This is much faster - you just pull a lever and it deploys, and thus is much more likely to help out in the more common real world scenarios where something goes wrong shortly after takeoff or before landing
... and, as you know, most accidents do happen right around takeoffs and landings.
Added benefit -- it saves the plane. I imagine that the plane is damaged somewhat after a parachute deployment, but it's far better than having it crash. And it's safer for people on the ground...
Mu metal which offers superb shielding of the magnetic component of the EMF.
mu metal is way overkill. Seriously, a single layer of tinfoil is more than enough.
You're not trying to stop a static magnetic field (there's no need) -- you're trying to stop a electromagnetic wave, and stopping either part of it (electric or magnetic) will do it.
too, that a LAN party can be a logistical nightmare;
It gets worse. How do you think the school board will react when they learn that people are playing games that involve people shooting guns at each other? (I assume you won't all be playing Mario Kart or the equivilent?)
How will the school feel about people who aren't students (I assume you won't restrict it to students) using the faculties? What if something goes wrong, either inside or out? A fight? Stolen equipment? (happens a lot when it's not just a bunch of friends) People smoking pot outside? (and trying to smoke (hopefully just tobacco) inside?)
Or suppose that the principal decides to come down and make sure everybody has a legitimate copy of each game they're playing?
Seriously, this doesn't sound like something the school would ever permit if they fully understood what they were getting into. And if you get them to approve it without them knowing what they're getting into, you run the risk of big trouble if things go wrong -- and the odds of that are pretty high, unless it's a small informal thing with just your friends, which isn't likely to generate any money whatsoever.
Well, a better analogy would be satellite TV. In fact, satellite TV would be just about a perfect analogy, in a world of flawed analogies.
Cable TV doesn't involve radio waves broadcast through the air (it involves radio waves channeled through a cable.) The FCC regulates radio waves broadcast, so in theory they could go after satellite TV if they wanted to. But cable TV ought to be outside of their domain.
Had the FCC actually decided that satellite radio had to be `decent', then this would not only put a stop to bad language on Comedy Central, but also to PPV porn on Direct TV or Dish Network, for example. Of course, it doesn't have to be just porn -- any show with nudity would be prohibited.
(It's odd how violence is ok, but the slightest view of a nipple and people go nuts.)
In any event, it's refreshing to see the FCC make a good decision once in a while.
I think this type of material could be very useful to provide electricity in places that do not have access to a reliable electrical grid.
Solar cells are already used in lots of applications that don't have access to an electrical grid, reliable or not. Pliable solar cells might be useful in more applications, but the ones we have now are used quite a bit.
What applications, you might ask? `35 mph school zone' lights (it's easier to add solar cells than to run wires.) Remote creek monitoring stations. Satellites in orbit. There's lots lots more.
As for providing 110v power to remote locations, this is done too. It generally requires quite a bank of solar cells, and lots of batteries (the sun isn't up 24/7) to provide the power used just by a single household, but some people do it.
How many watts are needed to run a a phone, a refrigerator, a radio or a computer?
This is easily measurable. For a fridge, it's a lot, but you can read the average right on the yellow label on the front when you buy it. For a phone, what kind of phone? A cell phone probably averages much less than one watt (assuming the time spent actually talking on it is minimal.) For a computer, it depends on the type of computer. A PC often uses 100-200 watts of power (not counting the monitor), but some computers use a lot less.
So, what is wrong with people doing a good job and creating value, getting a little bit of that value back so they can pay rent ?
Nothing. Exactly like there's nothing wrong with telling people that there's something out there that does exactly what they want and is expensive, and that there is something with some/much/most/all of the functionality but it's Free, Open Source or Cheap.
Words and their definitions are works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship.
... he writes as if it were an inalienable fact, but provides nothing to back it up. Funny, I felt I was the original author of my little dictionary. (Certainly, it was bigger than a `short phrase'. I never said that short phrases were copyrightable.) And certainly, I haven't explicitly put it in the public domain, though by posting it here I've implcitly allowed certain types of copying and use to occur.
Assuming that all this means that dictionaries cannot be copyrighted, then it must mean that a book I write about the War of 1812 cannot be either -- after all, all the facts inside are common property, right? I'm sure all the writers of history books will be quite sad to know that their works cannot be protected by copyright.
(Hopefully historical fiction is still protected, however. Right?)
Sorry, you have not convinced me, and obviously I'm not going to convince you. Alas, it's not important enough (to me, anyways) to pay a lawyer trained in IP matters to give a (sort of) definitive answer to this (and even that may not automatically put the issue to rest), so this is where the matter will probably end.
