Why would that work? It's not that the politicians forget what it means, I don't think. It is more likely that the voters are just becoming dumber and stupider when it comes to what "terrorism" means.
It just works untill they used it a few times too often... Don't worry tho, they'll find a replacement.. always did.
Remember, EU is the place where "Intellectual Property" without restrictions was to be protected by the new constitution on the same level (or rather: above) more usual constitutional rights, such as freedom of speech and right to live.
Even if that were true, you may have noticed that they did not manage to get this constitution accepted, not the least because of people voting against it.
We are still waiting for you Americans to actually shoot such an insane law down...
I don't think the parent was arguing to do away with copyright alltogether, rather, he makes a very good argument for copyright.
He also makes a very good argument for limiting the duration of copyright, and why extending copyright is in fact withholding things from the public that the public has a natural right to. I wouldn't call it stealing, but I think calling it stealing is less far fetched then calling copyright infringement stealing.
That is just business as usual for Phillips, they are not too interested in producing and marketing consumer products, rather, they are interested in standarizing things and getting licencing fees from that. Producing and marketing consumer products is more for 'proof of concept' and experience purposes.
Macrovision never bothered me - it seemed a reasonable protection measure, and never interfered with my legitimate use of VHS tapes.
Actually, the idiocy called macrovision is making your nice flatscreen tv more expensive and showing a slightly lower quality. Macrovision protection of VHS and DVD is pretty much an artifact of the way analog CRT tubes work, and has to be filtered out when displaying on a non CRT device. This can be done analog or digital but in either case it reduces the quality slightly, and it makes the device more expensive because of needing this filter.
So.. if you are not bothered by both degraded quality and paying more for it, then no you are not bothered by macrovision.
Isn't that money paid to them in exchange for the content they provide?
No, you pay first of all for the infrastructure needed to get that content to you. You may also be paying for the right to receive certain content, but I strongly doubt you are paying for the actual content. Check the contract with your cable company for details.
My dad decided to waste some 300 euro on a brand DVD player.. I spent approx 40 euro on some cheap no-name one (oh wait.. it has a name, Denver Electronics? whatever)..
His player plays DVDs with all the 'required' limitations, ie, macrovision, region locks, unskippable content etc.. It has digital 6 channel and analog 2 channel audio out and s-video and rgb video out
Mine? does all that as well, but I can disable all those things. It has a built-in 'trick' to bypass active region coding, plays virtually any mpeg1,2 and 4 video from either DVD or CD, and has nice modular firmware running on a fairly well documented microcontroller... It has 6 channel analog and digital audio out, rgb, component video, s-video and digital video outputs.
The one and only advantage of the expensive player is that on an old fashioned CRT connected to composite or s-video, it produces a slightly better picture.
There are also some 'brands' selling comparably featured and priced players. Interestingly, Phillips is among them.
When using su, you have to type the root password and it is being sent over the network. Encrypted, sure, but more vulnerable to time analysis then a RSA/DSA key used to directly access the root account.
DVDs are mastered with a keyframe every 1/2 second, so it's actually quite easy to handle seeking accurately. Cheapo DVD players just... don't.
1/2 sec is 15 frames on ntsc.. My 20 years old Panasonic video recorder is accurate to the frame with fast forward/reverse, so is my relatively new and ultracheap Aiwa. The first is a lot easier to use then the later, but the cheap Aiwa still beats virtually all 'consumer grade' DVD players out there easily.
Flamebait but nonetheless, it never got into that thing you have for a brain that you can in fact buy speakers? If eyesight was for sale in a meaningfull way you can count on it that many blind people would buy it.
Don't worry, text based mailers, esp. that one called Pine have quite a nice collection of exploits, so the adding of activescript may have helped making it even worse, but doing away with it doesn't even come close to solving sloppy and buggy code.
As a parttime job I currently 'play' administrator for a small company... They are running some remote terminal servers for a few Windows apps they really need still, rest of their desktop apps are all either native FreeBSD or some Linux binaries. Not a very large installation, only some 8 or so machines, all pxe booted diskless machines (tho they have a local flash disk), and easily maintained from a central server. They run about as many servers for hosting a bunch of web apps and some firewalls. (and an oddball linux and windows machine here and there)
Anyway, seems to work pretty well for them. Almost anything they use is built from source locally but by some centralized machines, and is distributed in a controlled way as binary packages.
Just got asterisk to realize we have isdn hardware, nice small scale voip project is next, kiax is already running.
And yeah, I did setup most of that environment, its interesting how esp. the developers and web people seem to be quite content with it.
