Its not just Windows, but Linux and every other OS uses the base 2 notation for KB, MB, GB, TB, etc.
MacOS X isn't "every other OS" then.
First, MacOS X takes KB = thousand bytes, MB = million bytes, GB = billion bytes, and TB = trillion bytes. As is standard everywhere. Second, nobody uses base 2 notation. Writing 1010KB for ten Kilobytes would be just stupid. Third, claiming that hard drive manufacturers are ripping you off is stupid. When they sell a 500 GB drive it has space for 500 billion bytes, which is _exactly_ what 500 GB means.
We get ripped off on most things here. Rear tyres for my car - US price: $300/each. Local price? $900 each. Computer stuff is generally more expensive in terms of AU vs US dollars by a factor of 1.5 or more. Our dollar is currently above parity...
MacBook Pro: US$1199, excluding sales tax. Aus$1349, including 10% sales tax. There's a difference, but not exactly "rip off". And there are additional costs in Australia, for example having to send someone to reply to the Australian parliament. Not exactly free.
Yeah, that's what I'm reading from this, though as said elsewhere, this is some claims in the patents were invalidated, but I'm wondering then can Moto re-apply with more detail? But yeah, does this mean anyone without a full listing of the algorithm (which is most 'with a computer/on the internet' patent these days) has a chance to have parts made invalid? Can of Worms.
That could be difficult, because they were suing Microsoft for infringing their patent, so presumably they would know now what Microsoft has implemented and can't really claim they invented it _afterwards_. And it's not about the algorithm, it is about stating clearly what is actually invented, so that someone else can reproduce it. Any ordinary programmer should be able to take a precise spec and turn it into an algorithm or actual code.
Microsoft is arguing that as a 'means plus function' patent, it isn't specific enough because it doesn't specifically give an algorithm. Surely if this goes through it will invalidate the vast majority of software patents?
It's not really about an algorithm per se. It's about specifying precisely what the algorithm is going to achieve. "Pick some block using some algorithm" isn't specific enough. "Pick some block using the following algorith: blablabla" is. "Pick some block by choosing among all blocks with distance less than 5 units the one that minimises the prediction error defined by the formula xxx" is specific enough, even if the implementor has to find their own algorithm.
Software patents are so problematic because if you expose your essential algorithm which uses code blocks then all someone has to do is code to it with different variable names.
WTF? Are you on drugs? That's what patents are all about: You _publish_ the invention, so that others _can_ replicate it, and then they have to pay you license fees if they use it. They can also replicate it, _improve_ it and get their own patents. Making it possible for others to reproduce it is the _purpose_ of the patent.
Agency pricing is pretty scummy period in my opinion, and is fairly rare. Here not only was it being done, but as a collusion.
Apple has so far sold 25 billion songs, all with agency pricing. Record companies set the price, and Apple sells it. The same things with books. Apple sells tens of thousands of different ebooks. They don't want to worry about what price to set for each book. So they let the publisher set the price; the publisher has more experience anyway.
Now apparently Apple told the publisher: If you sell the same book to other distributors for less, then we are not interested. Can't see anything wrong with that.
I don't know a single Mac user who uses windows on a Mac. I have Linux VMs on mine for VPN access, school work, and general tinkering, but my only windows installation is my gaming PC.
Not Mac OS X users, but I know some Windows users at my company who purchased MacBook Airs (paid by the company) and installed Windows (company wide license), because (a) it's the best laptop hardware you can buy, and (b) it's a bit of a status symbol if your company thinks you are worth the money.
The "tablet is not a PC" crowd will attack. And then the "tablet is a PC" crowd will counter-attack. Out of nowhere "some tablet are PC" crowd will join, but haven't shown their alliance. The "Apple is evil" along with the "Android/Chrome OS FTW" groups will join forces to fight everybody. Unfortunately, the hills may not protect us from the "Win8 will kill everyone".
I suspect that whether people belong to the "tablet is a PC" or "tablet is not a PC" crowd coincides strongly with whether they want or don't want Apple to be the largest PC vendor.
