I'm surprised that the blogger has given in so easily. I understand that he can't afford a lot of legal expenses, but my understanding is that at this point all he needs to do is file a counter-notification with his ISP certifying that to the best of his knowledge his use of copyrighted material falls under Fair Use, which it almost certainly does. Here's a how-to. This puts the ball back in ABC/Disney's court and doesn't require a lawyer at all.
Re:So let the flame wars begin!
on
The Birth of vi
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
As someone who has been a touch typist for 38 years and a 25=year Unix person, I too find it extremely difficult to accept the claim that the keyboard is necessarily slower than the mouse. That just contradicts my experience. I remember the first time I tried to use a graphical editor - Bravo - the Xerox predecessor to MS Word. It was unbearable. Obviously you didn't need to learn anything by way of commands to do simple editing - just move the mouse and type something to insert, backspace or whatever it was to delete - but I found positioning the mouse precisely to be extremely painful. And this wasn't just due to lack of familiarity with the mouse. In the interim I've used the mouse extensively for some purposes, but I will find it slow and painful to edit documents by positioning the mouse.
I usually use Emacs, but occasionally I use Vim, and sometimes I even use ed. I use OpenOffice Writer occasionally for some special purpose, such as creating a sign or poster with really large type or when it is more convenient to use exotic writing systems than it is in TeX. But I don't use it routinely in part because I don't like having to position the mouse. (Another reason is that it seems to start up even more slowly for me than for other people who complain about its slowness. I don't know why that is. It takes FOREVER.)
Before believing in this $50 million worth of research, I would want to know a lot more about what they tested, who, and how. The stated results wouldn't surprise me if the subjects were indifferent typists without much experience with computers or with the software they were using. I would be very surprised if they were true of experienced users. Without the details of the studies, claims like this are simply uninterpretable.
Anybody have a link to the actual studies?
Why on earth would you want to be forced to treat
arrays of different sizes differently? The fact that
in standard Pascal arrays of different sizes were of
different types, which is presumably what you want, is well known
to have made standard Pascal unusable. That is one lesson
I thought we learned a long time ago. Or do you mean
something different?
Yes, if you want to put it that way. Nobody has a monopoly on making small music players. Anyone who wants to is entitled to take that idea and run with it. If they want to use patented features in their hardware they need a license. Similarly, if they want to use somebody else's software they need a license from the copyright owner. If they can design the hardware without infringing any patents and write their software from scratch, they are beholden to no one. The only other thing they can't do is name their product in such a way as to induce confusion in the mind of consumers, or use non-functional design elements (so-called "trade dress") that would lead to confusion. There is no law against picking up on other people's ideas and making something similar.
And, in this case, there isn't much to say about reward for innovation. Luxpro doesn't appear to be copying anything particularly innovative from Apple. After all, there have been a series of digital audio players since 1998. It isn't as if Apple came first or is even technically particularly innovative. Apple did not pioneer the use of laptop hard drives or flash, and arguably it didn't even pioneer important aspects of the interface, judging from the patent disputes with which they have had to deal. Companies compete in a variety of ways, sometimes by making a better product, sometimes by making it more cheaply. There's no law or principle of business ethics that says that Luxpro isn't entitled to try to win market share by making a product much like Apple's and selling it for a lower price.
True, but on the other hand, much of daily life didn't change. What kinds of stores sold what kind of goods, how you sent mail, which bus or train went where you needed to go and how you bought your
ticket or pass, all sorts of mundane things were pretty much the same regardless of who was in charge.
Luxpro seems to have three models. The two higher-end ones are quite different from the Apple model due to their displays. The low-end one is much more similar but is nonetheless readily distinguishible from the Apple model due to the prominent Luxpro logo. Insofar as they are not infringing any Apple patents or copyrights and there is no way a reasonable consumer could confuse the two products, Apple has no case.
You'd think the teachers would realize that the videos provide a way of catching the vandals, not the motivation for vandalism, but such stupidity is what I have come to expect from anyone
who announces that they have a "zero tolerance" policy.
People who adopt a "zero tolerance" policy are branding "I am an idiot" on their forehead.
I'm amazed that nobody has pointed out a reason that seems obvious even to a non conspiracy theorist such as myself: they are aware that users of FOSS operating systems and browsers are particularly likely to be opposed to software patents and don't to make it harder for them to monitor the activities of the Council. This is the same Council that not long ago tried to sneak software patents past the European Parliament.
That was Bose, a company run by real engineers that makes quality products. I'm not ready to assume that Microsoft and Ford will take the same precautions.
