If the directive goes into 2nd reading in the Parliament, a 2/3 majority is needed to amend it.
That is 2/3 of *all* MPs, and hardly 2/3 of the
MPs typically show up. So, once the directive is
accepted by the EC, that's probably it.
It is even more ironic since this is the original
directive with most of the parliaments amendmends
removed. Too me this is mindboggling. It not even so much about the actual software patents anymore, it is about the credibility of the European Democracy.
So, some lobby ridden small group of european ministers can effectively and apparently easily circumvent any decisions of the parliament (the only elected body).
I am an European and I say: SHAME ON YOU EU! This is not a modern democratic process, this feels more like a banana republic.
Anything derived from GPL licensed code has to make its source accessible, which in turn allows the user to make modification, to check out the source, fix bugs, evolve the software, customize it, etc. That is freedom. Period.
Code derived from BSD licensed does not necessarily grant the same rights to the users.
The BSD license allows to take freedom away from the user, wheareas the GPL does not.
The GPL takes rights aways from authors of derived software in favour of preserving these rights to for the user.
Who would you rather grant this freedom to? The users? Or the developers/corporations who modify/reuse existing open-sourced code?
Most of the software I use is under a BSD/MIT/ISC style license, that is more free than the GPL.
Is a society that enforces the right of freedom of speech more free or less free than a society that doesn't?
By your logic enforcing freedom of speech is actually a restriction in freedom, because there are those who do not want freedom of speech.
Same with the GPL. The GPL enforces the rights of the people to access the (derived) source code. Other non-copyleft licenses do not.
As far as I remember everything beyond 3 sea-miles form any landmass are international waters. Everybody can move in international waters as one pleases.
or with no OS, will I believe that IBM is sincere.
A few months ago I tried to buy a ThinkPad T41 with either Linux pre-installed, no OS, or at least a breakdown of how much the Windows OS contributes to the total price.
I sent a very friendly email to the IBM customer support asking for either of the three options.
I got a one line response: IBM ThinkPad's are not sold without Operating System. Thank you for your interest. (Or very similar in wording).
Words are meaningless if not followed by actions. Of course IBM wants machines of *other* vendors to be converted to Linux. As soon as there is some impact on IBM offerings, it seems to be a different story.
Another change in US law that would greatly reduce the number of frivolous lawsuites would be to be finally adopt a loser-pays-all-costs policy - including the fees of the other party's lawyers.
Almost the entire rest of this planet enforces such a policy. Currently no matter how week the case is, the defending party has to effort their lawyers and won't be compensated even when they win the case.
Of course it won't happen, because lawyers make a lot of money from these lawsuites and also from deals like "if you lose you do not have to pay me, but if we win I get X % of the proceedings" (where X is usually > 40%).
Lawyers are also powerful in this country, and - really - who cares about whether the law is actually fair. So, personally, I do not expect to see any change at all.
This maybe off-topic, but does anybody remember the 10bn Deutschmark (about $5bn at that time) lawsuit against German companies for forcing Jewish prisoners into slave-like work during WW-II? As nobel as the cause is, guess who got the first 600 million of the paid money, before a single victim saw a dime...
If you guessed "The Lawyers", you would be correct.
That'd be quite interesting with the EU being the stronger economic power.
The Bush administration already backed off from steel-tarifs when the EU (backed by the WTO) imposed sanctions on US imports this year. (Of course that's nothing you hear much about in the US news)
Thankfully the EU is a place that is not arbitrarily kicked around by the US anymore, though the Europeans may not quite realize that, yet... In time they will.
On Linux the Suite takes pretty constantly about 3mb more than Firefox (if only the browser is used and the same webpages were accessed), which is negligible.
It starts up in about the same time.
I have found the same to be mostly true on Windows.
Rendering is the same speed as far as I can tell, and I have not found a site that can be rendered by Firefox but not by the Suite (or vice versa).
I like Venkman the JavaScript debugger, I like the integrated Mail client (which I use a lot).
I like that I have easy options to disable GIF cycling, and that I can prevent the suite from asking me to download the flash-plugin all the time. It also comes in handy that I can disable images to be loaded from any server but the originating server.
All of these may be available for FireFox, but why aren't they accessible through the standard menus?
I guess I just do not see the point of FireFox, the only advantage seems to be the smaller download (which is not even the case if you use both Firefix and Thunderbird)... I really hope the suite is continued past 1.8.
I don't get it. Some hospitals host their patient information on machine that are connected to the internet. UC Berkeley obviously had the machine connected to the internet.
Some credit card companies had their cardholders information leak via the internet.
