A fair number of high school government classes have students do various politically oriented letter writing as "experience" in "being part of democracy" (in quotes because I thought it was lame when I was in high school). Commenting on proposed regulations seems like a reasonable thing to do -- just because the student can't (legally) drink doesn't mean that they could comment on the fairness/benefit of a specific regulation dealing with alcohol (how many kids have made comments about smoking issues in various areas? I opposed a local smoking bad when I was younger than eighteen.)
My first try I didn't realize I could say "turn on light" so that I could see where my robe was that had the aspirin in it.:) The bulldozer killed me *inside the house*.
My PDA doesn't fit in my pocket (well most of the time). Plus, since it's "out of the way", I don't use it. But if the information was popping up on a screen in front of my eyes? Damn right I'd be using it! (Can you tell that I really, really want something like those glasses? I always want to go off and build my own MIThril system and then remember that (a) it is expensive and (b) I am not good with hardware (soldering, etc)).
It's still bullshit. The subrings that are commutative are very small. I don't see how they would be generally applicable to as large a problem area as they seem to be claiming. Plus, they could at least show how it's important (e.g. they mention gaussian elimination 2-3 times -- maybe they could show how their "N+" system helps in that. But they don't. I wonder why?)
There's a bunch of handwavy stuff about higher dimension number systems and getting communtative multiplication (needed for a bunch of signal processing algorithms and most other "real" math applications), but not proof.
Number systems with more than 2 coordinates are treated like matrices, because no one is able to find rules of muliplication and addition for say a 5-coordinate system that makes the numbers associative, commutative and distributive. Abstract algebra is basically only concerned with figuring out which of those properties hold for different sets. But in their stuff, they don't once show how their "N+" system will allow a 10-coordinate number (for instance) to be commutative with another one. From their site:
The Generalized Number System (N+) eliminates this disadvantage to extend the domain of signal processing to all dimensions in hyperspace. It provides several advantages compared to alternate hypercomplex number systems to include quaternions, octonions, and sedenions:
The associative, commutative, and distributive laws from the arithmetic of real and complex numbers hold.
Number dimension is fully programmable.
Gauss-Jordan elimination is applicable as required to solve many types of inverse, least-squares, and optimization problems.
Definitions exist for elementary functions to include sin, cosine, logarithm, and exponential.
That sure sounds like they've found a system form making quaternions commutative. But quarternions aren't. I read everything in the left two columns of links. And there wasn't more than vague promises of N+ solving signal processing problems and basic descriptions of real number field theory. But nothing saying how their N+ numbers are associative, commutative and distributive. So this is just bullshit.
Not exactly...one thing fixed in this patch is a content-type/file extension spoof issue where a open/save to file/cancel dialog is displayed indicating a file of one type (say innocent wav) when in fact it is an executable. So, if the user chose open it would open...but as an executable not as a wav. If they had chosen save to file, and then opened it from explorer it would just not open (or in the case of a spoofed wav it would be noise, if it played at all). Jouko Pynnonen (the guy thanked in MS's release note), who reported it on BugTraq, says in his summary post that for this issue (he calls it file extension spoofing) was reported Nov. 19th. The issue with automatic execution of some content (no confirmation dialogs!) was apparently reported Nov. 27th to MS.
At http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/20010919_a ta_bill.html in Section 301 it says: "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, an indictment may be found or an
information instituted for any Federal terrorism offense at any time without
limitation." and "The amendments made by this section shall apply to the
prosecution of any offense committed before, on, or after the date of enactment
of this section."
I've often wondered why this is. Read legally, the First Amendment doesn't seem to say this at all. But I probably shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth...
The reason is that the 14th amendment made all the previous amendments (and future ones) apply to all government action--whether state, local or federal. In other words, it makes no sense for the Federal Congress to be prohibited from establishing a state religion while state governments are not prohibited. Specifically, this amendment was passed in order to extend the protection of the law (i.e. basic human rights) to blacks and other groups that were previously second-class citizens because of state, not federal law.
Why would an employer prefer to "hire" people as contractors rather than employees? I think it is the cost, and not just that they want to screw people over and not pay them. Here are some things that employers have to pay for (whether they, their employee or anyone wants them to pay for):
The employee's wage
6.25% of their wage (for wages up to $30,000) for FICA. The employee also pays their 6.25%.
Medicare/Medicaid tax (I don't remember the percentage but it's around 1%).
Depending on the state, unemployment insurance and miscellaneous other "insurance" that are really taxes.
Any benefits they pay part of for their employees (even if they don't pay part, the company often has costs involved in running the "company healthcare" program).
