It's actually pretty easy - apply the idea / expression dichotomy, already clearly established in other areas of copyright law, to code. Distributing line-for-line copies of SCO's ELF implementation, which is their expression of an idea, is and should be illegal. But that's not what they're saying we did; they're saying they own the standard, they own the idea. Copyright law doesn't allow you to own an idea. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to be educated, anyone who files suit with this misconception needs to fail spectacularly, and any law that doesn't make this crystal clear needs to be rewritten. Copyright law doesn't allow you to own an idea.
A minor nitpick - I don't believe anything previously in the public domain has been put back under copyright, and I remember hearing a Supreme court judge saying they would have a problem with that. (Ex post facto, and it would screw publishers who had already begun distributing the works.) It's just that nothing new will enter the public domain for another 14(?) years, if ever again.
Actually, it is somewhat similar to the book in the bigger picture. (Spoiler!) The three laws lead to the same inevitable conclusion. But in the book, you get the idea that Dr. Calvin thinks this a good thing. In the movie, the revolution is much less peaceful, but the people (and the robot) who'd rather be free than safe win. My guess is whoever's responsible for the massive plot changes liked the book but didn't think the ending was happy.
what are you gonna do when we DO have quantum entanglement communication devices which ARE FTL?
The same thing we'll DO when we have motion machines that ARE PERPETUAL -- modify the theory. Until then...
if the communication really is 'instant' - it is instant, for all frames of reference - so the ship would get the alpha cent signal at the same time as earth at the same time as all other points... if not, then it isn't 'instant':)
Saying that the transmission and receipt of a signal are simultaneous, for all frames of reference, would break some basic assumptions. Going back to the three warring ships, suppose the losers sent instantaneous signals exactly when they exploded. According to your definition of instantaneous signals, both the assailant and earth would receive the same sequence of signals. If both signals arrive simultaneously for both observers, the earth observer must conclude that the laser went faster than c to hit the front ship and slower than c to hit the rear one. If the same signal arrives before the other for both observers, then the observer on the attacking ship must conclude that light travels at different speeds. The very basis of relativity is that all observers measure the same speed of light.
I remember when playing those on a faster computer you had to tweak the delay loop calibration to count higher (which should be automatic, but 33MHz is enough for anybody, right?). It could also have something to do with the strange graphics mode gorilla uses. You could also try them under bochs or dosemu.
I don't think the markets are really all that different. Nobody, Windows or Linux, is going to pay for something they know they can get for free within their moral limits. For example, I often buy commercial games (especially those that work in Linux), because there aren't really comparable free games, and I won't infringe copyright. But in this instance, why should I pay for DVD playing software when I can get better software for free? I consider using the illegal DeCSS not only not wrong, but almost my civic duty. As for converting Joe Sixpack, he'd rather already have something than have to go to a store and buy it.
Ugh - here's a better analogy. The brain is the hard drive and CPU. If you could transfer it, it might boot, though you'd be in driver hell. And unfortunately it's not at all modularly designed.
Depending on Titan's geology, some energy could also come from the heat in its core. On earth, we have life that uses only heat and chemical energy from deep-sea vents. And some theories say life started there with autocatalytic enzymes, with cell walls, DNA, and chlorophyll coming later.
Click on live trial and give your email. It seems almost identical to the patent - it runs a traceroute and figures out where each hop is. I have no idea how old it is, or whether it's related to Digital Envoy, though.
At the time of this writing, 1400 signed the petition. Surely one of them has the technical knowledge to compile them, if he had access to the source. So he should offer to sign an NDA and make binaries for everyone.
Minor technical detail: the function doesn't pop plates, use them for storage, and push them back on. Rather, the plates represent things it wants to store, so if it wants to store something, it writes it on a plate and pushes it onto the stack. And as long as it pops all the plates it used off the stack afterwards, there are no problems. Oh yeah, and the plates are magnetically suspended from the ceiling.