Why? For information like this you form an internal network that is not connected to the any public network.
If the information is needed by remotely you build a VPN, and/or you work with a subset of the information.
Well then, how about the second part of my post?
The part where it talks about the services the government provides? How's the government going to "pay" for that?
You propose getting rid of taxes... Let's assume we did that. All money you earn from the employer directly flows into your pocket.
Assuming you want some of the services the government provides, you'll have a to agree the government also has employ some folks or give out contracts to do some work.
Now, (1) as the government does not collect taxes it will have to have people and contractors work for free for them. Let's say a certain percentage of anybody's time is for free, as a service to the community. And... There's your tax again. For the same amount of work you carry home less money.
Or (2) the government prints money. Now there *is* more money in circulation, that means there is more money to be spent on the *same* amount of goods, so prices go up, because more people are willing to spend more money on things. It does not matter how you slice and dice it. That is what *will* happen.
There... Again, is your tax in a different form, paid for by the general populous by higher prices.
There is NO reason for taxes when the government prints up the money. None. Zero economic reason. there is a power wielding reason., but no economic reason. All the various tax schemes and codes at the federal "income" level, whether currently implemented or "proposed" by well meaning tax change advocates fail to address this glaringly obvious and undeniable data, and are a sham and a fraud and a mass fakeout, well meaning as they are.
I call bullshit.
The value of money is driven by supply and demand like everything else in a free market economy. If the government just prints money the value of money goes down and you get inflation. In the end more backnotes or higher numbers on them buy you (and the governent) exactly the same.
That's also the reason why a tax-cut financed by borrowing money is no cut at all... A large deficit drives up prices, so your - oh so generous - tax cut, is eaten up by the higher prices. Why people still want tax-cuts in a time where not enough money is available is beyond me.
Spending less money for the military and frist-strike wars is a better answer.
Vendors collect money for goods assuming that this money can be paid towards other goods. If suddenly more money is available more people are willing to pay more for their goods... Hence the value of money goes down, prices go up.
So... Taxes are necessary because money cannot just be printed, but it has to be shuffled around.
Taxes are also necessary to allow the government to centrally organize:
social security
generally providing the infrastructure for companies to do business and employ people
Where does it stop? [...] Should everyone who views porn have their ids handed over as well?
I don't know, but the solution is not to develop a system of hiding identities or any other way of not enforcing the law.
The solution is to change the law!
If I understand the UK law and practises correctly they'll be fined and maybe pay some minor damages.
Definitly not $140.000 (or what was it) per song as in the US.
I actually agree with releasing their IDs. They knew it was illegal, and law enforcement can't work if people cannot be identified.
Would agree with the DMV not releasing IDs in order to identify hit-and-"runners" when the license plate is known?
I do not agree, however, to the same practise in the US, as the threats and trials by the RIAA that follow hardly seem fair, and all *victims* have to settle, because they face life-ling bankruptcy!
Can anybody explain to me what is so bad about consensual sex and looking at other people doing sex (as long at the images were also taken consensual and do not involve abnormal things like child-sex)?
Is anybody worried about looking at voilence and death? Is anybody worried about public brain-washing propaganda?
We live in strange times! War and soldiers and stylised to glory and heros, while sex and other fun and is somehow dirty and should be avoided. A strange so called "Morality", indeed!
In Body Pleasure And The Originbs Of Violence
James W. Prescott relates the tendency towards violence to general sexual opression.
It's worth a read.
(James W. Prescott was employed at the US Public Health Department and layed off five years after he published this document (in 1980), because he wanted to conduct more studies in the area of child abuse and neglect.)
US viewers have far more detailed and unbiased coverage of politics available than German viewers: a vibrant network of public radio and television stations, C-SPAN, and numerous high-quality commercial offerings. "Conservative media czars" don't control US television, they simply happen to be very popular. Yes, Americans watch garbage because they choose to, not because they have to.
Excuse me? You are kdding, right?!
I lived in both Germany and the US for many years, and I can tell the US have the *worst* public news. Lots of details and "behind-the-scenes" details but no *useful* information. There are exceptions like KQED/NPR, and they are funded without taxes and only minor advertising income; not quite like the German mandatory fee but similar in spirit.
Have you lived in both countries so that you can actually compare the two?
Apparently this has to get completely out of control before anybody acts.
The more rediculous and frivolous the patent claims get, the more pressure is put on the people in charge to fix it.
It seems we are unable to pro-act and foresee the disaster, so we will have to wait until the we reach the complete breakdown and then re-act when "the forest is already on fire".
Strict privacy is guaranteed by powerful encryption algorithms and a personal password of 128-bits to which only the client, and not the Web site, has access.
