Trust me when I say that the shit has just hit the proverbial fan right now...I'm going to have to unsubscribe...my contributions may be removed from Wikipedia
I don't know if you're a big muckety-muck in the Greater Wiki Community; maybe you are, in which case I risk making a huge ass of myself. (I tried Googling for you, but all I kept coming up with was your many UserPages.) And, of course, it's always sad when people feel slighted or disenfranchised. That said:
I feel fairly certain that anyone who, by comparison to his own views, considers Richard Stallman and the FSF to be a bunch of money-grubbing, compromising, unprincipled corporate hacks is someone whose writing I'm not going to miss.
and hormel wanted to cash in on the name despite (or because of) the declining popularity of the meat(ish) product... Instead, meh... They try to push the legal envelope and get a paper cut. Potted meatheads.
Wow, you really just got that information from a doctor with a glove, didn't you?
Hormel actually 'got it' pretty early on, and had a good sense of humor about it, too. They're in a bind, of course, because they don't want to lose the trademark for the meat, but they don't want to lose the goodwill of the community by acting all RIAA-like. (Ironically, their meat itself is NOT in a bind. (Little sausage-casing humor there.))
So at first, they said "Look, just use lower case letters for the e-mail, and we'll use capital letters for our product." But that didn't really work, because nobody could remember which was which, and everyone always likes to capitalize Internet terms that aren't acronyms.
So then they said "OK, just don't trademark it yourself."
Now they're losing that case. (Ironically, their meat itself is NOT in a case. (Little sausage-binding humor there.))
it is probably better for people to check their sources rather than pretend that it is safe to assume what you hear is true. i personally believe that the freedom to lie should not be restricted, even though lying is certainly a bad thing. this is partially because of how awkward cases for slander and libel and defamation can be.
So take the Internet out of the equation.
It's cool for me to post unsigned flyers around your neighborhood, with your photo, full name, and address, claiming that "This man raped my daughter", because people should assume that it's not safe to trust anonymous flyers?
In addition, I'd point out that this can probably be generalized to (a) any anonymous data set that's combined with (b) some other non-anonymized data set that will map onto it. Here, we have (a) a sample of anonymized Netflix data and (b) a sample of non-anonymized IMDB ratings. So a lot of the reactions are either "Well, duh, if you post publicly to IMDB, you've posted publicly, so you're stupid!" or "it's only movies, who cares?"
I care. Not just in the hypothetical of "what if the TSA decides that someone who rented Farenheit 9/11 shouldn't fly?" (which isn't that extreme these days). No, that's too easy.
Instead, just combine the fact that (a) nearly every company you buy from is selling anonymized transaction data to data mining firms, and (b) you post to Slashdot. Oops! There goes your anonymity, right there.
Netflix-to-IMDB was easy; if you are the only person on both Netflix and IMDB whose favorite three movies are Birth of a Nation, The Boss of it All, and Overboard (starring Goldie Hawn), then yeah, of course they know you're you. That's not the bad part. The bad part is that you're also the only person from your zip code who bought gas at the gas station nearest to the Ron Paul campaign event and then posted a pro-Ron Paul post on Daily Kos - with an anonymous screen name, but similar to the one you used on IMDB. The Kos post was from the same IP address that someone used six months later to download a large book about molecular chemistry from the Gutenberg Project, within a few days of a mail bomb that was sent to the local IRS facility. And so on.
Once you can link the worlds of "sparse but identifying data" with "ubiquitous but anonymous" data, a lot of bad things can happen. And there's really no way to prevent that linking.
*shrug* There were two choices that were much less reactionary: (a) wait for the Apple release Java6 or (b) work on the OpenJDK project
You say that as if there's necessarily some Java6 Apple release to wait for. AFAIK, Apple's had no comment on when-or-if they plan to release a Java 6. It was in Leopard, and then it wasn't. For all we know, it could be completely dropped due to the licensing issues above.
They left out my favorite Mac-equivalent Windows program: Launchy, which is a QuickSilver-like program (to the extent that, like me, you only use 1% of QuickSilver's feature set). Indexes whatever folders you like, sorts apps based on how often you use them, and binds to a keystroke.