In the end, PC vendors don't care how many PCs they sell, they care about how much stuff they sell. There's no price for being the leader, especially no price for setting or bending the rules so that you are the leader; but there's a price (hard cash) for selling stuff at a profit. Apple sells x Macs and y iPads, and whether someone says they sell x PCs or (x + y) PCs doesn't matter to the bottom line.
Where it is important is when businesses care about what really happens. If HP says "we are selling four times more PCs than Apple, that's all we care about", then they might be making a big mistake. If they say "we sell so many servers, so many workstations, so many laptops, so many tablets, and these are our competitors..." that's probably a lot more healthy.
That's voted up as "interesting", when it has nothing to do whatsoever with this court case. The court case ruling would have applied to someone selling illegally copied DVDs, which they copied themselves. That's actually what the judge said. The copyright holder may have rights to damages, but not to the profits. Everything you said is totally irrelevant.
Originally, I thought the judge lost his marbles. Of course it's more akin to stealing something rather than just trespass, they are part of stealing/redistributing a product!
If you read the whole thing, I think he is right. Here is the complete argument: If someone set up a stall selling DVDs, whether legal or illegal, on someone else's land, that would be trespass. However, while the landowner coud remove the trespasser, the landowner would have no rights to the profits that the stall makes. And the copyright infringer trespasses on the copyright holder's rights, but by the same argument the copyright holder has no rights to the profits.
Serious question. I thought that this part of the DMCA takedown notice exists precisely to prevent abuse. Why haven't I *EVER* heard of it being enforced?
Because the most common case of wrong DMCA takedown notices is that there is a rightful copyright holder is complaining, but whatever they complain about isn't infringing on the copyright they own. No perjury for that. The perjury comes into play when someone sends down a takedown notice, but doesn't actually own the copyright they are complaining about.
The summary should say "jailbroken iPhones" instead of "unlocked iPhones". Jailbreaking allows unauthorized apps, unlocking allows SIM freedom.
If you want to be guaranteed radiation free, you could by a broken iPhone instead of a jailbroken one. Just remove the battery, and you can hold it to year head and talk into it as much as you like.
You'll have to talk a bit louder so that the person you are calling hears you.
The real problem we should be focusing on is the "takedown first, ask questions later" approach.
But that is handled already. The site takes down the material and asks questions later, because that is exactly what they need to do to be involved in any copyright lawsuit. On the other hand, the lawmakers realised that this opens the door to mischief, and therefore sending a DMCA takedown notice when you are not the copyright owner or their agent is a criminal offence that can put you into jail. If India has similar laws to the USA, then there is a good chance that a request for extradition would be successful. If not, then these guys from India better never travel to the USA.
Why? Are you saying that if I multiply a number by itself, it "consumes" the number so it cannot be used again, but if I multiply by "2" I get a fresh copy of the number 2 each time? I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Multiply two by itself, and you get four. Multiply by itself for the second time, you get 16. The third time, you get 256. Fourth time, 65536. Fifth time, about 4 billion. Sixth time, a 20 digit number. Around the 45th time, no hard drive is big enough to store the number.
Small correction, there is actually no proof that RSA reduces to factoring. It is true that if you can factor you can break RSA, but you may also be able to break RSA without factoring. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_problem
Do I believe Wikipedia? Or do I believe Donald Knuth?
Mersenne primes have a structure that makes it possible to test primality for very large numbers; there's no way to test whether unrestricted numbers of that size are prime (it's theoretically possible, but there aren't enough computing resources on the planet.)
Basically, it is much easier to find a proof that p is prime (if it is indeed prime) if you have a complete factorization of p + 1. For this number as for all Mersenne primes, the complete factorization is quite obvious.
Selling computer software is perfectly legit. Charging people who refuse to pay for it with theft is perfectly legit, as long as the legal sale and use works. But if they refuse to sell it to you at all (because, for example, they sell it only through an app you cannot run), or make it not work for you (because you run a different OS or computer architecture they won't support), then you should have the right to use a free version in the former case, or a cracked version in the latter case (though arguably you should pay them the price if you can, and just use the cracked version).