Where did I say that US culture was perfect? In fact, I think I specifically named part of US culture that I don't like
I didn't think or suggest you said it was perfect. What I said is that it is easy to see your own culture (whichever it might be) as superior only when you disregard its flaws. I also said that that was a rather common attitude in the USA at the moment. For the rest, the USA is a bit too big to talk about a single culture there.
In the end it has a lot to do with what you find important. For example, African culture might not have brought much to US American standards, but it does have the longest surviving cultures on this planet. If ensuring the future existance of your culture is an important goal, they have done well for the last 20+ millenia for what we know about, and prolly longer. Depending on how you define 'superior', they could be considered superior to every other culture on the planet.
At any rate, I have no problem with you believing that the culture you live in is the best for you, as long as you don't assume that that automatically makes it best for others also.
As for wanting to live and work in the USA, been there, done that. Could have returned there till early 2003 but didn't feel like it. Your person and the culture you live in have to match well enough to not make it a constant struggle. The one that matches that best for you is not unlikely the one you were born in, and is easily called superior for you. The USA has lots of oppertunities for those actively looking for them, and things are possible at a scale no other country can even think about at this time.. That makes for a good reason for people to want to move there.
Last but not least, yes, there are some cultures that have ideas that both of us would find horrible. Thing is, we do have some such ideas of our own in the eyes of other cultures, not to mention some that we ourselves recognized recently as being quite bad (slavery anyone?)
Let's say you want to buy a BMW. So you go to the dealership. Now who are you more likely to trust as a knowledgeable salesperson? A woman in a nice suit, or a women in a old jogging uniform?
The later is obviously not intending to divert my attention away from the actual product so would be the more trustworthy one intially.
The story is interesting, but also full of almost going under, being bought, sold, parent companies going bankrupt and what not..
The Cray we know now shares a name with the Cray that produced the famous Cray supercomputers of old, they also have some nice technology around, but there the similarities stop.
Obviousness in the context of patent law is a clearly defined concept. Sadly enough, it doesn't mean what common use of the word means. What it means comes down to the thing I posted, combination of prior art for a reason that was documented or well understood before the 'invention'.
Then, as already mentioned, there is this little blurb about 'skilled in the field'. This for all purposes excludes a layman's view. Where you draw the line however has been made virtually irrelevant by the legal definiton of obviousness, exactly because you cannot define a clear line with regards to who is skilled in the field and who isn't (besides the fact that you can virtually always find 2 experts disagreeing about any given subject)
but suppose your someone who doesn't understand tech fully. Now someone says I can combine all these things into an electronic package. They would be utterly impressed by your abilities and bow down at your greatness.
Definitely.
THere is one little issue here however. Patent law talks about non-obvious to someone skilled in the field. That should address this issue for all I can see.
Well, for as far as patent law goes.. this means non-obvious to someone skilled in the field. This is a very difficult thing because you can always find an 'expert' that disagrees. Hence 'obvious' has a very specific meaning in patent law, sadly enough a meaning which doesn't come very close to the general use of the word.
At any rate, in order to make this workable, a patent should as part of the patent application provide a convincing argument as to why something is not obvious.
This is even more true in the case of 'software' where often the first person to implement something is not the first person to think of it, but the first person to either have a practical use for it or the first person having the actual means for implementing it.
One can argue that when both conditions have been met and yet for a substantial amount fof time a problem has been unsolved, then a solution to that problem starts looking as non-obvious.
The main part of my argument is that in case of doubt, a patent should not be awarded. If those who try to obtain a patent disagree, it is upto them to prove to the satisfaction of a court of law that in fact their patent is valid. The burden of proof should be on those who want to obtain the patent, not on those who'd get restricted by such a patent.
Current practise is the other way around, and that is in the end my biggest objection to the current system, seen in the light of modern 'inventions' and the areas covered by patents nowadays. The burden on society becomes too big as it is.
For the rest, if interested, read back in my posting history for my complete take on the subject of patents. I'm not a legal expert, but I have been an expert witness for the European Patent Office at a few occations with regards to software related inventions, and have had many discussions with people who can claim to be an expert on patent law (both in Europe and the USA). You can also take a peek at my 'soapbox' (see url at top of this post).
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Why would that work? It's not that the politicians forget what it means, I don't think. It is more likely that the voters are just becoming dumber and stupider when it comes to what "terrorism" means.
It just works untill they used it a few times too often... Don't worry tho, they'll find a replacement.. always did.
Remember, EU is the place where "Intellectual Property" without restrictions was to be protected by the new constitution on the same level (or rather: above) more usual constitutional rights, such as freedom of speech and right to live.
Even if that were true, you may have noticed that they did not manage to get this constitution accepted, not the least because of people voting against it.