You could, however, trademark a made-up word, not copyright it.
At least you've finally learned the difference between trademark and copyright. (We've come a ways from `the term "Webster's Dictionary" no longer has copyright protection'.) So I've made at least some progress here...
Dictionaries do fit the criteria. They owe their existence to previous dictionaries
If you say so. I disagree.
Counterproposal: I'm about to create a very small, very abridged dictionary here :
Doug's 2004 Dictionary
Dictionary: a book that contains words and short summaries about what each word means.
Thesaurus: a book that contains words, and then lists of words that have similar meanings to the first word.
Clueless: lacking clue.
Clue: could mean `a bit of knowledge', or it has come to mean `overall knowledge, either about a specific field or about everything'.
Shizzle: a relatively new word, made up by some rapper. It's hard to tell what it means, but I suspect it means either `sure' or `sh*t'.
(c) 2004 by Doug
If you feel that my dictionary is not covered by copyright, this is where you need to prove your point. If you feel that it's existance is based on a previous dictionary, then you'll need to be specific about which one. Certainly, I did not consult any other texts while writing it, and do not have an edietic memory. Also, I don't recall ever looking up any of these words in a dictionary. And consider that the word `shizzle' is very new, and not likely to be found in any dictionary more than 10 years old (and therefore all would still be covered by their copyrights, unless explictly put into the public domain.)
As another counter example, consider this -- a slang dictionary... do you feel that he's not entitled to the copyright on his work? Certainly, he does.
Another counterexample -- these people seem to think that you keep the copyright of definitions that you add to the project. If individual definitions are protected by copyrighted, would not the whole thing also be similarly protected?
Really, you've come up with a position that's pretty difficult to support.
Claiming copyright and actually having a copyrightable right are two different things, as SCO is finding out.
This has nothing to do with SCO. But since you seem convinced that you are right, go into your favorite search engine and try to find ONE page written by somebody who ought to know that actually says dictionaries cannot be copyrighted.
As for people who ought to know, I'll accept copyright lawyers, attorneys and law professors.
Changing the font or page size isn't a copyrightable act of authorship.
But dictionaries are much more than that. Defintions change over the years, for example. If you take two dictionaries by two different people, the definitions of a given word will be expressed differently, and may actually be slightly different.
Defintions of words are *not* merely immutable facts.
A list of the words in a dictionary probably isn't copyrightable. But the dictionary itself (and the definitions inside) certainly is.
Dictionaries do NOT fit the critera I mentioned --
Works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship (for example: standard calendars, height and weight charts, tape measures and rulers, and lists or tables taken from public documents or other common sources)
1) it contains original authorship. Somebody had to actually write those definitions -- they didn't come from some sort of collective conciousness.
2) it didn't come from public documents or other common sources either.
If you look around, every dictionary you find will claim a copyright. Even if it doesn't have this `extra material' you were talking about.
Seems to me that, in some cases at least, only "limited" copyrights should be granted. For example, McDonald's could be granted a copyright on the phrase "I'm Lovin' It" as it is used for a fast-food restaurant (or even any restaurant).
ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!
People! This is a trademark, not a copyright! The two are different! (And patents are different too.) The three are often confused, but all three are different, with different rules and laws applying to each one. Stop confusing them!
(And ironically, trademarks do sort of work the way that you're saying copyrights should work.)
Copyright - covers a literary work, and prevents somebody from making a copy of it. Lasts a long time now -- at least 70 years. Books, movies, software are copyrighted
Trademark - covers a word or a small phrase, perhaps a symbol or shape or even a color, but only in a specific industry. Trademarks do not automatically expire, but they can be abandoned or become ubitquous, and therefore thrown out. `I'm loving it' is a trademark. (`Kleenex' is another, but one that's in danger of becoming ubitquous, if it hasn't already.)
Note that trademarks are valid only in a specific industry. So we can have Apple Computer and Apple Dodge, for example -- both have trademarks, but only in their industry. However, it's pretty common nowadays to register many different trademarks, one for every industry that you might *possibly* use that trademark in. I imagine that
`I'm loving it' has been so registered in every industry that you've ever heard of, and a few that you haven't.
Patents -- cover a method for doing something. Last 17 years, but through some legal games you can delay their being granted for a long time. One example of a patent is the one that covers playing with a cat with a laser pointer. Or the one on LZH compression.
