The premise of TFA is seriously flawed. First, his "oral rehydration therapy" technique is a terrible example, as clearly he's talking about patents not copyrights. You can't copyright a process, formula or method --- because the copyright protects the expression of the idea, not the idea itself.
Second, if anything, ongoing fees would seriously harm the smaller guy and not the large corporations, who have complex bring-forward and diarizing systems and could easily pay whatever fees.
Third, the registration of copyright, patents and trade-marks (and other forms of intellectual property) does have fees, and often annual or periodic fees for maintenance. Granted, they're trivial and not based on value or anything.
Fourth, the more prohibitive you make intellectual property systems, the more likely you are to encourage hoarding of knowledge and creativity. The whole purpose of intellectual property regimes such as patents is to balance the public good of having information available and the private good of commercializing or profiting from one's own hard work. If the patent system were truly prohibitive in the nature of fees, expiry deadlines, etc., the author's own "oral rehydration technique" example would be a prime example of what could possibly go wrong --- inventors would be more likely to hoard this information and then the public would not benefit (of course, in this specific case, altruism might trump).
Last, there are taxes on intellectual property, such as capital gains or royalty taxes (depending on jurisdiction). Typically they only arise when you actually sell or license it to another party, but they do arise.
Does that database show the live status of patents? I've never relied on it to do so... that being said, I did a quick status search and the status doesn't seem to have been updated. Things moving at the speed of government, I suppose...
It's right on their front page, and it even shows an official-looking certificate for patent number 6513042, which the USPTO has now rejected! The test.com link even describes how important their patent is and what it covers. "The Patent issued to Test.com, Inc. protects its intellectual property in the area of distributing and selling tests on the Internet and sharing revenues received for the test with the test creator."
Maybe their marketing folks haven't heard the news?
Maybe they meant flash memory? Maybe portable hard drives? I don't know... but still, good job, Fox News.
I don't know how much $272.39 is in worthless American money, but in real Canadian money, that's not that expensive. (I only get to use that for a few more weeks, as our dollar rapidly retreats back down to parity... please let this poor Canadian have just these few more moments of undeserved pride).
corel painter (latest, version "x") is the app for "painting"... while I wouldn't call paint shop pro x2 photo "stripped" for photo editing needs (its feature set is very comparable to Photoshop CS), it's not got as robust a painting engine as painter, with its natural canvas and complex brush nozzle simulators.
Re:In a lot of ways, Gimp is more intuitive than P
on
GIMP 2 for Photographers
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· Score: 2, Interesting
It's very sad to me that Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo (XI, or X2, or whatever) doesn't get mentioned in this conversation usually. It's a very full-featured, robust program (built on the former Jasc Paint Shop Pro) with most every feature (including a "lightroom"-like addition to X2) that photoshop has. It's very reasonably priced, and I would place it (in terms of functionality) somewhere between GIMP and Photoshop, and way above Elements, even though the price is basically Elements.
At least in Canada, you can only violate a copyright through a new work if you don't develop it independently. Two people can independently develop the exact same song and they both have independent copyright in them. It's part of the concept of "you can't copyright an idea, you can just copyright your manifestation of it".
The solution to your dilemma is actually the TOTAL opposite: don't ever listen to someone else's work. The more you listen to, the more likely it is that someone else's copyright work will get in your head and ruin your independent development. When it comes down to the lawsuit, even if you developed your tune independently, the original author would say "hey, he ripped me off!". If you could (convincingly) say, "that's nice, but I've never listened to it before" (which is remarkably difficult to do), you're not infringing anyone's copyright. Most people could never do that, though.
If you were alone on a desert island for the last 15 years and, completely independently, composed Aerosmith's "Don't Wanna Miss A Thing" (let's face it, you'd be alone on an island so I think rock ballads would be too far off what's in your head), or something reasonably close to it, you could have your very own, infringement-free copyright in that work.
