I think the point being made is that the EU directive would require the U.S. to pass laws violating its own constitution - I've never really considered it this way, but it's not a bad argument, IMO.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the U.S. passes laws to bring it in accord with EU requirements, and those laws are subsequently declared unconstitutional. What then? Data embargoes all around?
Right. And since I see that your dinner dishes are unwashed and your lawn needs mowing, you have no right to criticize me for burying bodies in my back yard.
Come on. By that logic, anyone who is even slightly less than perfect has no right whatsoever to point out injustice anywhere.
The difference is not a difference of kind, but of degree.
But, this whole "Constitution vs. treaties" issue is one that seems to pop up with some regularity, whenever constitutional issues are discussed on/.
So, with that in mind, here is Mr. Justice Black, writing for the Court, from the Reid case mentioned before (footnotes removed):
"Article VI, the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, declares:
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; . . .."
There is nothing in this language which intimates that treaties and laws enacted pursuant to them do not have to comply with the provisions of the Constitution. Nor is there anything in the debates which accompanied the drafting and ratification of the Constitution which even suggests such a result. These debates as well as the history that surrounds the adoption of the treaty provision in Article VI make it clear that the reason treaties were not limited to those made in "pursuance" of the Constitution was so that agreements made by the United States under the Articles of Confederation, including the important peace treaties which concluded the Revolutionary [354 U.S. 1, 17] War, would remain in effect. It would be manifestly contrary to the objectives of those who created the Constitution, as well as those who were responsible for the Bill of Rights - let alone alien to our entire constitutional history and tradition - to construe Article VI as permitting the United States to exercise power under an international agreement without observing constitutional prohibitions. In effect, such construction would permit amendment of that document in a manner not sanctioned by Article V. The prohibitions of the Constitution were designed to apply to all branches of the National Government and they cannot be nullified by the Executive or by the Executive and the Senate combined.
There is nothing new or unique about what we say here. This Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty. For example, in Geofroy v. Riggs, 133 U.S. 258, 267 , it declared:
"The treaty power, as expressed in the Constitution, is in terms unlimited except by those restraints which are found in that instrument against the action of the government or of its departments, and those arising from the nature of the government itself and of that of the States. It would not be contended that it extends so far as to authorize what the Constitution forbids, or a change in the character of the [354 U.S. 1, 18] government or in that of one of the States, or a cession of any portion of the territory of the latter, without its consent."
This Court has also repeatedly taken the position that an Act of Congress, which must comply with the Constitution, is on a full parity with a treaty, and that when a statute which is subsequent in time is inconsistent with a treaty, the statute to the extent of conflict renders the treaty null. It would be completely anomalous to say that a treaty need not comply with the Constitution when such an agreement can be overridden by a statute that must conform to that instrument.
There is nothing in Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416 , which is contrary to the position taken here. There the Court carefully noted that the treaty involved was not inconsistent with any specific provision of the Constitution. The Court was concerned with the Tenth Amendment which reserves to the States or the people all power not delegated to the National Government. To the extent that the United States can validly make treaties, the people and the States have delegated their power to the National Government and the Tenth Amendment is no barrier."
FWIW, Missouri v. Holland is the migratory birds case mentioned in another post...
No, no. You should have quoted the whole paragraph, to wit:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. (emphasis mine)
It seems clear that treaties were intended to supersede STATE laws and constitutions - as they should, otherwise you have 50 separate foreign policies. But they do not supersede, and cannot supersede the Federal Constitution. See Reid v. Covert 354 US 1 (1957), for example...
This is true as long as there's a definite firewall between student-funded and state-funded activities. But the situation is rather a gray area, IMO. I bet that, at the University of Oregon, which you seem to be familiar with, the Student Association/Government doesn't collect its fees directly from students. I bet that, instead, the school collects it under the auspices of an "activity fee" or some such, and this money is then disbursed back to student associations. Now, does the _school_ keep that money separate from its general funds, or is it collected and dumped in a common pot? If it's not kept separate (truthfully, I'd be surprised if it wasn't), it's another makeable case...
