I don't think the free market can solve all the world's problems, but in this case it does have a fair shot.
The dilemma presented in the writeup is that you can't get messages through to someone (your doctor, mailing list recipients, whoever) because their ISP is extorting you. The author then argues that the free market cannot respond because it is the recipient being screwed (by charging others for a service that the recipient has already paid for), but the recipient is unaware of this abuse because they can't receive the messages.
But, that last part is rather unlikely. You will still be able to contact the recipient elsehow: either by paying the silly fee at least once, or by phoning them, or using a recipient email address not linked to the ISP, or by posting something on a web-site.
Take the example of the mailing list. The author worries about the cost of sending mails to thousands of people. So, basically, your mailing-list signup could say something like "We won't send email to people on ISP X" or "We cannot guarantee delivery to ISP X... click here to find out more." If the user really wanted to sign-up to that mailing list, then they will be annoyed by this. Ultimately end-users will find out about what their ISPs are doing, and switch ISPs (or at least switch email providers).
So the recipients will be empowered to change their email provider. And I'm fairly certain this whole scheme will fail for precisely that reason. The end users (senders or receivers) don't get much of benefit from the service--certainly not a benefit commensurate to the cost. So they will not pay the fees, and the scheme will fail. (Notice that some people have called for nominal 'email costs' many times to prevent spam... such proposals never take off mainly because the users of email don't want that hassle or cost.)
I think it will be possible to vote with our wallets, and watch this little scheme die a painful death.
v3 makes the GPL less attractive... A company can't put time and money into helping a project when a competitor can then just use those changes, or worse yet new companies arise because you just removed any barrier to entry that might have existed.
But that was precisely the fear with GPLv2: that no company would touch it because that would give their competitors and advantage. But in the end, companies realized that the GPL levels the playing field, so although your competitor can use the code, you get to have his code modifications, too. And you're getting a community helping improve your code. So lots of company are now using GPLv2 code.
This will be true of GPLv3. Companies will use GPLv3 code if there is GPLv3 code they want. If GPLv3 becomes frequently used by people, then companies will use the code, and contribute to the codebase. The "danger" of competitors using your improvements has always been there: it's fundamental to the GPL. Plenty of companies can't get over this fear of being cooperative. But, some companies seem to be able to overcome the fear and do quite well using GPL software. GPLv3 will be the same thing: if there is a community of GPLv3 coders, then companies will set-up shop around them.
It looks like this company is actually helping the community. They're eliminating the fear that if their product is used, they, the customer, won't have to worry about the big bad MS coming after them.
I guess the problem is that different people have different definitions of 'the community.' Xandros (and you) seem to think that 'the community' is "Xandros and their customers." Whereas others think that 'the community' is "the developers and the users of the software" (and note that those "users" may or may not be Xandros customers).
So, in effect, Xandros is making a deal that puts their 'community' above the community at large, whereas I would argue that the intent of the GPL in general, and the open-source developers that use it, is to create something that the wider community (all developers, all users, including Xandros and their customers) will ultimately benefit from.
I think that as long as companies like Novell and Xandros keep thinking of the community of only being made up of their paying customers, they are missing the point of free software and ultimately will be missing out on the crucial developments that they require to maintain profitability.
If that's the real reason, then does the normal CompleteCare include a clause like "This insurance is only valid if you do not change the Operating System on the computer?" Does it have a clause like "This insurance is only valid if you have Windows installed, and running properly, on the computer?"
I doubt it does. In fact, TFA claims that someone had a Dell computer with Gentoo installed, and used CompleteCare to get hardware fixed. So why the discrimination when you buy a computer preloaded with Ubuntu?
Moreover, Dell must obviously be prepared to deal with computers where the HD is broken, or where Windows is installed but running badly (e.g. malware, viruses), or where for some nebulous reason (of which there are many in any OS) their tools do not install/run. I imagine they could boot into a CD or USB key to perform the diagnostics. They must have to deal with these kinds of problems all the time.
So the "diagnostic software" excuse, while reasonable, is not a sufficient reason for them to not offer hardware insurance on Ubuntu machines.
Just thinking out loud here... but it seems to me that the patent system seems to forget the "fundamental point", which is that patents are supposed to do some good for society at large.
The patent system has (theoretically) requirements about "prior art" and "obviousness." But to me, even this is not enough. Patents should also be judged based on whether they have "value added" (as compared to not giving out the patent).
In many ways, the original purpose of patents was to prevent trade secrets. So the idea is that we (society) will give a limited time monopoly in exchange for implementation details, which might otherwise have been hidden from us. But what "implementation detail" is being hidden from us in a "1-click" patent or even a "constructible card game" patent? The answer is: nothing. So why should society bother giving out a monopoly? The "first mover" advantage in most cases is enough for you to make money off of your idea. Only in the case of a really subtle and complex idea is it "worth it" for society to trade a monopoly in exchange for implementation details--because otherwise there is nothing society really gains.
I know another aspect of patents is to encourage people to invest time, effort and energy into an idea/research (e.g. drug companies). I would say that's fine too--there again there is a tangible "value add" for society.
I don't really have an answer for how to implement this, but I think that somehow patents should be judged not merely on "obviousness" and "prior art", but also on "is this a good deal?" The current system assumes that if you have an idea, you get a patent. Instead perhaps it should be a contract system, where each patent application states: (1) what they want from society (a monopoly), and (2) what they are giving back to society (implementation details, etc.). If it's a bad deal, the application is rejected (even if the idea is good).
Done in this way, perhaps patents for things like drugs could be granted ahead-of-time. So basically a contract between a drug company and the government that says: "The government agrees to provide patent protection to the results of the proposed research, since the research is deemed to be of value to society and unlikely to be undertaken without patent protection."
Yes, there are problems with individually-negotiated patents, such as creating yet another system prone to bribes and manipulation. Just thinking out loud; suggestions welcome.
I'm increasingly disgusted that everything creative has to be patented so that someone can make money off of it. Whatever happened to sharing a great idea, and making new and better things with it?