But you _can_ run it by buying a different computer or installing some different software. Just because you are too cheap to pay out that doesn't mean you _can't_ use it. That's your choice.
With copyrights under the DCMA there are no strict liability issues. A site must honor a take down notice under the law, at least in the USA.
I think the site must honour a take down notice if (1) the take down notice is formally correct, that is contains all the elements required by the law, and (2) the site wants to guarantee that they cannot be sued successfully for copyright infringement themselves.
Sounds to me like the Moon+ Reader author should sue LitRes for Unjust Enrichment [wikipedia.org].
Surely if illegal downloads are not stealing because the author doesn't actually lose anything, then stopping someone from selling their stuff isn't stealing either. because the Moon+ Reader author would still have all the copies he or she created?
There's a huge difference between books and ebooks. You can read a book without making a copy. You can't read an ebook without a copy being made, for example from the flash drive in your ebook reader to RAM. Making these copies is perfectly legal when you purchased the ebook legally, but it is copyright infringement if you didn't.
In other words, you can try to make some sophistic argument why receiving an illegal copy may not be copyright infringement, but that doesn't help you at all with ebooks.
It's illegal to _publish_ books (upload) whose copyright (or license to publish) you don't have, but it's NOT illegal to download books, movies or music.
It is illegal in many countries. It is criminal in many countries depending on the degree to which you are doing it and on the exact circumstances. In the USA, there seems to be no law that gives the copyright holder statutory damages when you _download_.
By the way, there are cases where a copyright holder doesn't bother taking copyright infringers to court, but will react very forcefully if you make claims that your infringement is legal.
Slashdot Mirror
Fuck that. They can use "decimal GB" or dGB as their "official" prefix. KB, MB and GB are base 2, and have been for decades. Live with it.
You are clueless. I can live with that. You, on the other hand, might decide to grow up.
Its not just Windows, but Linux and every other OS uses the base 2 notation for KB, MB, GB, TB, etc.
MacOS X isn't "every other OS" then.
First, MacOS X takes KB = thousand bytes, MB = million bytes, GB = billion bytes, and TB = trillion bytes. As is standard everywhere. Second, nobody uses base 2 notation. Writing 1010KB for ten Kilobytes would be just stupid. Third, claiming that hard drive manufacturers are ripping you off is stupid. When they sell a 500 GB drive it has space for 500 billion bytes, which is _exactly_ what 500 GB means.
It's not just Apple, MS, etc. either.
We get ripped off on most things here. Rear tyres for my car - US price: $300/each. Local price? $900 each. Computer stuff is generally more expensive in terms of AU vs US dollars by a factor of 1.5 or more. Our dollar is currently above parity...
MacBook Pro: US$1199, excluding sales tax. Aus$1349, including 10% sales tax. There's a difference, but not exactly "rip off". And there are additional costs in Australia, for example having to send someone to reply to the Australian parliament. Not exactly free.
You would say "car salesman", since "criminal" doesn't add any information.
Yeah, that's what I'm reading from this, though as said elsewhere, this is some claims in the patents were invalidated, but I'm wondering then can Moto re-apply with more detail? But yeah, does this mean anyone without a full listing of the algorithm (which is most 'with a computer/on the internet' patent these days) has a chance to have parts made invalid? Can of Worms.
That could be difficult, because they were suing Microsoft for infringing their patent, so presumably they would know now what Microsoft has implemented and can't really claim they invented it _afterwards_. And it's not about the algorithm, it is about stating clearly what is actually invented, so that someone else can reproduce it. Any ordinary programmer should be able to take a precise spec and turn it into an algorithm or actual code.
Microsoft is arguing that as a 'means plus function' patent, it isn't specific enough because it doesn't specifically give an algorithm. Surely if this goes through it will invalidate the vast majority of software patents?
It's not really about an algorithm per se. It's about specifying precisely what the algorithm is going to achieve. "Pick some block using some algorithm" isn't specific enough. "Pick some block using the following algorith: blablabla" is. "Pick some block by choosing among all blocks with distance less than 5 units the one that minimises the prediction error defined by the formula xxx" is specific enough, even if the implementor has to find their own algorithm.