It's an interesting question, that, as I said before, I don't think has been adequately explored yet. Other issues to consider - what does it mean for a paper to be officially sanctioned by a school? Does the school ever use the paper as a forum for official announcements/positions? Do they pay for the privilege if they do? If not, wouldn't that mean that the paper, at least partially, operates at the behest of the parent school?
Again, this is unsettled to my knowledge, but it would be awfully expensive to go to court and find out who's responsible for what, so it might be wise for student-run papers at public schools to consider who exactly they think they are responsible to.
Au contraire - if those newspapers are published by state-run institutions, paid for by state/public money, then those newspapers _are_ an arm of the state. And the state has no business promoting some political viewpoints while refusing to air others.
This is, to my knowledge, not settled law, but it's definitely a makeable case. For private schools/papers, however, you are generally correct.
See? And that's just from me signing up for a Hotmail account back in January!
Seriously, the fact that they get that much says to me:
a) there are a lot of people besides me who just picked that out of a hat (c'mon, could "somewhere.com" be a little more generic?), because;
b) there are a lot of people trying to avoid massive amounts of spam, because;
c) there are far too many companies selling their users' registration data and email addresses, very often, I suspect, without informing the people that they collected that data from in the first place.
Anyway, I haven't used that one lately. Mostly I register these days (when I have to) as "Heywood Jablowme", heyblowme@twococks.org
To expand a bit, I apply this to the context of free speech, but it's just as applicable to any other debate. It's not enough to say "End pollution - do it for the love of your children." That is simply a raw appeal to emotion that makes no pretense of defending the proposition that less pollution is better than more pollution. It may be the case that less is better than more WRT pollution, and that a legitimate case can be made in defense of that, but this is not the way to do it. This method of impugning the motives of those who disagree with you ("you" in the generic sense, not meant to refer to anyone specific) is known as "poisoning the well of discourse" for those playing at home, and no debate can proceed under these terms. Which, I imagine, is just fine with most of the people who make these sorts of statements.
And my point is that it's never solely "for the children" - instead, saying that we do it "for the children" is merely a rhetorical trick, a way of foreclosing any possible debate on the subject.
After all, who wants to be seen as anti-children? And that's what it's all about. You support (for example - I don't know if you actually do or not) filters in libraries - "it's for the children," you say. So, when I oppose filters, I must be, logically, anti-children. And if I'm anti-children, what other horrors do I indulge in? It is conviction by implication - I am anti-child, therefore I am (by implication) a monster, wandering the streets looking for children to molest and puppies to kick.
But this is not a rational defense of restrictions to speech. The whole point of saying "it's for the children" is to PREVENT rational discourse on the subject and thereby impose a political agenda, by appealing to emotion, that which cannot survive the light of probing examination.
You are refuting an argument I don't make, nor have I seen anyone in this discussion make. The context here is freedom of speech, not environmental pollution. And given how many restrictions to free speech are proposed in the name of "protecting the children", I believe that my statements are quite justified.
The problem with this is that the notional "right" that children have to be raised in an obscenity-free environment rather quickly devolves into becoming MY responsibility to raise someone else's children in an obscenity-free environment.
I know the notion of personal responsibility is somewhat passé these days, but I reiterate - if parents are unwilling to take responsibility for children that they (presumably voluntarily) produced, why should I? Believe me, my hands are full raising my own two children without taking on others that don't belong to me.
I don't ask that the government decide what my children should and shouldn't watch - I can and will do that myself. Many of the things I enjoy doing are completely unsuitable for my six-year-old son, but it would be throwing the baby out with the bath water to create a society where only those things suitable for a six-year-old were permissible.
We are, IMO, far too fixated on "the children" these days. Society and civilization exist for the benefit of all their members, not solely the next generation. We do children a disservice when we overprotect them - it renders them incapable of dealing with the wider world when they are released into it. We do children a disservice when we attempt to twist society to fit them, rather than gradually exposing them to, and preparing them to deal with the world as it exists, rather than as we think it ideally ought to be.