I agree, except I don't think that a fine is the appropriate penalty. Suspend his license, for a short time for the first offense. If he keeps it up, take away his license permanently.
The problem is that people are often extremely poor judges of their own ability, especially of their own ability to do things that they want to do. It is remotely possible that you are able to drive safely while using a cell phone, but I am not willing to trust your judgment on this, and you should not be willing to trust mine.
If an activity is statistically unsafe and has significant negative consequences (such as death) for others, and you can't rely on people's judgment of their own ability, which in the case of driving you is usually the case, then you either have to ban the activity for everyone or find an objective way of selecting those allowed to engage in it.
I didn't make any such assumption because I wouldn't call what you describe "docking salary". Yes, there are employers that pay salary on some sort of irregular schedule. (Many universities theoretically pay you only during nine months, though they usually give you the option of spreading out the paychecks over 11 or 12.) If you get a certain annual salary and the company closes down longer than it used to at Christmas without any effect on the amount of money you receive, they've simply lengthened your paid vacation period; they haven't docked your salary.
What is the legal basis for docking your salary? If you are a salaried employee, they are obligated to pay you so long as you are willing and able to work. If they choose to shut down you can't be penalized for that.
Yes, but the problem is that if you have a general prohibition on deep
linking it overrides fair use, just as the DMCA in combination with DRM does.
You may have a fair use right to use the material, but you've got no legal
way of doing so.
As a general principle, a prohibition on deep linking against the wishes of
the linkee is unacceptable because it breaks the net and violates important
aspects of free speech. For example, if you want to criticize something that I have
posted but you can only link to my homepage, not to the specific post, your ability
to criticize is significantly impaired. As far as I can see, there are only three ways in which a deep linkee is hurt: (a) he or she loses ad revenue. Too bad. The law isn't meant to support a specific business model. (b) he or she is not able to ensure that you read other material first. In some cases the motivation for this is good, but it isn't something you can enforce anymore than you can make someone read the introduction to your book before reading chapter 1. At best you can include on deep pages links to
higher pages with an explanation as to why people should go there. (c) the linkee ends up paying for the bandwidth consumed by people downloading audio and video.
This last is a legitimate issue. The solution, however, is either to improve the technology to the point that the costs are negligible or to find a way of charging
the downloader for bandwidth costs.
This isn't really such a big deal. It is the decision of a trial court, not an appellate court, and so does not establish any kind of binding precedent. Moreover, it looks like it wasn't a good test of the merits of the case. The linker represented himself and apparently threw a tantrum instead of presenting a competent defense.
The President is the CEO, not the Emperor. If the CEO tells the accountants to lie about the financial status of the company, he is not only going to be in trouble with the Board, he is probably going to go to jail. Similarly, if the CEO tells the company scientists to lie about the efficacy of a drug or the safety of an automobile, he is going to be in similar trouble. The President does ultimately ADMINISTER the executive branch, but that doesn't make its members his personal servants. They do not work for the President - they work for the People. He does not have the right to control the conclusions of professional scientists, even if they work for the government.
Regrettably, this doesn't come as a surprise. In my own field we have the example of "voiceprint analysis", where "analysts" claimed to be able to identify a suspect's voice by comparing two spectrograms. This was complete and utter nonsense. There was no evidence that human beings have unique voices, no underlying theory of differences among voices (since almost all research focussed on abstracting away from individual differences so as to understand the acoustic basis for speech perception), no published description of the technique by which the comparison was made (which was proprietary) and no properly documented studies of the efficacy of the technique. Even worse, there were cases in Great Britain in which phoneticians testified solely on the basis of their ears that "the voice
[on the tape or wherever] is the voice of the defendant and could be that of no other person in the world." If your lawyer didn't know enough to find a real expert to debunk this nonsense, you could be in a lot of trouble.
I've never ridden a motorcycle (my dad is a neurologist) but I have the impression that some drivers actually have it in for motorcycles. They seem to think that motorcycles ought not to be on the road and that they are easy to bully. I've found the same thing riding a bicycle.
Hmm. Let's see. I point out that there are a wide variety of hazardous conditions,
such as darkness, fog, and ice, in which it isn't safe to drive at the speed
limit. You then whine about how I'm some sort of defective who shouldn't be allowed on the roads if I can't drive the speed limit in non-hazardous conditions, in others, in precisely the complement of the conditions I cited. In other words, you have stated no rational objection to anything I have said and have no foundation for your gratuitous insults.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm surprised that the blogger has given in so easily. I understand that he can't afford a lot of legal expenses, but my understanding is that at this point all he needs to do is file a counter-notification with his ISP certifying that to the best of his knowledge his use of copyrighted material falls under Fair Use, which it almost certainly does. Here's a how-to. This puts the ball back in ABC/Disney's court and doesn't require a lawyer at all.