And if you're a big fan of QS's clipboard cache, you can get an even nicer, more powerful version of that on the PC with ClipCache:
As for MyExpose, I remember trying it, and deciding I liked TopDesk (http://www.otakusoftware.com/topdesk/) better, although it hasn't been updated in a while. The biggest problem is that these types of functions aren't (apparently) low-level accelerated in XP the way they are in OS X, so it's just not as seamless - just like "show contents when dragging" still gives you window trails.
Weird thing is, when I'm on a PC, I just don't feel like using TopDesk - just like, when I'm in Microsoft Office, I don't feel like using highlight-and-middle-click to copy text. I guess my brain is modal.
Cubase/Protools seems an odd argument for either platform, considering that PT (the real version, not whatever you got with your MBox) has historically been more stable on the Mac, while Steinberg products (Cubase/Nuendo) have historically been more stable on the PC.
In fact, for a long time, there wasn't even a Universal Binary from Steinberg, though I assume there's got to be one by now; additionally, WaveLab's only on the PC, and CoreAudio had huge latency problems at the beginning compared to ASIO (again, I'd like to think that's been solved by now).
One of the reasons Berklee is a Mac school is because of all the great audio programs available on the Mac - yet, for the same reason, they were utterly unable to get Nuendo working smoothly.
If this bill passes, the most likely effect will be that dating sites will follow the path of easiest compliance, and simply prohibit any and all users from New Jersey.
So your point sums up to this: when an emerging technology is mature enough to be commercially viable, the first one to implement it should get a monopoly on it?
Whoah there, Freedom Boy. Perhaps when you were out buying straw, you missed the part where I've repeatedly said I think that this patent is a bad thing?
I just said I think that, under the current (U.S.) laws, it may be valid. And even those laws don't go as far as your Ray Bolger impression. The first one to apply for a patent gets it unless someone else has described it publicly first. It doesn't matter if the patenter is the first commercially viable implementor; only whether other people with the same idea bothered to talk about it somewhere we can see it.
One of the good things is that, instead of a few magazines and long-dead BBS's, we now have widely disseminated discussions about, well, everything. In 10 years, it will be pretty hard to claim that an obvious technological idea is novel, because there will be 20 people talking about it in ten different forums (and 100 spammer-generated doppelgangers having the identical discussion elsewhere).
Presumably, "have permission" means "paid for permission", which, in turn, most likely means "pays royalties on every copy sold", which translates directly to "the label is being paid", which we all know really means "the artist isn't seeing a penny from the label", which means...
Not necessarily. I studied this for an entire semester, but I've apparently blocked it all out.
There are a bunch of different kinds of music "rights" - around six or seven basic ones, IIRC.
The important distinction here is between the rights to the song - the melody, chord changes, lyrics - and the rights to the recording. We don't care about the recording here, because we're making a new one.
The song isn't owned by the record company (again IIRC). Whether it's owned by the publisher, or the composer, or various artist's collectives, I couldn't tell you anymore. And, of course, sometimes the publisher is the label; a lot of times, the publisher is the songwriter (who may or may not be the artist).
Some of these rights are compulsory - that is, in lieu of actually negotiating individual agreements, the licensing fees are just declared by law or regulation, and you've implicitly agreed to them by copyrighting something. Some are in theory not compulsory, but are in practice always negotiated by the same group at the same rates (e.g. the Harry Fox Agency). Some are covered by international conventions, some aren't. And so on.
So without seeing the actual contract The Romantics signed, it'd be hard to say if they got money out of Activision's existing license. (Even seeing the contract might not clear it up; naturally, everyone involved is trying to get more than their share, and sometimes that means writing contracts that confuse artists, if you catch my drift.)
And, of course, when the song was written originally, the concept of "videogame rights" was nonexistent, so who knows what part of their contract would cover it now...
Just imagine if the very first e-commerce site had patented the concept, which actually was pretty innovative.
That's called "argument from consequences". Yes, such a patent would make life unimaginably horrible. That wouldn't make it an invalid patent.
