Just to clarify, the XO has a hierarchical filesystem that you can access from the shell. The actual filesystem is JFFS (for Journaling Flash Filesystem) which allows you to turn off the laptop by holding the power button without losing information or waiting through an fsck.
XO activities store files in a keyed datastore hosted on the filesystem, so for the most part you are protected from the filesystem, but it is still there if you need it e.g. for development.
According to the article the purpose of separating the two is to get the price of ink down. About $10 for a refill instead of $45 is what the article claims.
Rather than dual photography I would be more inclined to describe the method as real-world ray tracing. A focused pixel of light is captured for each pixel of the light source, then the scene is transformed so that the camera image is in the plane of the light source and the lighting function discovered earlier is inverted.
The article claims that there is no need to describe the geometry of the scene, and I understand why that is true for the structure of the subject, but it seems as though the geometry of the light and camera would still have to be known. Anything that isn't in view of the camera in the first image is unlit in the second image, and vice versa, but I don't understand how you would determine what transformation would result in that exchange without any information on the camera-light geometry in relation to the scene.
The most obvious (to me) non-infringing use of P2P would be the peer to peer store and forward protocol of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), or what we have all come to know and love as e-Mail. The thing is that the whole of the Internet is designed around smart end-points, stupid but resilient middle. Client/server use, such as HTTP is essentially an overlay network -- the core of the Internet is all peer to peer.
Frankly, I'm not certain that Novell's help with patents will be as important to Free software as the simple problem that most open source developers simply aren't worth suing. Taking your patent and asserting a claim against IBM, or Novell is one thing; if you win you might stand to claim some hundreds of millions of dollars. Suing me is comparatively pointless. You might sue to avoid competition, but suing for income is pretty meaningless.
On the other hand, suing (or warning of the intent to sue) to get rid of open source competition really only has the effect of having your patented whatever be removed from the code in question, which ultimately gives you less control over the problem application. You are better off leaving it in, and threatening deep pockets like IBM instead.
Utility Data Center (UDC) was a combination of software and hardware designed to be extremely agile in forming new network topologies. The idea was to be able to point to any N machines and network attached storage devices, and physically rewire them into a new network topology appropriate for some problem. When the task was complete they would be put back into the resource pool to be allocated to the next project.
Many of the software and hardware parts of UDC will continue to be developed even after the UDC Business Unit is shut down. It is just the need for a hyper-expensive hardware resource pool sold as a unit that failed to develop a viable business plan. UDC overestimated CIO willingness to rent IT hardware, and failed to engage with managed services. On the other hand, CIO's were also unwilling to make the couple of hundred million investment that a UDC cost -- the system wasn't deliverable in digestible size chunks.
The big copiers run a couple of thousand dollars, but the multi-function fax/scanner/printers from HP are in the approximate price range and are all able to scan stacks of paper rather than individual sheets. The easiest way to get one of the large printers for less that a few hundred dollars is to start calling alumni who work for HP and ask them if they'll make an equipment donation.
The large multi-function HP Printer/Copiers will scan and e-mail a PDF of an entire stack of papers just as you would use a normal copier. I'm sure that the other manufacturers have similar features, but it is the HP equipment that we use at work.
I also settled on SuSE 9.0, after first having tried Debian, then Lindows, both of which were painfully bad (although in completely different ways.) SuSE is sweet; I still encounter a few annoying bits where SuSE doesn't install the same set of default applications, but it is by far the easiest OS to administrate of any I've used. (Actually Lindows is also simple to admin, but so limiting that it ends up being impossible to configure to do what you want.)
Online storage is considerably more expensive than the raw disk drives, and in this case would almost certainly have to include redundant storage or risk strong criticism each time a drive failed. A terabyte array is considerably more than $500.
On the other hand, disks have gotten to a competitive price point with offline storage. Comparing disk storage to DAT is a wash (not that the disk storage is nearly as stable over the long term, but it would be nice if at least some of the cost reductions in disk were the transition to tape. But DLT is still mind numbingly expensive, and M-O while cheaper than DLT is still more expensive than a cheap hard-drive IIRC.)
