops who arrest you for being a terrorist.
If you _intentionally_ replicate any copyrighted work in sufficient substance, this is per se violation of copyright. It does not require a xerox machine or a disk drive.
Yes, I agree, that is the letter of the law. I do not know the success rate of how this works in practice. I would be curious to know, and that's why I want to ask a lawyer.
If you happen to produce something similar (functionally), because you are experienced and good at what you do, it is NOT a violation of copyright.
Right, that's what I was trying to get across. Most likely, the code isn't even going to be close to what the person did before (at least if I follow my own experience).
You later hinted at that, but your story as you began was strong, emphasizing intentional replication. Perhaps you meant replication of function and not replication of the _code_? But you said, to wit: "...replicate code you wrote before from memory alone..."
Ahhh, I see the confusion here. I did not actually write that particular quote. LostCluster did. I went on the assumption that he did not mean it literally. I assumed he meant that the person did not have photographic memory and had to recreate the code.
Intentional replication of _code_ is a violation of copyright. Later replication of functionality, even if quite intentional, is perfectly fine as long as no other legal strictures apply.
Yes, that's what I'm getting at.
If you were to assert that it would be pretty hard for someone to actually replicate very much code, even on purpose, from memory, I'd generally agree. It would, however, still be actionable if it ever occurred.
Yes, that would definitely be an issue if it could be proved to a judge or jury that the code was similar enough to be copyright infringement.
Hope this helps.
Oh, yeah, definitely. Thanks.
Sorry for letting loose on you earlier, I was cranky....
That's quite alright, I'm not one of those people who equate disagreement with hostility.
People who do this are so damn annoying, because they never check if the domain actually exists. I was at the receiving end of all the junk mail being sent by sites with free signups, because idiots kept using my address, assuming that it was unused. I finally had to give up the address, because of all the crap mail. Not a big thing, but really annoying.
If you're going to use a fake e-mail address, at least do other people the common courtesy of using "example.com" as the address. That site is guaranteed to never be used by anyone.
How do the scientists determine this in a way using the scientific method?
How theories evolve:
Observe how ice accumulates.
Take core sample.
Compare with observations.
Count accumlated ice.
Craft beautiful research paper about the observations taken at the lake using careful measuments and research dating back almost 100 years culminating in theory that Lake Vostok is probably beneath about 500,000 years worth of ice give or take + or - 5%.
Get forced to summerize paper to PR.
Read spin in paper, "Lake untouched for 500,000 years!"
Cry.
"???" and "Profit!" are left as an exercise for the reader.
Can you elaborate? Why did you consult the lawyer? Do you have photographic memory? Were you changing companies? What laws and cases did he quote to you? Can you give me his number? I'd like to consult with him.
I've worked for two competing companies at different times, and I've never had any issues. I've talked with the laywers at GTE duing my exit interview, and this never came up.
Problem with uranium is that it's percentage in the mined ore is very low (IIRC ca. 1%). The rest of the ore exists for a much higher percentage (IIRC ca.10%) of material that is at least as radioactive as uranium, has about the same or longer halftime (some are much more radioactive but have a shorter halftime), but is unusable for reactors. ALL this material is brought up, the uranium is severed from it and the rest is dumped, in most cases above ground, free to be blown everywhere, leak into your groundwater and do other funny things no-one in the nuclear industry wants you to know about.
I'm not going to dispute that one either. Here's another fun one for you: Factories that manufacture antiperspirants tend to produce different minerals suspended in water as a waste product which they dump into streams and rivers. Then the minerals wash up on the banks of these rivers and dry out. The trouble is that some of this stuff is slightly radioactive, and now there's tons of it laying around on the banks of rivers and streams. You won't hear about this one on the news either.
POOF! There goes another argument!
I don't understand why it's okay for a coal plant to produce radioactivity, though.
Okay, I RTFA you linked to. Did it occur to you that it ONLY talks about the energy-generating phase (the relative clean part of the cycle) and not a word about the mining, enrichment, waste etc.?
The point was to show that coal firing produces radioactive waste.
BTW, the amount of energy used to produce uranium fuel takes about 90% of a reactor's lifetime to win back, so effective energy gain is not really big. And CO2? Same story: in the pre-energy-generating phase is at least as much CO2 released as a coal plant would have for the same amount of energy.
Can you provide a news story or other corroborating evidence of your '40 miles' claim?
No, I can't. This was the words of the guy giving the us tour. I believed he was telling the truth, but maybe he got the numbers wrong, or maybe I heard the numbers wrong.
My question is how the piece got out of the (presumably very strong) bunker, still retaining that much energy.
My understanding was that it was a test of the system, and they reinforced it later.
It's _not_ from scratch if you produce it from memory.
He'd seen it before, he wasn't the copyright owner, he reproduced it, he infringed copyright. It's black and white.
If this were the case, companies would be able to sue anyone who goes to work for a competitor. "You coded up that mutex exactly the same way on our system."