I call "bullshit", how are they going to release the email if they do not have access to its content?
Of course the "Web site" has access.
Revenge is like many other desires: If we follow them blindly they lead to short term pleasure but longterm lead to unhappiness as we never learned how to sustain the pleasures (which some claim is in fact not possible).
It's too bad that in many western societies Justice is almost equivalent to Revenge.
This may be a little offtopic...
Justice should never appeal to the "lower" human feeling, but rather be designed to prevent crime from happending in the first place. Revenge has no place in Justice as it does nothing to "undo" the crime after it happened.
Crimes are prevented by:
Eliminating the reason (for example poverty and social inequalities).
Education (for example learn to deal with jealousy, envy, and other desires and feelings in a non-violent way)
Deterrance (if you commit a crime, face the consequences).
Reparation (not preventing anything, but necessary to repair the damage caused - this is not revenge!)
This is a big difference, although in practise the differences are subtle; i.e. are you locking somebody up because of revenge or deterrance?
When somebody is punished for a crime, there should be no pleasure and no feeling of revenge or even accomblishment! Rather there should be the urge to understand why the crime happened and the understanding that this is necessary to deter the next.
Happily banning "bad" language and sexual content from everywhere, but fighting hard for Nazi hate propaganda to be protected by freedom of speech. The same is seen on US TV. It seems to be ok to slaughter dozens of people, but be "Oh God" if you can see a nipple.
I, personally, do not believe that Nazi propaganda deserves this protection.
That said, of course it is rediculous to subject internet sites to all laws of every country that can access them. That would make almost every site illegal as you probably can always find a country in which the content is illegal.
If the french do not like the content, why don't *they* block it, or enforce it through *their* internet providers?!
And this advanced the field of computer devices exactly how?!
On what merits is this patent granted? Because is so novel to put lightbulbs and some logic to access them *in* a computer case?
And this is not even Software Patent. Now we are starting to see trivial patents involving "forced of nature".
What will be the next great new "advancement"? o A microphone in a pen? o A paperclip on a monitor for notes? o A device with four wheels (oh wait, there's prior art)? o A calculator on your waterbottle? o Feel free to come up with more examples...
But wait, I'm giving people ideas (at least the prior art would be document right here).
This has got to stop! There is no innovation here, just pure greed to get a lock on a piece of the market by abusing the current laws and relying on a utterly incompetent Patent Office. (Sorry for the rant)
This question is almost as old as computing itself. You want to have your logic physically close to the data. Stored procedures is one way to achieve that.
It is a balance to strike which very much depends on the application. So I don't think there is good/bad. If I had an application that needed to crunch a lot of data that is stored in a database and the logic is such that it cannot be expressed declarative (i.e. a SQL query), than I have no choice but using stored procedured or to ship large amounts of data between the database and the Application.
Slashdot Mirror
Some people like and use Linux, others don't. No need to get religious about it.
I happen to use and like Linux, at the same time I can appriciate other people who have a different opinion.
If the directive goes into 2nd reading in the Parliament, a 2/3 majority is needed to amend it. That is 2/3 of *all* MPs, and hardly 2/3 of the MPs typically show up. So, once the directive is accepted by the EC, that's probably it.
It is even more ironic since this is the original directive with most of the parliaments amendmends removed. Too me this is mindboggling. It not even so much about the actual software patents anymore, it is about the credibility of the European Democracy.
So, some lobby ridden small group of european ministers can effectively and apparently easily circumvent any decisions of the parliament (the only elected body).
I am an European and I say:
SHAME ON YOU EU! This is not a modern democratic process, this feels more like a banana republic.
Anything derived from GPL licensed code has to make its source accessible, which in turn allows the user to make modification, to check out the source, fix bugs, evolve the software, customize it, etc. That is freedom. Period.
Code derived from BSD licensed does not necessarily grant the same rights to the users. The BSD license allows to take freedom away from the user, wheareas the GPL does not.
The GPL takes rights aways from authors of derived software in favour of preserving these rights to for the user.
Who would you rather grant this freedom to? The users? Or the developers/corporations who modify/reuse existing open-sourced code?
Is a society that enforces the right of freedom of speech more free or less free than a society that doesn't?
By your logic enforcing freedom of speech is actually a restriction in freedom, because there are those who do not want freedom of speech.
Same with the GPL. The GPL enforces the rights of the people to access the (derived) source code. Other non-copyleft licenses do not.
As far as I remember everything beyond 3 sea-miles form any landmass are international waters. Everybody can move in international waters as one pleases.