The rule wrt video cameras was decided by stipulation. If you read the court decision you will see that the Cyber Cafe only considered video camera system installation to be a problem if they would be required to turn over tapes of their customers without court intervention. When the city stipulated that the inspection requirement was only an inspection of the recording system, not of the tapes, and that tapes would not be requested without a court order the Cafe withdrew its objection to that facet of the law.
Since the court wasn't asked to consider that aspect of the law, it seems bizarre to me to complain that the court 'upheld' that provision. It really hasn't been tested since the controversy was removed in court.
First talk to your lawyer. He or she will help you with the details.
If you don't have, and don't want to have a lawyer, then first you should put them on notice. Identify the code that you believe they have misappropriated, and the product or place where they are publishing it without your permission. Ask them to respond with their agreement to comply, and send your notice to the company CEO by certified mail.
You can file a lawsuit for damages. Statutory damages are about $500 per work. If you register your copyrighted code with the copyright office of the library of congress then you'll also be able to collect reasonable lawyer's fees should you prevail.
If the company fails to respond, or fails to agree to respect your rights then you can also file a lawsuit to get a permanent injunction barring them from violating your rights, and possibly for triple damages.
If you had a lawyer, you could also make him available for another mutually agreeable negotiated license, but negotiating that yourself it is very easy to fall to charges of extortion. The only real solution for doing this without a lawyer is to set up standard commercial licensing terms, and direct their attention to it.
5 quarters to insolvency at current estimated burn rate. If they cut all other expenses besides litigation then 10 quarters to insolvency. All assuming there is no new income stream.
Re:my opinion of 'Oryx and Crake'
on
Oryx and Crake
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· Score: 1
Inflection and tone can be used to convey a richer set of meanings than the bare text
None of which is in the original text. What you're getting is a filtered version of the book with some stuff taken away and other stuff added. For many types of book this isn't a big deal but for books that use wordplay you are essentially enjoying a completely different art form from readers.
I completely agree. The audiobook is a collaborative art form including the work of the director, reader, and author. A book by a very good author, when read by an incompetent reader can be much worse than the original book, and when read by a good reader with inspired direction, quite a bit better. When I said that there is more meaning in the tone and inflection I didn't mean to pretend that the author was somehow the origin of that added meaning.
When text is used in a purely representative mode then switching do a slightly different representation isn't necessarily a problem. But text can do much more than merely represent and translation to a different medium can lose this. Again, wordplay is a prime example. Wordplay isn't about representing anything, it's about doing stuff with the words on the page. It can be as important to a text as the stuff you visualize while reading it.
The most common things that I notice are lost in the translation from text to spoken word are spellings and text formatting. Much of the Fantasy gendre seems to rely on spelling a common name in an unusual way to make them seem otherworldly, which in spoken form is lost. Captioned or boxed text is likewise very difficult to convey, so that the Chapter headings for e.g Dune tend to mix in to the body text although their text formatting indicates that they should be treated seperately. Mystery and suspense novels make the transition quite well, as do histories, biographies, and some humor.
But in the case of Oryx and Crake, since I've never seen the book I was completely unaware that Atwood had written it in an unusual style, and I am provoked to go back and look at the book again in printed form if I can find a copy among my friends.
Re:my opinion of 'Oryx and Crake'
on
Oryx and Crake
·
· Score: 1
you get the reader's inflection and tone which can contribute quite a bit to the meaning
Not the meaning, merely some meaning, someone else's meaning. If you've only listened to the audiobook you haven't read the book.
What are you trying to say exactly? From a pedantic point of view, of course you haven't read the book, you've listened to it. So what? Does having a book read to you destroy your ability to imagine the people and places being described? Meaning, as always, resides ultimately with the viewer, reader, or listener. Inflection and tone can be used to convey a richer set of meanings than the bare text, but it is my meaning that is the meaning, not someone elses.
The story's somewhat disjointed narrative works well to evoke the narrator's jumbled memories of the events leading to the decimation of the human population.
Decimation like hell. I think you are trying to say extinction.
Re:my opinion of 'Oryx and Crake'
on
Oryx and Crake
·
· Score: 1
Interesting comment. Since the most free time I have during a week is on my daily commute, I listened to 'Oryx & Crake' on MP3-CD, and spelling, punctuation, and such oddities don't translate.