If they are a big company, an army of lawyers and accountants to make sure they comply with the myriad number of work-related laws: disability, discrimination, work environment, tax compliance, etc. If they are a small company, they just hope they never run a foul any law or get sued.
If they "hire" someone as a contractor here are their expenses:
The wage (i.e. the contract fees)
Some bookkeeping for payment of the contract.
That's it. I'm sure some companies take advantage of not having all those other costs by paying the employee less (i.e. actual wage minus bookkeeping costs) instead of paying them what they could without all the regulation costs. But then some people here were saying they (as contractors) are being paid anywhere from twice to four times what they get as normal employees. So some companies are not taking advantage of contracting to screw people over. Even if a company pays a contractor quite a bit more than a normal employee (i.e. what the normal employee sees as his wage), then the company is probably saving money: but getting the same work.
When looking for patent infringement you look at the Claims rather than the specific Embodiment.
I figured that but...as you said the Claims run in concentric circles. In other words, on many of the patents I couldn't figure out for sure what the claims were claiming: not that they were necessarily broad, just incomprehensible. And since I figured any part of a patent was "upholdable", I gave an example from part of a patent that was perfectly clear to me.
Thanks for the info. Next time I'll just spend all the time figuring out the claims...instead of trying to read most of many patents.:)
Now you know, why it is against german law to patent mathematical algorithms, algorithms in general, games or computer programs.
I don't disagree (at least about algorithms). I was just saying that their patents appear to be very specific and so it should be fairly easy to see if ogg infringes. Now as to whether what they patented should be patented is another question.
From this url given elsewhere by another poster, I looked up all the patents that Thomson Multimedia and Fraunhofer have in the US (apparently some weren't approved in US but in other countries). With all the hub-ub about overbroad/silly patents I thought I could go read some in more detail. The list of patten numbers is:
5,742,735
5,455,833
5,579,430
5,559,834
5,703,999
5,706,309
5,736,943
5,701,346
4,942,607
5,214,742
5,227,990
5,384,811
5,321,729
4,821,260
(You can look up any of them at the patent office. Just enter all the numbers in the search field separated by spaces.)
Some interesting things I noted:
I know something about math (and signal processing) and I couldn't decipher what was meant by a lot of them. In other words, how can the patent office people decide if an application is a valid patent if the application is incoherent? I know that specialists are supposed to look at applications for patents in their field but they might not be up to speed about everything in their field. Yeah, they might reject it for that reason but aren't they just as likely to approve it, thinking "maybe I'm just stupid/ignorant about this sub-field."
They seem to be fairly specific (although specificity doesn't necessarily mean something is patentable).
These "ominous words" were found at the end of patent #5,579,430, titled "Digital encoding process":
Although the invention has been described and illustrated in detail, it is to be clearly understood that the same is by way of illustration and example, and is not to be taken by way of limitation. The spirit and scope of the present invention are to be limited only by the terms of the appended claims.
Since most of the patents I found did not specify that the encoded signal had to be audio, this seems like they have a patent on any use of whatever their algorithms are trying to do (which I found not very clear...) In other words, it is almost like somebody patented a specific hash table function (I'm sure someone has) and then patented it specifically for application X, but didn't rule out the possibility of "owning" it in any application that uses hash functions.
All of the above must be taken with at grain of salt because the legal-ese in the patents (especially the beginnings where the claims are listed) is very weird and I had trouble deciphering what kind of math they were getting at. Not to mention one could spend days if not weeks reading them all and all supplemental material. Overall it looks like Ogg would have to include some very specific algorithms to be infringing (unless just the fact that the patents claim to patent one method of doing a certain type/part of encoding signals is enough to claim infringement--i.e. one form of encoding algorithm counts as owning them all...but that doesn't seem very reasonable.)
On the other hand, clones (most likely) did not choose to be a clone, and in many cases will never even know that they are one! Despite this, it seems very probable for a whole new prejudice to happen. At least on the lines of black slavery, jews in the holocaust and homosexuality. Perhaps even unprecedented.
Heinlein has a book Friday where essentially genetically engineered people are a "working" class that have little or no rights. Friday, the main character, is one such girl who does dangerous work for the man who commissioned her creation. She "passes" but, if she ever lets people know, they are usually irrationally fearful of her. A lot of the resolution for her in the book is dealing with the fact that she herself tends to think she shouldn't have rights.
Rachael
One could run their announcement through a thesaurus randomly replacing words with "synonyms"... then it would make just as much sense and still tell us nothing.