By the same logic we should all do some pre-time in jail, because we *may* commit a crime in the future.
Or we could pre-pay some traffic fines, because we *may* speed in the future.
If I'd buy a computer in Germany, and I could honestly say that I will not copy anything illegal, I would refuse to pay this fee.
Troll? This actually happened. How can this possibly be trolling?
Is IBM above criticism?
or with no OS, will I believe that IBM is sincere.
A few months ago I tried to buy a ThinkPad T41 with either Linux pre-installed, no OS, or at least a breakdown of how much the Windows OS contributes to the total price.
I sent a very friendly email to the IBM customer support asking for either of the three options.
I got a one line response:
IBM ThinkPad's are not sold without Operating System. Thank you for your interest.
(Or very similar in wording).
Words are meaningless if not followed by actions. Of course IBM wants machines of *other* vendors to be converted to Linux. As soon as there is some impact on IBM offerings, it seems to be a different story.
Almost the entire rest of this planet enforces such a policy. Currently no matter how week the case is, the defending party has to effort their lawyers and won't be compensated even when they win the case.
Of course it won't happen, because lawyers make a lot of money from these lawsuites and also from deals like "if you lose you do not have to pay me, but if we win I get X % of the proceedings" (where X is usually > 40%).
Lawyers are also powerful in this country, and - really - who cares about whether the law is actually fair. So, personally, I do not expect to see any change at all.
This maybe off-topic, but does anybody remember the 10bn Deutschmark (about $5bn at that time) lawsuit against German companies for forcing Jewish prisoners into slave-like work during WW-II? As nobel as the cause is, guess who got the first 600 million of the paid money, before a single victim saw a dime...
If you guessed "The Lawyers", you would be correct.
The Bush administration already backed off from steel-tarifs when the EU (backed by the WTO) imposed sanctions on US imports this year. (Of course that's nothing you hear much about in the US news)
Thankfully the EU is a place that is not arbitrarily kicked around by the US anymore, though the Europeans may not quite realize that, yet... In time they will.
I have found the same to be mostly true on Windows.
Rendering is the same speed as far as I can tell, and I have not found a site that can be rendered by Firefox but not by the Suite (or vice versa).
I like Venkman the JavaScript debugger, I like the integrated Mail client (which I use a lot).
I like that I have easy options to disable GIF cycling, and that I can prevent the suite from asking me to download the flash-plugin all the time. It also comes in handy that I can disable images to be loaded from any server but the originating server.
All of these may be available for FireFox, but why aren't they accessible through the standard menus?
I guess I just do not see the point of FireFox, the only advantage seems to be the smaller download (which is not even the case if you use both Firefix and Thunderbird)... I really hope the suite is continued past 1.8.
Some credit card companies had their cardholders information leak via the internet.
Why? For information like this you form an internal network that is not connected to the any public network.
If the information is needed by remotely you build a VPN, and/or you work with a subset of the information.
You propose getting rid of taxes... Let's assume we did that. All money you earn from the employer directly flows into your pocket.
Assuming you want some of the services the government provides, you'll have a to agree the government also has employ some folks or give out contracts to do some work.
Now, (1) as the government does not collect taxes it will have to have people and contractors work for free for them. Let's say a certain percentage of anybody's time is for free, as a service to the community. And... There's your tax again. For the same amount of work you carry home less money.
Or (2) the government prints money. Now there *is* more money in circulation, that means there is more money to be spent on the *same* amount of goods, so prices go up, because more people are willing to spend more money on things. It does not matter how you slice and dice it. That is what *will* happen. There... Again, is your tax in a different form, paid for by the general populous by higher prices.
I call bullshit.
The value of money is driven by supply and demand like everything else in a free market economy. If the government just prints money the value of money goes down and you get inflation. In the end more backnotes or higher numbers on them buy you (and the governent) exactly the same.
That's also the reason why a tax-cut financed by borrowing money is no cut at all... A large deficit drives up prices, so your - oh so generous - tax cut, is eaten up by the higher prices. Why people still want tax-cuts in a time where not enough money is available is beyond me.
Spending less money for the military and frist-strike wars is a better answer.
Vendors collect money for goods assuming that this money can be paid towards other goods. If suddenly more money is available more people are willing to pay more for their goods... Hence the value of money goes down, prices go up.
So... Taxes are necessary because money cannot just be printed, but it has to be shuffled around.
Taxes are also necessary to allow the government to centrally organize:
I don't know, but the solution is not to develop a system of hiding identities or any other way of not enforcing the law.
The solution is to change the law!
Definitly not $140.000 (or what was it) per song as in the US.