On the other hand, the reader is quite good, so I would recommend the audiobook version -- in exchange for the loss of print oddities you get the reader's inflection and tone which can contribute quite a bit to the meaning.
My only disappointment with Oryx and Crake was that the eventual ending seemed a bit abrupt. I wasn't sure why the book stopped at that point, specifically. Certainly the plot was complete, the world had been adequately filled out, you now finally understood everything that had happened; but you don't really get to do anything with this character that you now fully understand -- ready, steady, charge and ---? THE END.
An epilogue in the language of the Crakers was needed to wrap it up.
...under the DMCA could scratches on a cd that is being resold be considered an "effective security device"?
If you are using the scratches to protect your copyrights then it might be possible to have them considered an effective security device. Unfortunately
that wouldn't help you much -- next you'd have to go to the people who
manufacture devices for removing scratches and sue them for trafficking in
circumvention devices, but they would (as with the Sharpie pen) argue that the non-infringing uses of their devices are substantial.
If you aren't using the scratches to protect your copyright (such as if they have no effect on copying, or you don't have any copyrightable interest) then you wouldn't be able to apply the DMCA to your case. If you are reselling a CD then you have no copyrightable interest to protect, so in the case you pose, you would be unable to bring an effective suit.
Where exactly is the DMCA applicable? For instance, if I buy a used CD at a record store, does that CD also fall under the rules of the DMCA? If what you said is accurate, then that would make repairing scratches on that CD that prevented it from playing illegal under the DMCA. That sounds crazy, not that I would put it past our government.
This is from memory, but the part of the DMCA I was quoting applies to manufacturers and dealers, and makes it illegal to manufacture or traffic in devices whose primary use is to circumvent an effective security device, and which have no substantial secondary use which would be permissible.
I don't follow your logic with respect to scratches... are you supposing that the recording industry might start scratching the CD surface to keep a section of the CD from being read? Why wouldn't they just remove that section of the CD instead of scratching it?
A more interesting case was when people started pointing to their Sharpie pens as DMCA anti-circumvention devices when people realized that one of the security mechanisms being put onto new CD's was to create a badly formatted multi-session CD. The Audio CD players would ignore the second session since they aren't multi-session compatible anyway, but computer CD drives would fail in the CD-ROM firmware as the CD continually failed to read the second session's allocation table.
Of course Sharpie pens have substantial non-infringing uses, so it wouldn't really be possible to go after Sharpie for producing a device which the DMCA says is illegal. Likewise, if scratches were somehow used to implement a security mechanism for preventing copying of audio CD's, I assume that the non-infringing uses of scratch removers would be considered substantial enough in their primary use of repairing damaged CD's, that they wouldn't qualify for DMCA designation as an anti-circumvention device.
Actually the DMCA applies to circumventing 'effective security devices' where effective should be interpreted in the legal sense, of something which has some effect (not in the engineering sense of something that works well.) In this sense, data that is encrypted, corrupted, and protected by any other mechanism which can be said to have the effect of preventing users from copying music is illegal to circumvent, even if the element that protects the data was not originally designed as a security device.
This is why the word 'effective' was added in the first place. The DMCA isn't talking about security devices per se, but about anything which has the effect of a security device, whether it was intended to do security or not.
Reading through the accident report, it appears that the current head of the safety group did resign a couple of years ago over safety concerns after NASA decided to start outsourcing more of its basic operations without adequate secondary checks. (He had been a NASA project manager, and after his resignation in protest, he was rehired to head up the safety group.)
I'm not sure it was clear to the safety personnel that they were doing a bad job. Rather it seems from the description as though the whole internal structure of NASA was constructed so as to give the safety office as little independence and influence as possible. Within that structure it is hard to imagine anyone I know being able to perform a truly critical review of decisions. NASA culture was so steeped in the assumption that safety came first, that no one was given the opportunity to take an objective and systemic look at the integrated system risks.
No one had authority to look at the forest, everyone was forced to inspect the individual trees. By getting bogged down in detail, NASA was incorrectly convinced that the thousands of safety procedures they followed protected them from an anomaly that didn't concern the guys responsible for that subsystem.