Software patents are so problematic because if you expose your essential algorithm which uses code blocks then all someone has to do is code to it with different variable names.
WTF? Are you on drugs? That's what patents are all about: You _publish_ the invention, so that others _can_ replicate it, and then they have to pay you license fees if they use it. They can also replicate it, _improve_ it and get their own patents. Making it possible for others to reproduce it is the _purpose_ of the patent.
Agency pricing is pretty scummy period in my opinion, and is fairly rare. Here not only was it being done, but as a collusion.
Apple has so far sold 25 billion songs, all with agency pricing. Record companies set the price, and Apple sells it. The same things with books. Apple sells tens of thousands of different ebooks. They don't want to worry about what price to set for each book. So they let the publisher set the price; the publisher has more experience anyway.
Now apparently Apple told the publisher: If you sell the same book to other distributors for less, then we are not interested. Can't see anything wrong with that.
I don't know a single Mac user who uses windows on a Mac. I have Linux VMs on mine for VPN access, school work, and general tinkering, but my only windows installation is my gaming PC.
Not Mac OS X users, but I know some Windows users at my company who purchased MacBook Airs (paid by the company) and installed Windows (company wide license), because (a) it's the best laptop hardware you can buy, and (b) it's a bit of a status symbol if your company thinks you are worth the money.
The "tablet is not a PC" crowd will attack. And then the "tablet is a PC" crowd will counter-attack. Out of nowhere "some tablet are PC" crowd will join, but haven't shown their alliance. The "Apple is evil" along with the "Android/Chrome OS FTW" groups will join forces to fight everybody. Unfortunately, the hills may not protect us from the "Win8 will kill everyone".
I suspect that whether people belong to the "tablet is a PC" or "tablet is not a PC" crowd coincides strongly with whether they want or don't want Apple to be the largest PC vendor.
In the end, PC vendors don't care how many PCs they sell, they care about how much stuff they sell. There's no price for being the leader, especially no price for setting or bending the rules so that you are the leader; but there's a price (hard cash) for selling stuff at a profit. Apple sells x Macs and y iPads, and whether someone says they sell x PCs or (x + y) PCs doesn't matter to the bottom line.
Where it is important is when businesses care about what really happens. If HP says "we are selling four times more PCs than Apple, that's all we care about", then they might be making a big mistake. If they say "we sell so many servers, so many workstations, so many laptops, so many tablets, and these are our competitors..." that's probably a lot more healthy.
That's voted up as "interesting", when it has nothing to do whatsoever with this court case. The court case ruling would have applied to someone selling illegally copied DVDs, which they copied themselves. That's actually what the judge said. The copyright holder may have rights to damages, but not to the profits. Everything you said is totally irrelevant.
Originally, I thought the judge lost his marbles. Of course it's more akin to stealing something rather than just trespass, they are part of stealing/redistributing a product!
If you read the whole thing, I think he is right. Here is the complete argument: If someone set up a stall selling DVDs, whether legal or illegal, on someone else's land, that would be trespass. However, while the landowner coud remove the trespasser, the landowner would have no rights to the profits that the stall makes. And the copyright infringer trespasses on the copyright holder's rights, but by the same argument the copyright holder has no rights to the profits.
Serious question. I thought that this part of the DMCA takedown notice exists precisely to prevent abuse. Why haven't I *EVER* heard of it being enforced?
Because the most common case of wrong DMCA takedown notices is that there is a rightful copyright holder is complaining, but whatever they complain about isn't infringing on the copyright they own. No perjury for that. The perjury comes into play when someone sends down a takedown notice, but doesn't actually own the copyright they are complaining about.
The summary should say "jailbroken iPhones" instead of "unlocked iPhones". Jailbreaking allows unauthorized apps, unlocking allows SIM freedom.
If you want to be guaranteed radiation free, you could by a broken iPhone instead of a jailbroken one. Just remove the battery, and you can hold it to year head and talk into it as much as you like.