Rachael
Anonymous posting (this is somewhat offtopic)
on
Usenet Gag Order
·
· Score: 1
Yes you are right. I too, as far as I know, have never posted anonymously. The only "hiding" I do is to put some string in my e-mail address so the automatic e-mail gathering programs don't get a valid address. I actually have never gotten spam mail sent to me or "mean" things sent to me (I have posted controversial things). Maybe I too am very lucky, at least about not getting spam. But as for not being flamed in personal e-mail, I think it is because I try to be reasoned and not inflammatory when I write. On the internet, words that a person could say to his mother sometimes get turned into "evil-irrational-flaming." i.e. people sometimes are touchy.
Most of the comments against this suit are really criticisms of the ADA and how it encourages "silly pc crap." Unfortunately, the ADA is wrong even if it didn't encourage the silliness. Here's why.
Say I'm confined to a wheel chair. I need to get into some store. Why do I have the *right* to force the owner to make a ramp for me? Even if the owner doesn't pay outright he does through taxes (and so does everyone else). What gives me that right? He's not responsible for my being confined to a wheel chair -- why must he pay the costs associated with the disability? Sure it would be nice and courteous for him to do it, but government should not be about forcing people to be courteous.
The bottom line is that the non-disabled are not responsible for the disableds' diability. Sure, it's sad and unfortunate and makes life more difficult, but one man's situation is not another's responsibility *unless* he caused it -- i.e. a man hitting another with a car and paralyzing him.
I believe that those responsible for something should pay. If anyone wants to argue about "we are all responsible for each other" that's fine -- we can argue about that until our fingers fall off. But if we agree that only those responsible for something should pay for it, then the ADA is wrong -- because it makes certain people pay for things they are *not* responsible for.
What if, god forbid, the current group "controlling" linux kernel distributions went nuts (i.e. for whatever reason they starting making wacky changes and "improvements" on the kernel that a majority of Linux users didn't like)? Under GPL, that majority (or a minority if they are disgusted with it enough) can take the source they do like and start a new group who "control" the development of the linux kernel. Under this sun license, apparently if a group of users/programmers decided that sun was developing java in the wrong way they could not take the last java they liked and develop it how they want.
And that is what I always saw forking as -- and undesirable (and sad) thing that might happpen to a software project that *may* be necessary. In an open source project I think the ability to fork is paramount because one could contribute work to a project only to find that the "official" version no longer does what one thinks it should do. What does one do then? Lay down and cry or fork the project? (Assuming one wants to take the time. Presumable there would also be like minded individuals.)
I bet at least half of us here could *do* it in a week. I was shocked when Amazon patented the whole thing because that method of doing shopping was the most common one I had ever seen before Amazon patented it. The method is so obvious it screams "use me." Here we have cookies, databases and encrypted connections...I guess I'll make my customers enter their credit card for every item. Can you see it:
Web page for xyz.com catalog page:
"Due to patent problems we are not allowed to use common technology to make you visit more convenient. You will need to enter your credit card whenever you submit an order because we are not allowed to store your credit card securely on our server. Please buy from us anyway."
Okay, I'm going to respond to the major problems poeple had with what I said:
(1) The US is just as bad or worse than Europe.
Well DUH! I said so: "the US isn't so good about these things either."
(2) I am misinformed about some specific regulatory or banned thing.
Well tell me. Most problems with my list-of-bad- things-gov'ts-in-Europe-and-the-US-do are criticized as in (3), (4) or (5).
(3) "Well I don't want to eat GM food -- it's dangerous." or "I don't want a gun." or...
But what if your neighbor does? Is your right to live without forcible interference infringed upon because you neighbor wants to eat cow meat pumped full of chemicals? Are your rights infringed upon because you neighbor would prefer to have a handgun to protect himself from those professional criminals? The point isn't whether you agree with the law, but whether allowing the illegal behavior infringes on your rights. In everything but rape, murder, fraud and the like, some behavior is not infringing on anyone's rights.
(4) Even though people pay so much in taxes they get it back in services.
Yes after being siphoned through a parasitical bueacracy whose goal *needs* to be to increase their funds. If you don't mind losing it to the government to pay for health care then why would you mind just paying for it yourself without having it go through gov't? All the government does is increase the cost of your health care. "But we want to make sure the poor have health care." Why should they have it at my expense? I'm having enough trouble getting to where I want to be, why should I kill myself a little bit everyday so a poor person can live wretchedly? (In the US, most welfare recipients don't live that well anyway.) Why should I be forced to?
(5) I have a warped sense of democracy. Actually the ignorant vote for elite representatives who know what they're doing.