Even that is a false dichotomy. It's not a matter of "patent and make money" versus "release for the good of the world." Rather it should be "patent and make money" or "don't patent and make money" or "release for free for the good of the world" and so on. The current mindset in business is that the only way to make money off of an idea is to patent it--which is ridiculous. I fully agree that people should be able to commercialize their ideas. No one disputes that. But patents are not a automatic road to profit: on the one hand, most patents don't end up being commercialized; and on the other hand, many good ideas create massive profits without being explicitly patent-protection.
The present obsession with patent-protection (or other legal protection) of ideas is a sickness that is stifling a great deal of creativity, and a great deal of economic productivity. As you insinuated in your post, companies should be content with just making good products. It doesn't matter if your competition sells a similar product. If you are making the best product at the best price, then you will ultimately turn a profit. And if you are not able to give the customers what they want, then tough luck: maybe someone else will, and they will reap the rewards.
I can't wait to pay £400 for a Beta CPU and then get to endure 6 months of crashing until it gets patched.
That's a fair worry. But, on the other hand, chips already ship with plenty of bugs. There are thousands of documented bugs in every chip you've ever used. The expense of redesigning is too high, so they will never fix those bugs. Instead they usually just publish the list of known bugs, and tell the compiler writers: "don't ever use that particular instruction--it doesn't work" or "avoid this sequence of assembler commands--it will cause the chip to lockup."
So we are already in a situation where we buy buggy hardware, and we have to deal with it. In particular, the compiler writers deal with it, insulating the rest of us from the bugs. If it were possible to "code around" the hardware bugs at higher levels, this could be an advantage. So I guess the idea would be that instead of (or in addition to) having the compiler writers design around the bugs, you could have high-level libraries be hardware-specific, designed to work around the bugs or to clearly detect when the buggy states have arisen. The idea is to have explicit signaling between hardware and software, so in theory the library could actively check if it had triggered a bug-state, and do the computation elsehow (whereas as far as I know, compilers are written to completely avoid a possible bug-state).
Again, I share your worry that this will simply be an "excuse" for the hardware designers to get lazy and release inferior products. But when modern chips have 300 million transistors, you can be sure that bugs will creep in--and I would rather they have built-in strategies for mitigating those bugs.
The linked article doesn't really explain the work very well. The project homepage has quite a bit more information. What they are trying to accomplish is indeed a middle-layer between applications and hardware (e.g. OS functions or drivers) but the point is the solve a particular optimization problem (speed, low power usage, security) by optimizing software and hardware together.
So, for example, if low power usage is the goal, then instead of fine-tuning the hardware for low power usage, and then also tuning the software for low power usage (e.g. getting rid of unnecessary loops, checks, etc.), the strategy would be to create specific hooks in the hardware system (accessible via the OS and/or a driver, of course) to allow this fine-tuning. Nowadays we have chips that can regulate themselves so that they don't use excessive power. But it could be even more efficient if the software were able to signal the hardware, for instance differentiating between "I'm just waking up to do a quick, boring check--no need to scale the CPU up to full power" versus "I'm about to start a complex task and would like the CPU ramped up to full power."
They claim to have some encouraging results. From one of the abstracts:
We have demonstrated the effectiveness of our approach on the well-known dI/dt problem, where we successfully stabilized the voltage fluctuations of the CPU's power supply by transforming the source code of the executing application using feedback from hardware.
Obviously the idea of having software and hardware interact is not new (that's what computers do, after all)... but the intent of this project is, apparently, to push much more aggressively into a realm where optimizations are realized by using explicit signaling between hardware and software systems. (Rather than leaving the hardware or OS to guess what hardware state is best suited to the task at hand.)
I think we can all agree that ODF is a turd that can't be polished. The fact that it's "open" doesn't mean it isn't fundamentally broken.
Well I don't agree. Perhaps you can specify a few reasons why you think it is fundamentally broken?
I really don't know if ODF is the best open office-document standard that we could ever develop (probably not) but it is certainly very good at doing its job so far. And I mean that it does both the "office-document" part and the "open" part. With regard to being a good "office-document" standard, it seems to support all the features a user would expect from a modern format. With regard to the "open" part, I recently discovered that you can extract all the data from an ODF spreadsheet using a few lines of python (unzipping and using mindom to parse it), which allows me to write scripts to extract data from spreadsheets, perform more sophisticated analysis (that no spreadsheet could handle), and dump the results back into the document. Needless to say, that would have been impossible using a proprietary, binary, non-human-readable format.
So, again, I wonder whether you can refer me to an objectively better format (that currently exists). Right now, in terms of office documents, I would argue that ODF is the best format, because it is open, it has all the required features, and it exists. Proprietary formats are fundamentally broken as long as it remains proprietary (it is, in fact, defective by design). And though there are other open formats (plaintext, latex, etc.) none of them can do what ODF can.
Has anyone found a nugget of legal truth in the other documents?
According to the Microsoft legal threat, the relevant portion of the Visual Studio Express EULA is:
...you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways... You may not work around technical limitations in the software.
Microsoft would claim, therefore, that to develop TestDriven.NET, the developer had to download Visual Studio Express, and agree to the EULA in order to install it. However the situation is probably more complex. The issue (from what I can tell) is that a single version of TestDriven.NET works with all versions of Visual Studio (Express or otherwise). So it can easily be shown that TestDriven.NET was developed using the full version of Visual Studio--which not only allows you to create add-ins but in fact encourages you to do so. So the EULA (of the full version of Visual Studio) was not broken.
So the question is: "Is TestDriven.NET legally required to alter their product so as to enforce the terms of someone else's EULA?" Isn't it the end-user, who combines VS Express and TestDriven.NET that is in violation of the EULA?
Or perhaps the real question is: "Are ridiculous terms in an EULA, such as 'thou shalt not make the product do things we didn't intend for it to do' actually legally enforceable?"
If they said 'no addins' for the free edition, and someone does one, surely they are in the right to get annoyed?
Absolutely. They can get as annoyed as they like. They can yell from the top of a mountain "I am annoyed! Please stop doing that!" In fact that's what they did at first--they tried to convince the developer to stop distributing the project. That's their right.