As someone who has been a touch typist for 38 years and a 25=year Unix person, I too find it extremely difficult to accept the claim that the keyboard is necessarily slower than the mouse. That just contradicts my experience. I remember the first time I tried to use a graphical editor - Bravo - the Xerox predecessor to MS Word. It was unbearable. Obviously you didn't need to learn anything by way of commands to do simple editing - just move the mouse and type something to insert, backspace or whatever it was to delete - but I found positioning the mouse precisely to be extremely painful. And this wasn't just due to lack of familiarity with the mouse. In the interim I've used the mouse extensively for some purposes, but I will find it slow and painful to edit documents by positioning the mouse. I usually use Emacs, but occasionally I use Vim, and sometimes I even use ed. I use OpenOffice Writer occasionally for some special purpose, such as creating a sign or poster with really large type or when it is more convenient to use exotic writing systems than it is in TeX. But I don't use it routinely in part because I don't like having to position the mouse. (Another reason is that it seems to start up even more slowly for me than for other people who complain about its slowness. I don't know why that is. It takes FOREVER.)
Before believing in this $50 million worth of research, I would want to know a lot more about what they tested, who, and how. The stated results wouldn't surprise me if the subjects were indifferent typists without much experience with computers or with the software they were using. I would be very surprised if they were true of experienced users. Without the details of the studies, claims like this are simply uninterpretable. Anybody have a link to the actual studies?
Why on earth would you want to be forced to treat arrays of different sizes differently? The fact that in standard Pascal arrays of different sizes were of different types, which is presumably what you want, is well known to have made standard Pascal unusable. That is one lesson I thought we learned a long time ago. Or do you mean something different?
Yes, if you want to put it that way. Nobody has a monopoly on making small music players. Anyone who wants to is entitled to take that idea and run with it. If they want to use patented features in their hardware they need a license. Similarly, if they want to use somebody else's software they need a license from the copyright owner. If they can design the hardware without infringing any patents and write their software from scratch, they are beholden to no one. The only other thing they can't do is name their product in such a way as to induce confusion in the mind of consumers, or use non-functional design elements (so-called "trade dress") that would lead to confusion. There is no law against picking up on other people's ideas and making something similar.
And, in this case, there isn't much to say about reward for innovation. Luxpro doesn't appear to be copying anything particularly innovative from Apple. After all, there have been a series of digital audio players since 1998. It isn't as if Apple came first or is even technically particularly innovative. Apple did not pioneer the use of laptop hard drives or flash, and arguably it didn't even pioneer important aspects of the interface, judging from the patent disputes with which they have had to deal. Companies compete in a variety of ways, sometimes by making a better product, sometimes by making it more cheaply. There's no law or principle of business ethics that says that Luxpro isn't entitled to try to win market share by making a product much like Apple's and selling it for a lower price.
True, but on the other hand, much of daily life didn't change. What kinds of stores sold what kind of goods, how you sent mail, which bus or train went where you needed to go and how you bought your ticket or pass, all sorts of mundane things were pretty much the same regardless of who was in charge.
Luxpro seems to have three models. The two higher-end ones are quite different from the Apple model due to their displays. The low-end one is much more similar but is nonetheless readily distinguishible from the Apple model due to the prominent Luxpro logo. Insofar as they are not infringing any Apple patents or copyrights and there is no way a reasonable consumer could confuse the two products, Apple has no case.
What's your beef? The guy is asking about the best way to do what his client wants, not opposing it.
I think that people have too negative a view of signing statements. They establish intent for the impeachment trial.
You'd think the teachers would realize that the videos provide a way of catching the vandals, not the motivation for vandalism, but such stupidity is what I have come to expect from anyone who announces that they have a "zero tolerance" policy. People who adopt a "zero tolerance" policy are branding "I am an idiot" on their forehead.
The BBC's point is well taken but ironic in light of their own rather pathetic record.
Ah, you're right. There are too many bodies with similar names. (The Council of Europe is yet another.)
I'm amazed that nobody has pointed out a reason that seems obvious even to a non conspiracy theorist such as myself: they are aware that users of FOSS operating systems and browsers are particularly likely to be opposed to software patents and don't to make it harder for them to monitor the activities of the Council. This is the same Council that not long ago tried to sneak software patents past the European Parliament.