Your recommendation to "WATCH your kids" works great for kids with conscientious parents who have unlimited time and unlimited patience.
Raising children does not require unlimited time or patience. You are correct, however, that it requires conscientious parents who will:
A) instill a sense of values/limits in their children;
B) monitor their children to insure that they comply with the limits set before them, and;
C) correct/punish them when they do not, and reward/praise them when they do.
I submit that if there are parents who have neither the time nor the inclination to devote themselves to these (necessary, but not sufficient) requirements for raising children, then perhaps they ought not to be parents in the first place.
Of course. What I object to is the portrayal of their motives - I think she is hardly motivated by a noble desire to help her fellow man. Well, maybe she once was, but that kind of money has a way of perverting people.
Consider also that many of those same plaintiffs sued Brockovich and her lawyer buddy BECAUSE they received jack-squat to cover their medical bills...
From the article I referred to before:
One man who required a foot of colon to be removed collected $100,000 while a woman who endured the same operation got about $2 million. A plaintiff offered Salon.com's Kathy Sharp an explanation for the disbursement pattern: "If you were buddies with Ed and Erin, you got a lot of money. Otherwise, forget it."
...
Ultimately, several plaintiffs hired new lawyers to sue their original ones, only to find their new attorneys instantly countersued. One of the newly retained attorneys said of the film, "I read the script; the only true part was Erin Brockovich's name."
Doesn't that shit just make you wanna puke? $2 mil for her as part of a 3-way split (split between the plaintiffs law firms) of over
$140 million. (yes, I know the link is to the National Review, but I can't find the original WSJ article).
Yeah, Erin's a regular fucking working-class hero, alright.
That's Hollywood history for you.
My bad - for some reason I thought this was ATA-only, but after rereading the proposal more closely I see that The Man is actually targetting ATAPI devices from the outset. CPRM on ATA hard disks seems like a bonus side-benefit for them.
I stand corrected. And that's more of an admission than you'll get from most people here.
On the other hand, "everything you know is wrong" is a pretty strong statement that I will take issue with;)
I should have been a bit clearer in my post, sorry.
But I don't understand how this makes DVD's (as they currently exist, anyway) any harder to decrypt. The whole point to CPRM, as I understand it) is to restrict users abilities WRT data that they don't "own" ("own" in the copyright sense, anyway).
But, if I have a fast enough system to DeCSS a disk on-the-fly, such that no encrypted data ever touches my CPRM-enabled hard drive (although I'm not sure if I'd have to go to those lengths anyway), then as far as CPRM is concerned, that raw, unencrypted video file is mine - I own it, I created it, and I have the right/ability (in the TECHNICAL sense, not the LEGAL sense) to do whatever I like with it.
In this limited case, the weak link is the DVD spec, not CPRM. Since DVD is broken, unless they change the DVD spec, I can produce unencrypted data which, AFAIK, CPRM has no way of knowing actually belongs to someone else.
And I don't believe for a minute that a watermark yet exists that can't be scrubbed away (who know about tomorrow, though?). There's only so much you can do to digital media without affecting quality, and I've seen no evidence that watermarks exist which can survive the sorts of conversions/compressions/modifications that even normal users do, let alone someone actively attacking the watermark. If you want to wipe a Digimarc watermark, for example, it's not exactly hard - no statistical analyses of LSB's or any crap like that.
Or am I missing something? I don't claim to be an expert on CPRM, and I make no claims about more secure media which doesn't exit yet,so if I'm totally off-base, please let me know - I hate to wander around all ignorant like;)
That's true, right up until the point that you DeCSS the original DVD data, producing unencrypted data. Remaster, burn to DVD-R, and off you go - unless the DVD consortium is planning on making it impossible for corporate/home users to produce their own video on DVD, I don't see how you can stop it from happening.
That's pretty funny. Maybe someday you'll have the balls to put a name to your words.
So for example, "P" isn't a registered trademark of Parsons in computer systems?