I've read most of the nVidia discussions, and I've never heard of that, so lose the tone. Also, earlier today I stumbled across this in the Mesa FAQ; apparently in 1999 SGI opened up a sample OpenGL implementation. (Not that I'm sure this is the same thing you're talking about.)
The fact that current copyright law includes the exclusive right to copy, and not simply to distribute copies, is kruft from a bygone era. When copyright was made, technology for personal copies did not exist, so copying and distributing copies was essentially identical, so they restricted copying itself. Now that the technology exists, we've had to specifically modify our laws to allow each new type of fair use. Instead, the right to make copies should belong to everyone, and only the right to distribute copies would be given to copyright holders. This would actually have no effect on the current legality of things - it would just make fair use follow logically from the basis of the law instead of being an afterthought like it is now. My two cents.
Macrovision was not put in place to block piracy. It was put in place under the facade that it blocks piracy.
The industry isn't stupid. They knew damn well Macrovision wouldn't stop actual pirates, the ones with tons of custom VHS duplicators in their warehouses, from copying tapes. I can't believe they would be that stupid. Just once, I want to attribute it to malice.
I believe that copyrights are much better suited to reward the investment in software than patents. Frankly, patents are a kludge for industries where copyright wouldn't make sense. In the software industry, patents have a chilling effect on innovation, and they prevent computers from being user friendly and compatible with each other.
In literature, the media to which copyright originally applied, an idea is worthless but it's expression is valuable. You can't patent the idea of a story about star-crossed lovers, but you can copyright your expression of it. This dichotomy is present in copyright law, and it applies to software as well. The investment in producing, say, a word processor isn't the idea of a word processor, it's the programmer-years of effort to required implement one, and that is exactly what copyright rewards.
By rewarding the idea instead of the implementation, patents hinder innovation. If you had patented the idea of a word processor, then with just few lawyer-weeks of non-productive labor, you would have precluded everyone else in the world from investing in the implementation of a word processor. To say nothing of having harmed the job market for programmers, you now totally control every word processor ever built, despite having done nothing! Now anyone who wants to write a word processor has to find you and pay you (if you even decide to license the patent), which will surely limit the number of word processors written. With central control and without diversity, innovation suffers. If I have an idea for a feature, but you don't like it, there's nowhere else I can go, and my innovation will be lost.
Patents also harm innovation by increasing the legal risk of writing software. Many people write software for fun or to scratch an itch. Many small companies write software for small profits in niche markets. This is a big source of innovation. These people and companies don't have the resources to search for patents they may unknowingly be infringing, the money to license them, or the lawyers to defend themselves if they don't. Writing software is fun, but getting sued isn't, and if writing software puts one at constant legal risk, it won't happen.
Finally, patents prevent computers from being compatible with each other and easy to use. You suggest that if IBM patents "nesting selectable options in a menu," then we should all come up with a better way. And suppose someone patented scroll-bars -- we should all put them on different sides, or use the scroll-wheel (if we've licenced it, that is), or scroll-buttons. But users would confuse scroll-buttons with close-bars ("scroll up, then down to close"), which were used instead of the "X in the top-right" to evade a Microsoft patent. My point is, copying ideas, such as scroll bars, menus, plugin APIs, etc. is absolutely necessary for software to work together and for computers to interface with users in a standard way. Copyrights respect this and allow companies to make profit anyway, but patents do not.
I'm thinking he was talking about the interesting pattern of the rings. In the top left corner, there is one dark ring, with several "echo" rings getting weaker while they get closer to Saturn in decreasing intervals.
If you know how to reprogram your MAC address, you probably also know how to keep your computer virus-free, so banning by MAC address is a perfectly good reactive solution to viruses until they start randomly changing MAC addresses. And then you could ban unregistered MAC addresses, which is fine until viruses sniff and copy other MAC addresses, which isn't always possible.
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It doesn't have to be "legally obvious," it has to be obvious to someone "skilled in the art." And you admit that it is obvious to us geeks.
SCO has those too.
OK, they're not naked, but it's a joke, OK?