How did the ignorant masses know who to vote for to tell them what is good for them? If people are so stupid they can't be trusted to not eat rat poison, how can they be smart enough to pick the people who *are* smart enough to differentiate between poison and ambrosia? The point is that if we let individuals make their own choices then only the individual is hurt by their own stupidity. I am not hurt by my neighbors decision to forego carbohydrates because they heard it was a good way to lose weight. But if the government decides that the population is too obese and decides that people are only allowed to eat so many calories, I may be hurt -- I have a fast metabolism and have to eat a lot or I will get fat (not eating enough makes your body go into "starvation mode" thereby storing as much fat as possible, even if normally your body would just let it be excreted.) And don't say this is a far-fetched example -- a lot of Americans are obese and there are already groups lobbying to get the federal government to regulate people so they diet or don't eat certain foods.
Specific points:
* about going to any doctor: the last time I did research on this (admittedly, 4 years ago when doing research on welfare systems when I was *very* socialist), most European health care systems assign each citizen certain doctors they can go to and they can't go to any others without paying more money on top of their taxes. Also, there are some procedures that are rationed because governments have never been good at dealing with scarcity. And worse, some people are arbitrarily denied procedures because they are old (Canada denies transplants to aged people last time I checked) or have debilitated themselves intentionally, even though they could pay for it had they been living in a non-socialized medicine country. Why is this a good thing?
* alternate transportation: If the transportation is not owned by the government or is not regulated to the point where price changes are challenged by the gov't, then show it to me. I don't consider a system where subsidies or price fixes occur to be non-gov't owned or regulated. The US is in particular very bad about this.
Some have been saying that Katz is asking for it both ways: he's complaining about censorship of unpopular ideas and wanting to strangle the "ignorant, hysterical" ideas. I read his article as saying that the US is not especially intellectually free--people automatically denounce ideas in a non-intellectual way if those ideas are "bad." i.e. calling Singer Hitler for merely opening debate on a very important issue. How does calling him Hitler help the debate? How does it make for a more intellectually free society when one cannot at least express an opinion without being lynched? I don't think Katz was talking about censorship per se, but the automatic smearing of anything that isn't popular and tasteful by a majority of society as evil or "just like Hitler" or whatever, as long as the description is as emotionally loaded as possible! Why can't we just answer reasonable arguments on "touchy" subjects with reasonable arguments instead of automatically calling the idea or person "just like Hitler" ?
...to answer criticism that their GM foods might breed rampantly in the wild and destroy other crops. Some environmental groups were very mad about it, but weren't satisfied with making it impossible for the second generation to breed.
This terminator thing didn't start out as a way to make more money off of people, but as a way to fix perceived problems. It's too bad that there are large lobbies in most European countries and the US to stop this stuff over unscientific fears and unrealistic requirements such as trying to prove that GM foods will never cause any changes to the environment at all. But, all the while they are forgetting that genetically modified foods are just exactly what has been happening since life began: one variety of organism is able to become effective at survival because the environment and surrounding organisms make it possible. The only difference is that usually the new organism has to randomly breed back and forth until it mutates into something that has an advantage. Doing it in the lab just saves generations of crossing crops, like it's been done since men started sedentary agriculture.
Umm...okay, Europe doesn't have concentration camps but are citizens of most European countries allowed to:
* buy beef from the US? * soon, buy genetically modified food? * go to whatever doctor they please? * keep a majority of what they earn? * own a gun? * ride on a non-car transportation system (i.e. train, bus) that isn't owned or regulated to practical ownership by the gov't? * many other things... * take a medicine whether or not the gov't health agency says they can?
Personally the US isn't so good about these things either, but in any case, the only difference between this and more extreme forms of state control is scope, not the essence. The essence is that a human being is being physically coerced to do something he may or may not want to do. (Sure, most people probably voluntarily only take gov't approved medicines, but just try to break the rule.) It doesn't matter if you will be summarily shot or given an elaborate trial before you are killed/inprisoned/fined if the thing you are being punished for should not be illegal. ESR just realizes the fundamental contradiction in believing that 'social democracy' as it is practiced in nearly every country in the world -- i.e. that a group of people who don't know any better than to not take bad medicine (because they have to be told what medicine is good for them by the gov't) acquire the ability to vote for laws that do tell them and others what they must not do. Or in short form, the idiots are too stupid to run their own lives but are smart enough to run their neighbors.
"3) The mysterious Federal Reserve Note: Contrary to popular belief, only 8%, or so of the US currency is *actually* in the form of dollars. The other 92% of the US currency is in the form of electronic cash and IOUs to various foreign powers."
Which is one good reason a gold standard (or some other thing that can't be easily replicated/mined) should be money... it's way too easy for those printing the money (i.e. the US gov't) to inflate the money. At least with a physical thing like gold prices are not tied to money supply that can be changed by fiat--some one actually has to dig more gold!