And, in fact, they did - a company called Pangea Intellectual Property (aka PanIP) bought a patent that was originally filed in 1984. Luckily, there were already a few online stores in 1984 (Comp-U-Card/Electronic Mall), and the patent was eventually invalidated because of that.
If that patent had been filed a few years earlier, we might not be having this discussion about Amazon.
I think you're missing my point (although MIME is a bit newer than 1970).
I *know* that all these concepts are ancient. That was precisely why I mentioned them.
People are saying that "one-click was obvious; the only reason there's no prior art was because we thought it was a bad idea at the time." In retrospect, it was only a bad idea if you couldn't undo it.
So let's take digital audio, which was "obvious" by the early 20th century - yet not really usable until we developed good converters. And once you have something digitized, sending it around a network is also an obvious thing to do - yet not doable until you have a fast, reliable network.
So on the one hand, an invention like "a method to allow purchase of digitized music over a wireless network with no physical media involved" was obvious in the 1930s. We knew about digitization, we knew about networks, we knew about wireless, we certainly knew about selling.
There's probably no prior art - not because it *couldn't* have been done three years ago, or because it couldn't have been conceived 30 years ago - but just because all the circumstances that make it not only possible, but commercially feasible, hadn't yet emerged.
Much as I hate the effects of the one-click patent, I'm not sure I agree with can you.
Received wisdom was that one-click was a bad idea
That's really the key of it. It was obvious to everybody: obvious that it was such a bad idea that nobody should do it.
Except that it turned out that it was a really good idea, if you offset the "flaw" (no confirmation) with undoability. Good enough that other sites started doing it, too, and had to stop because of the patent.
I'm trying to think of other things that were "obviously bad ideas" which are now good ideas because of offsetting techology. Verbose, self-descriptive, text-based, network-transmitted file formats? Garbage collection? Hell, digital audio was obvious, but also obviously dumb due to the poor quality and large file sizes. But if you patented some of these in 1970, would they be valid?
I was thinking about this the other night (probably thanks to xkcd). On the one hand, I don't generally agree with Stallman about, well, much of anything. On the other, without him and the FSF, the world would be a much, much poorer place. So I don't mean to rag on the FSF. But:
They're pretty much out on the edge.
Not of geekdom, mind you, but of intellectual property and politics. And it's not a bad thing: Brave people taking a stand on the edge help move the middle. Free software (and its estranged brother open source) have gone from academic playthings to corporate data centers, and it would never have been possible without them.
Yet I'm not really sure I'd want anyone with the FSF to be my witness. They're a lot easier to discredit as "fringe" to a conservative judge than, say, the EFF or (dare I say) even the ACLU. They look and sound like wild-eyed ex-hippies because, well, they're wild-eyed ex-hippies. And having a key witness discredited is a really good way to lose an otherwise airtight case.
I think I'd rather them focus on pushing the boundaries of licensing and, maybe, on finally finishing that rewrite of emacs in C#.
Of course if some third party obtains your private key, your should assume that your communications are no longer secure. What part of that is hard to understand?
Duh! I agree - even my grandmother knows the difference between a private key generated on her PC by a Java applet running in a browser pointed to hushmail.com and a private key that's generated server-side and displayed in her browser pointed to hushmail.com.
Thanks for the explanation. I've been wondering why, in late 2007, everything I see is still optimized for i686 (or even i586). I upgraded from Core to Core2, and couldn't figure out why I didn't need to recompile everything to take full advantage; that's when I noticed that Tiger was still using a gcc that didn't even have Core!
It sounds like Penryn has a bunch of slightly-neat features that we'll start taking advantage of sometime in 2025.
Slashdot Mirror
Trust me when I say that the shit has just hit the proverbial fan right now...I'm going to have to unsubscribe...my contributions may be removed from Wikipedia
I don't know if you're a big muckety-muck in the Greater Wiki Community; maybe you are, in which case I risk making a huge ass of myself. (I tried Googling for you, but all I kept coming up with was your many UserPages.) And, of course, it's always sad when people feel slighted or disenfranchised. That said:
I feel fairly certain that anyone who, by comparison to his own views, considers Richard Stallman and the FSF to be a bunch of money-grubbing, compromising, unprincipled corporate hacks is someone whose writing I'm not going to miss.