Yes, shitbag, that's exactly what I'm saying. You cannot trademark a letter, even the letter "P", even if you're Parsons Technology. What Parsons has registered is a trademark for their particular stylized design, incorporating the letter "P". So if I want to call my computer company "P Computers" or even "P Software", then there's nothing they can do about it. Now, were I to call my company "P Technology" and use a "P" logo that was suspiciously similar to theirs, like the one in their trademark record (serial #74179529
registration #1734490, which you can find by searching TESS), which by the way clearly indicates that it is for "words, letters and/or numbers IN STYLIZED FORM", THEN they might have a case of infringement.
If you don't think so, then let me announce that I am applying for a trademark on the letter "E", with respect to its use in all correspondence, electronic or otherwise, to protect my forthcoming product, named "E-Mailer". But I'll license it to anyone who wants to use "E", for the low, low fee of $0.50 per occurrence. Cash only, please.
They couldn't trademark '80486' because it's a part number, and any other manufacturer could also call their chip an '80486'. Just like different word-processor makers can come out with version 7.0 at the same time.
Actually the original post was closer. You cannot trademark or copyright letters or numbers in the U.S. This was settled back in the '80's by a case (cases?) involving Zilog.
Remember Zilog, makers of the fine Z-80 microprocessor? Well, they had this Z-80, used in a bunch of CP/M machines of the time, like the TRS-80. Anyway, to protect the name of their product, they essentially attempted to sue everyone on the planet who had ever used the letter "Z". They lost.
well, the thing is that if you have 500MB, you can afford alot more than 256 kbs.
Oh, yeah, no doubt about it (hey, way to yank things back on topic;)
Anyway, if you've got 500MB to play with, you don't really necessarily need lossy compression at all - if you can manage 2:1 lossless compression, you can quite easily fit an entire CD on there, with a lot left over...
Whoa there, cowboy! Jeezus, did I hit a nerve or what? The guy asked if anyone can really tell the difference - I can, and I bet you can too. Let me make myself crystal clear - 256k.mp3 is just fine for everyday use.
The question asked about.mp3 as compared to the original, and I responded with my own opinion about that comparison. Don't take it personally - it's just my opinion, and it's neither whining nor complaining about the quality.
I've heard this from people before. Maybe it's just me, but I don't beleive them when they say this. Could Slashdot readers reply to this and tell me if they can tell the difference between MP3s and CDs?
Actually, I was just doing a blind taste test myself not that long ago, comparing 256k.mp3 (encoded wih the latest version of LAME) vs. high-bitrate.ogg vs. straight CD-audio.
My conclusion? I can definitely tell the difference between 256k.mp3 and the others using a pair of not-particularly-expensive Sony headphones. And this is after a misspent youth, blowing out my eardrums at far too many rock concerts. To my ears,.mp3 sounds thin and vaguely tinny compared to the original. Vorbis files are much closer to the original, sounding richer and fuller than the.mp3. In fact, it was damn hard to tell the difference between the original CD-audio and the.ogg files.
Slashdot Mirror
What's the first amendment got to do with the EU?
I think the point being made is that the EU directive would require the U.S. to pass laws violating its own constitution - I've never really considered it this way, but it's not a bad argument, IMO.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the U.S. passes laws to bring it in accord with EU requirements, and those laws are subsequently declared unconstitutional. What then? Data embargoes all around?
...Big Swedish music exports include Abba, Ace of Base, Roxette...
...and as a result, Sweden is now classified as an exporter of weapons of mass destruction.
;)
Right. And since I see that your dinner dishes are unwashed and your lawn needs mowing, you have no right to criticize me for burying bodies in my back yard.
Come on. By that logic, anyone who is even slightly less than perfect has no right whatsoever to point out injustice anywhere.
The difference is not a difference of kind, but of degree.
But, this whole "Constitution vs. treaties" issue is one that seems to pop up with some regularity, whenever constitutional issues are discussed on
So, with that in mind, here is Mr. Justice Black, writing for the Court, from the Reid case mentioned before (footnotes removed):
FWIW, Missouri v. Holland is the migratory birds case mentioned in another post...