Rachael
(Please no flaming...it's just those kinds of ratios of "real money" versus debt money makes one want to scream: "why the *#$! did we get of the gold standard?")
"We are not the same as animals. Humans have inherent value. If the word "humanity" has so little meaning for someone, then I for one am ashamed to have them as part of my species."
A human being only has value in relation to someone who values that being. Inherent is a way of saying that something is valuable in all situations. That's just not the case. (Aliens who wanted our planet would not consider human beings valuable if we were in their way...and in terms of survival we are not valuable to them if the only way they can expand to use the earth environment is to kill us).
One *could* make the case that all human beings always have value to all human beings. But that surely isn't the case to me because I definitely don't see Hitler or the leader of a terrorist group valuable (to me).
Slashdot Mirror
A fair number of high school government classes have students do various politically oriented letter writing as "experience" in "being part of democracy" (in quotes because I thought it was lame when I was in high school). Commenting on proposed regulations seems like a reasonable thing to do -- just because the student can't (legally) drink doesn't mean that they could comment on the fairness/benefit of a specific regulation dealing with alcohol (how many kids have made comments about smoking issues in various areas? I opposed a local smoking bad when I was younger than eighteen.)
Rachael
My first try I didn't realize I could say "turn on light" so that I could see where my robe was that had the aspirin in it. :) The bulldozer killed me *inside the house*.
Rachael
My PDA doesn't fit in my pocket (well most of the time). Plus, since it's "out of the way", I don't use it. But if the information was popping up on a screen in front of my eyes? Damn right I'd be using it! (Can you tell that I really, really want something like those glasses? I always want to go off and build my own MIThril system and then remember that (a) it is expensive and (b) I am not good with hardware (soldering, etc)).
Rachael
It's still bullshit. The subrings that are commutative are very small. I don't see how they would be generally applicable to as large a problem area as they seem to be claiming. Plus, they could at least show how it's important (e.g. they mention gaussian elimination 2-3 times -- maybe they could show how their "N+" system helps in that. But they don't. I wonder why?)
Rachael
There's a bunch of handwavy stuff about higher dimension number systems and getting communtative multiplication (needed for a bunch of signal processing algorithms and most other "real" math applications), but not proof.
Number systems with more than 2 coordinates are treated like matrices, because no one is able to find rules of muliplication and addition for say a 5-coordinate system that makes the numbers associative, commutative and distributive. Abstract algebra is basically only concerned with figuring out which of those properties hold for different sets. But in their stuff, they don't once show how their "N+" system will allow a 10-coordinate number (for instance) to be commutative with another one. From their site:
That sure sounds like they've found a system form making quaternions commutative. But quarternions aren't. I read everything in the left two columns of links. And there wasn't more than vague promises of N+ solving signal processing problems and basic descriptions of real number field theory. But nothing saying how their N+ numbers are associative, commutative and distributive. So this is just bullshit.
Rachael
Not exactly...one thing fixed in this patch is a content-type/file extension spoof issue where a open/save to file/cancel dialog is displayed indicating a file of one type (say innocent wav) when in fact it is an executable. So, if the user chose open it would open...but as an executable not as a wav. If they had chosen save to file, and then opened it from explorer it would just not open (or in the case of a spoofed wav it would be noise, if it played at all). Jouko Pynnonen (the guy thanked in MS's release note), who reported it on BugTraq, says in his summary post that for this issue (he calls it file extension spoofing) was reported Nov. 19th. The issue with automatic execution of some content (no confirmation dialogs!) was apparently reported Nov. 27th to MS.
Sounds retroactive to me....
Rachael
I've often wondered why this is. Read legally, the First Amendment doesn't seem to say this at all. But I probably shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth...
The reason is that the 14th amendment made all the previous amendments (and future ones) apply to all government action--whether state, local or federal. In other words, it makes no sense for the Federal Congress to be prohibited from establishing a state religion while state governments are not prohibited. Specifically, this amendment was passed in order to extend the protection of the law (i.e. basic human rights) to blacks and other groups that were previously second-class citizens because of state, not federal law.
Rachael
http://www.alcbev.state.ut.us/Liquor_Laws/liquor_l aws_affecting_visitors.html
Why would an employer prefer to "hire" people as contractors rather than employees? I think it is the cost, and not just that they want to screw people over and not pay them. Here are some things that employers have to pay for (whether they, their employee or anyone wants them to pay for):
If they "hire" someone as a contractor here are their expenses:
That's it. I'm sure some companies take advantage of not having all those other costs by paying the employee less (i.e. actual wage minus bookkeeping costs) instead of paying them what they could without all the regulation costs. But then some people here were saying they (as contractors) are being paid anywhere from twice to four times what they get as normal employees. So some companies are not taking advantage of contracting to screw people over. Even if a company pays a contractor quite a bit more than a normal employee (i.e. what the normal employee sees as his wage), then the company is probably saving money: but getting the same work.