Look, accuracy is nice, but you don't have to go the whole 8.2 meters with it.
and hormel wanted to cash in on the name despite (or because of) the declining popularity of the meat(ish) product... Instead, meh... They try to push the legal envelope and get a paper cut. Potted meatheads.
Wow, you really just got that information from a doctor with a glove, didn't you?
Hormel actually 'got it' pretty early on, and had a good sense of humor about it, too. They're in a bind, of course, because they don't want to lose the trademark for the meat, but they don't want to lose the goodwill of the community by acting all RIAA-like. (Ironically, their meat itself is NOT in a bind. (Little sausage-casing humor there.))
So at first, they said "Look, just use lower case letters for the e-mail, and we'll use capital letters for our product." But that didn't really work, because nobody could remember which was which, and everyone always likes to capitalize Internet terms that aren't acronyms.
So then they said "OK, just don't trademark it yourself."
Now they're losing that case. (Ironically, their meat itself is NOT in a case. (Little sausage-binding humor there.))
The only real issue I have, using a white 24" iMac
Oooooohhh, now it's a RACIAL thing! Typical.
it is probably better for people to check their sources rather than pretend that it is safe to assume what you hear is true. i personally believe that the freedom to lie should not be restricted, even though lying is certainly a bad thing. this is partially because of how awkward cases for slander and libel and defamation can be.
So take the Internet out of the equation.
It's cool for me to post unsigned flyers around your neighborhood, with your photo, full name, and address, claiming that "This man raped my daughter", because people should assume that it's not safe to trust anonymous flyers?
Great example, Peter Mork.
In addition, I'd point out that this can probably be generalized to (a) any anonymous data set that's combined with (b) some other non-anonymized data set that will map onto it. Here, we have (a) a sample of anonymized Netflix data and (b) a sample of non-anonymized IMDB ratings. So a lot of the reactions are either "Well, duh, if you post publicly to IMDB, you've posted publicly, so you're stupid!" or "it's only movies, who cares?"
I care. Not just in the hypothetical of "what if the TSA decides that someone who rented Farenheit 9/11 shouldn't fly?" (which isn't that extreme these days). No, that's too easy.
Instead, just combine the fact that (a) nearly every company you buy from is selling anonymized transaction data to data mining firms, and (b) you post to Slashdot. Oops! There goes your anonymity, right there.
Netflix-to-IMDB was easy; if you are the only person on both Netflix and IMDB whose favorite three movies are Birth of a Nation, The Boss of it All, and Overboard (starring Goldie Hawn), then yeah, of course they know you're you. That's not the bad part. The bad part is that you're also the only person from your zip code who bought gas at the gas station nearest to the Ron Paul campaign event and then posted a pro-Ron Paul post on Daily Kos - with an anonymous screen name, but similar to the one you used on IMDB. The Kos post was from the same IP address that someone used six months later to download a large book about molecular chemistry from the Gutenberg Project, within a few days of a mail bomb that was sent to the local IRS facility. And so on.
Once you can link the worlds of "sparse but identifying data" with "ubiquitous but anonymous" data, a lot of bad things can happen. And there's really no way to prevent that linking.
*shrug* There were two choices that were much less reactionary: (a) wait for the Apple release Java6 or (b) work on the OpenJDK project
You say that as if there's necessarily some Java6 Apple release to wait for. AFAIK, Apple's had no comment on when-or-if they plan to release a Java 6. It was in Leopard, and then it wasn't. For all we know, it could be completely dropped due to the licensing issues above.
They left out my favorite Mac-equivalent Windows program: Launchy, which is a QuickSilver-like program (to the extent that, like me, you only use 1% of QuickSilver's feature set). Indexes whatever folders you like, sorts apps based on how often you use them, and binds to a keystroke.
And if you're a big fan of QS's clipboard cache, you can get an even nicer, more powerful version of that on the PC with ClipCache:
http://www.xrayz.co.uk/clipcache/
As for MyExpose, I remember trying it, and deciding I liked TopDesk (http://www.otakusoftware.com/topdesk/) better, although it hasn't been updated in a while. The biggest problem is that these types of functions aren't (apparently) low-level accelerated in XP the way they are in OS X, so it's just not as seamless - just like "show contents when dragging" still gives you window trails.