Well, since there was never a "C+" language, and you increment variables by one with "++" (hence the inherent joke in the name "c++"..."c incremented by one") a more logical construct would be (c++)++
All a bank would have to do is to grab RFIDs from bills given to you either by teller or via ATM when it records a payment to you, and once those numbers are in a governmental database, they can wait until the RFID reappears at someone's cash register.
The same goes for cash serial numbers on standard US currency, but this presumes that the banks, and the store fronts are all in it together on the
data collection.
As for anti-counterfeiting... what makes you think that RFID information is unforgeable? Or impossible to steal from somewhere in the supply chain? Or possibly, even purchase over the counter, given the other legitimate uses for them.
Unless you have a chip fab to hand in your back yard, forging RFID is hard because the people who do own the fabs, and who sell RFID devices, sell their devices according to the law. Just as you can't legally buy the type of paper that is used to print US currency, you wouldn't be able to legally buy the types
of chips (differentiated possibly by a lead-in response string, a frequency, etc.) that would be used for RFIDs in currency; but since it is a bit harder
to manufacture RFIDs than it is to manufacture paper, the forger has a much harder time reproducing the devices in question.
RFID is a powerful technology, for good or evil purposes. Reducing our prices at the cash register is good. Using it as a police state enforcement tool is bad. Perhaps you disagree, but enjoy your right to express an opinion, however uninformed.
Careful throwing out insults that could equally well come back in your face.
Slashdot Mirror
Just to clarify, the XO has a hierarchical filesystem that you can access from the shell. The actual filesystem is JFFS (for Journaling Flash Filesystem) which allows you to turn off the laptop by holding the power button without losing information or waiting through an fsck.
XO activities store files in a keyed datastore hosted on the filesystem, so for the most part you are protected from the filesystem, but it is still there if you need it e.g. for development.
According to the article the purpose of separating the two is to get the price of ink down. About $10 for a refill instead of $45 is what the article claims.
Rather than dual photography I would be more inclined to describe the method as real-world ray tracing. A focused pixel of light is captured for each pixel of the light source, then the scene is transformed so that the camera image is in the plane of the light source and the lighting function discovered earlier is inverted.
The article claims that there is no need to describe the geometry of the scene, and I understand why that is true for the structure of the subject, but it seems as though the geometry of the light and camera would still have to be known. Anything that isn't in view of the camera in the first image is unlit in the second image, and vice versa, but I don't understand how you would determine what transformation would result in that exchange without any information on the camera-light geometry in relation to the scene.
The most obvious (to me) non-infringing use of P2P would be the peer to peer store and forward protocol of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), or what we have all come to know and love as e-Mail. The thing is that the whole of the Internet is designed around smart end-points, stupid but resilient middle. Client/server use, such as HTTP is essentially an overlay network -- the core of the Internet is all peer to peer.
On the other hand, suing (or warning of the intent to sue) to get rid of open source competition really only has the effect of having your patented whatever be removed from the code in question, which ultimately gives you less control over the problem application. You are better off leaving it in, and threatening deep pockets like IBM instead.
Utility Data Center (UDC) was a combination of software and hardware designed to be extremely agile in forming new network topologies. The idea was to be able to point to any N machines and network attached storage devices, and physically rewire them into a new network topology appropriate for some problem. When the task was complete they would be put back into the resource pool to be allocated to the next project.
Many of the software and hardware parts of UDC will continue to be developed even after the UDC Business Unit is shut down. It is just the need for a hyper-expensive hardware resource pool sold as a unit that failed to develop a viable business plan. UDC overestimated CIO willingness to rent IT hardware, and failed to engage with managed services. On the other hand, CIO's were also unwilling to make the couple of hundred million investment that a UDC cost -- the system wasn't deliverable in digestible size chunks.
The big copiers run a couple of thousand dollars, but the multi-function fax/scanner/printers from HP are in the approximate price range and are all able to scan stacks of paper rather than individual sheets. The easiest way to get one of the large printers for less that a few hundred dollars is to start calling alumni who work for HP and ask them if they'll make an equipment donation.