No, no. You should have quoted the whole paragraph, to wit:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. (emphasis mine)
It seems clear that treaties were intended to supersede STATE laws and constitutions - as they should, otherwise you have 50 separate foreign policies. But they do not supersede, and cannot supersede the Federal Constitution. See Reid v. Covert 354 US 1 (1957), for example...
This is true as long as there's a definite firewall between student-funded and state-funded activities. But the situation is rather a gray area, IMO. I bet that, at the University of Oregon, which you seem to be familiar with, the Student Association/Government doesn't collect its fees directly from students. I bet that, instead, the school collects it under the auspices of an "activity fee" or some such, and this money is then disbursed back to student associations. Now, does the _school_ keep that money separate from its general funds, or is it collected and dumped in a common pot? If it's not kept separate (truthfully, I'd be surprised if it wasn't), it's another makeable case...
It's an interesting question, that, as I said before, I don't think has been adequately explored yet. Other issues to consider - what does it mean for a paper to be officially sanctioned by a school? Does the school ever use the paper as a forum for official announcements/positions? Do they pay for the privilege if they do? If not, wouldn't that mean that the paper, at least partially, operates at the behest of the parent school?
Again, this is unsettled to my knowledge, but it would be awfully expensive to go to court and find out who's responsible for what, so it might be wise for student-run papers at public schools to consider who exactly they think they are responsible to.
Au contraire - if those newspapers are published by state-run institutions, paid for by state/public money, then those newspapers _are_ an arm of the state. And the state has no business promoting some political viewpoints while refusing to air others.
This is, to my knowledge, not settled law, but it's definitely a makeable case. For private schools/papers, however, you are generally correct.
Good to know. I'll do it.
See? And that's just from me signing up for a Hotmail account back in January!
Seriously, the fact that they get that much says to me:
a) there are a lot of people besides me who just picked that out of a hat (c'mon, could "somewhere.com" be a little more generic?), because;
b) there are a lot of people trying to avoid massive amounts of spam, because;
c) there are far too many companies selling their users' registration data and email addresses, very often, I suspect, without informing the people that they collected that data from in the first place.
Anyway, I haven't used that one lately. Mostly I register these days (when I have to) as "Heywood Jablowme", heyblowme@twococks.org
I presonally know that no_one@nowhere.com is getting a lot of spam that was intended for me
That's funny - I usually use someone@somewhere.com
To expand a bit, I apply this to the context of free speech, but it's just as applicable to any other debate. It's not enough to say "End pollution - do it for the love of your children." That is simply a raw appeal to emotion that makes no pretense of defending the proposition that less pollution is better than more pollution. It may be the case that less is better than more WRT pollution, and that a legitimate case can be made in defense of that, but this is not the way to do it. This method of impugning the motives of those who disagree with you ("you" in the generic sense, not meant to refer to anyone specific) is known as "poisoning the well of discourse" for those playing at home, and no debate can proceed under these terms. Which, I imagine, is just fine with most of the people who make these sorts of statements.
And my point is that it's never solely "for the children" - instead, saying that we do it "for the children" is merely a rhetorical trick, a way of foreclosing any possible debate on the subject.
After all, who wants to be seen as anti-children? And that's what it's all about. You support (for example - I don't know if you actually do or not) filters in libraries - "it's for the children," you say. So, when I oppose filters, I must be, logically, anti-children. And if I'm anti-children, what other horrors do I indulge in? It is conviction by implication - I am anti-child, therefore I am (by implication) a monster, wandering the streets looking for children to molest and puppies to kick.
But this is not a rational defense of restrictions to speech. The whole point of saying "it's for the children" is to PREVENT rational discourse on the subject and thereby impose a political agenda, by appealing to emotion, that which cannot survive the light of probing examination.
You are refuting an argument I don't make, nor have I seen anyone in this discussion make. The context here is freedom of speech, not environmental pollution. And given how many restrictions to free speech are proposed in the name of "protecting the children", I believe that my statements are quite justified.