That was Bose, a company run by real engineers that makes quality products. I'm not ready to assume that Microsoft and Ford will take the same precautions.
I agree, except I don't think that a fine is the appropriate penalty. Suspend his license, for a short time for the first offense. If he keeps it up, take away his license permanently.
The problem is that people are often extremely poor judges of their own ability, especially of their own ability to do things that they want to do. It is remotely possible that you are able to drive safely while using a cell phone, but I am not willing to trust your judgment on this, and you should not be willing to trust mine. If an activity is statistically unsafe and has significant negative consequences (such as death) for others, and you can't rely on people's judgment of their own ability, which in the case of driving you is usually the case, then you either have to ban the activity for everyone or find an objective way of selecting those allowed to engage in it.
I didn't make any such assumption because I wouldn't call what you describe "docking salary". Yes, there are employers that pay salary on some sort of irregular schedule. (Many universities theoretically pay you only during nine months, though they usually give you the option of spreading out the paychecks over 11 or 12.) If you get a certain annual salary and the company closes down longer than it used to at Christmas without any effect on the amount of money you receive, they've simply lengthened your paid vacation period; they haven't docked your salary.
What is the legal basis for docking your salary? If you are a salaried employee, they are obligated to pay you so long as you are willing and able to work. If they choose to shut down you can't be penalized for that.
Yes, but the problem is that if you have a general prohibition on deep linking it overrides fair use, just as the DMCA in combination with DRM does. You may have a fair use right to use the material, but you've got no legal way of doing so.
As a general principle, a prohibition on deep linking against the wishes of the linkee is unacceptable because it breaks the net and violates important aspects of free speech. For example, if you want to criticize something that I have posted but you can only link to my homepage, not to the specific post, your ability to criticize is significantly impaired. As far as I can see, there are only three ways in which a deep linkee is hurt: (a) he or she loses ad revenue. Too bad. The law isn't meant to support a specific business model. (b) he or she is not able to ensure that you read other material first. In some cases the motivation for this is good, but it isn't something you can enforce anymore than you can make someone read the introduction to your book before reading chapter 1. At best you can include on deep pages links to higher pages with an explanation as to why people should go there. (c) the linkee ends up paying for the bandwidth consumed by people downloading audio and video.
This last is a legitimate issue. The solution, however, is either to improve the technology to the point that the costs are negligible or to find a way of charging the downloader for bandwidth costs.
This isn't really such a big deal. It is the decision of a trial court, not an appellate court, and so does not establish any kind of binding precedent. Moreover, it looks like it wasn't a good test of the merits of the case. The linker represented himself and apparently threw a tantrum instead of presenting a competent defense.
I'd be careful with this one - it could be construed as sexual harassment or sexual orientation discrimination.
The President is the CEO, not the Emperor. If the CEO tells the accountants to lie about the financial status of the company, he is not only going to be in trouble with the Board, he is probably going to go to jail. Similarly, if the CEO tells the company scientists to lie about the efficacy of a drug or the safety of an automobile, he is going to be in similar trouble. The President does ultimately ADMINISTER the executive branch, but that doesn't make its members his personal servants. They do not work for the President - they work for the People. He does not have the right to control the conclusions of professional scientists, even if they work for the government.
Regrettably, this doesn't come as a surprise. In my own field we have the example of "voiceprint analysis", where "analysts" claimed to be able to identify a suspect's voice by comparing two spectrograms. This was complete and utter nonsense. There was no evidence that human beings have unique voices, no underlying theory of differences among voices (since almost all research focussed on abstracting away from individual differences so as to understand the acoustic basis for speech perception), no published description of the technique by which the comparison was made (which was proprietary) and no properly documented studies of the efficacy of the technique. Even worse, there were cases in Great Britain in which phoneticians testified solely on the basis of their ears that "the voice [on the tape or wherever] is the voice of the defendant and could be that of no other person in the world." If your lawyer didn't know enough to find a real expert to debunk this nonsense, you could be in a lot of trouble.
I've never ridden a motorcycle (my dad is a neurologist) but I have the impression that some drivers actually have it in for motorcycles. They seem to think that motorcycles ought not to be on the road and that they are easy to bully. I've found the same thing riding a bicycle.
Hmm. Let's see. I point out that there are a wide variety of hazardous conditions, such as darkness, fog, and ice, in which it isn't safe to drive at the speed limit. You then whine about how I'm some sort of defective who shouldn't be allowed on the roads if I can't drive the speed limit in non-hazardous conditions, in others, in precisely the complement of the conditions I cited. In other words, you have stated no rational objection to anything I have said and have no foundation for your gratuitous insults.