And of course, a specific item or group of items may be protected by more than one. For example, for the newest fighter airplane, the plans are probably copyrighted, the shape trademarked, and whatever spiffy new airfoil they use is probably patented.
And no, I'm not a lawyer. But I did stay in a Holiday Inn a few years ago. And I can read (and have read) many of the web pages on these topics out there.
And in case it's not obvious, I'm talking about the US here. Other countries may be different.
The trademark protection on the term "Webster's" in connection to dictionaries expired LONG ago.
Ok, I'll take your word for that.
However, trademarks and coprights are very different beasts, and just because one has expired , that doesn't mean the other has too.
I bring this up because in your previous post, you seemed to show some confusion between the two by saying this --
the term "Webster's Dictionary" no longer has copyright protection
... the term "Webster's Dictionary" by itself *never* had copyright protection -- it's too small. But I imagine it did have trademark protection, and I'll take your word for it that this protection has expired (probably because they forgot to renew it, or because it became too common of a word.)
you'll find that only the unique parts in your "copyrighted" dictionary are covered by copyright - the actual list of words and their definitions aren't.
... and I believe that you'll find yourself to be wrong. Yes, pure facts cannot be copyrighted, but there's a lot of opinion to a definition. This page may be of some assistance. Note that a dictionary, even if it's just a bunch of words and defintions, does not fit this passage --
WHAT IS NOT PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT?
...
Works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship (for example: standard calendars, height and weight charts, tape measures and rulers, and lists or tables taken from public documents or other common sources)
There are no TV channels in the 72 mHz band. However, channel 4 goes from 66 to 72 mHz, so it may very well interfere with the lower channel numbers. But it *should* stop at 72 mHz, and it would affect channel 11 before 22 and 23...
As for why those channels are banned at your club, it's much more likely that there's a pager tower or something nearby that transmits between those two frequencies. [Yes, pager towers often do use the frequencies right between our channels.]
R/F interference is a complicated issue. This page goes over many of the concerns pretty well, at least the ones arising from the design of our receivers.
To be fair, to say `Windows crashes' or talk about Windows crashes of any sort, on Slashdot *is* redundant. Even if you're the very first person to say it in a given thread, it's already been said six zillion times before in other threads:)
And even if you were the first to post about it, everybody else was already thinking about it anyways...
In this case however, I've heard that the two computers are seperate, with WinCE used (while not flying, if you're smart) to set up the other computer, the one that actually does the channel mixing and such. So even if WinCE *did* crash, the plane would just keep flying, and you probably wouldn't even notice until after you landed and looked down at your screen and saw that something was wrong.
Precisely. Also, there's no mention of a 75 mHz model or module, so it may not be legally usable on ground vehicles in the US at all. (Actually, the radio isn't even available at all yet, but we'll ignore that for now.)
Granted, when it does come out, I assume it'll use a module, or have a built in frequency synthesizer. It's designed for airplanes, so obviously it'll use the 72 mHz band.
If it uses a synthesizer, it may be a long time before they bother to make a 75 mHz version. If it's a module, and it's a module that already exists, then a 75 mHz version of that module is probably already available. But if it's a new type of module...
And your batteries will probably last 3X longer as well because you aren't driving a GUI with all the WinCE overhead.
WinCE and the hardware it runs on is reasonably power-friendly for what it does (pretending to be a full PC on limited hardware.) It may be overkill for this application, but I'm sure there's a market for this sort of thing, so...
Most R/C transmitters last about 2-3 hours as shipped from the factory. If it's a computer radio, they add a bigger battery to compensate for the higher power drain, and Futaba has done that here.
My 9C (another computer radio, but not nearly so fancy) came with a 700 mAh battery pack, only good for about 2.5 hours too. (But yes, I put a better pack in it fairly soon, so I don't have to worry about charging at the field ever.)
Given the time expended in preparation, launch, recovery and repair, it seems most unlikely that the batteries in your R/C controller would fail before you have to call it a day.
It depends on the type of flying. If you're slope flying, it's quite common to have several hour flights, and for the flight to end only because you have to go pee.
For other types of flying, if it's a problem, you throw your radio on a charger while not flying. Works fine. And you're right -- 3 hours of actual flying in a day is uncommon, unless you're slope soaring:)
I don't see why people are bitching about the battery so much. (Probably because they don't fly R/C.) The cheapest R/C transmitters (4 channel, no radio) generally last only about three hours per charge straight from the factory too. (Of course, we often replace the 600 mAh NiCd pack with 2000 mAh NiMH packs, but I digress...)