However they were not happy with the way the "good faith" negotiations proceeded, and now they are trying to use the law to get their way. The question is, do they have the right to legally enforce their ethos? If there were a contract between Microsoft and TestDriven.NET, then that may limit what TestDriven.NET is allowed to do. However it does not appear that this is the case. In fact, it appears that there is no legal reason why someone can't program add-ins for VS Express. Microsoft may not like it, but it's not illegal. (Please correct me if I'm wrong on that point.)
If you want to use it, you use it the way they say, that seems obvious to me.
I disagree. If I obtain a product (buy it for $X or download a free product under certain licensing terms) then I can use it however I want (limited only by the law). If something in the EULA makes it illegal to use add-ins, then I suppose Microsoft can claim that end-users of TestDriven.NET are violating the VS Express EULA... but that still doesn't make TestDriven.NET's actions illegal.
I have an open source project, and I would get mighty pissed if someone broke my terms. Ok mine are the gpl, but it's the same thing.
You're mixing two different issues, however. The GPL is a license that (along with copyright) provide a legal framework that delineates what you can and cannot legally do. That is a legal issue. If you release your GPL project, and then find that someone is using your code to run a porn website (but is complying with the GPL), then you may claim that their usage is against the "ethos" of your project--but that still doesn't give you the legal right to prevent their use. You gave them a license to use the software, and that's what they are doing. You can be annoyed, but you cannot sue.
The post from the Visual Studio blog is quite interesting. In the first paragraph, Dan Fernandez says that the add-in "is a direct violation of both the EULA and 'ethos' of the Express product line." Throughout his post, he continually mentions that the add-in is "illegal."
Yet he spends the entire post talking only about the "ethos" part of it (describing their numerous good faith attempts to convince Jamie Cansdale to stop distributing his product), but he never explains what the illegal part is. Clearly the Visual Studio team feels that Jamie is violating the "ethos" of their project (their "business plan," in fact). On the other hand, Jamie probably feels that the Visual Studio team is violating the "ethos" of his project when they try to limit it. So whose "ethos" is more important?
At no point, however, does the blog post mention anything about how the Visual Studio EULA could prohibit the distribution of TestDriven.NET. After all, I can redistribute copies of TestDriven.NET without even owning a copy of Visual Studio--so obviously I'm not bound by the Visual Studio EULA.
I can think of no legal reason to prohibit what Jamie is doing... and apparently, neither can Dan Fernandez. Has anyone found a nugget of legal truth in the other documents?
Apple isn't keeping tabs on anyone... But the question remains why anyone feels violated by this
Well I would argue that Apple is, indeed, keeping tabs on people. Whether or not they use that power for good or evil is another question altogether. Then again, it's not just Apple that we have to worry about. The world is more complex than that.
What if you lose your iPod and someone posts all your files on P2P networks? What if someone steals it? Even if "my iPod was stolen" is a valid legal defense, this still means that you are opening yourself up to legal threats (and costs) by using watermarked songs. Moreover, I don't like the idea of a portable device having thousands of internal copies of my real name and email address. (Yes, my wallet contains that information and a whole lot more--but I would still be bothered by the additional risk I incur when carrying around yet more personal information stored in a high-theft item.)
I don't know if people should feel "violated" by this watermarking of non-DRM tracks (after all, it is a whole lot better than fully-DRMed tracks)... but I do think there is some cause for concern even with watermarking. (Even for people fully compliant with the law.)
High time ISPs charge consumers by MBytes of data transmitted.
Frankly I've never understood why in the US all the ISPs only give "unlimited download" accounts. In Canada, from what I can tell, they offer different packages for different needs. For instance, Videotron offers:
20 Gb download and 10 Gb upload - $40/month (source)
Unlimited upload and download - $65/month (source)
It's a very simple system. Most users opt for the basic package (20 Gb down and 10 Gb up is plenty for most people!) and the "power users" pay more for enhanced service (slightly faster connection and no worries about limits). Metering per Mb is another option--but is basically unnecessary. Just sell the "unlimited" as an extra option. You charge more for it, and you actually give them the advertised unlimited option. Seems simple enough.
Lawyers that disbehave are disbarred. I wish something like that could be done to scientists.
Well, scientists do have a system like that. When a fellow scientists "behaves improperly" their credibility drops. Because it is their peers who review their papers and who review their grant proposals, they begin lacking funding and having a hard time getting other scientists to listen to them.
This, of course, sometimes causes them to spin wild conspiracy stories, and complain loudly that the "scientific establishment" is trying to censor or suppress their ideas. When, in reality, science is simply doing its job: ignoring bad sources of information and instead focusing on reliable sources of information.
So, really, science does a decent job of policing itself. The problem, however, is where science and the media intermix. Because the media does not always ignore the cries of discredited scientists. Quite the opposite--media typically loves scientists that "speak against the crowd" both because it makes a good story, and because what they are saying is typically more sensational and more alarmist. (And, typically, less correct.)
(Disclosure: I'm part of the "scientific establishment" so take my opinions as you will.)
Re:FRAUD ALERT -- Slashdot sucked in again!
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How Bad Can Wi-fi Be?
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· Score: 3, Informative
Planck's constant is so small that interactions between electromagnetic waves and molecules cannot be chemically specific.
What do you mean by that? If that were true, then spectroscopy wouldn't be possible. Different molecules do indeed interact with the EM-spectrum quite differently. They absorb at different wavelengths, and exhibit other effects (like Raman scattering) that are indeed chemically-specific. In fact, spectroscopy is the most common way of identifying chemical species.
Different parts of the EM-spectrum probe different aspects of molecules. (Visible light probes electronic structure, infrared light interacts with molecular vibrations, etc.) Even the radiofrequency range of the spectrum interacts with molecules in a chemically-specific way: microwave-region EM-radiation probes the rotational modes of molecules, and radiofrequency spectroscopy can also probe nuclear states (see NMR).
If I've misunderstood what you meant, please set me straight.