Weird thing is, when I'm on a PC, I just don't feel like using TopDesk - just like, when I'm in Microsoft Office, I don't feel like using highlight-and-middle-click to copy text. I guess my brain is modal.
Cubase/Protools seems an odd argument for either platform, considering that PT (the real version, not whatever you got with your MBox) has historically been more stable on the Mac, while Steinberg products (Cubase/Nuendo) have historically been more stable on the PC.
In fact, for a long time, there wasn't even a Universal Binary from Steinberg, though I assume there's got to be one by now; additionally, WaveLab's only on the PC, and CoreAudio had huge latency problems at the beginning compared to ASIO (again, I'd like to think that's been solved by now).
One of the reasons Berklee is a Mac school is because of all the great audio programs available on the Mac - yet, for the same reason, they were utterly unable to get Nuendo working smoothly.
If this bill passes, the most likely effect will be that dating sites will follow the path of easiest compliance, and simply prohibit any and all users from New Jersey.
Where can I contribute?
We wish -- no, must -- make our disgust at this abuse perfectly clear.
So your point sums up to this: when an emerging technology is mature enough to be commercially viable, the first one to implement it should get a monopoly on it?
Whoah there, Freedom Boy. Perhaps when you were out buying straw, you missed the part where I've repeatedly said I think that this patent is a bad thing?
I just said I think that, under the current (U.S.) laws, it may be valid. And even those laws don't go as far as your Ray Bolger impression. The first one to apply for a patent gets it unless someone else has described it publicly first. It doesn't matter if the patenter is the first commercially viable implementor; only whether other people with the same idea bothered to talk about it somewhere we can see it.
One of the good things is that, instead of a few magazines and long-dead BBS's, we now have widely disseminated discussions about, well, everything. In 10 years, it will be pretty hard to claim that an obvious technological idea is novel, because there will be 20 people talking about it in ten different forums (and 100 spammer-generated doppelgangers having the identical discussion elsewhere).
Presumably, "have permission" means "paid for permission", which, in turn, most likely means "pays royalties on every copy sold", which translates directly to "the label is being paid", which we all know really means "the artist isn't seeing a penny from the label", which means...
Not necessarily. I studied this for an entire semester, but I've apparently blocked it all out.
There are a bunch of different kinds of music "rights" - around six or seven basic ones, IIRC.
The important distinction here is between the rights to the song - the melody, chord changes, lyrics - and the rights to the recording. We don't care about the recording here, because we're making a new one.
The song isn't owned by the record company (again IIRC). Whether it's owned by the publisher, or the composer, or various artist's collectives, I couldn't tell you anymore. And, of course, sometimes the publisher is the label; a lot of times, the publisher is the songwriter (who may or may not be the artist).
Some of these rights are compulsory - that is, in lieu of actually negotiating individual agreements, the licensing fees are just declared by law or regulation, and you've implicitly agreed to them by copyrighting something. Some are in theory not compulsory, but are in practice always negotiated by the same group at the same rates (e.g. the Harry Fox Agency). Some are covered by international conventions, some aren't. And so on.
So without seeing the actual contract The Romantics signed, it'd be hard to say if they got money out of Activision's existing license. (Even seeing the contract might not clear it up; naturally, everyone involved is trying to get more than their share, and sometimes that means writing contracts that confuse artists, if you catch my drift.)
And, of course, when the song was written originally, the concept of "videogame rights" was nonexistent, so who knows what part of their contract would cover it now...
It's not the thing that makes it work - it's the thing that makes it worth doing. See elsewhere in the thread.
Just imagine if the very first e-commerce site had patented the concept, which actually was pretty innovative.
That's called "argument from consequences". Yes, such a patent would make life unimaginably horrible. That wouldn't make it an invalid patent.
And, in fact, they did - a company called Pangea Intellectual Property (aka PanIP) bought a patent that was originally filed in 1984. Luckily, there were already a few online stores in 1984 (Comp-U-Card/Electronic Mall), and the patent was eventually invalidated because of that.