It's not as big a problem as you might think. And if you do plan on making very long flights (like you're going for a record, or a
LSF level V Slope Soaring task), then you make other arrangements, like an external battery pack or a backup radio anyways.
And yes it works without line of sight, through hills. It's just not very long-range when you do that.
What does? Your cell phone, or a video feed?
A video feed will only work if it's a relatively low frequency, with plenty of power. Without much power, the range will very limited, as you suggested. The signal won't go through the hill, it'll diffract around it.
Your cell phone probably uses microwave frequency signals, so the only way it'll work through a hill is that there's a tower behind you (with no hill in front of it) that you're not aware of. Or perhaps one on top of the hill that you're not aware of...
I doubt anyone is trying to fly their model planes from a mile away.
Most people cannot see their normal-sized planes well enough to fly them more than half a mile away. However, given a large glider (I'm talking 12'+ wingspan here), good eyes and good lift, people can and do take them up over a mile high.
Does my insurance cover removing model airplanes from my abdomen?
Assuming that this is a medical procedure, yes, it probably does.
Of course, if it's a mortician's procedure, then probably not. As an added bonus, if he's not very ethical, pictures of the procedure may show up on http://rotten.com/!
High-frequency transmissions of the type you are describing (video feed) require uninterrupted line-of-sight.
Incorrect. Sure, VHF signals don't go through ground very well, but they WILL diffract around a hill. Higher frequencies will do it less, and lower frequencies will do it more. Most cell phones are in the microwave range, and so they barely do it at all.
Sure, many video feeds are done with very high frequencies, and therefore won't diffract well around hills and the like, but they can be done with lower frequency signals too.
If you lose sight of the aircraft, your controller can't see it either.
That's hardly true. At 72 mHz, your controller signal will diffract reasonably well, and it'll certainly go right through trees and the like. It's quite possible that you can control your plane but cannot see it. Of course, it's hard to fly what you cannot see...
As for people who want to put a wireless camera on their plane and fly it that way, this has been done, many times. It rarely works very well unless you throw LOTS of money at it (like with the UAVs.) It also could very well get the FAA and government interested in your model, where they generally just ignore R/C planes. R/C they ignore. UAV, they do not, and the while the difference is sort of vague, one big point is that UAVs can be flown without direct line of sight.
It also has nothing to do with this radio. This radio just has a fancy interface, lots of channels and a big price tag. Beyond that, it's not fundamentally any different from any other computer radio.
Perhaps, but in the US the FCC isn't going to allow you to do that, unless Futaba has already done it for you. The FCC certifies the entire device, which doesn't really allow the end user to modify it at all, _unless it's used on the ham bands_ (which is an option.)
In any event, the most useful R/C plane telemetry generally isn't visual -- it's audible. You're too busy looking up at your plane to watch a display on your radio (looking at your radio while flying is a recipe for losing your plane), but a variable pitch tone that's telling you if your glider is gaining or losing altitude can be very useful in determining if you're still in that thermal. Full scale glider pilots use the same system, but of course in that case it's not done via radio.
Again, looking at your radio in flight is very bad, especially if several people are flying at once or your plane is way up there. MANY times somebody has looked down at their radio for some reason, and looked back up and never found their plane again. Or looked back up, found their plane, and kept flying it for a while longer but then realized that it wasn't obeying their controls anymore. (Eventually, they learned that they `found' the wrong plane up in the sky and that their plane had crashed shortly after and they didn't even notice, because they were `flying' something else.)
It would seem less weird when you consider that you have to pay for client licenses for connections to NT/2000/XP/2003 machines (gory details here. Microsoft refuses to allow more than 10 SMB connections to Win2000 Pro because "it wasn't designed for it" or some such. So Samba on Win32 would make sense, if you were a Windows user who a.) wanted to save money and b.) wanted to allow a lot of other Windows users to connect to his machine.
I considered that, but there's a catch -- the Windows licenses only allow ten connections whether you're using Microsoft servers or not. So, yes, using Samba on Windows 2000 Pro may let you bypass that restriction as imposed by W2K Pro, but it's still not `legal'.
This has come up before with web servers -- Microsoft got on Orielly's case because Orielly's web server allowed as many connections as the machine could handle, and didn't restrict it to 10 even if the machine wasn't licensed for it. (This was at least 10 years ago, so maybe my memory is sketchy. I had a friend who was working at Orielly at the time and he was fussing about this...)