The price drop has been confirmed in Canada, it's CDN$100 for the Premium, CDN$100 for the core, and CDN$50 for the Elite. So, it's now CDN$399 for Premium, CDN$299 for Core, and CDN$499 for Elite. Pretty comparable to the US pricing, but as mentioned, we're always a bit higher (not "WAY" higher in most cases).
http://www.xbox.com/en-ca/community/news/2007/0806 -consoleprice.htm
I think you mean trade-mark infringement or passing off...
I guess it would depend on whether their logo was similar, or whether people would be confused. I think that, outside of the IBM context, "International" "Business" and "Machines" are all fairly generic words, and there must be hundreds if not thousands of companies that use those words in varying degrees. International Parallel Machines is probably distinctive enough, but IPM, being one "hump" from IBM, might be infringing. Who knows?
The link re: Canada intrigues me --- though I note the study's description only says that the average payout on malpractiec suites is higher. Could that be because there are far more trivial lawsuits in America that result in lower awards skewing the average down?
Anyway, that statistic really surprised me, but I'm not sure it paints the whole picture.
I understand what deferred revenue means... but I don't see why MS couldn't have agreed to pay T2 up front for the content based on what -normally- would be available to them through the XBLA fee payments...
I understand that end user payments are MS (through XBL) revenue, but clearly MS has to pay T2 a chunk of that, right? I mean, MS could have paid them $50M up front for eps1 and 2, and then when the end users pay for the episodes, it could be deducted from the payments that would be regularly due to T2 for the downloadable content.
But again, I'm no GAAP expert, nor an accountant... thanks for the explanation!
OK, my accounting knowledge stands corrected. I had thought, maybe, that MS and T2 could have entered into an agreement that MS will pay them $X on episode 1 and $X on episode 2 (presumably, from the XBLA revenues generated) and that T2 was deferring those... but again, I'm no GAAP expert:)
I haven't looked closely at the financials or at the details of the call, but couldn't part or all of the $50 million in deferred revenue also account for end-user payments for the downloadable content? For example, if each gamer has to pay $19.95 for an episode (or redeem same in x360 points, whatever), and they estimate a chunk of downloads, they might just be recognizing that deferred revenue now?
I don't see how this is conclusive that MS paid $50M for the content... but maybe I'm missing something?
Well, I certainly wouldn't be the one to argue that the substance of the law is terrible (that is, making it illegal to record a cinematographic work). I still am not convinced that the penalty is appropriate --- does there need to be any jail unless it's with the intent to distribute? Some kid takes a clip or a picture of a movie in a theatre with his cell phone camera and he gets 2 years? Seems harsh. Anyway, I agree with you --- I think it's more or less "as illegal" as before.
But I am bothered by the process. Misrepresenting Canada's place in the movie piracy world. Misrepresenting financial impact of piracy. Misrepresenting the state of Canada's laws. How does that equal an amendment to the criminal code? It's disillusioning that it's that easy, and I would argue, it's a bit "evil" to force unnecessary legislation through these means.
My biggest concern is, what is the Canadian public, which, arguably, should be the one benefitting from Criminal Code legislation, getting out of this? How does this enhance the safety, securty, peace, order and good government of Canada? It doesn't really seem to do anything new (aside from sentences), but it sets the wrong tone. "Look! Movie piracy is so bad in Canada, Canada had to enact tougher laws." But the law itself is based on the fallacy that movie piracy is bad in Canada. So, in a circular way, it creates a "believable lie", and it just stinks a bit to me.
gsslay, I think you miss the point. The basis of your calling this out as a fallacy is the (false) conclusion that the "Anonymous Reader" and Zonk are contending that "nothing should be done about camcorder piracy". Quite the contrary, nobody is arguing that it should be condoned. The law itself (Apart from changing the criminal sentences) does little to affect the legality of movie camcording, so we should not be terribly concerned by it (though it is incredibly vague).
The real point is that the time and energy that will go/has gone into enforcing, drafting, and passing this law could be better spent elsewhere (e.g., health and safety issues) as it was already illegal to tape movies in Canadian theatres under the Copyright Act. We should be concerned that the lobbyists were able to get a law through to second reading (and likely passed) that was unnecessary using false information and distortions about Canadian law and about international movie piracy.