If that patent had been filed a few years earlier, we might not be having this discussion about Amazon.
I think you're missing my point (although MIME is a bit newer than 1970).
I *know* that all these concepts are ancient. That was precisely why I mentioned them.
People are saying that "one-click was obvious; the only reason there's no prior art was because we thought it was a bad idea at the time." In retrospect, it was only a bad idea if you couldn't undo it.
So let's take digital audio, which was "obvious" by the early 20th century - yet not really usable until we developed good converters. And once you have something digitized, sending it around a network is also an obvious thing to do - yet not doable until you have a fast, reliable network.
So on the one hand, an invention like "a method to allow purchase of digitized music over a wireless network with no physical media involved" was obvious in the 1930s. We knew about digitization, we knew about networks, we knew about wireless, we certainly knew about selling.
On the other hand, Apple just patented it.
There's probably no prior art - not because it *couldn't* have been done three years ago, or because it couldn't have been conceived 30 years ago - but just because all the circumstances that make it not only possible, but commercially feasible, hadn't yet emerged.
Much as I hate the effects of the one-click patent, I'm not sure I agree with can you.
Received wisdom was that one-click was a bad idea
That's really the key of it. It was obvious to everybody: obvious that it was such a bad idea that nobody should do it.
Except that it turned out that it was a really good idea, if you offset the "flaw" (no confirmation) with undoability. Good enough that other sites started doing it, too, and had to stop because of the patent.
I'm trying to think of other things that were "obviously bad ideas" which are now good ideas because of offsetting techology. Verbose, self-descriptive, text-based, network-transmitted file formats? Garbage collection? Hell, digital audio was obvious, but also obviously dumb due to the poor quality and large file sizes. But if you patented some of these in 1970, would they be valid?
How many people on here remember the state of internet commerce back in 1997?
How many people on here remember 1997?
Live Documents matches features found in Office 2007
They're obviously trying to position this to be "as powerful as Office 2007", but they can't even bring themselves to use THAT much vague puffery?
My personal site also matches features found in Office 2007. It's blue.
proposal I have seen since that "Irish, eat your children" thing.
Yep. And yet... they never got it right by providing expert witnesses in court, so far as I can remember. That one has not yet been tried.
who thinks this may not be such a great idea?
I was thinking about this the other night (probably thanks to xkcd). On the one hand, I don't generally agree with Stallman about, well, much of anything. On the other, without him and the FSF, the world would be a much, much poorer place. So I don't mean to rag on the FSF. But:
They're pretty much out on the edge.
Not of geekdom, mind you, but of intellectual property and politics. And it's not a bad thing: Brave people taking a stand on the edge help move the middle. Free software (and its estranged brother open source) have gone from academic playthings to corporate data centers, and it would never have been possible without them.
Yet I'm not really sure I'd want anyone with the FSF to be my witness. They're a lot easier to discredit as "fringe" to a conservative judge than, say, the EFF or (dare I say) even the ACLU. They look and sound like wild-eyed ex-hippies because, well, they're wild-eyed ex-hippies. And having a key witness discredited is a really good way to lose an otherwise airtight case.
I think I'd rather them focus on pushing the boundaries of licensing and, maybe, on finally finishing that rewrite of emacs in C#.
So, if a security bug is present an exploit could happen...?
Yep, that seems to be about the point of the article from what I can see.
In other news: If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a skateboard.
Of course if some third party obtains your private key, your should assume that your communications are no longer secure. What part of that is hard to understand?
Duh! I agree - even my grandmother knows the difference between a private key generated on her PC by a Java applet running in a browser pointed to hushmail.com and a private key that's generated server-side and displayed in her browser pointed to hushmail.com.
Oh, wait, no she doesn't.
Thanks for the explanation. I've been wondering why, in late 2007, everything I see is still optimized for i686 (or even i586). I upgraded from Core to Core2, and couldn't figure out why I didn't need to recompile everything to take full advantage; that's when I noticed that Tiger was still using a gcc that didn't even have Core!
It sounds like Penryn has a bunch of slightly-neat features that we'll start taking advantage of sometime in 2025.