I don't think Orielly gave in, and I'm sure this has come up again and again with every web server, ftp server, mail server, etc. that runs under Windows. But Microsoft can't really enforce it, so...
I'm not quite sure why this story is in the Linux Slashdot category. Yes, the story is on Linux Today, but Samba runs on pretty much any *nix platform. (It wouldn't even surprise me if it ran on win32 under cygwin. That would be a bit wierd, but...)
The BSD and Apple categories would be just as appropriate. Perhaps Slashdot needs a *nix category...
because they don't have the resources to write their own apps from scratch and figure it is easier to simply steal from your enemies.
Steal? What are they stealing? You can't steal something that is given away! [well, yes you can. You can certainly steal more than your share of soup at the soup kitchen, but in the case of Linux, if you take it from me, I still have it. No stealing possible. And they're not stealing (or even taking) anything anyways.]
As for the resources to write their own apps, nobody has the resources to write every app possible. Even Microsoft. Windows wouldn't be nearly as popular if it could *only* run Microsoft applications, even though Microsoft does have a very large variety of applications that they make to choose from. As for Linux, Linus didn't even write every thing needed to make a complete OS -- Various linux distributions also use parts from GNU, X, BSD, etc. All perfectly legit, of course. No stealing here.
There's nothing wrong or dishonest with them providing an API that allows Linux applications to be run on their OS. And they're not saying that they like Linux -- the WINE analogy given at the beginning of the thread is extremely appropriate. They've just realized that embracing/supporting Linux in this small manner will probably help them make more money. It sounds like a wise business decision to me.
As for the idea that `open source is a threat to National Security', there is truth to that. Of course, `closed source' is a threat too, just of a somewhat different nature.
In the open source case, sure, the code can be reviewed, but there's a lot more opportunities for `bad' people to slip in a patch that looks good and so it gets approved, but in reality it opens a non-obvious back door of some sort.
In the closed source case, a similar opportunity exists to introduce bad code, but it's really only available either to developers that work at the company in question, or those who crack into said company. But on the other had, once in, far fewer eyes are likely to look at that code, so it doesn't have to be so carefully obfuscated.
Both situations can be defused if you can get the source and find people qualified to audit every line of it and find these holes and correct them, and then have them do it without cutting corners. It's a huge job, but it's certainly possible. As for getting the source code, I imagine the NSA has little problem getting access to Micorosft's source code should they need it for something.
Way back then I had a (and may still have somewhere) Mac program called copy2mac which successfully copied every disk, whether copy protected or not successfully.
Right, but the floppy drive in a Mac is different from the floppy drive in an Apple II. In the Apple II, an awful lot of the work usually done in the drive firmware was done by the Apple II itself. This allowed you to do lots of things that you really shouldn't have been able to do, and this was used over and over for copy protection.
I gave two examples (weak bits, half/quarter tracks) that break bit-by-bit copy programs. If the Mac drive doesn't allow these things, great. But the Apple II drive did. And there were more things than that.
Fair Use allows you to copy your DVD, no matter what the corps say.
Perhaps I didn't make myself clear enough. I am quite aware of my fair use rights, and certainly pay attention when they're whittled away. I even give money to the ACLU and EFF in the hopes that they can slow the whittling somewhat.
The post I was replying to was talking about `professional pirates' --
Actually, the professional pirates would not have to decrypt anything
...
and assuming that piracy here means copying DVDs and selling them, and not plundering ships at sea (I don't like the definition, but nobody consulted me before first using it), then this copying wouldn't fall under the fair use provisions. Or do you disagree?
What I was saying is that you don't have to break encryption to violate the DMCA. There are other ways...
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Added benefit -- it saves the plane. I imagine that the plane is damaged somewhat after a parachute deployment, but it's far better than having it crash. And it's safer for people on the ground ...
You're not trying to stop a static magnetic field (there's no need) -- you're trying to stop a electromagnetic wave, and stopping either part of it (electric or magnetic) will do it.
How will the school feel about people who aren't students (I assume you won't restrict it to students) using the faculties? What if something goes wrong, either inside or out? A fight? Stolen equipment? (happens a lot when it's not just a bunch of friends) People smoking pot outside? (and trying to smoke (hopefully just tobacco) inside?)
Or suppose that the principal decides to come down and make sure everybody has a legitimate copy of each game they're playing?
Seriously, this doesn't sound like something the school would ever permit if they fully understood what they were getting into. And if you get them to approve it without them knowing what they're getting into, you run the risk of big trouble if things go wrong -- and the odds of that are pretty high, unless it's a small informal thing with just your friends, which isn't likely to generate any money whatsoever.