Here here! I also had a PCjr, and used it for basic programming (if i remember correctly, it had a BASIC cartridge), wordperfect, BBS access, and of course games (anything by Sierra, basically). I never even heard of the "chiclet" keyboard, the one I had was relatively normal. And wired... it plugged in with a phone-like jack. Wil Wright's Music Construction Set was also a favourite of mine, and really showed off what the PCjr was capable of, musically.
I quite enjoyed my PCjr, and it was way cheaper than what we later "upgraded" to, an XT8086. While the upgrade was certainly faster, it was a few years before the "adlib" music synthesizer (later sound blaster) could match what the PCjr could do natively.
This is a key question, imho (IAAL). The expert report specifically says that the computer was not connected to a router. As an aside, I am not certain how the expert determines whether it was a wireless router or not; his conclusion there seems to be that because he had a "public" IP address, he wasn't connected to a wireless router --- of course, that's not true... it just means that the computer wasn't connected likely connected to a router.
Because the computer was not connected to a router, his IP address and many open ports are exposed to the world without the assistance of a hardware firewall. Doesn't that increase the likelihood of remote malfeasance? The situation described by Iphtashu Fitz is uncommon (especially with a router) but very possible, and the likelihood certainly increases without a hardware firewall (and even moreseo without a decent software firewall).
Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?
on
When Wikipedia Fails
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Ken Lay died at 10. By "Wednesday afternoon", according to TFA, the Wikipedia page had settled down and presented a reasonably accurate view. So what exactly is the point of TFA? It sounds to me like Wikipedia works just fine. Within hours, an informative, freely-accessible article was available to the whole world.
What everybody in the media seems to be missing about this story is this: where is the beloved Britannica's article on Kenneth Lay? You know, the authoritative source used to compare these things. The one used by Wiki's detractors to say, "Oh, look how inaccurate their initial drafts of the Ken Lay article are! That would never happen in traditional encyclopedias". I searched Britannica's site, can't seem to find it. Tried Kenneth Lay, Ken Lay, Lay, Kenneth, nothing. Maybe it's behind their paywall? Oh, wait, there is another point for Wikipedia: no paywall.
So when the author of the TFA writes "[u]nlike, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia has no formal peer review for its articles", I would counter with this: "Unlike, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia actually contains articles on the topic we're discussing. Oh, and it's free too."
Reminds me very much of the Cat Schwartz (not a fan, don't know her name, she was apparently some TV commentator) brouhaha on the 'Net a year or so ago, when she posted pictures of herself on a blog that were cropped to contain only shorts of her eyes and mouth. But when you looked at the metadata for the file, there was a thumbnail showing she was naked and smoking a joint (or, at least, smoking something). Talk about your metadata showing!
An article on Slashdot is saying that Monad was pulled from Windows Vista due to the virus story. This is 100% incorrect. One had nothing to do with the other. Monad is probably going to be a longer term project than Windows.
So I guess people with pirated WinXP copies will now just need to download their updates from friends/work/university/wherever they can get their hands on a legit XP system.
Yippee, great protection, MS!
Websites aren't common carriers nor should they ever be.
And your basis for this is....? I mean, aside from your own personal opinion.
I think they [the admins] should be given fair warning before a C&D to do something about it. But I don't think they have the right to "post anything" just because it's a website.
Well at least this one is framed by "I think" or "I don't think," so it's clear that ths is your opinion. But I would think that people might have some type of Constitutional argument against your belief that they don't have the right to post anything just because it's a website. What about it being a website makes it different than any other publication?
At some point someone has to be liable for the content published. If you want to run a website where any jackass off the net [like me] can post shit then you have to accept some liability.
Again, thank you for your opinion, but I think that the other view on this is just as valid. People who post shit might have some liability, but people who open a forum for others to communicate do not necessarily need to accept any liability, hence the previous AT&T argument.