It's actually pretty easy - apply the idea / expression dichotomy, already clearly established in other areas of copyright law, to code. Distributing line-for-line copies of SCO's ELF implementation, which is their expression of an idea, is and should be illegal. But that's not what they're saying we did; they're saying they own the standard, they own the idea. Copyright law doesn't allow you to own an idea. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to be educated, anyone who files suit with this misconception needs to fail spectacularly, and any law that doesn't make this crystal clear needs to be rewritten. Copyright law doesn't allow you to own an idea.
Sorry, but although they may have beat me to print on demand, I have the patent for print on demand... on the Internet!
Actually, I just figured it - you get 407 moles of IP addresses per square foot of earth (including oceans).
A minor nitpick - I don't believe anything previously in the public domain has been put back under copyright, and I remember hearing a Supreme court judge saying they would have a problem with that. (Ex post facto, and it would screw publishers who had already begun distributing the works.) It's just that nothing new will enter the public domain for another 14(?) years, if ever again.
Actually, it is somewhat similar to the book in the bigger picture. (Spoiler!) The three laws lead to the same inevitable conclusion. But in the book, you get the idea that Dr. Calvin thinks this a good thing. In the movie, the revolution is much less peaceful, but the people (and the robot) who'd rather be free than safe win. My guess is whoever's responsible for the massive plot changes liked the book but didn't think the ending was happy.
The same thing we'll DO when we have motion machines that ARE PERPETUAL -- modify the theory. Until then...
if the communication really is 'instant' - it is instant, for all frames of reference - so the ship would get the alpha cent signal at the same time as earth at the same time as all other points... if not, then it isn't 'instant' :)
Saying that the transmission and receipt of a signal are simultaneous, for all frames of reference, would break some basic assumptions. Going back to the three warring ships, suppose the losers sent instantaneous signals exactly when they exploded. According to your definition of instantaneous signals, both the assailant and earth would receive the same sequence of signals. If both signals arrive simultaneously for both observers, the earth observer must conclude that the laser went faster than c to hit the front ship and slower than c to hit the rear one. If the same signal arrives before the other for both observers, then the observer on the attacking ship must conclude that light travels at different speeds. The very basis of relativity is that all observers measure the same speed of light.
I remember when playing those on a faster computer you had to tweak the delay loop calibration to count higher (which should be automatic, but 33MHz is enough for anybody, right?). It could also have something to do with the strange graphics mode gorilla uses. You could also try them under bochs or dosemu.
For what it's worth, Linux counter estimates 18 million Linux users.
I don't think the markets are really all that different. Nobody, Windows or Linux, is going to pay for something they know they can get for free within their moral limits. For example, I often buy commercial games (especially those that work in Linux), because there aren't really comparable free games, and I won't infringe copyright. But in this instance, why should I pay for DVD playing software when I can get better software for free? I consider using the illegal DeCSS not only not wrong, but almost my civic duty. As for converting Joe Sixpack, he'd rather already have something than have to go to a store and buy it.
Worth a shot. tcfelker@mtco.com
Ugh - here's a better analogy. The brain is the hard drive and CPU. If you could transfer it, it might boot, though you'd be in driver hell. And unfortunately it's not at all modularly designed.
Depending on Titan's geology, some energy could also come from the heat in its core. On earth, we have life that uses only heat and chemical energy from deep-sea vents. And some theories say life started there with autocatalytic enzymes, with cell walls, DNA, and chlorophyll coming later.
That one has a database, but it doesn't rely on whois data, so it may not infringe the patent. Trying again...
http://www.visualware.com/personal/products/visual route/index.html
Click on live trial and give your email. It seems almost identical to the patent - it runs a traceroute and figures out where each hop is. I have no idea how old it is, or whether it's related to Digital Envoy, though.
At the time of this writing, 1400 signed the petition. Surely one of them has the technical knowledge to compile them, if he had access to the source. So he should offer to sign an NDA and make binaries for everyone.