You have no legal right to copy your former employer's code completely from memory,
If you were able to, from memory, reconstruct code exactly the way it was coded on the system in question, yes. I will admit that they probably have you there when they examine the new code and their old code.
However, very few people have eidetic memory. When you type in the code the second time, it is not going to be the same. Furthermore, there are probably other people working on the project, and those people are adding their code into the mix. Finally, it's going to take you time to type the code in, integrate it, and debug it. By this time, the competitive advantage of suing you has been lost. Subsequently, the evidence would never stand up in court.
and if you do this, and admit it in court, you may as well hand over all of your material possessions now, along with a significant garnishment of your future wages.
You can truthfully say in court that you wrote similar code. They can't prove that you copied anything. They already know you have the expertise to write the code, and it's not illegal to work for a competitor.
You have consulted neither the law nor an attorney on this subject, and it shows.
Have you? What did your lawyer say? Show me one case where a company sucessfully sued a former employee for typing in code from memory.
You were talking about doing it from memory. Don't change your story.
I didn't. Show me some way to get code from your head into a computer without typing it. They don't make mount points for your brain. You're starting over from scratch.
The power storage problem might be overcome using ultracapacitors. You can get 2600 farad capacitors (not ufd, farads) at 2.5V today, and you can take current out fast. Auto engines can be started with six of these things, weighing a total of about 3Kg. With a big budget, a laser launch system could have enough energy storage to do the job.
Actually, there's an easier way. I had a chance to tour the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab when they were still doing experiments with their big tokamak.
One of the things about doing plasma physics (i.e. attempting neclear fusion) is that you need an absolutely ginormous amount of energy to get the experiment started. What's more is that pulling all this energy off of the power grid at once and then dropping the load causes some, shall we say, "slight instabilites", with the power grid.
So, the way you get enough power is to slowly bleed power off of the grid and store it somewhere so that you can use it all at once at a later time. The way that they did this at the PPPL is with huge concrete discs encased in concrete bunkers that gradually spun up as more energy was applied. When enough energy was stored kinetically, they'd disconnect from the grid and apply the brakes to the discs to generate electricity for the experiment. At least this way, NJ was never blacked out, because of an experiment.
The amount of energy these things can store is amazing. One time, one of the discs broke. Most of the pieces embedded themselves in the bunkers, but one piece bounced around and flew out. The piece landed 40 miles away.
You're confusing "from memory" with "from scratch".
No, I'm not. What I said was that the, "person effectively rewrote it from scratch". Since he didn't bring a electronic or print copy of the source code with him, he still had to type it in, integrate it, and debug it. In other words, he started with zero files and started typing.
This utterly incorrect in any State of the United States, and probably in most first world countries.
Maybe if there was a patented algorithm in it. Otherwise, no it's not. The person effectively rewrote it from scratch, so it would never stand up in court. Furthermore, it would take time to rewrite the code, and by that time, the other company would have the advantage of time. Companies usually have non-compete clauses in their employee contract for this reason. They know that they can't prevent you from going somewhere else, and duplicating what you did for them, so they try to prevent you from working for a competitor for a year.
Slashdot Mirror
Then you play one of the MP3s which you got off his ipod, which exploits a buffer overrun in the ipod's MP3 codec. When the bus passes by a WiFi hotspot the exploit's embedded P2P server connects to thousands of users worldwide. As you step off the bus, you get a "knock" on the back of the head from the RIAA's jack-booted shock troops who arrest you for being a terrorist.
But it's fucking cool!
Yes, I agree, that is the letter of the law. I do not know the success rate of how this works in practice. I would be curious to know, and that's why I want to ask a lawyer.
If you happen to produce something similar (functionally), because you are experienced and good at what you do, it is NOT a violation of copyright.
Right, that's what I was trying to get across. Most likely, the code isn't even going to be close to what the person did before (at least if I follow my own experience).
You later hinted at that, but your story as you began was strong, emphasizing intentional replication. Perhaps you meant replication of function and not replication of the _code_? But you said, to wit: "...replicate code you wrote before from memory alone..."
Ahhh, I see the confusion here. I did not actually write that particular quote. LostCluster did. I went on the assumption that he did not mean it literally. I assumed he meant that the person did not have photographic memory and had to recreate the code.
Intentional replication of _code_ is a violation of copyright. Later replication of functionality, even if quite intentional, is perfectly fine as long as no other legal strictures apply.
Yes, that's what I'm getting at.
If you were to assert that it would be pretty hard for someone to actually replicate very much code, even on purpose, from memory, I'd generally agree. It would, however, still be actionable if it ever occurred.
Yes, that would definitely be an issue if it could be proved to a judge or jury that the code was similar enough to be copyright infringement.
Hope this helps.
Oh, yeah, definitely. Thanks.
Sorry for letting loose on you earlier, I was cranky....
That's quite alright, I'm not one of those people who equate disagreement with hostility.
When we find you, we will KICK YOUR ASS!!!!!