The large multi-function HP Printer/Copiers will scan and e-mail a PDF of an entire stack of papers just as you would use a normal copier. I'm sure that the other manufacturers have similar features, but it is the HP equipment that we use at work.
I also settled on SuSE 9.0, after first having tried Debian, then Lindows, both of which were painfully bad (although in completely different ways.) SuSE is sweet; I still encounter a few annoying bits where SuSE doesn't install the same set of default applications, but it is by far the easiest OS to administrate of any I've used. (Actually Lindows is also simple to admin, but so limiting that it ends up being impossible to configure to do what you want.)
On the other hand, disks have gotten to a competitive price point with offline storage. Comparing disk storage to DAT is a wash (not that the disk storage is nearly as stable over the long term, but it would be nice if at least some of the cost reductions in disk were the transition to tape. But DLT is still mind numbingly expensive, and M-O while cheaper than DLT is still more expensive than a cheap hard-drive IIRC.)
Since the court wasn't asked to consider that aspect of the law, it seems bizarre to me to complain that the court 'upheld' that provision. It really hasn't been tested since the controversy was removed in court.
First talk to your lawyer. He or she will help you with the details.
If you don't have, and don't want to have a lawyer, then first you should put them on notice. Identify the code that you believe they have misappropriated, and the product or place where they are publishing it without your permission. Ask them to respond with their agreement to comply, and send your notice to the company CEO by certified mail.
You can file a lawsuit for damages. Statutory damages are about $500 per work. If you register your copyrighted code with the copyright office of the library of congress then you'll also be able to collect reasonable lawyer's fees should you prevail.
If the company fails to respond, or fails to agree to respect your rights then you can also file a lawsuit to get a permanent injunction barring them from violating your rights, and possibly for triple damages.
If you had a lawyer, you could also make him available for another mutually agreeable negotiated license, but negotiating that yourself it is very easy to fall to charges of extortion. The only real solution for doing this without a lawyer is to set up standard commercial licensing terms, and direct their attention to it.
5 quarters to insolvency at current estimated burn rate. If they cut all other expenses besides litigation then 10 quarters to insolvency. All assuming there is no new income stream.
I completely agree. The audiobook is a collaborative art form including the work of the director, reader, and author. A book by a very good author, when read by an incompetent reader can be much worse than the original book, and when read by a good reader with inspired direction, quite a bit better. When I said that there is more meaning in the tone and inflection I didn't mean to pretend that the author was somehow the origin of that added meaning.
When text is used in a purely representative mode then switching do a slightly different representation isn't necessarily a problem. But text can do much more than merely represent and translation to a different medium can lose this. Again, wordplay is a prime example. Wordplay isn't about representing anything, it's about doing stuff with the words on the page. It can be as important to a text as the stuff you visualize while reading it.
The most common things that I notice are lost in the translation from text to spoken word are spellings and text formatting. Much of the Fantasy gendre seems to rely on spelling a common name in an unusual way to make them seem otherworldly, which in spoken form is lost. Captioned or boxed text is likewise very difficult to convey, so that the Chapter headings for e.g Dune tend to mix in to the body text although their text formatting indicates that they should be treated seperately. Mystery and suspense novels make the transition quite well, as do histories, biographies, and some humor.
But in the case of Oryx and Crake, since I've never seen the book I was completely unaware that Atwood had written it in an unusual style, and I am provoked to go back and look at the book again in printed form if I can find a copy among my friends.
What are you trying to say exactly? From a pedantic point of view, of course you haven't read the book, you've listened to it. So what? Does having a book read to you destroy your ability to imagine the people and places being described? Meaning, as always, resides ultimately with the viewer, reader, or listener. Inflection and tone can be used to convey a richer set of meanings than the bare text, but it is my meaning that is the meaning, not someone elses.
Decimation like hell. I think you are trying to say extinction.
On the other hand, the reader is quite good, so I would recommend the audiobook version -- in exchange for the loss of print oddities you get the reader's inflection and tone which can contribute quite a bit to the meaning.