Minor technical detail: the function doesn't pop plates, use them for storage, and push them back on. Rather, the plates represent things it wants to store, so if it wants to store something, it writes it on a plate and pushes it onto the stack. And as long as it pops all the plates it used off the stack afterwards, there are no problems. Oh yeah, and the plates are magnetically suspended from the ceiling.
I've read most of the nVidia discussions, and I've never heard of that, so lose the tone. Also, earlier today I stumbled across this in the Mesa FAQ; apparently in 1999 SGI opened up a sample OpenGL implementation. (Not that I'm sure this is the same thing you're talking about.)
The fact that current copyright law includes the exclusive right to copy, and not simply to distribute copies, is kruft from a bygone era. When copyright was made, technology for personal copies did not exist, so copying and distributing copies was essentially identical, so they restricted copying itself. Now that the technology exists, we've had to specifically modify our laws to allow each new type of fair use. Instead, the right to make copies should belong to everyone, and only the right to distribute copies would be given to copyright holders. This would actually have no effect on the current legality of things - it would just make fair use follow logically from the basis of the law instead of being an afterthought like it is now. My two cents.
The industry isn't stupid. They knew damn well Macrovision wouldn't stop actual pirates, the ones with tons of custom VHS duplicators in their warehouses, from copying tapes. I can't believe they would be that stupid. Just once, I want to attribute it to malice.
In literature, the media to which copyright originally applied, an idea is worthless but it's expression is valuable. You can't patent the idea of a story about star-crossed lovers, but you can copyright your expression of it. This dichotomy is present in copyright law, and it applies to software as well. The investment in producing, say, a word processor isn't the idea of a word processor, it's the programmer-years of effort to required implement one, and that is exactly what copyright rewards.
By rewarding the idea instead of the implementation, patents hinder innovation. If you had patented the idea of a word processor, then with just few lawyer-weeks of non-productive labor, you would have precluded everyone else in the world from investing in the implementation of a word processor. To say nothing of having harmed the job market for programmers, you now totally control every word processor ever built, despite having done nothing! Now anyone who wants to write a word processor has to find you and pay you (if you even decide to license the patent), which will surely limit the number of word processors written. With central control and without diversity, innovation suffers. If I have an idea for a feature, but you don't like it, there's nowhere else I can go, and my innovation will be lost.
Patents also harm innovation by increasing the legal risk of writing software. Many people write software for fun or to scratch an itch. Many small companies write software for small profits in niche markets. This is a big source of innovation. These people and companies don't have the resources to search for patents they may unknowingly be infringing, the money to license them, or the lawyers to defend themselves if they don't. Writing software is fun, but getting sued isn't, and if writing software puts one at constant legal risk, it won't happen.
Finally, patents prevent computers from being compatible with each other and easy to use. You suggest that if IBM patents "nesting selectable options in a menu," then we should all come up with a better way. And suppose someone patented scroll-bars -- we should all put them on different sides, or use the scroll-wheel (if we've licenced it, that is), or scroll-buttons. But users would confuse scroll-buttons with close-bars ("scroll up, then down to close"), which were used instead of the "X in the top-right" to evade a Microsoft patent. My point is, copying ideas, such as scroll bars, menus, plugin APIs, etc. is absolutely necessary for software to work together and for computers to interface with users in a standard way. Copyrights respect this and allow companies to make profit anyway, but patents do not.
I'm thinking he was talking about the interesting pattern of the rings. In the top left corner, there is one dark ring, with several "echo" rings getting weaker while they get closer to Saturn in decreasing intervals.
The site has several high speed videos, like this one, and from the looks of it, only one or two teeth hit the hot dog.
If you know how to reprogram your MAC address, you probably also know how to keep your computer virus-free, so banning by MAC address is a perfectly good reactive solution to viruses until they start randomly changing MAC addresses. And then you could ban unregistered MAC addresses, which is fine until viruses sniff and copy other MAC addresses, which isn't always possible.
Nail a Frisbee to the top of the center post.