Rachael
When looking for patent infringement you look at the Claims rather than the specific Embodiment.
I figured that but...as you said the Claims run in concentric circles. In other words, on many of the patents I couldn't figure out for sure what the claims were claiming: not that they were necessarily broad, just incomprehensible. And since I figured any part of a patent was "upholdable", I gave an example from part of a patent that was perfectly clear to me.
Thanks for the info. Next time I'll just spend all the time figuring out the claims...instead of trying to read most of many patents. :)
Rachael
Now you know, why it is against german law to patent mathematical algorithms, algorithms in general, games or computer programs.
I don't disagree (at least about algorithms). I was just saying that their patents appear to be very specific and so it should be fairly easy to see if ogg infringes. Now as to whether what they patented should be patented is another question.
Rachael
From this url given elsewhere by another poster, I looked up all the patents that Thomson Multimedia and Fraunhofer have in the US (apparently some weren't approved in US but in other countries). With all the hub-ub about overbroad/silly patents I thought I could go read some in more detail. The list of patten numbers is:
- 5,742,735
- 5,455,833
- 5,579,430
- 5,559,834
- 5,703,999
- 5,706,309
- 5,736,943
- 5,701,346
- 4,942,607
- 5,214,742
- 5,227,990
- 5,384,811
- 5,321,729
- 4,821,260
(You can look up any of them at the patent office. Just enter all the numbers in the search field separated by spaces.)Some interesting things I noted:
- Although the invention has been described and illustrated in detail, it is to be clearly understood that the same is by way of illustration and example, and is not to be taken by way of limitation. The spirit and scope of the present invention are to be limited only by the terms of the appended claims.
Since most of the patents I found did not specify that the encoded signal had to be audio, this seems like they have a patent on any use of whatever their algorithms are trying to do (which I found not very clear...) In other words, it is almost like somebody patented a specific hash table function (I'm sure someone has) and then patented it specifically for application X, but didn't rule out the possibility of "owning" it in any application that uses hash functions.All of the above must be taken with at grain of salt because the legal-ese in the patents (especially the beginnings where the claims are listed) is very weird and I had trouble deciphering what kind of math they were getting at. Not to mention one could spend days if not weeks reading them all and all supplemental material. Overall it looks like Ogg would have to include some very specific algorithms to be infringing (unless just the fact that the patents claim to patent one method of doing a certain type/part of encoding signals is enough to claim infringement--i.e. one form of encoding algorithm counts as owning them all...but that doesn't seem very reasonable.)
Rachael
On the other hand, clones (most likely) did not choose to be a clone, and in many cases will never even know that they are one! Despite this, it seems very probable for a whole new prejudice to happen. At least on the lines of black slavery, jews in the holocaust and homosexuality. Perhaps even unprecedented.
Heinlein has a book Friday where essentially genetically engineered people are a "working" class that have little or no rights. Friday, the main character, is one such girl who does dangerous work for the man who commissioned her creation. She "passes" but, if she ever lets people know, they are usually irrationally fearful of her. A lot of the resolution for her in the book is dealing with the fact that she herself tends to think she shouldn't have rights. Rachael
One could run their announcement through a thesaurus randomly replacing words with "synonyms" ... then it would make just as much sense and still tell us nothing.
Rachael
Yes you are right. I too, as far as I know, have never posted anonymously. The only "hiding" I do is to put some string in my e-mail address so the automatic e-mail gathering programs don't get a valid address. I actually have never gotten spam mail sent to me or "mean" things sent to me (I have posted controversial things). Maybe I too am very lucky, at least about not getting spam. But as for not being flamed in personal e-mail, I think it is because I try to be reasoned and not inflammatory when I write. On the internet, words that a person could say to his mother sometimes get turned into "evil-irrational-flaming." i.e. people sometimes are touchy.
RL
Most of the comments against this suit are really criticisms of the ADA and how it encourages "silly pc crap." Unfortunately, the ADA is wrong even if it didn't encourage the silliness. Here's why.
Say I'm confined to a wheel chair. I need to get into some store. Why do I have the *right* to force the owner to make a ramp for me? Even if the owner doesn't pay outright he does through taxes (and so does everyone else). What gives me that right? He's not responsible for my being confined to a wheel chair -- why must he pay the costs associated with the disability? Sure it would be nice and courteous for him to do it, but government should not be about forcing people to be courteous.
