Not all fonts are basically scalable. Scalable fonts are akin to Postscript programs. They are interpreted by the font-renderer. Bitmapped fonts are just a collection of pictures of the letters, at a particular dot-pitch. They are not scalable in the sense that they are a fixed representation of the letters. Scalable fonts are a set of instructions for rendering the letters in the proper proportions, whatever the dot pitch of the output device.
Remind me not to hire you as my counsel if I ever wind up on the wrong end of a DMCA lawsuit. You are right to declare the DMCA ridiculous, but you are wrong to conclude that the embed program violates it. For an alleged circumvention device to violate the DMCA, it must lack any substantial non-infringing uses. Clearly, embed has many substantial non-infringing uses.
Furthermore, the DMCA says nothing about circumventing "license control". These lapses in your understanding of the DMCA are what would make you lousy counsel for a case concerning it. But your heart is in the right place.
Everytime we see an example of the little guy getting threatened by the Big Evil, we Slashdotters have an orgy of analysis and in the end do absolutely nothing.
I think you're projecting your inadequacies onto the Slashdot crowd, and I don't like it one (flipped) bit (snicker). How do you know what other Slashdotters do in response to any article posted here? You assume that because you have an orgy of analysis and then do nothing, that everybody else does the same. Why don't you get off of YOUR lazy ass and donate, and stop worrying about MY ASS and everyone else's?
And why should Slashdot do anything to make it easier to donate to any particular cause? The EFF already makes it pretty easy, and anyone who was inclined to donate knows where to look to discover where to send the money.
From the article: "When someone provides a link without my permission, which grants a user access to a part of my website without going first to my site's home page, the user may experience something different from what I intended when I established my website," Bruce Sunstein, an intellectual property law attorney, said.
If I read a book backwards, I will have an exerience other than what the author intended. Have I infringed his copyright? No.
If I play a LP at 45 rpm instead of 33 1/3 rpm, I will have a different experience than what the publisher and recording artist intended. Have I infringed their copyright? No.
If I set fire to a piece of sheet music instead of placing it on my music stand, I will have a different experience of the work than if I had used it as the publisher intended. But have I infringed anyone's copyright? No.
If I read a website with a text-to-speech converter (assuming there's plaintext to read in the first place), I will have a different experience of the site than the publisher intended. Have I infringed his copyright? No.
I don't know what is wrong with these "intellectual property" people, but they are creating a new oxymoron, it seems to me. There is very little intellectualism discernable in intellectal property theory.
Why not? email is a great way to distribute all sorts of binary files; send it off and forget it. No waiting for slow HTTP downloads.
No, just a slow POP3 download.
And why should I have to manually compress files before sending? Computers are supposed to make my life easier.
No they are not. They are supposed to support the stock price. Silly boy. Go sit in the corner!
Just think - if computers actually DID make your life easier, you'd never want or need to buy another one. That kind of short-sighted business model may have flown in early 2000, but this is 2002. The bubble has burst, it's time for real business.
Ever since we stopped allowing people to receive executable attachments (thanks to MIMEdefang!), the virii have all but disappeared. There is no need to scan for virii on a mail server. Just get rid of executable attachments (there's a big list of them in MIMEdefang's example configuration). All these trojans use stupid Outlook auto-execute tricks/bugs/features to propagate. Executables shouldn't be sent as a direct attachment anyway. Either wrap it up in a zip file (the recipient has no excuse when he infects himself) or put it up on the ftp site and send a URL. This has got to be one of the basic elements of securing a network where Outlook users lurk - no executable attachments (picture Joan Crawford on a rampage).
MIMEdefang also gives us the ability to call Mail::Spamassassin from a sendmail Milter, something Spamassassin itself does not yet support. The latest version also supports the File::Scan module for writing virus scanners in perl.
"They're essentially hackers and rippers," Hemming said. "Basically our brand name is being damaged quite significantly by these activities."
Yeah I can understand that. After all, consumers have associated the Kazaa brand with intrusive spy software. Removing the spyware does great harm the Kazaa brand, which everyone knows and expects to be full of it.
why does everyone always associate spiritualist with the supernatural?