(By the way, I do agree that the energy from a WiFi signal will be absorbed by most common materials and lead to a barely noticeable increase in temperature. But that doesn't mean that the process is not chemical-specific. For instance, some materials will absorb more of the WiFi signal than others.)
1. If Intel were really interested in "trying to bring capability to young people" then why didn't they sign on with the OLPC project in the first place? By having Intel generate a separate project, resources are inherently divided. According to TFA, Intel originally laughed at the idea of OLPC. Now they are copying it. Why didn't they just agree to help OLPC?
2. In TFA, Negroponte reportedly is accusing Intel of selling their Classmate PC below production cost. Such a tactic is used, of course, to driver others out of the market, so as to establish monopoly. If OLPC and Intel both try to sell their laptops to various countries, and the Intel one has "more bang for the buck" (because they are subsidizing it), then obviously countries will pick the Intel one. Then OLPC dies and suddenly the Intel ones start mysteriously costing more.
The OLPC project has the aim to create extremely inexpensive educational laptops in a cost-effective way. They want a sustainable solution to education. Intel, according to Negroponte, is not working towards that goal.
That paragraph caught my eye, too. But the author knows what he's doing: he's a troll.
After all, near the beginning of the article, he admits to being a troll:
Naturally, I disagreed -- partially because I am a naturally disagreeable person. Any idiot can make friends -- but can you make some really serious enemies?
I'm all for "playing devil's advocate" and having an intelligent debate where both sides are properly represented... but this guy basically admits that he just likes making people mad. So the way he ends his article is no surprise. In fact the whole article is filled with subtle (and not so subtle) jabs at both sides of the debate, such as:
Open source is not a movement; it's a religion.
Moreover, like any good troll, he creates arguments that are full of holes, thereby inviting angry "True Believers" to fight the good fight and tear his arguments apart. (And as a by-product he gets page views of course.)
I'm fully in favor of a reasoned debate on any issue... but I'm not clear on exactly what new insights this guy's article brings to the debate.
(Actually Mozilla products are not released under the GPL but rather their own open-source license.) The fact that it is open-source is the crucial bit, since that's what, ultimately, gives the users the power in this whole situation. And that's why I'm not worried.
Thus far, Mozilla has done nothing but good things (in my opinion). They have created a nice browser and email client, distributed them as open-source, and have been aggressively promoting their products and FLOSS in general. In short, I trust them... because they have earned that trust with their actions.
So, with regard to this Google deal, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they are making decisions that benefit the community. So far, we have no evidence of anything shady about the deal. (They have disclosed that the money is in exchange for Google being the default, but not the only, engine in the search bar... which is fine in my book.)
However, I'm not a fool (or at least I like to think so). And if Mozilla is found guilty of shady deals, or "betraying" the community of people who are currently evangelizing and supporting Mozilla, then I will change my stance quickly--as will most others in the community I think. The important point is that because the source-code is available to the community, everyone is empowered to fork the project and ignore Mozilla if that becomes necessary. It would be a shame to loose the Firefox brand, but at least the work that went into the codebase would not be lost.
It is this "power to the community" that makes me not worry so much... both because it means that if Mozilla becomes "evil" we have an immediate counter-reaction... and also because the existence of this possible counter-reaction makes it rather unlikely for Mozilla to ever turn their back on the community.
The use of the Disney logo doesn't violate trademark law because it was accompanied by a "this movie is not endorsed by:" line. The purpose of trademark law is not to prevent people from reproducing imagery, but rather to avoid consumer confusion. I don't think many consumers would be confused by a large disclaimer stating "this is not affiliated with Disney!" (anymore than they would think that my post is endorsed by Disney, simply because I use their name in my post).
Furthermore, the entire video is both a massive comedic parody, and a commentary on the current state of copyright. As the video points out, these are two things which are supposedly protected by fair use. You are allowed to use clips in order to criticize something and/or for satire.
Another bit of irony is that the author of the video threw in some clips from Aladdin, where the genie was performing satire. If you've ever watched Aladdin, you'll know how many jokes in that movie revolved around the genie making reference to all kinds of movies and actors. Many of the genie's lines are taken verbatim from other movies, for instance.
So, if Disney is protected by the satire/parody clause in copyright, why isn't this short, informative, humorous video? If a video like this is not protected by fair use (does it reduce the economic potential of Aladdin to show 8 clips, each 0.8 seconds long, from that movie?) then the law is ever more broken than I previously thought.
You seem to think that TPB isn't pulling in lots of cash right now. I'm pretty sure they are. The ads on the site generate revenue, and I'm sure they get quite a bit of traffic. Creating a second site with user generated content is simply an expansion of this: it will also have ads, of course, and will generate revenue. TPB is a huge site with massive traffic, so the people involve already know how to scale a site, and build redundancies (witness, for instance, how quickly TPB was back online after their servers were confiscated!) Admittedly they will have to do some new work to build a decent flash player, but I'm sure they already have experience with running a large database.
And of course, as we all know, community is one of the most valuable things on the internet. The "brand name" that TPB would bring to this new site is significant. People would feel that they could post and discuss things there that they might not want to post or discuss on other sites. (For example, people might trust TPB to not hand over search records or user account records... or indeed to not even maintain such data.)
So in terms of return-on-investment, I think they have a pretty solid case, and I don't think they'll have too much trouble pulling together the money required. Whether or not the site actually succeeds is another matter, but I think they have a good chance.
And, with regard to TPB "becoming legitimate"... well, as they are fond of reminding us, they are not violating any Swedish laws. So, in fact, they are already entirely legit.
You need to be able to prove that the company ignored prior art
That's part of patent law I've never understood. I've been told by people (who have patents) that it is in their best interest to *NOT* do a patent search before applying for a patent, since that search could be used against them later, to prove willful infringement, which carries a stiffer penalty (I guess) than mere incidental infringement.
But, why the heck is the system run this way? A patent application is supposed to be a legal document. It's not worded this way, but it is basically meant to convey "Under penalty of perjury, I hereby claim that this is a novel invention, that no other before me has invented. I have no knowledge of any prior art in this regard, and I find it highly unlikely that anyone else could have invented something similar, because it is so unique and novel."