We are still waiting for you Americans to actually shoot such an insane law down...
You are completely wrong, sorry.
Providing an incentive to creators is not the purpose of copyright, is how copyright law tries to achieve the actual purpose of copyright.
Means is not the same as purpose.
I don't think the parent was arguing to do away with copyright alltogether, rather, he makes a very good argument for copyright.
He also makes a very good argument for limiting the duration of copyright, and why extending copyright is in fact withholding things from the public that the public has a natural right to. I wouldn't call it stealing, but I think calling it stealing is less far fetched then calling copyright infringement stealing.
Except that TFA was about Philips.
Maybe that is exactly why I find it interesting?
That is just business as usual for Phillips, they are not too interested in producing and marketing consumer products, rather, they are interested in standarizing things and getting licencing fees from that. Producing and marketing consumer products is more for 'proof of concept' and experience purposes.
Macrovision never bothered me - it seemed a reasonable protection measure, and never interfered with my legitimate use of VHS tapes.
Actually, the idiocy called macrovision is making your nice flatscreen tv more expensive and showing a slightly lower quality. Macrovision protection of VHS and DVD is pretty much an artifact of the way analog CRT tubes work, and has to be filtered out when displaying on a non CRT device. This can be done analog or digital but in either case it reduces the quality slightly, and it makes the device more expensive because of needing this filter.
So.. if you are not bothered by both degraded quality and paying more for it, then no you are not bothered by macrovision.
Isn't that money paid to them in exchange for the content they provide?
No, you pay first of all for the infrastructure needed to get that content to you. You may also be paying for the right to receive certain content, but I strongly doubt you are paying for the actual content. Check the contract with your cable company for details.
Kinda like my dvd player...
Indeed.
My dad decided to waste some 300 euro on a brand DVD player.. I spent approx 40 euro on some cheap no-name one (oh wait.. it has a name, Denver Electronics? whatever)..
His player plays DVDs with all the 'required' limitations, ie, macrovision, region locks, unskippable content etc.. It has digital 6 channel and analog 2 channel audio out and s-video and rgb video out
Mine? does all that as well, but I can disable all those things. It has a built-in 'trick' to bypass active region coding, plays virtually any mpeg1,2 and 4 video from either DVD or CD, and has nice modular firmware running on a fairly well documented microcontroller... It has 6 channel analog and digital audio out, rgb, component video, s-video and digital video outputs.
The one and only advantage of the expensive player is that on an old fashioned CRT connected to composite or s-video, it produces a slightly better picture.
There are also some 'brands' selling comparably featured and priced players. Interestingly, Phillips is among them.
Not everyone in the world agrees.
When using su, you have to type the root password and it is being sent over the network. Encrypted, sure, but more vulnerable to time analysis then a RSA/DSA key used to directly access the root account.
DVDs are mastered with a keyframe every 1/2 second, so it's actually quite easy to handle seeking accurately. Cheapo DVD players just... don't.
1/2 sec is 15 frames on ntsc.. My 20 years old Panasonic video recorder is accurate to the frame with fast forward/reverse, so is my relatively new and ultracheap Aiwa. The first is a lot easier to use then the later, but the cheap Aiwa still beats virtually all 'consumer grade' DVD players out there easily.
No problem. And indeed.. reading at -1 solves it, but it is stupid that you can't see where posts are being dropped.
I think you misread the GP. Pay specific attention to:
Audio captchas? Hey, that discriminates against me because I don't use speakers.
You see, GP is voicing annoyance about having to keep disabled people in mind.
Flamebait but nonetheless, it never got into that thing you have for a brain that you can in fact buy speakers? If eyesight was for sale in a meaningfull way you can count on it that many blind people would buy it.
Don't worry, text based mailers, esp. that one called Pine have quite a nice collection of exploits, so the adding of activescript may have helped making it even worse, but doing away with it doesn't even come close to solving sloppy and buggy code.
While at it, do a make package clean instead.. might save some time for the next machine you want to install..
As a parttime job I currently 'play' administrator for a small company... They are running some remote terminal servers for a few Windows apps they really need still, rest of their desktop apps are all either native FreeBSD or some Linux binaries. Not a very large installation, only some 8 or so machines, all pxe booted diskless machines (tho they have a local flash disk), and easily maintained from a central server. They run about as many servers for hosting a bunch of web apps and some firewalls. (and an oddball linux and windows machine here and there)
Anyway, seems to work pretty well for them. Almost anything they use is built from source locally but by some centralized machines, and is distributed in a controlled way as binary packages.
Just got asterisk to realize we have isdn hardware, nice small scale voip project is next, kiax is already running.