You'll have to talk a bit louder so that the person you are calling hears you.
Or a fine for false claims, and a strong punishment for proven false claims.
I'll post this again: Sending a DMCA takedown notice, when you are not the copyright holder or their agent, is a criminal offence. See this site:
http://targetlaw.com/consequences-of-filing-a-false-dmca-takedown-request
The real problem we should be focusing on is the "takedown first, ask questions later" approach.
But that is handled already. The site takes down the material and asks questions later, because that is exactly what they need to do to be involved in any copyright lawsuit. On the other hand, the lawmakers realised that this opens the door to mischief, and therefore sending a DMCA takedown notice when you are not the copyright owner or their agent is a criminal offence that can put you into jail. If India has similar laws to the USA, then there is a good chance that a request for extradition would be successful. If not, then these guys from India better never travel to the USA.
Why? Are you saying that if I multiply a number by itself, it "consumes" the number so it cannot be used again, but if I multiply by "2" I get a fresh copy of the number 2 each time? I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Multiply two by itself, and you get four. Multiply by itself for the second time, you get 16. The third time, you get 256. Fourth time, 65536. Fifth time, about 4 billion. Sixth time, a 20 digit number. Around the 45th time, no hard drive is big enough to store the number.
Small correction, there is actually no proof that RSA reduces to factoring. It is true that if you can factor you can break RSA, but you may also be able to break RSA without factoring. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_problem
Do I believe Wikipedia? Or do I believe Donald Knuth?
Mersenne primes have a structure that makes it possible to test primality for very large numbers; there's no way to test whether unrestricted numbers of that size are prime (it's theoretically possible, but there aren't enough computing resources on the planet.)
Basically, it is much easier to find a proof that p is prime (if it is indeed prime) if you have a complete factorization of p + 1. For this number as for all Mersenne primes, the complete factorization is quite obvious.
Actually it would be 2 multiplied by itself 57,885,160 times, minus 1.
Actually it would be 2 multiplied by 2 57,885,160 times, minus 1.
Selling computer software is perfectly legit. Charging people who refuse to pay for it with theft is perfectly legit, as long as the legal sale and use works. But if they refuse to sell it to you at all (because, for example, they sell it only through an app you cannot run), or make it not work for you (because you run a different OS or computer architecture they won't support), then you should have the right to use a free version in the former case, or a cracked version in the latter case (though arguably you should pay them the price if you can, and just use the cracked version).
But you _can_ run it by buying a different computer or installing some different software. Just because you are too cheap to pay out that doesn't mean you _can't_ use it. That's your choice.
With copyrights under the DCMA there are no strict liability issues. A site must honor a take down notice under the law, at least in the USA.
I think the site must honour a take down notice if (1) the take down notice is formally correct, that is contains all the elements required by the law, and (2) the site wants to guarantee that they cannot be sued successfully for copyright infringement themselves.
Sounds to me like the Moon+ Reader author should sue LitRes for Unjust Enrichment [wikipedia.org].
Surely if illegal downloads are not stealing because the author doesn't actually lose anything, then stopping someone from selling their stuff isn't stealing either. because the Moon+ Reader author would still have all the copies he or she created?
There's a huge difference between books and ebooks. You can read a book without making a copy. You can't read an ebook without a copy being made, for example from the flash drive in your ebook reader to RAM. Making these copies is perfectly legal when you purchased the ebook legally, but it is copyright infringement if you didn't.
In other words, you can try to make some sophistic argument why receiving an illegal copy may not be copyright infringement, but that doesn't help you at all with ebooks.
It's illegal to _publish_ books (upload) whose copyright (or license to publish) you don't have, but it's NOT illegal to download books, movies or music.
It is illegal in many countries. It is criminal in many countries depending on the degree to which you are doing it and on the exact circumstances. In the USA, there seems to be no law that gives the copyright holder statutory damages when you _download_.
By the way, there are cases where a copyright holder doesn't bother taking copyright infringers to court, but will react very forcefully if you make claims that your infringement is legal.