The problem with this is that the notional "right" that children have to be raised in an obscenity-free environment rather quickly devolves into becoming MY responsibility to raise someone else's children in an obscenity-free environment.
I know the notion of personal responsibility is somewhat passé these days, but I reiterate - if parents are unwilling to take responsibility for children that they (presumably voluntarily) produced, why should I? Believe me, my hands are full raising my own two children without taking on others that don't belong to me.
I don't ask that the government decide what my children should and shouldn't watch - I can and will do that myself. Many of the things I enjoy doing are completely unsuitable for my six-year-old son, but it would be throwing the baby out with the bath water to create a society where only those things suitable for a six-year-old were permissible.
We are, IMO, far too fixated on "the children" these days. Society and civilization exist for the benefit of all their members, not solely the next generation. We do children a disservice when we overprotect them - it renders them incapable of dealing with the wider world when they are released into it. We do children a disservice when we attempt to twist society to fit them, rather than gradually exposing them to, and preparing them to deal with the world as it exists, rather than as we think it ideally ought to be.
Your recommendation to "WATCH your kids" works great for kids with conscientious parents who have unlimited time and unlimited patience.
Raising children does not require unlimited time or patience. You are correct, however, that it requires conscientious parents who will:
A) instill a sense of values/limits in their children;
B) monitor their children to insure that they comply with the limits set before them, and;
C) correct/punish them when they do not, and reward/praise them when they do.
I submit that if there are parents who have neither the time nor the inclination to devote themselves to these (necessary, but not sufficient) requirements for raising children, then perhaps they ought not to be parents in the first place.
Of course. What I object to is the portrayal of their motives - I think she is hardly motivated by a noble desire to help her fellow man. Well, maybe she once was, but that kind of money has a way of perverting people.
...
Consider also that many of those same plaintiffs sued Brockovich and her lawyer buddy BECAUSE they received jack-squat to cover their medical bills...
From the article I referred to before:
One man who required a foot of colon to be removed collected $100,000 while a woman who endured the same operation got about $2 million. A plaintiff offered Salon.com's Kathy Sharp an explanation for the disbursement pattern: "If you were buddies with Ed and Erin, you got a lot of money. Otherwise, forget it."
Ultimately, several plaintiffs hired new lawyers to sue their original ones, only to find their new attorneys instantly countersued. One of the newly retained attorneys said of the film, "I read the script; the only true part was Erin Brockovich's name."
Doesn't that shit just make you wanna puke? $2 mil for her as part of a 3-way split (split between the plaintiffs law firms) of over $140 million. (yes, I know the link is to the National Review, but I can't find the original WSJ article).
Yeah, Erin's a regular fucking working-class hero, alright. That's Hollywood history for you.
My bad - for some reason I thought this was ATA-only, but after rereading the proposal more closely I see that The Man is actually targetting ATAPI devices from the outset. CPRM on ATA hard disks seems like a bonus side-benefit for them.
;)
I stand corrected. And that's more of an admission than you'll get from most people here.
On the other hand, "everything you know is wrong" is a pretty strong statement that I will take issue with
I should have been a bit clearer in my post, sorry. But I don't understand how this makes DVD's (as they currently exist, anyway) any harder to decrypt. The whole point to CPRM, as I understand it) is to restrict users abilities WRT data that they don't "own" ("own" in the copyright sense, anyway).
;)
But, if I have a fast enough system to DeCSS a disk on-the-fly, such that no encrypted data ever touches my CPRM-enabled hard drive (although I'm not sure if I'd have to go to those lengths anyway), then as far as CPRM is concerned, that raw, unencrypted video file is mine - I own it, I created it, and I have the right/ability (in the TECHNICAL sense, not the LEGAL sense) to do whatever I like with it.
In this limited case, the weak link is the DVD spec, not CPRM. Since DVD is broken, unless they change the DVD spec, I can produce unencrypted data which, AFAIK, CPRM has no way of knowing actually belongs to someone else.