Had the FCC actually decided that satellite radio had to be `decent', then this would not only put a stop to bad language on Comedy Central, but also to PPV porn on Direct TV or Dish Network, for example. Of course, it doesn't have to be just porn -- any show with nudity would be prohibited.
(It's odd how violence is ok, but the slightest view of a nipple and people go nuts.)
In any event, it's refreshing to see the FCC make a good decision once in a while.
What applications, you might ask? `35 mph school zone' lights (it's easier to add solar cells than to run wires.) Remote creek monitoring stations. Satellites in orbit. There's lots lots more.
As for providing 110v power to remote locations, this is done too. It generally requires quite a bank of solar cells, and lots of batteries (the sun isn't up 24/7) to provide the power used just by a single household, but some people do it.
This is easily measurable. For a fridge, it's a lot, but you can read the average right on the yellow label on the front when you buy it. For a phone, what kind of phone? A cell phone probably averages much less than one watt (assuming the time spent actually talking on it is minimal.) For a computer, it depends on the type of computer. A PC often uses 100-200 watts of power (not counting the monitor), but some computers use a lot less.Assuming that all this means that dictionaries cannot be copyrighted, then it must mean that a book I write about the War of 1812 cannot be either -- after all, all the facts inside are common property, right? I'm sure all the writers of history books will be quite sad to know that their works cannot be protected by copyright. (Hopefully historical fiction is still protected, however. Right?)
Sorry, you have not convinced me, and obviously I'm not going to convince you. Alas, it's not important enough (to me, anyways) to pay a lawyer trained in IP matters to give a (sort of) definitive answer to this (and even that may not automatically put the issue to rest), so this is where the matter will probably end.
At least you've finally learned the difference between trademark and copyright. (We've come a ways from `the term "Webster's Dictionary" no longer has copyright protection'.) So I've made at least some progress hereCounterproposal: I'm about to create a very small, very abridged dictionary here :
Doug's 2004 Dictionary
Dictionary: a book that contains words and short summaries about what each word means.
Thesaurus: a book that contains words, and then lists of words that have similar meanings to the first word.
Clueless: lacking clue.
Clue: could mean `a bit of knowledge', or it has come to mean `overall knowledge, either about a specific field or about everything'.
Shizzle: a relatively new word, made up by some rapper. It's hard to tell what it means, but I suspect it means either `sure' or `sh*t'.
(c) 2004 by Doug
Ok, that's my dictionary. I've just created it, just now. It's automatically protected by copyright as soon as I write it, registered or not. The (c) 2004 bit is not required for it to be copyrighted, but I'll include it just so there's no question.
If you feel that my dictionary is not covered by copyright, this is where you need to prove your point. If you feel that it's existance is based on a previous dictionary, then you'll need to be specific about which one. Certainly, I did not consult any other texts while writing it, and do not have an edietic memory. Also, I don't recall ever looking up any of these words in a dictionary. And consider that the word `shizzle' is very new, and not likely to be found in any dictionary more than 10 years old (and therefore all would still be covered by their copyrights, unless explictly put into the public domain.)
As another counter example, consider this -- a slang dictionary ... do you feel that he's not entitled to the copyright on his work? Certainly, he does.
Another counterexample -- these people seem to think that you keep the copyright of definitions that you add to the project. If individual definitions are protected by copyrighted, would not the whole thing also be similarly protected?
Really, you've come up with a position that's pretty difficult to support.
This has nothing to do with SCO. But since you seem convinced that you are right, go into your favorite search engine and try to find ONE page written by somebody who ought to know that actually says dictionaries cannot be copyrighted. As for people who ought to know, I'll accept copyright lawyers, attorneys and law professors.Defintions of words are *not* merely immutable facts.
A list of the words in a dictionary probably isn't copyrightable. But the dictionary itself (and the definitions inside) certainly is.
Dictionaries do NOT fit the critera I mentioned --
1) it contains original authorship. Somebody had to actually write those definitions -- they didn't come from some sort of collective conciousness.2) it didn't come from public documents or other common sources either.
If you look around, every dictionary you find will claim a copyright. Even if it doesn't have this `extra material' you were talking about.
People! This is a trademark, not a copyright! The two are different! (And patents are different too.) The three are often confused, but all three are different, with different rules and laws applying to each one. Stop confusing them!
(And ironically, trademarks do sort of work the way that you're saying copyrights should work.)