My only disappointment with Oryx and Crake was that the eventual ending seemed a bit abrupt. I wasn't sure why the book stopped at that point, specifically. Certainly the plot was complete, the world had been adequately filled out, you now finally understood everything that had happened; but you don't really get to do anything with this character that you now fully understand -- ready, steady, charge and ---? THE END.
An epilogue in the language of the Crakers was needed to wrap it up.
If you are using the scratches to protect your copyrights then it might be possible to have them considered an effective security device. Unfortunately that wouldn't help you much -- next you'd have to go to the people who manufacture devices for removing scratches and sue them for trafficking in circumvention devices, but they would (as with the Sharpie pen) argue that the non-infringing uses of their devices are substantial.
If you aren't using the scratches to protect your copyright (such as if they have no effect on copying, or you don't have any copyrightable interest) then you wouldn't be able to apply the DMCA to your case. If you are reselling a CD then you have no copyrightable interest to protect, so in the case you pose, you would be unable to bring an effective suit.
Just found the second document as well: The SCO Group, Inc. Strong Buy
Here is the first of the two documents that Groklaw originally linked to: Handicapping the SCO vs. IBM Lawsuit
This is from memory, but the part of the DMCA I was quoting applies to manufacturers and dealers, and makes it illegal to manufacture or traffic in devices whose primary use is to circumvent an effective security device, and which have no substantial secondary use which would be permissible.
I don't follow your logic with respect to scratches... are you supposing that the recording industry might start scratching the CD surface to keep a section of the CD from being read? Why wouldn't they just remove that section of the CD instead of scratching it?
A more interesting case was when people started pointing to their Sharpie pens as DMCA anti-circumvention devices when people realized that one of the security mechanisms being put onto new CD's was to create a badly formatted multi-session CD. The Audio CD players would ignore the second session since they aren't multi-session compatible anyway, but computer CD drives would fail in the CD-ROM firmware as the CD continually failed to read the second session's allocation table.
Of course Sharpie pens have substantial non-infringing uses, so it wouldn't really be possible to go after Sharpie for producing a device which the DMCA says is illegal. Likewise, if scratches were somehow used to implement a security mechanism for preventing copying of audio CD's, I assume that the non-infringing uses of scratch removers would be considered substantial enough in their primary use of repairing damaged CD's, that they wouldn't qualify for DMCA designation as an anti-circumvention device.
This is why the word 'effective' was added in the first place. The DMCA isn't talking about security devices per se, but about anything which has the effect of a security device, whether it was intended to do security or not.
I'm not sure it was clear to the safety personnel that they were doing a bad job. Rather it seems from the description as though the whole internal structure of NASA was constructed so as to give the safety office as little independence and influence as possible. Within that structure it is hard to imagine anyone I know being able to perform a truly critical review of decisions. NASA culture was so steeped in the assumption that safety came first, that no one was given the opportunity to take an objective and systemic look at the integrated system risks.
No one had authority to look at the forest, everyone was forced to inspect the individual trees. By getting bogged down in detail, NASA was incorrectly convinced that the thousands of safety procedures they followed protected them from an anomaly that didn't concern the guys responsible for that subsystem.
I'm rooting for C+=2.
The same goes for cash serial numbers on standard US currency, but this presumes that the banks, and the store fronts are all in it together on the data collection.
As for anti-counterfeiting... what makes you think that RFID information is unforgeable? Or impossible to steal from somewhere in the supply chain? Or possibly, even purchase over the counter, given the other legitimate uses for them.
Unless you have a chip fab to hand in your back yard, forging RFID is hard because the people who do own the fabs, and who sell RFID devices, sell their devices according to the law. Just as you can't legally buy the type of paper that is used to print US currency, you wouldn't be able to legally buy the types of chips (differentiated possibly by a lead-in response string, a frequency, etc.) that would be used for RFIDs in currency; but since it is a bit harder to manufacture RFIDs than it is to manufacture paper, the forger has a much harder time reproducing the devices in question.
RFID is a powerful technology, for good or evil purposes. Reducing our prices at the cash register is good. Using it as a police state enforcement tool is bad. Perhaps you disagree, but enjoy your right to express an opinion, however uninformed.
Careful throwing out insults that could equally well come back in your face.