And I don't believe for a minute that a watermark yet exists that can't be scrubbed away (who know about tomorrow, though?). There's only so much you can do to digital media without affecting quality, and I've seen no evidence that watermarks exist which can survive the sorts of conversions/compressions/modifications that even normal users do, let alone someone actively attacking the watermark. If you want to wipe a Digimarc watermark, for example, it's not exactly hard - no statistical analyses of LSB's or any crap like that.
Or am I missing something? I don't claim to be an expert on CPRM, and I make no claims about more secure media which doesn't exit yet,so if I'm totally off-base, please let me know - I hate to wander around all ignorant like
That's true, right up until the point that you DeCSS the original DVD data, producing unencrypted data. Remaster, burn to DVD-R, and off you go - unless the DVD consortium is planning on making it impossible for corporate/home users to produce their own video on DVD, I don't see how you can stop it from happening.
That's pretty funny. Maybe someday you'll have the balls to put a name to your words.
So for example, "P" isn't a registered trademark of Parsons in computer systems?
Yes, shitbag, that's exactly what I'm saying. You cannot trademark a letter, even the letter "P", even if you're Parsons Technology. What Parsons has registered is a trademark for their particular stylized design, incorporating the letter "P". So if I want to call my computer company "P Computers" or even "P Software", then there's nothing they can do about it. Now, were I to call my company "P Technology" and use a "P" logo that was suspiciously similar to theirs, like the one in their trademark record (serial #74179529 registration #1734490, which you can find by searching TESS), which by the way clearly indicates that it is for "words, letters and/or numbers IN STYLIZED FORM", THEN they might have a case of infringement.
If you don't think so, then let me announce that I am applying for a trademark on the letter "E", with respect to its use in all correspondence, electronic or otherwise, to protect my forthcoming product, named "E-Mailer". But I'll license it to anyone who wants to use "E", for the low, low fee of $0.50 per occurrence. Cash only, please.
They couldn't trademark '80486' because it's a part number, and any other manufacturer could also call their chip an '80486'. Just like different word-processor makers can come out with version 7.0 at the same time.
Actually the original post was closer. You cannot trademark or copyright letters or numbers in the U.S. This was settled back in the '80's by a case (cases?) involving Zilog.
Remember Zilog, makers of the fine Z-80 microprocessor? Well, they had this Z-80, used in a bunch of CP/M machines of the time, like the TRS-80. Anyway, to protect the name of their product, they essentially attempted to sue everyone on the planet who had ever used the letter "Z". They lost.
End of history lesson.
well, the thing is that if you have 500MB, you can afford alot more than 256 kbs.
;)
Oh, yeah, no doubt about it (hey, way to yank things back on topic
Anyway, if you've got 500MB to play with, you don't really necessarily need lossy compression at all - if you can manage 2:1 lossless compression, you can quite easily fit an entire CD on there, with a lot left over...
Whoa there, cowboy! Jeezus, did I hit a nerve or what? The guy asked if anyone can really tell the difference - I can, and I bet you can too. Let me make myself crystal clear - 256k .mp3 is just fine for everyday use.
.mp3 as compared to the original, and I responded with my own opinion about that comparison. Don't take it personally - it's just my opinion, and it's neither whining nor complaining about the quality.
The question asked about
I've heard this from people before. Maybe it's just me, but I don't beleive them when they say this. Could Slashdot readers reply to this and tell me if they can tell the difference between MP3s and CDs?
.mp3 (encoded wih the latest version of LAME) vs. high-bitrate .ogg vs. straight CD-audio.
.mp3 and the others using a pair of not-particularly-expensive Sony headphones. And this is after a misspent youth, blowing out my eardrums at far too many rock concerts. To my ears, .mp3 sounds thin and vaguely tinny compared to the original. Vorbis files are much closer to the original, sounding richer and fuller than the .mp3. In fact, it was damn hard to tell the difference between the original CD-audio and the .ogg files.
Actually, I was just doing a blind taste test myself not that long ago, comparing 256k
My conclusion? I can definitely tell the difference between 256k
Just my personal opinion/experience - YMMV.