I actually agree with releasing their IDs. They knew it was illegal, and law enforcement can't work if people cannot be identified.
Would agree with the DMV not releasing IDs in order to identify hit-and-"runners" when the license plate is known?
I do not agree, however, to the same practise in the US, as the threats and trials by the RIAA that follow hardly seem fair, and all *victims* have to settle, because they face life-ling bankruptcy!
Is anybody worried about looking at voilence and death? Is anybody worried about public brain-washing propaganda?
We live in strange times! War and soldiers and stylised to glory and heros, while sex and other fun and is somehow dirty and should be avoided. A strange so called "Morality", indeed!
In Body Pleasure And The Originbs Of Violence James W. Prescott relates the tendency towards violence to general sexual opression. It's worth a read.
(James W. Prescott was employed at the US Public Health Department and layed off five years after he published this document (in 1980), because he wanted to conduct more studies in the area of child abuse and neglect.)
I don't get it.
US viewers have far more detailed and unbiased coverage of politics available than German viewers: a vibrant network of public radio and television stations, C-SPAN, and numerous high-quality commercial offerings. "Conservative media czars" don't control US television, they simply happen to be very popular. Yes, Americans watch garbage because they choose to, not because they have to.
Excuse me? You are kdding, right?!
I lived in both Germany and the US for many years, and I can tell the US have the *worst* public news. Lots of details and "behind-the-scenes" details but no *useful* information. There are exceptions like KQED/NPR, and they are funded without taxes and only minor advertising income; not quite like the German mandatory fee but similar in spirit.
Have you lived in both countries so that you can actually compare the two?
The more rediculous and frivolous the patent claims get, the more pressure is put on the people in charge to fix it.
It seems we are unable to pro-act and foresee the disaster, so we will have to wait until the we reach the complete breakdown and then re-act when "the forest is already on fire".
I call "bullshit", how are they going to release the email if they do not have access to its content?
Of course the "Web site" has access.
Can't resist... The following holds (assuming both N and P are real numbers): P=NP N=1 v P=0 So, if P=0 the equation is trivially true.
It's too bad that in many western societies Justice is almost equivalent to Revenge.
This may be a little offtopic...
Justice should never appeal to the "lower" human feeling, but rather be designed to prevent crime from happending in the first place. Revenge has no place in Justice as it does nothing to "undo" the crime after it happened.
Crimes are prevented by:
- Eliminating the reason (for example poverty and social inequalities).
- Education (for example learn to deal with jealousy, envy, and other desires and feelings in a non-violent way)
- Deterrance (if you commit a crime, face the consequences).
- Reparation (not preventing anything, but necessary to repair the damage caused - this is not revenge!)
This is a big difference, although in practise the differences are subtle; i.e. are you locking somebody up because of revenge or deterrance?When somebody is punished for a crime, there should be no pleasure and no feeling of revenge or even accomblishment! Rather there should be the urge to understand why the crime happened and the understanding that this is necessary to deter the next.
Happily banning "bad" language and sexual content from everywhere, but fighting hard for Nazi hate propaganda to be protected by freedom of speech.
The same is seen on US TV. It seems to be ok to slaughter dozens of people, but be "Oh God" if you can see a nipple.
I, personally, do not believe that Nazi propaganda deserves this protection.
That said, of course it is rediculous to subject internet sites to all laws of every country that can access them. That would make almost every site illegal as you probably can always find a country in which the content is illegal.
If the french do not like the content, why don't *they* block it, or enforce it through *their* internet providers?!
And this advanced the field of computer devices exactly how?!
On what merits is this patent granted? Because is so novel to put lightbulbs and some logic to access them *in* a computer case?
And this is not even Software Patent. Now we are starting to see trivial patents involving "forced of nature".
What will be the next great new "advancement"?
o A microphone in a pen?
o A paperclip on a monitor for notes?
o A device with four wheels (oh wait, there's prior art)?
o A calculator on your waterbottle?
o Feel free to come up with more examples...
But wait, I'm giving people ideas (at least the prior art would be document right here).
This has got to stop! There is no innovation here, just pure greed to get a lock on a piece of the market by abusing the current laws and relying on a utterly incompetent Patent Office.
(Sorry for the rant)
This question is almost as old as computing itself.
You want to have your logic physically close to the data. Stored procedures is one way to achieve that.
It is a balance to strike which very much depends on the application. So I don't think there is good/bad.
If I had an application that needed to crunch a lot of data that is stored in a database and the logic is such that it cannot be expressed declarative (i.e. a SQL query), than I have no choice but using stored procedured or to ship large amounts of data between the database and the Application.