The bottom line is that the non-disabled are not responsible for the disableds' diability. Sure, it's sad and unfortunate and makes life more difficult, but one man's situation is not another's responsibility *unless* he caused it -- i.e. a man hitting another with a car and paralyzing him.
I believe that those responsible for something should pay. If anyone wants to argue about "we are all responsible for each other" that's fine -- we can argue about that until our fingers fall off. But if we agree that only those responsible for something should pay for it, then the ADA is wrong -- because it makes certain people pay for things they are *not* responsible for.
RL
I think the point about forking is this:
What if, god forbid, the current group "controlling" linux kernel distributions went nuts (i.e. for whatever reason they starting making wacky changes and "improvements" on the kernel that a majority of Linux users didn't like)? Under GPL, that majority (or a minority if they are disgusted with it enough) can take the source they do like and start a new group who "control" the development of the linux kernel. Under this sun license, apparently if a group of users/programmers decided that sun was developing java in the wrong way they could not take the last java they liked and develop it how they want.
And that is what I always saw forking as -- and undesirable (and sad) thing that might happpen to a software project that *may* be necessary. In an open source project I think the ability to fork is paramount because one could contribute work to a project only to find that the "official" version no longer does what one thinks it should do. What does one do then? Lay down and cry or fork the project? (Assuming one wants to take the time. Presumable there would also be like minded individuals.)
Rachael
I bet at least half of us here could *do* it in a week. I was shocked when Amazon patented the whole thing because that method of doing shopping was the most common one I had ever seen before Amazon patented it. The method is so obvious it screams "use me." Here we have cookies, databases and encrypted connections...I guess I'll make my customers enter their credit card for every item. Can you see it:
Web page for xyz.com catalog page:
"Due to patent problems we are not allowed to use common technology to make you visit more convenient. You will need to enter your credit card whenever you submit an order because we are not allowed to store your credit card securely on our server. Please buy from us anyway."
Rachael
Okay, I'm going to respond to the major problems poeple had with what I said:
(1) The US is just as bad or worse than Europe.
Well DUH! I said so: "the US isn't so good about these things either."
(2) I am misinformed about some specific regulatory or banned thing.
Well tell me. Most problems with my list-of-bad- things-gov'ts-in-Europe-and-the-US-do are criticized as in (3), (4) or (5).
(3) "Well I don't want to eat GM food -- it's dangerous." or "I don't want a gun." or...
But what if your neighbor does? Is your right to live without forcible interference infringed upon because you neighbor wants to eat cow meat pumped full of chemicals? Are your rights infringed upon because you neighbor would prefer to have a handgun to protect himself from those professional criminals? The point isn't whether you agree with the law, but whether allowing the illegal behavior infringes on your rights. In everything but rape, murder, fraud and the like, some behavior is not infringing on anyone's rights.
(4) Even though people pay so much in taxes they get it back in services.
Yes after being siphoned through a parasitical bueacracy whose goal *needs* to be to increase their funds. If you don't mind losing it to the government to pay for health care then why would you mind just paying for it yourself without having it go through gov't? All the government does is increase the cost of your health care. "But we want to make sure the poor have health care." Why should they have it at my expense? I'm having enough trouble getting to where I want to be, why should I kill myself a little bit everyday so a poor person can live wretchedly? (In the US, most welfare recipients don't live that well anyway.) Why should I be forced to?
(5) I have a warped sense of democracy. Actually the ignorant vote for elite representatives who know what they're doing.
How did the ignorant masses know who to vote for to tell them what is good for them? If people are so stupid they can't be trusted to not eat rat poison, how can they be smart enough to pick the people who *are* smart enough to differentiate between poison and ambrosia? The point is that if we let individuals make their own choices then only the individual is hurt by their own stupidity. I am not hurt by my neighbors decision to forego carbohydrates because they heard it was a good way to lose weight. But if the government decides that the population is too obese and decides that people are only allowed to eat so many calories, I may be hurt -- I have a fast metabolism and have to eat a lot or I will get fat (not eating enough makes your body go into "starvation mode" thereby storing as much fat as possible, even if normally your body would just let it be excreted.) And don't say this is a far-fetched example -- a lot of Americans are obese and there are already groups lobbying to get the federal government to regulate people so they diet or don't eat certain foods.