Obviously, that's not how patents are viewed today. No one is afraid of submitting a bogus patent. The worst thing that will happen is that it's thrown out. But shouldn't they be treated as binding legal statements? If it is discovered that you claimed something was "novel and patent worthy" and it is later determined to be "obvious and prior implementations were publicly known" then the penalty should be that for perjury. After all, you filed a legal document with the government where you made some very strong claims, and it turned out that you were very much wrong.
A great amount of patent nonsense could be eliminated if they were treated like the binding legal documents that they are. No other legal document gives so much power with zero accountability the way a patent does. Imagine if an assayer certified that there was oil in a certain area. So a company buys the land in question, and discovers there is no oil. Would it be reasonable for the assayer to say: "Sorry there isn't any oil there--I actually didn't check myself, so you can't hold me accountable." Where is the liability for misrepresentation in weak patents?
That would actually be interesting. Digg ended the last uproar by saying "okay, we give up, go ahead and post it"... but by then the key had been posted to so many sites (largely in protest) that no one cared anymore. Even the AACS team must have realized that it was futile to now suppress the code. I'm sure they sent out plenty of other legal threats, but basically the code had been widely distributed.
But if someone posted a new Digg story, with the code... what would happen? Let's say Digg was the first (or one of the first) to "break" this story. Would Digg bury the story? Or let it stand? Would they begin another proactive campaign of suppressing the information? Or would they stick to their previous (rather belated) show of solidarity with their users? If they were one of the only sites distributing it, they would be (rightly) afraid of an imminent AACS legal threat.
It will be very interesting to see the reactions of the community and the AACS team as more keys are discovered and distributed. (Heck, it may occur that someone posts a bogus key story to Digg, just to mess with them.)
Agreed. The article does abuse the word "myth"--for several of the statements, they do not really disprove it, but merely show (or try to show) that it is not relevant to the global climate debate. They use the terms "myth" and "debunking" because it sounds cool, but that's not entirely fair of them.
So for instance, in this case, they should perhaps have said that the myth was "polar bear populations are a useful way to measure global climate". The point being that bringing up polar bear populations in a global climate debate is just distracting from the real data.
New scientist publishes an article that says "polar bear populations are rising" is a myth. They claim that some populations are rising, others falling, and the overall trend is unknown.
A skeptic points to an article about reliable research that found that one particular population of polar bears was rising. (Exactly what the new scientist article states.) The skeptic asks "what gives?"
True believer tries to answer, by pointing out that new scientist was trying to show that some populations are rising, whereas others are falling, and the overall trend is unknown. Hence "polar bear populations are rising" is a myth, or at least incomplete and misleading. Furthermore, there is no contradiction between the New Scientist claims and the data the skeptic linked to.
Then random passerby comes along, mixes up facts, and mis-represents the discussion so far. He ends with a quasi-personal attack and mythological reference.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think the free market can solve all the world's problems, but in this case it does have a fair shot.
The dilemma presented in the writeup is that you can't get messages through to someone (your doctor, mailing list recipients, whoever) because their ISP is extorting you. The author then argues that the free market cannot respond because it is the recipient being screwed (by charging others for a service that the recipient has already paid for), but the recipient is unaware of this abuse because they can't receive the messages.
But, that last part is rather unlikely. You will still be able to contact the recipient elsehow: either by paying the silly fee at least once, or by phoning them, or using a recipient email address not linked to the ISP, or by posting something on a web-site.
Take the example of the mailing list. The author worries about the cost of sending mails to thousands of people. So, basically, your mailing-list signup could say something like "We won't send email to people on ISP X" or "We cannot guarantee delivery to ISP X... click here to find out more." If the user really wanted to sign-up to that mailing list, then they will be annoyed by this. Ultimately end-users will find out about what their ISPs are doing, and switch ISPs (or at least switch email providers).
So the recipients will be empowered to change their email provider. And I'm fairly certain this whole scheme will fail for precisely that reason. The end users (senders or receivers) don't get much of benefit from the service--certainly not a benefit commensurate to the cost. So they will not pay the fees, and the scheme will fail. (Notice that some people have called for nominal 'email costs' many times to prevent spam... such proposals never take off mainly because the users of email don't want that hassle or cost.)
I think it will be possible to vote with our wallets, and watch this little scheme die a painful death.
This will be true of GPLv3. Companies will use GPLv3 code if there is GPLv3 code they want. If GPLv3 becomes frequently used by people, then companies will use the code, and contribute to the codebase. The "danger" of competitors using your improvements has always been there: it's fundamental to the GPL. Plenty of companies can't get over this fear of being cooperative. But, some companies seem to be able to overcome the fear and do quite well using GPL software. GPLv3 will be the same thing: if there is a community of GPLv3 coders, then companies will set-up shop around them.
So, in effect, Xandros is making a deal that puts their 'community' above the community at large, whereas I would argue that the intent of the GPL in general, and the open-source developers that use it, is to create something that the wider community (all developers, all users, including Xandros and their customers) will ultimately benefit from.
I think that as long as companies like Novell and Xandros keep thinking of the community of only being made up of their paying customers, they are missing the point of free software and ultimately will be missing out on the crucial developments that they require to maintain profitability.
If that's the real reason, then does the normal CompleteCare include a clause like "This insurance is only valid if you do not change the Operating System on the computer?" Does it have a clause like "This insurance is only valid if you have Windows installed, and running properly, on the computer?"
I doubt it does. In fact, TFA claims that someone had a Dell computer with Gentoo installed, and used CompleteCare to get hardware fixed. So why the discrimination when you buy a computer preloaded with Ubuntu?
Moreover, Dell must obviously be prepared to deal with computers where the HD is broken, or where Windows is installed but running badly (e.g. malware, viruses), or where for some nebulous reason (of which there are many in any OS) their tools do not install/run. I imagine they could boot into a CD or USB key to perform the diagnostics. They must have to deal with these kinds of problems all the time.
So the "diagnostic software" excuse, while reasonable, is not a sufficient reason for them to not offer hardware insurance on Ubuntu machines.