Actually, it does work if you limit the search to 2km. I got 3 Windsor plumber hits. 10km would probably show more, if you wade through the Detroit stuff.
LOL. Point well taken, and yes we're way off topic.
I'm glad I don't face that choice either... I was simply saying that the reason something is outlawed is rarely because of the result it "often" causes. More likely, something is outlawed for the severity of the harm it can cause (or, probably more often, is believed to cause).
Slashdot Mirror
The premise of TFA is seriously flawed. First, his "oral rehydration therapy" technique is a terrible example, as clearly he's talking about patents not copyrights. You can't copyright a process, formula or method --- because the copyright protects the expression of the idea, not the idea itself.
Second, if anything, ongoing fees would seriously harm the smaller guy and not the large corporations, who have complex bring-forward and diarizing systems and could easily pay whatever fees.
Third, the registration of copyright, patents and trade-marks (and other forms of intellectual property) does have fees, and often annual or periodic fees for maintenance. Granted, they're trivial and not based on value or anything.
Fourth, the more prohibitive you make intellectual property systems, the more likely you are to encourage hoarding of knowledge and creativity. The whole purpose of intellectual property regimes such as patents is to balance the public good of having information available and the private good of commercializing or profiting from one's own hard work. If the patent system were truly prohibitive in the nature of fees, expiry deadlines, etc., the author's own "oral rehydration technique" example would be a prime example of what could possibly go wrong --- inventors would be more likely to hoard this information and then the public would not benefit (of course, in this specific case, altruism might trump).
Last, there are taxes on intellectual property, such as capital gains or royalty taxes (depending on jurisdiction). Typically they only arise when you actually sell or license it to another party, but they do arise.
Does that database show the live status of patents? I've never relied on it to do so... that being said, I did a quick status search and the status doesn't seem to have been updated. Things moving at the speed of government, I suppose...
Maybe their marketing folks haven't heard the news?
Um, yeah, that's a pretty safe prediction. Here's the latest price on a 1TB hard drive from my local computer store:
Maybe they meant flash memory? Maybe portable hard drives? I don't know... but still, good job, Fox News.I don't know how much $272.39 is in worthless American money, but in real Canadian money, that's not that expensive. (I only get to use that for a few more weeks, as our dollar rapidly retreats back down to parity... please let this poor Canadian have just these few more moments of undeserved pride).
corel painter (latest, version "x") is the app for "painting" ... while I wouldn't call paint shop pro x2 photo "stripped" for photo editing needs (its feature set is very comparable to Photoshop CS), it's not got as robust a painting engine as painter, with its natural canvas and complex brush nozzle simulators.
It's very sad to me that Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo (XI, or X2, or whatever) doesn't get mentioned in this conversation usually. It's a very full-featured, robust program (built on the former Jasc Paint Shop Pro) with most every feature (including a "lightroom"-like addition to X2) that photoshop has. It's very reasonably priced, and I would place it (in terms of functionality) somewhere between GIMP and Photoshop, and way above Elements, even though the price is basically Elements.
At least in Canada, you can only violate a copyright through a new work if you don't develop it independently. Two people can independently develop the exact same song and they both have independent copyright in them. It's part of the concept of "you can't copyright an idea, you can just copyright your manifestation of it".
The solution to your dilemma is actually the TOTAL opposite: don't ever listen to someone else's work. The more you listen to, the more likely it is that someone else's copyright work will get in your head and ruin your independent development. When it comes down to the lawsuit, even if you developed your tune independently, the original author would say "hey, he ripped me off!". If you could (convincingly) say, "that's nice, but I've never listened to it before" (which is remarkably difficult to do), you're not infringing anyone's copyright. Most people could never do that, though.
If you were alone on a desert island for the last 15 years and, completely independently, composed Aerosmith's "Don't Wanna Miss A Thing" (let's face it, you'd be alone on an island so I think rock ballads would be too far off what's in your head), or something reasonably close to it, you could have your very own, infringement-free copyright in that work.