Because they are synonyms.
And what is so irrational about it?
I described what was irrational about it. It is nonsensical, by definition.
If we are all made up of matter and enery and matter and energy are neither created or destroyed. Then where does our energy go when we die?
The matter in your body goes six feet under, or is burned and the remains placed in a urn, or is dumped into the sea, or is frozen in Dahmer's refrigerator, or....
Matter can change form to energy and energy to matter, so then we become part of the universe again.
So you aren't part of the universe while you are alive, is that it?
We are all star stuff... (babylon 5)
That is not a spiritualist outlook. Anthropic perhaps, but not spiritualist.
Spiritualist == irrationalist. The moment you agree that the supernatural is possible, every idea becomes equally credible. If the supernatural exists, then it is just as likely that your opinions about spirituality were implanted in your mind last Thursday by god, along with fake memories of your life and what you believed before then. Go ahead, try to disprove it. You can't. That is what is wrong with the idea of the supernatural. It makes any attempt to understand anything futile.
The term IE can be used in different contexts to mean different (kinds) of code... There is no known definition where it is clear you know (exactly) what somebody is talking about.
Bill Gates
Is this to be believed? Microsoft cannot tell what their own code does? That explains a lot, but is it really the truth? Somehow I don't think so.
Computers can make problems requiring complex repetitive calculations a much less onerous task to solve. I highly recommend that people apply computers to difficult scientific questions.
Don't believe it will happen? Happens all the time with shareholder lawsuits. There are law firms that specialize in watching for sharp stock value drops and filing class-action lawsuits on behalf of the shareholders.
There are some of us who call this "compeuppance" or an example of "you reap what you sow." I think it is appropriately ironic that corporations - legal entities created and defended by lawyers - are plagued by fleas shed from the big dogs the corps have been breeding all these years. I say "Let them scratch."
This remote-disabling feature is available on high end car alarms. The alarm includes a hidden GPS receiver and cell phone. The owner is alerted by pager or SMS when the car alarm goes off. The owner can call the car's hidden cell receiver, enter a PIN, and the next time the car comes to a stop, the ignition cutout activates. The disabled car then signals the owner its location.
I was offered this system when I bought my Durango in 1998, but not all components to the service were available at that time, so I got a conventional ignore-this-siren-too alarms with ignition cutout. But no remote disabling, no GPS coordinates, no hidden cellphone with PIN. I can start my car with the keychain remote, though. That's kinda nice.
That does sound better. I found that some of the suggestions it was recording were things like CNN war coverage, or the local newscast. That's because I like Discovery Wings channel and NPR's Frontline, which are usually classed as "news/documentary/war" or somesuch, same categories as CNN war coverage and local news.
Q. Why should a donor include the operating system with their PC donation? A. It is a legal requirement that pre-installed operating systems remain with a machine for the life of the machine. If a company or individual donates a machine to your school, it must be donated with the operating system that was installed on the PC.
Ok, that sounds pretty dubious, but let's accept it for the sake of argument. Now on to the contradiction:
Q. Can I upgrade the operating system on a donated machine? A. Yes, once the machine and installed operating system is transferred to your school or institution you own the PC and the licensed software. You can upgrade via Microsoft Academic Licensing Programs: Microsoft School Agreement Subscription, Microsoft Campus Agreement Subscription, Microsoft Academic Open or Microsoft Academic Select. Contact your preferred Microsoft Authorized Education Reseller for details.
OK, so which is it? Does the school license the software on the used PC, or do they own it?
If they own it, what was the status of ownership by the donor, prior to the donation? Did the owner own it? If he owned it, then he does not have to transfer it with the PC, since it is his property to do with as he sees fit. If he did not own it, how come the school becomes the owner when they accept transfer of the license from the donor? Does this mean we can "launder" EULA's by donating each other the PCs we wish to buy? Seems like receiving a donated OS with a donated PC is the way to own the OS instead of just becoming a licensee.