Copyright - covers a literary work, and prevents somebody from making a copy of it. Lasts a long time now -- at least 70 years. Books, movies, software are copyrighted
Trademark - covers a word or a small phrase, perhaps a symbol or shape or even a color, but only in a specific industry. Trademarks do not automatically expire, but they can be abandoned or become ubitquous, and therefore thrown out. `I'm loving it' is a trademark. (`Kleenex' is another, but one that's in danger of becoming ubitquous, if it hasn't already.)
Note that trademarks are valid only in a specific industry. So we can have Apple Computer and Apple Dodge, for example -- both have trademarks, but only in their industry. However, it's pretty common nowadays to register many different trademarks, one for every industry that you might *possibly* use that trademark in. I imagine that `I'm loving it' has been so registered in every industry that you've ever heard of, and a few that you haven't.
Patents -- cover a method for doing something. Last 17 years, but through some legal games you can delay their being granted for a long time. One example of a patent is the one that covers playing with a cat with a laser pointer. Or the one on LZH compression.
And of course, a specific item or group of items may be protected by more than one. For example, for the newest fighter airplane, the plans are probably copyrighted, the shape trademarked, and whatever spiffy new airfoil they use is probably patented.
And no, I'm not a lawyer. But I did stay in a Holiday Inn a few years ago. And I can read (and have read) many of the web pages on these topics out there.
And in case it's not obvious, I'm talking about the US here. Other countries may be different.
However, trademarks and coprights are very different beasts, and just because one has expired , that doesn't mean the other has too.
I bring this up because in your previous post, you seemed to show some confusion between the two by saying this --
[ I'm assuming you're in the US here. ]
There are no TV channels in the 72 mHz band. However, channel 4 goes from 66 to 72 mHz, so it may very well interfere with the lower channel numbers. But it *should* stop at 72 mHz, and it would affect channel 11 before 22 and 23 ...
As for why those channels are banned at your club, it's much more likely that there's a pager tower or something nearby that transmits between those two frequencies. [Yes, pager towers often do use the frequencies right between our channels.]
R/F interference is a complicated issue. This page goes over many of the concerns pretty well, at least the ones arising from the design of our receivers.
And even if you were the first to post about it, everybody else was already thinking about it anyways ...
In this case however, I've heard that the two computers are seperate, with WinCE used (while not flying, if you're smart) to set up the other computer, the one that actually does the channel mixing and such. So even if WinCE *did* crash, the plane would just keep flying, and you probably wouldn't even notice until after you landed and looked down at your screen and saw that something was wrong.
Granted, when it does come out, I assume it'll use a module, or have a built in frequency synthesizer. It's designed for airplanes, so obviously it'll use the 72 mHz band.
If it uses a synthesizer, it may be a long time before they bother to make a 75 mHz version. If it's a module, and it's a module that already exists, then a 75 mHz version of that module is probably already available. But if it's a new type of module ...
Most R/C transmitters last about 2-3 hours as shipped from the factory. If it's a computer radio, they add a bigger battery to compensate for the higher power drain, and Futaba has done that here.
My 9C (another computer radio, but not nearly so fancy) came with a 700 mAh battery pack, only good for about 2.5 hours too. (But yes, I put a better pack in it fairly soon, so I don't have to worry about charging at the field ever.)
For other types of flying, if it's a problem, you throw your radio on a charger while not flying. Works fine. And you're right -- 3 hours of actual flying in a day is uncommon, unless you're slope soaring :)
I don't see why people are bitching about the battery so much. (Probably because they don't fly R/C.) The cheapest R/C transmitters (4 channel, no radio) generally last only about three hours per charge straight from the factory too. (Of course, we often replace the 600 mAh NiCd pack with 2000 mAh NiMH packs, but I digress ...)
It's not as big a problem as you might think. And if you do plan on making very long flights (like you're going for a record, or a LSF level V Slope Soaring task), then you make other arrangements, like an external battery pack or a backup radio anyways.
A video feed will only work if it's a relatively low frequency, with plenty of power. Without much power, the range will very limited, as you suggested. The signal won't go through the hill, it'll diffract around it.
Your cell phone probably uses microwave frequency signals, so the only way it'll work through a hill is that there's a tower behind you (with no hill in front of it) that you're not aware of. Or perhaps one on top of the hill that you're not aware of ...