Not so for patents, not so for trade-marks.
The price drop has been confirmed in Canada, it's CDN$100 for the Premium, CDN$100 for the core, and CDN$50 for the Elite. So, it's now CDN$399 for Premium, CDN$299 for Core, and CDN$499 for Elite. Pretty comparable to the US pricing, but as mentioned, we're always a bit higher (not "WAY" higher in most cases). http://www.xbox.com/en-ca/community/news/2007/0806 -consoleprice.htm
I think you mean trade-mark infringement or passing off... I guess it would depend on whether their logo was similar, or whether people would be confused. I think that, outside of the IBM context, "International" "Business" and "Machines" are all fairly generic words, and there must be hundreds if not thousands of companies that use those words in varying degrees. International Parallel Machines is probably distinctive enough, but IPM, being one "hump" from IBM, might be infringing. Who knows?
The link re: Canada intrigues me --- though I note the study's description only says that the average payout on malpractiec suites is higher. Could that be because there are far more trivial lawsuits in America that result in lower awards skewing the average down? Anyway, that statistic really surprised me, but I'm not sure it paints the whole picture.
I understand what deferred revenue means... but I don't see why MS couldn't have agreed to pay T2 up front for the content based on what -normally- would be available to them through the XBLA fee payments...
I understand that end user payments are MS (through XBL) revenue, but clearly MS has to pay T2 a chunk of that, right? I mean, MS could have paid them $50M up front for eps1 and 2, and then when the end users pay for the episodes, it could be deducted from the payments that would be regularly due to T2 for the downloadable content. But again, I'm no GAAP expert, nor an accountant... thanks for the explanation!
OK, my accounting knowledge stands corrected. I had thought, maybe, that MS and T2 could have entered into an agreement that MS will pay them $X on episode 1 and $X on episode 2 (presumably, from the XBLA revenues generated) and that T2 was deferring those ... but again, I'm no GAAP expert :)
I haven't looked closely at the financials or at the details of the call, but couldn't part or all of the $50 million in deferred revenue also account for end-user payments for the downloadable content? For example, if each gamer has to pay $19.95 for an episode (or redeem same in x360 points, whatever), and they estimate a chunk of downloads, they might just be recognizing that deferred revenue now? I don't see how this is conclusive that MS paid $50M for the content... but maybe I'm missing something?
Well, I certainly wouldn't be the one to argue that the substance of the law is terrible (that is, making it illegal to record a cinematographic work). I still am not convinced that the penalty is appropriate --- does there need to be any jail unless it's with the intent to distribute? Some kid takes a clip or a picture of a movie in a theatre with his cell phone camera and he gets 2 years? Seems harsh. Anyway, I agree with you --- I think it's more or less "as illegal" as before.
But I am bothered by the process. Misrepresenting Canada's place in the movie piracy world. Misrepresenting financial impact of piracy. Misrepresenting the state of Canada's laws. How does that equal an amendment to the criminal code? It's disillusioning that it's that easy, and I would argue, it's a bit "evil" to force unnecessary legislation through these means.
My biggest concern is, what is the Canadian public, which, arguably, should be the one benefitting from Criminal Code legislation, getting out of this? How does this enhance the safety, securty, peace, order and good government of Canada? It doesn't really seem to do anything new (aside from sentences), but it sets the wrong tone. "Look! Movie piracy is so bad in Canada, Canada had to enact tougher laws." But the law itself is based on the fallacy that movie piracy is bad in Canada. So, in a circular way, it creates a "believable lie", and it just stinks a bit to me.
gsslay, I think you miss the point. The basis of your calling this out as a fallacy is the (false) conclusion that the "Anonymous Reader" and Zonk are contending that "nothing should be done about camcorder piracy". Quite the contrary, nobody is arguing that it should be condoned. The law itself (Apart from changing the criminal sentences) does little to affect the legality of movie camcording, so we should not be terribly concerned by it (though it is incredibly vague).