Specific points:
* about going to any doctor: the last time I did research on this (admittedly, 4 years ago when doing research on welfare systems when I was *very* socialist), most European health care systems assign each citizen certain doctors they can go to and they can't go to any others without paying more money on top of their taxes. Also, there are some procedures that are rationed because governments have never been good at dealing with scarcity. And worse, some people are arbitrarily denied procedures because they are old (Canada denies transplants to aged people last time I checked) or have debilitated themselves intentionally, even though they could pay for it had they been living in a non-socialized medicine country. Why is this a good thing?
* alternate transportation: If the transportation is not owned by the government or is not regulated to the point where price changes are challenged by the gov't, then show it to me. I don't consider a system where subsidies or price fixes occur to be non-gov't owned or regulated. The US is in particular very bad about this.
Rachael
Some have been saying that Katz is asking for it both ways: he's complaining about censorship of unpopular ideas and wanting to strangle the "ignorant, hysterical" ideas. I read his article as saying that the US is not especially intellectually free--people automatically denounce ideas in a non-intellectual way if those ideas are "bad." i.e. calling Singer Hitler for merely opening debate on a very important issue. How does calling him Hitler help the debate? How does it make for a more intellectually free society when one cannot at least express an opinion without being lynched? I don't think Katz was talking about censorship per se, but the automatic smearing of anything that isn't popular and tasteful by a majority of society as evil or "just like Hitler" or whatever, as long as the description is as emotionally loaded as possible! Why can't we just answer reasonable arguments on "touchy" subjects with reasonable arguments instead of automatically calling the idea or person "just like Hitler" ?
Rachael
...to answer criticism that their GM foods might breed rampantly in the wild and destroy other crops. Some environmental groups were very mad about it, but weren't satisfied with making it impossible for the second generation to breed.
This terminator thing didn't start out as a way to make more money off of people, but as a way to fix perceived problems. It's too bad that there are large lobbies in most European countries and the US to stop this stuff over unscientific fears and unrealistic requirements such as trying to prove that GM foods will never cause any changes to the environment at all. But, all the while they are forgetting that genetically modified foods are just exactly what has been happening since life began: one variety of organism is able to become effective at survival because the environment and surrounding organisms make it possible. The only difference is that usually the new organism has to randomly breed back and forth until it mutates into something that has an advantage. Doing it in the lab just saves generations of crossing crops, like it's been done since men started sedentary agriculture.
Rachael
Umm...okay, Europe doesn't have concentration camps but are citizens of most European countries allowed to:
* buy beef from the US?
* soon, buy genetically modified food?
* go to whatever doctor they please?
* keep a majority of what they earn?
* own a gun?
* ride on a non-car transportation system (i.e. train, bus) that isn't owned or regulated to practical ownership by the gov't?
* many other things...
* take a medicine whether or not the gov't health agency says they can?
Personally the US isn't so good about these things either, but in any case, the only difference between this and more extreme forms of state control is scope, not the essence. The essence is that a human being is being physically coerced to do something he may or may not want to do. (Sure, most people probably voluntarily only take gov't approved medicines, but just try to break the rule.) It doesn't matter if you will be summarily shot or given an elaborate trial before you are killed/inprisoned/fined if the thing you are being punished for should not be illegal. ESR just realizes the fundamental contradiction in believing that 'social democracy' as it is practiced in nearly every country in the world -- i.e. that a group of people who don't know any better than to not take bad medicine (because they have to be told what medicine is good for them by the gov't) acquire the ability to vote for laws that do tell them and others what they must not do. Or in short form, the idiots are too stupid to run their own lives but are smart enough to run their neighbors.
Rachael
"3) The mysterious Federal Reserve Note: Contrary to popular belief, only 8%, or so of the US currency is *actually* in the form of dollars. The other 92% of the US currency is in the form of electronic cash and IOUs to various foreign powers."
... it's way too easy for those printing the money (i.e. the US gov't) to inflate the money. At least with a physical thing like gold prices are not tied to money supply that can be changed by fiat--some one actually has to dig more gold!
Which is one good reason a gold standard (or some other thing that can't be easily replicated/mined) should be money
Rachael
(Please no flaming...it's just those kinds of ratios of "real money" versus debt money makes one want to scream: "why the *#$! did we get of the gold standard?")
"We are not the same as animals. Humans have inherent value. If the word "humanity" has so little meaning for someone, then I for one am ashamed to have them as part of my species."
A human being only has value in relation to someone who values that being. Inherent is a way of saying that something is valuable in all situations. That's just not the case. (Aliens who wanted our planet would not consider human beings valuable if we were in their way...and in terms of survival we are not valuable to them if the only way they can expand to use the earth environment is to kill us).
One *could* make the case that all human beings always have value to all human beings. But that surely isn't the case to me because I definitely don't see Hitler or the leader of a terrorist group valuable (to me).
Rachael