Most people cannot see their normal-sized planes well enough to fly them more than half a mile away. However, given a large glider (I'm talking 12'+ wingspan here), good eyes and good lift, people can and do take them up over a mile high.Of course, if it's a mortician's procedure, then probably not. As an added bonus, if he's not very ethical, pictures of the procedure may show up on http://rotten.com/!
Sure, many video feeds are done with very high frequencies, and therefore won't diffract well around hills and the like, but they can be done with lower frequency signals too.
That's hardly true. At 72 mHz, your controller signal will diffract reasonably well, and it'll certainly go right through trees and the like. It's quite possible that you can control your plane but cannot see it. Of course, it's hard to fly what you cannot seeAs for people who want to put a wireless camera on their plane and fly it that way, this has been done, many times. It rarely works very well unless you throw LOTS of money at it (like with the UAVs.) It also could very well get the FAA and government interested in your model, where they generally just ignore R/C planes. R/C they ignore. UAV, they do not, and the while the difference is sort of vague, one big point is that UAVs can be flown without direct line of sight.
It also has nothing to do with this radio. This radio just has a fancy interface, lots of channels and a big price tag. Beyond that, it's not fundamentally any different from any other computer radio.
In any event, the most useful R/C plane telemetry generally isn't visual -- it's audible. You're too busy looking up at your plane to watch a display on your radio (looking at your radio while flying is a recipe for losing your plane), but a variable pitch tone that's telling you if your glider is gaining or losing altitude can be very useful in determining if you're still in that thermal. Full scale glider pilots use the same system, but of course in that case it's not done via radio.
Again, looking at your radio in flight is very bad, especially if several people are flying at once or your plane is way up there. MANY times somebody has looked down at their radio for some reason, and looked back up and never found their plane again. Or looked back up, found their plane, and kept flying it for a while longer but then realized that it wasn't obeying their controls anymore. (Eventually, they learned that they `found' the wrong plane up in the sky and that their plane had crashed shortly after and they didn't even notice, because they were `flying' something else.)
This has come up before with web servers -- Microsoft got on Orielly's case because Orielly's web server allowed as many connections as the machine could handle, and didn't restrict it to 10 even if the machine wasn't licensed for it. (This was at least 10 years ago, so maybe my memory is sketchy. I had a friend who was working at Orielly at the time and he was fussing about this ...)
I don't think Orielly gave in, and I'm sure this has come up again and again with every web server, ftp server, mail server, etc. that runs under Windows. But Microsoft can't really enforce it, so ...
The BSD and Apple categories would be just as appropriate. Perhaps Slashdot needs a *nix category ...
As for the resources to write their own apps, nobody has the resources to write every app possible. Even Microsoft. Windows wouldn't be nearly as popular if it could *only* run Microsoft applications, even though Microsoft does have a very large variety of applications that they make to choose from. As for Linux, Linus didn't even write every thing needed to make a complete OS -- Various linux distributions also use parts from GNU, X, BSD, etc. All perfectly legit, of course. No stealing here.
There's nothing wrong or dishonest with them providing an API that allows Linux applications to be run on their OS. And they're not saying that they like Linux -- the WINE analogy given at the beginning of the thread is extremely appropriate. They've just realized that embracing/supporting Linux in this small manner will probably help them make more money. It sounds like a wise business decision to me.
As for the idea that `open source is a threat to National Security', there is truth to that. Of course, `closed source' is a threat too, just of a somewhat different nature.
In the open source case, sure, the code can be reviewed, but there's a lot more opportunities for `bad' people to slip in a patch that looks good and so it gets approved, but in reality it opens a non-obvious back door of some sort.
In the closed source case, a similar opportunity exists to introduce bad code, but it's really only available either to developers that work at the company in question, or those who crack into said company. But on the other had, once in, far fewer eyes are likely to look at that code, so it doesn't have to be so carefully obfuscated.
Both situations can be defused if you can get the source and find people qualified to audit every line of it and find these holes and correct them, and then have them do it without cutting corners. It's a huge job, but it's certainly possible. As for getting the source code, I imagine the NSA has little problem getting access to Micorosft's source code should they need it for something.
I gave two examples (weak bits, half/quarter tracks) that break bit-by-bit copy programs. If the Mac drive doesn't allow these things, great. But the Apple II drive did. And there were more things than that.
The post I was replying to was talking about `professional pirates' --
and assuming that piracy here means copying DVDs and selling them, and not plundering ships at sea (I don't like the definition, but nobody consulted me before first using it), then this copying wouldn't fall under the fair use provisions. Or do you disagree?What I was saying is that you don't have to break encryption to violate the DMCA. There are other ways ...