Just thinking out loud here... but it seems to me that the patent system seems to forget the "fundamental point", which is that patents are supposed to do some good for society at large. The patent system has (theoretically) requirements about "prior art" and "obviousness." But to me, even this is not enough. Patents should also be judged based on whether they have "value added" (as compared to not giving out the patent).
In many ways, the original purpose of patents was to prevent trade secrets. So the idea is that we (society) will give a limited time monopoly in exchange for implementation details, which might otherwise have been hidden from us. But what "implementation detail" is being hidden from us in a "1-click" patent or even a "constructible card game" patent? The answer is: nothing. So why should society bother giving out a monopoly? The "first mover" advantage in most cases is enough for you to make money off of your idea. Only in the case of a really subtle and complex idea is it "worth it" for society to trade a monopoly in exchange for implementation details--because otherwise there is nothing society really gains.
I know another aspect of patents is to encourage people to invest time, effort and energy into an idea/research (e.g. drug companies). I would say that's fine too--there again there is a tangible "value add" for society.
I don't really have an answer for how to implement this, but I think that somehow patents should be judged not merely on "obviousness" and "prior art", but also on "is this a good deal?" The current system assumes that if you have an idea, you get a patent. Instead perhaps it should be a contract system, where each patent application states: (1) what they want from society (a monopoly), and (2) what they are giving back to society (implementation details, etc.). If it's a bad deal, the application is rejected (even if the idea is good).
Done in this way, perhaps patents for things like drugs could be granted ahead-of-time. So basically a contract between a drug company and the government that says: "The government agrees to provide patent protection to the results of the proposed research, since the research is deemed to be of value to society and unlikely to be undertaken without patent protection."
Yes, there are problems with individually-negotiated patents, such as creating yet another system prone to bribes and manipulation. Just thinking out loud; suggestions welcome.
The present obsession with patent-protection (or other legal protection) of ideas is a sickness that is stifling a great deal of creativity, and a great deal of economic productivity. As you insinuated in your post, companies should be content with just making good products. It doesn't matter if your competition sells a similar product. If you are making the best product at the best price, then you will ultimately turn a profit. And if you are not able to give the customers what they want, then tough luck: maybe someone else will, and they will reap the rewards.
So we are already in a situation where we buy buggy hardware, and we have to deal with it. In particular, the compiler writers deal with it, insulating the rest of us from the bugs. If it were possible to "code around" the hardware bugs at higher levels, this could be an advantage. So I guess the idea would be that instead of (or in addition to) having the compiler writers design around the bugs, you could have high-level libraries be hardware-specific, designed to work around the bugs or to clearly detect when the buggy states have arisen. The idea is to have explicit signaling between hardware and software, so in theory the library could actively check if it had triggered a bug-state, and do the computation elsehow (whereas as far as I know, compilers are written to completely avoid a possible bug-state).
Again, I share your worry that this will simply be an "excuse" for the hardware designers to get lazy and release inferior products. But when modern chips have 300 million transistors, you can be sure that bugs will creep in--and I would rather they have built-in strategies for mitigating those bugs.
So, for example, if low power usage is the goal, then instead of fine-tuning the hardware for low power usage, and then also tuning the software for low power usage (e.g. getting rid of unnecessary loops, checks, etc.), the strategy would be to create specific hooks in the hardware system (accessible via the OS and/or a driver, of course) to allow this fine-tuning. Nowadays we have chips that can regulate themselves so that they don't use excessive power. But it could be even more efficient if the software were able to signal the hardware, for instance differentiating between "I'm just waking up to do a quick, boring check--no need to scale the CPU up to full power" versus "I'm about to start a complex task and would like the CPU ramped up to full power."
They claim to have some encouraging results. From one of the abstracts: Obviously the idea of having software and hardware interact is not new (that's what computers do, after all)... but the intent of this project is, apparently, to push much more aggressively into a realm where optimizations are realized by using explicit signaling between hardware and software systems. (Rather than leaving the hardware or OS to guess what hardware state is best suited to the task at hand.)
I really don't know if ODF is the best open office-document standard that we could ever develop (probably not) but it is certainly very good at doing its job so far. And I mean that it does both the "office-document" part and the "open" part. With regard to being a good "office-document" standard, it seems to support all the features a user would expect from a modern format. With regard to the "open" part, I recently discovered that you can extract all the data from an ODF spreadsheet using a few lines of python (unzipping and using mindom to parse it), which allows me to write scripts to extract data from spreadsheets, perform more sophisticated analysis (that no spreadsheet could handle), and dump the results back into the document. Needless to say, that would have been impossible using a proprietary, binary, non-human-readable format.
So, again, I wonder whether you can refer me to an objectively better format (that currently exists). Right now, in terms of office documents, I would argue that ODF is the best format, because it is open, it has all the required features, and it exists. Proprietary formats are fundamentally broken as long as it remains proprietary (it is, in fact, defective by design). And though there are other open formats (plaintext, latex, etc.) none of them can do what ODF can.
So the question is: "Is TestDriven.NET legally required to alter their product so as to enforce the terms of someone else's EULA?" Isn't it the end-user, who combines VS Express and TestDriven.NET that is in violation of the EULA?
Or perhaps the real question is: "Are ridiculous terms in an EULA, such as 'thou shalt not make the product do things we didn't intend for it to do' actually legally enforceable?"
However they were not happy with the way the "good faith" negotiations proceeded, and now they are trying to use the law to get their way. The question is, do they have the right to legally enforce their ethos? If there were a contract between Microsoft and TestDriven.NET, then that may limit what TestDriven.NET is allowed to do. However it does not appear that this is the case. In fact, it appears that there is no legal reason why someone can't program add-ins for VS Express. Microsoft may not like it, but it's not illegal. (Please correct me if I'm wrong on that point.) I disagree. If I obtain a product (buy it for $X or download a free product under certain licensing terms) then I can use it however I want (limited only by the law). If something in the EULA makes it illegal to use add-ins, then I suppose Microsoft can claim that end-users of TestDriven.NET are violating the VS Express EULA... but that still doesn't make TestDriven.NET's actions illegal. You're mixing two different issues, however. The GPL is a license that (along with copyright) provide a legal framework that delineates what you can and cannot legally do. That is a legal issue. If you release your GPL project, and then find that someone is using your code to run a porn website (but is complying with the GPL), then you may claim that their usage is against the "ethos" of your project--but that still doesn't give you the legal right to prevent their use. You gave them a license to use the software, and that's what they are doing. You can be annoyed, but you cannot sue.
