Though Webster indeed marks the plural as schemata, but my Latin dictionary shows the entry "schema, -ae, f. Aspect, shape, figure (Plautus, Amphitrion 117)". So Plautus agrees with the original post.
DRM is a feature, all right. For the media producers. It does not add value to the final user, therefore it is not a feature for her. It's merely a characteristic.
On the other hand, if the DRM on the Flash chip meant that if end-user's copy is somehow corrupted, she can go to the music store and have it replaced without having to spend her money to buy it over again, then it would be a feature.
As it stands, DRM in digital media are only good for headaches when one tries to store personal backup data. That and the fact that I can't send my European cousins a gift DVD because of region-code incompatibilities. Feature, all right.
You're lumping together two separate problems into the same bin. Of course, child pornography, hate language and other "content-monitoring" concerns are on most countries' agendas, but no one needs ICANN to combat them; they need Interpol for that.
So why place the Internet under UN governance? Because since ICANN is a semi-commercial organization, it could be argued that it falls under the dominance of the United States government. And frankly, no one outside the US trusts George W not to try and take advantage of it once he figures this out. It's too much power to lie in the hands of any one government, especially when that government is so grossly more powerful than all of the others to start with.
Which is exactly why it should be placed under the aegis of the UN; so that no particular government can have complete control over it.
Oh, please. The Hanseatic League wasn't supra-national, or a government. It was an alliance of Prussian city-states to protect their commercial interests. It was more like a precursor to German government, or a cartel of wealthy merchants.
And the League of Nations wasn't an attempt at a supra-national government either, it was an organization set up to oversee the humiliation of post-WWI Germany in the hands of British victors as established by the Treaty of Paris.
Because any political party or interested persons can go before the Supreme Electoral Court and ask to inspect the software or hardware. Since neither the situation nor the opposition raised significant complaints, one is safe to assume there are no glaring problems.
Paper ballots can be stuffed, lost, or otherwise tampered with (and, im my country, have often and consistently been tampered in the past). They can become wet and unreadable. It's easy. What's really hard is hacking into an isolated system which lacks any sort of input device more sophisticated than a keypad:-)
Perhaps one can blur the image purposefully to make it seem farther away. One problem with wearable computers today is that they force their wearer to focus on something close with one eye while the other cannot focus on the same distance. This leads to a pretty headache after a while...
Yes, I read that in the filing, and I was wondering about that. I don't speak legalese, so can anybody clear for me exactly what rights are those MS is trying to buy?
FYI, the speed of light is roughly 3.0E+08 meters per second. One AU is roughly 1.5E+11 meters, and one light-year is roughly 9.5E+15 meters. So one light-year is around 60000 AUs...
Also, in the Star Trek movie, V'ger was actually Voyager 10, so there were no worries there, anyway.
Thinking about it, it's the first time a man-made artifact reaches the outside of the Oort cloud and effectively leaves the Solar System. This is an occasion on par with the launching of the Sputnik and the Moon landing.
Where I'm from, in Brazil, there is already an electronic voting system working for years. I've been eligible to vote for seven years, now, and I have never used a paper ballot. The system can and does work. It's unfortunate that there's such difficulty in the United States...
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Though Webster indeed marks the plural as schemata, but my Latin dictionary shows the entry "schema, -ae, f. Aspect, shape, figure (Plautus, Amphitrion 117)". So Plautus agrees with the original post.
Who knows, maybe you can get the DRM guys to GPS-locate the thing for you ;-)
DRM is a feature, all right. For the media producers. It does not add value to the final user, therefore it is not a feature for her. It's merely a characteristic.
On the other hand, if the DRM on the Flash chip meant that if end-user's copy is somehow corrupted, she can go to the music store and have it replaced without having to spend her money to buy it over again, then it would be a feature.
As it stands, DRM in digital media are only good for headaches when one tries to store personal backup data. That and the fact that I can't send my European cousins a gift DVD because of region-code incompatibilities. Feature, all right.
... Oh, wait, people still use those. So I guess the CDs will be here for a while yet.
You're lumping together two separate problems into the same bin. Of course, child pornography, hate language and other "content-monitoring" concerns are on most countries' agendas, but no one needs ICANN to combat them; they need Interpol for that. So why place the Internet under UN governance? Because since ICANN is a semi-commercial organization, it could be argued that it falls under the dominance of the United States government. And frankly, no one outside the US trusts George W not to try and take advantage of it once he figures this out. It's too much power to lie in the hands of any one government, especially when that government is so grossly more powerful than all of the others to start with. Which is exactly why it should be placed under the aegis of the UN; so that no particular government can have complete control over it.
Oh, please. The Hanseatic League wasn't supra-national, or a government. It was an alliance of Prussian city-states to protect their commercial interests. It was more like a precursor to German government, or a cartel of wealthy merchants.
And the League of Nations wasn't an attempt at a supra-national government either, it was an organization set up to oversee the humiliation of post-WWI Germany in the hands of British victors as established by the Treaty of Paris.
Because any political party or interested persons can go before the Supreme Electoral Court and ask to inspect the software or hardware. Since neither the situation nor the opposition raised significant complaints, one is safe to assume there are no glaring problems. Paper ballots can be stuffed, lost, or otherwise tampered with (and, im my country, have often and consistently been tampered in the past). They can become wet and unreadable. It's easy. What's really hard is hacking into an isolated system which lacks any sort of input device more sophisticated than a keypad :-)
Perhaps one can blur the image purposefully to make it seem farther away. One problem with wearable computers today is that they force their wearer to focus on something close with one eye while the other cannot focus on the same distance. This leads to a pretty headache after a while...
Yes, I read that in the filing, and I was wondering about that. I don't speak legalese, so can anybody clear for me exactly what rights are those MS is trying to buy?
FYI, the speed of light is roughly 3.0E+08 meters per second. One AU is roughly 1.5E+11 meters, and one light-year is roughly 9.5E+15 meters. So one light-year is around 60000 AUs...
Also, in the Star Trek movie, V'ger was actually Voyager 10, so there were no worries there, anyway.
Thinking about it, it's the first time a man-made artifact reaches the outside of the Oort cloud and effectively leaves the Solar System. This is an occasion on par with the launching of the Sputnik and the Moon landing.
Where I'm from, in Brazil, there is already an electronic voting system working for years. I've been eligible to vote for seven years, now, and I have never used a paper ballot. The system can and does work. It's unfortunate that there's such difficulty in the United States...