And yeah, I did setup most of that environment, its interesting how esp. the developers and web people seem to be quite content with it.
Where did I say that US culture was perfect? In fact, I think I specifically named part of US culture that I don't like
I didn't think or suggest you said it was perfect. What I said is that it is easy to see your own culture (whichever it might be) as superior only when you disregard its flaws. I also said that that was a rather common attitude in the USA at the moment. For the rest, the USA is a bit too big to talk about a single culture there.
In the end it has a lot to do with what you find important. For example, African culture might not have brought much to US American standards, but it does have the longest surviving cultures on this planet. If ensuring the future existance of your culture is an important goal, they have done well for the last 20+ millenia for what we know about, and prolly longer. Depending on how you define 'superior', they could be considered superior to every other culture on the planet.
At any rate, I have no problem with you believing that the culture you live in is the best for you, as long as you don't assume that that automatically makes it best for others also.
As for wanting to live and work in the USA, been there, done that. Could have returned there till early 2003 but didn't feel like it. Your person and the culture you live in have to match well enough to not make it a constant struggle. The one that matches that best for you is not unlikely the one you were born in, and is easily called superior for you. The USA has lots of oppertunities for those actively looking for them, and things are possible at a scale no other country can even think about at this time.. That makes for a good reason for people to want to move there.
Last but not least, yes, there are some cultures that have ideas that both of us would find horrible. Thing is, we do have some such ideas of our own in the eyes of other cultures, not to mention some that we ourselves recognized recently as being quite bad (slavery anyone?)
Let's say you want to buy a BMW. So you go to the dealership. Now who are you more likely to trust as a knowledgeable salesperson? A woman in a nice suit, or a women in a old jogging uniform?
The later is obviously not intending to divert my attention away from the actual product so would be the more trustworthy one intially.
Thats all nice and true as long as you don't look at the flaws of your own culture, sadly enough a rather common flaw in the USA nowadays.
The story is interesting, but also full of almost going under, being bought, sold, parent companies going bankrupt and what not..
The Cray we know now shares a name with the Cray that produced the famous Cray supercomputers of old, they also have some nice technology around, but there the similarities stop.
Difference is that you don't actually take their house away for months if nbot years, rather, you search it and take any relevant information.
Sorry for replying twice to your post.
Obviousness in the context of patent law is a clearly defined concept. Sadly enough, it doesn't mean what common use of the word means. What it means comes down to the thing I posted, combination of prior art for a reason that was documented or well understood before the 'invention'.
Then, as already mentioned, there is this little blurb about 'skilled in the field'. This for all purposes excludes a layman's view. Where you draw the line however has been made virtually irrelevant by the legal definiton of obviousness, exactly because you cannot define a clear line with regards to who is skilled in the field and who isn't (besides the fact that you can virtually always find 2 experts disagreeing about any given subject)
but suppose your someone who doesn't understand tech fully. Now someone says I can combine all these things into an electronic package. They would be utterly impressed by your abilities and bow down at your greatness.
Definitely.
THere is one little issue here however. Patent law talks about non-obvious to someone skilled in the field. That should address this issue for all I can see.
non-obviousness is in the eye of the beholder.
Well, for as far as patent law goes.. this means non-obvious to someone skilled in the field. This is a very difficult thing because you can always find an 'expert' that disagrees. Hence 'obvious' has a very specific meaning in patent law, sadly enough a meaning which doesn't come very close to the general use of the word.
At any rate, in order to make this workable, a patent should as part of the patent application provide a convincing argument as to why something is not obvious.
This is even more true in the case of 'software' where often the first person to implement something is not the first person to think of it, but the first person to either have a practical use for it or the first person having the actual means for implementing it.
One can argue that when both conditions have been met and yet for a substantial amount fof time a problem has been unsolved, then a solution to that problem starts looking as non-obvious.
The main part of my argument is that in case of doubt, a patent should not be awarded. If those who try to obtain a patent disagree, it is upto them to prove to the satisfaction of a court of law that in fact their patent is valid. The burden of proof should be on those who want to obtain the patent, not on those who'd get restricted by such a patent.
Current practise is the other way around, and that is in the end my biggest objection to the current system, seen in the light of modern 'inventions' and the areas covered by patents nowadays. The burden on society becomes too big as it is.
For the rest, if interested, read back in my posting history for my complete take on the subject of patents. I'm not a legal expert, but I have been an expert witness for the European Patent Office at a few occations with regards to software related inventions, and have had many discussions with people who can claim to be an expert on patent law (both in Europe and the USA). You can also take a peek at my 'soapbox' (see url at top of this post).