Sincerely,
If you're going to use a fake e-mail address, at least do other people the common courtesy of using "example.com" as the address. That site is guaranteed to never be used by anyone.
The flash animation at the site said that the water in the lake gets replaced every 13,300 years.
How theories evolve:
"???" and "Profit!" are left as an exercise for the reader.
Can you elaborate? Why did you consult the lawyer? Do you have photographic memory? Were you changing companies? What laws and cases did he quote to you? Can you give me his number? I'd like to consult with him.
I've worked for two competing companies at different times, and I've never had any issues. I've talked with the laywers at GTE duing my exit interview, and this never came up.
I'm not going to dispute that one either. Here's another fun one for you: Factories that manufacture antiperspirants tend to produce different minerals suspended in water as a waste product which they dump into streams and rivers. Then the minerals wash up on the banks of these rivers and dry out. The trouble is that some of this stuff is slightly radioactive, and now there's tons of it laying around on the banks of rivers and streams. You won't hear about this one on the news either.
POOF! There goes another argument!
I don't understand why it's okay for a coal plant to produce radioactivity, though.
The point was to show that coal firing produces radioactive waste.
BTW, the amount of energy used to produce uranium fuel takes about 90% of a reactor's lifetime to win back, so effective energy gain is not really big. And CO2? Same story: in the pre-energy-generating phase is at least as much CO2 released as a coal plant would have for the same amount of energy.
Can you point us at a DOE study about this?
No, I can't. This was the words of the guy giving the us tour. I believed he was telling the truth, but maybe he got the numbers wrong, or maybe I heard the numbers wrong.
My question is how the piece got out of the (presumably very strong) bunker, still retaining that much energy.
My understanding was that it was a test of the system, and they reinforced it later.
As are you. What did your lawyer say? Have you ever been sued for working for a competitor?
If this were the case, companies would be able to sue anyone who goes to work for a competitor. "You coded up that mutex exactly the same way on our system."
If you were able to, from memory, reconstruct code exactly the way it was coded on the system in question, yes. I will admit that they probably have you there when they examine the new code and their old code.
However, very few people have eidetic memory. When you type in the code the second time, it is not going to be the same. Furthermore, there are probably other people working on the project, and those people are adding their code into the mix. Finally, it's going to take you time to type the code in, integrate it, and debug it. By this time, the competitive advantage of suing you has been lost. Subsequently, the evidence would never stand up in court.
and if you do this, and admit it in court, you may as well hand over all of your material possessions now, along with a significant garnishment of your future wages.
You can truthfully say in court that you wrote similar code. They can't prove that you copied anything. They already know you have the expertise to write the code, and it's not illegal to work for a competitor.
You have consulted neither the law nor an attorney on this subject, and it shows.
Have you? What did your lawyer say? Show me one case where a company sucessfully sued a former employee for typing in code from memory.
You were talking about doing it from memory. Don't change your story.
I didn't. Show me some way to get code from your head into a computer without typing it. They don't make mount points for your brain. You're starting over from scratch.
MACSYMA predates both of these.
Actually, there's an easier way. I had a chance to tour the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab when they were still doing experiments with their big tokamak.
One of the things about doing plasma physics (i.e. attempting neclear fusion) is that you need an absolutely ginormous amount of energy to get the experiment started. What's more is that pulling all this energy off of the power grid at once and then dropping the load causes some, shall we say, "slight instabilites", with the power grid.
So, the way you get enough power is to slowly bleed power off of the grid and store it somewhere so that you can use it all at once at a later time. The way that they did this at the PPPL is with huge concrete discs encased in concrete bunkers that gradually spun up as more energy was applied. When enough energy was stored kinetically, they'd disconnect from the grid and apply the brakes to the discs to generate electricity for the experiment. At least this way, NJ was never blacked out, because of an experiment.
The amount of energy these things can store is amazing. One time, one of the discs broke. Most of the pieces embedded themselves in the bunkers, but one piece bounced around and flew out. The piece landed 40 miles away.
Um, dude, there's something you need to know...
Oh. Nevermind...
No, I'm not. What I said was that the, "person effectively rewrote it from scratch". Since he didn't bring a electronic or print copy of the source code with him, he still had to type it in, integrate it, and debug it. In other words, he started with zero files and started typing.
You mean radioactivity? Yeah, because we know coal power doesn't produce any of that. Oh wait, it does.
Ha Hah!
But Neo is The One!
Jeez, dood, this article was about Entropy... ;)
Maybe if there was a patented algorithm in it. Otherwise, no it's not. The person effectively rewrote it from scratch, so it would never stand up in court. Furthermore, it would take time to rewrite the code, and by that time, the other company would have the advantage of time. Companies usually have non-compete clauses in their employee contract for this reason. They know that they can't prevent you from going somewhere else, and duplicating what you did for them, so they try to prevent you from working for a competitor for a year.
I'll wait until the Linux support is better.
I tried this, and my car overheated.