The real point is that the time and energy that will go/has gone into enforcing, drafting, and passing this law could be better spent elsewhere (e.g., health and safety issues) as it was already illegal to tape movies in Canadian theatres under the Copyright Act. We should be concerned that the lobbyists were able to get a law through to second reading (and likely passed) that was unnecessary using false information and distortions about Canadian law and about international movie piracy.
Here here! I also had a PCjr, and used it for basic programming (if i remember correctly, it had a BASIC cartridge), wordperfect, BBS access, and of course games (anything by Sierra, basically). I never even heard of the "chiclet" keyboard, the one I had was relatively normal. And wired... it plugged in with a phone-like jack. Wil Wright's Music Construction Set was also a favourite of mine, and really showed off what the PCjr was capable of, musically.
I quite enjoyed my PCjr, and it was way cheaper than what we later "upgraded" to, an XT8086. While the upgrade was certainly faster, it was a few years before the "adlib" music synthesizer (later sound blaster) could match what the PCjr could do natively.
This is a key question, imho (IAAL). The expert report specifically says that the computer was not connected to a router. As an aside, I am not certain how the expert determines whether it was a wireless router or not; his conclusion there seems to be that because he had a "public" IP address, he wasn't connected to a wireless router --- of course, that's not true... it just means that the computer wasn't connected likely connected to a router.
Because the computer was not connected to a router, his IP address and many open ports are exposed to the world without the assistance of a hardware firewall. Doesn't that increase the likelihood of remote malfeasance? The situation described by Iphtashu Fitz is uncommon (especially with a router) but very possible, and the likelihood certainly increases without a hardware firewall (and even moreseo without a decent software firewall).
Ken Lay died at 10. By "Wednesday afternoon", according to TFA, the Wikipedia page had settled down and presented a reasonably accurate view. So what exactly is the point of TFA? It sounds to me like Wikipedia works just fine. Within hours, an informative, freely-accessible article was available to the whole world.
What everybody in the media seems to be missing about this story is this: where is the beloved Britannica's article on Kenneth Lay? You know, the authoritative source used to compare these things. The one used by Wiki's detractors to say, "Oh, look how inaccurate their initial drafts of the Ken Lay article are! That would never happen in traditional encyclopedias". I searched Britannica's site, can't seem to find it. Tried Kenneth Lay, Ken Lay, Lay, Kenneth, nothing. Maybe it's behind their paywall? Oh, wait, there is another point for Wikipedia: no paywall.
So when the author of the TFA writes "[u]nlike, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia has no formal peer review for its articles", I would counter with this: "Unlike, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia actually contains articles on the topic we're discussing. Oh, and it's free too."
Reminds me very much of the Cat Schwartz (not a fan, don't know her name, she was apparently some TV commentator) brouhaha on the 'Net a year or so ago, when she posted pictures of herself on a blog that were cropped to contain only shorts of her eyes and mouth. But when you looked at the metadata for the file, there was a thumbnail showing she was naked and smoking a joint (or, at least, smoking something). Talk about your metadata showing!
So I guess people with pirated WinXP copies will now just need to download their updates from friends/work/university/wherever they can get their hands on a legit XP system. Yippee, great protection, MS!
And your basis for this is....? I mean, aside from your own personal opinion.
Well at least this one is framed by "I think" or "I don't think," so it's clear that ths is your opinion. But I would think that people might have some type of Constitutional argument against your belief that they don't have the right to post anything just because it's a website. What about it being a website makes it different than any other publication?
Again, thank you for your opinion, but I think that the other view on this is just as valid. People who post shit might have some liability, but people who open a forum for others to communicate do not necessarily need to accept any liability, hence the previous AT&T argument.
Actually, it does work if you limit the search to 2km. I got 3 Windsor plumber hits. 10km would probably show more, if you wade through the Detroit stuff.
I'm glad I don't face that choice either... I was simply saying that the reason something is outlawed is rarely because of the result it "often" causes. More likely, something is outlawed for the severity of the harm it can cause (or, probably more often, is believed to cause).