The post from the Visual Studio blog is quite interesting. In the first paragraph, Dan Fernandez says that the add-in "is a direct violation of both the EULA and 'ethos' of the Express product line." Throughout his post, he continually mentions that the add-in is "illegal."
Yet he spends the entire post talking only about the "ethos" part of it (describing their numerous good faith attempts to convince Jamie Cansdale to stop distributing his product), but he never explains what the illegal part is. Clearly the Visual Studio team feels that Jamie is violating the "ethos" of their project (their "business plan," in fact). On the other hand, Jamie probably feels that the Visual Studio team is violating the "ethos" of his project when they try to limit it. So whose "ethos" is more important?
At no point, however, does the blog post mention anything about how the Visual Studio EULA could prohibit the distribution of TestDriven.NET. After all, I can redistribute copies of TestDriven.NET without even owning a copy of Visual Studio--so obviously I'm not bound by the Visual Studio EULA.
I can think of no legal reason to prohibit what Jamie is doing... and apparently, neither can Dan Fernandez. Has anyone found a nugget of legal truth in the other documents?
What if you lose your iPod and someone posts all your files on P2P networks? What if someone steals it? Even if "my iPod was stolen" is a valid legal defense, this still means that you are opening yourself up to legal threats (and costs) by using watermarked songs. Moreover, I don't like the idea of a portable device having thousands of internal copies of my real name and email address. (Yes, my wallet contains that information and a whole lot more--but I would still be bothered by the additional risk I incur when carrying around yet more personal information stored in a high-theft item.)
I don't know if people should feel "violated" by this watermarking of non-DRM tracks (after all, it is a whole lot better than fully-DRMed tracks)... but I do think there is some cause for concern even with watermarking. (Even for people fully compliant with the law.)
20 Gb download and 10 Gb upload - $40/month (source)
Unlimited upload and download - $65/month (source)
It's a very simple system. Most users opt for the basic package (20 Gb down and 10 Gb up is plenty for most people!) and the "power users" pay more for enhanced service (slightly faster connection and no worries about limits). Metering per Mb is another option--but is basically unnecessary. Just sell the "unlimited" as an extra option. You charge more for it, and you actually give them the advertised unlimited option. Seems simple enough.
This, of course, sometimes causes them to spin wild conspiracy stories, and complain loudly that the "scientific establishment" is trying to censor or suppress their ideas. When, in reality, science is simply doing its job: ignoring bad sources of information and instead focusing on reliable sources of information.
So, really, science does a decent job of policing itself. The problem, however, is where science and the media intermix. Because the media does not always ignore the cries of discredited scientists. Quite the opposite--media typically loves scientists that "speak against the crowd" both because it makes a good story, and because what they are saying is typically more sensational and more alarmist. (And, typically, less correct.)
(Disclosure: I'm part of the "scientific establishment" so take my opinions as you will.)
Different parts of the EM-spectrum probe different aspects of molecules. (Visible light probes electronic structure, infrared light interacts with molecular vibrations, etc.) Even the radiofrequency range of the spectrum interacts with molecules in a chemically-specific way: microwave-region EM-radiation probes the rotational modes of molecules, and radiofrequency spectroscopy can also probe nuclear states (see NMR).
If I've misunderstood what you meant, please set me straight.
(By the way, I do agree that the energy from a WiFi signal will be absorbed by most common materials and lead to a barely noticeable increase in temperature. But that doesn't mean that the process is not chemical-specific. For instance, some materials will absorb more of the WiFi signal than others.)
I think the problem is two-fold:
1. If Intel were really interested in "trying to bring capability to young people" then why didn't they sign on with the OLPC project in the first place? By having Intel generate a separate project, resources are inherently divided. According to TFA, Intel originally laughed at the idea of OLPC. Now they are copying it. Why didn't they just agree to help OLPC?
2. In TFA, Negroponte reportedly is accusing Intel of selling their Classmate PC below production cost. Such a tactic is used, of course, to driver others out of the market, so as to establish monopoly. If OLPC and Intel both try to sell their laptops to various countries, and the Intel one has "more bang for the buck" (because they are subsidizing it), then obviously countries will pick the Intel one. Then OLPC dies and suddenly the Intel ones start mysteriously costing more.
The OLPC project has the aim to create extremely inexpensive educational laptops in a cost-effective way. They want a sustainable solution to education. Intel, according to Negroponte, is not working towards that goal.
After all, near the beginning of the article, he admits to being a troll: I'm all for "playing devil's advocate" and having an intelligent debate where both sides are properly represented... but this guy basically admits that he just likes making people mad. So the way he ends his article is no surprise. In fact the whole article is filled with subtle (and not so subtle) jabs at both sides of the debate, such as: Moreover, like any good troll, he creates arguments that are full of holes, thereby inviting angry "True Believers" to fight the good fight and tear his arguments apart. (And as a by-product he gets page views of course.)
I'm fully in favor of a reasoned debate on any issue... but I'm not clear on exactly what new insights this guy's article brings to the debate.
Thus far, Mozilla has done nothing but good things (in my opinion). They have created a nice browser and email client, distributed them as open-source, and have been aggressively promoting their products and FLOSS in general. In short, I trust them... because they have earned that trust with their actions.
So, with regard to this Google deal, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they are making decisions that benefit the community. So far, we have no evidence of anything shady about the deal. (They have disclosed that the money is in exchange for Google being the default, but not the only, engine in the search bar... which is fine in my book.)
However, I'm not a fool (or at least I like to think so). And if Mozilla is found guilty of shady deals, or "betraying" the community of people who are currently evangelizing and supporting Mozilla, then I will change my stance quickly--as will most others in the community I think. The important point is that because the source-code is available to the community, everyone is empowered to fork the project and ignore Mozilla if that becomes necessary. It would be a shame to loose the Firefox brand, but at least the work that went into the codebase would not be lost.
It is this "power to the community" that makes me not worry so much... both because it means that if Mozilla becomes "evil" we have an immediate counter-reaction... and also because the existence of this possible counter-reaction makes it rather unlikely for Mozilla to ever turn their back on the community.
I have to disagree.
The use of the Disney logo doesn't violate trademark law because it was accompanied by a "this movie is not endorsed by:" line. The purpose of trademark law is not to prevent people from reproducing imagery, but rather to avoid consumer confusion. I don't think many consumers would be confused by a large disclaimer stating "this is not affiliated with Disney!" (anymore than they would think that my post is endorsed by Disney, simply because I use their name in my post).
Furthermore, the entire video is both a massive comedic parody, and a commentary on the current state of copyright. As the video points out, these are two things which are supposedly protected by fair use. You are allowed to use clips in order to criticize something and/or for satire.
Another bit of irony is that the author of the video threw in some clips from Aladdin, where the genie was performing satire. If you've ever watched Aladdin, you'll know how many jokes in that movie revolved around the genie making reference to all kinds of movies and actors. Many of the genie's lines are taken verbatim from other movies, for instance.
So, if Disney is protected by the satire/parody clause in copyright, why isn't this short, informative, humorous video? If a video like this is not protected by fair use (does it reduce the economic potential of Aladdin to show 8 clips, each 0.8 seconds long, from that movie?) then the law is ever more broken than I previously thought.
You seem to think that TPB isn't pulling in lots of cash right now. I'm pretty sure they are. The ads on the site generate revenue, and I'm sure they get quite a bit of traffic. Creating a second site with user generated content is simply an expansion of this: it will also have ads, of course, and will generate revenue. TPB is a huge site with massive traffic, so the people involve already know how to scale a site, and build redundancies (witness, for instance, how quickly TPB was back online after their servers were confiscated!) Admittedly they will have to do some new work to build a decent flash player, but I'm sure they already have experience with running a large database.
... well, as they are fond of reminding us, they are not violating any Swedish laws. So, in fact, they are already entirely legit.
And of course, as we all know, community is one of the most valuable things on the internet. The "brand name" that TPB would bring to this new site is significant. People would feel that they could post and discuss things there that they might not want to post or discuss on other sites. (For example, people might trust TPB to not hand over search records or user account records... or indeed to not even maintain such data.)
So in terms of return-on-investment, I think they have a pretty solid case, and I don't think they'll have too much trouble pulling together the money required. Whether or not the site actually succeeds is another matter, but I think they have a good chance.
And, with regard to TPB "becoming legitimate"
But, why the heck is the system run this way? A patent application is supposed to be a legal document. It's not worded this way, but it is basically meant to convey "Under penalty of perjury, I hereby claim that this is a novel invention, that no other before me has invented. I have no knowledge of any prior art in this regard, and I find it highly unlikely that anyone else could have invented something similar, because it is so unique and novel."
Obviously, that's not how patents are viewed today. No one is afraid of submitting a bogus patent. The worst thing that will happen is that it's thrown out. But shouldn't they be treated as binding legal statements? If it is discovered that you claimed something was "novel and patent worthy" and it is later determined to be "obvious and prior implementations were publicly known" then the penalty should be that for perjury. After all, you filed a legal document with the government where you made some very strong claims, and it turned out that you were very much wrong.
A great amount of patent nonsense could be eliminated if they were treated like the binding legal documents that they are. No other legal document gives so much power with zero accountability the way a patent does. Imagine if an assayer certified that there was oil in a certain area. So a company buys the land in question, and discovers there is no oil. Would it be reasonable for the assayer to say: "Sorry there isn't any oil there--I actually didn't check myself, so you can't hold me accountable." Where is the liability for misrepresentation in weak patents?
That would actually be interesting. Digg ended the last uproar by saying "okay, we give up, go ahead and post it"... but by then the key had been posted to so many sites (largely in protest) that no one cared anymore. Even the AACS team must have realized that it was futile to now suppress the code. I'm sure they sent out plenty of other legal threats, but basically the code had been widely distributed.
But if someone posted a new Digg story, with the code... what would happen? Let's say Digg was the first (or one of the first) to "break" this story. Would Digg bury the story? Or let it stand? Would they begin another proactive campaign of suppressing the information? Or would they stick to their previous (rather belated) show of solidarity with their users? If they were one of the only sites distributing it, they would be (rightly) afraid of an imminent AACS legal threat.
It will be very interesting to see the reactions of the community and the AACS team as more keys are discovered and distributed. (Heck, it may occur that someone posts a bogus key story to Digg, just to mess with them.)
Agreed. The article does abuse the word "myth"--for several of the statements, they do not really disprove it, but merely show (or try to show) that it is not relevant to the global climate debate. They use the terms "myth" and "debunking" because it sounds cool, but that's not entirely fair of them.
So for instance, in this case, they should perhaps have said that the myth was "polar bear populations are a useful way to measure global climate". The point being that bringing up polar bear populations in a global climate debate is just distracting from the real data.
Let's recap shall we.
New scientist publishes an article that says "polar bear populations are rising" is a myth. They claim that some populations are rising, others falling, and the overall trend is unknown.
A skeptic points to an article about reliable research that found that one particular population of polar bears was rising. (Exactly what the new scientist article states.) The skeptic asks "what gives?"
True believer tries to answer, by pointing out that new scientist was trying to show that some populations are rising, whereas others are falling, and the overall trend is unknown. Hence "polar bear populations are rising" is a myth, or at least incomplete and misleading. Furthermore, there is no contradiction between the New Scientist claims and the data the skeptic linked to.
Then random passerby comes along, mixes up facts, and mis-represents the discussion so far. He ends with a quasi-personal attack and mythological reference.