1) For the most part the user interface is the same. The update seems to have focused on improvements to the core app. For example the now playing list draws much faster.
2) It records many more shows from the suggestions list which is good. I bumped my tivo up to 100+ hours a while back and it used to record only 3-4 unscheduled shows a day. Now it graps something like 10 and really makes use of all that space.
Only 3 or 4 a day? I upgraded my DirecTiVo to 225 hours (2 x 120GB hdd), and it recorded everything in sight. I guess you rarely use the ThumbsUp/ThumbsDown buttons? I use them all the time. When the extra space appeared after the upgrade, the unit was recording suggestions practically all day long. My "Now Showing" list took five minutes to draw sometimes. I turned off automatic recording of suggestions to avoid the lengthy delays.
Now if they've speeded up drawing "Now Showing" I may turn that feature back on.
BTW, I'm almost completely used to the continuous HD chatter from the little black box on top of the TV now... I should have put in 5400 rpm drives, but the 7200s were on sale.
If you leave the audio on the CD in RedBook format, you can just send a command every now and then to the CD player to change tracks. There's no I/O or CPU bottlneck. Makes it easy to change soundtracks too, without having to fiddle with a mp3 import program (Motor City Online), or fiddle with scripts (Tribes2): just put in a different CD.
What if your employer asks you to take it so you can be more productive? It's just for this big push to get the new product out by the deadline.
What if at some future time when this drug is commonplace, you can't get a job in your field unless you agree to take the pill during the work week?
What if the traditional work week disappears, replaced by 168 non-stop hours of wakeful, productive work?
People are fond of responding to workplace privacy issues by pointing out that you're being paid for your time, and shouldn't be surfing or getting high or whatever, and so spyware and logging and drug tests are to be expected, and are an employer's right. How is this really any different? You don't have to work at a place that requires 168 hours of wakefulness, but if every employer in your town who has a position in your field is requiring this drug to be taken as a condition of employment, your kinda SOL.
They [DirecTV] give you a static IP for the same price as everyone else's dynamic service.
Not in PacBell territory, they don't. If the ILEC that DirecTV must deal with does not offer static, then neither does DirecTV. I asked specifically about this when they sent me the offer, and they said static IP is not available in Southern California because PacBell makes all the reseller ISPs use PPPoE.
The only DSL users in PacBell-land that get static are business DSL and a handful of grandfathered PacBell residential static IP customers. Everybody else - including all resellers - have been forced to PPPoE.
Food is not data, restaurants are not ISPs. When I download a file, there is no chef at the data center cooking it up for me from ingredients in his pantry.
There are too many "almost nevers", "may haves", and "might bes" in your counterargument. Even if I accept your premise (which I don't), it is too conditional to offer any help in crafting law or policy to help curb child abuse. We can't be throwing people into prison for what they might have done. As a practical matter, there simply is not enough room because no one wants to fund more prisons, or allow them to be built in an area where there are enough law enforcement personnel to staff it. As a constitional matter, you are advocating establishment of thought crimes. Virtual kiddie porn cannot be anything but a thought crime, since it involves no children.
Slashdot Mirror
Not all fonts are basically scalable. Scalable fonts are akin to Postscript programs. They are interpreted by the font-renderer. Bitmapped fonts are just a collection of pictures of the letters, at a particular dot-pitch. They are not scalable in the sense that they are a fixed representation of the letters. Scalable fonts are a set of instructions for rendering the letters in the proper proportions, whatever the dot pitch of the output device.
Remind me not to hire you as my counsel if I ever wind up on the wrong end of a DMCA lawsuit. You are right to declare the DMCA ridiculous, but you are wrong to conclude that the embed program violates it. For an alleged circumvention device to violate the DMCA, it must lack any substantial non-infringing uses. Clearly, embed has many substantial non-infringing uses.
Furthermore, the DMCA says nothing about circumventing "license control". These lapses in your understanding of the DMCA are what would make you lousy counsel for a case concerning it. But your heart is in the right place.
Everytime we see an example of the little guy getting threatened by the Big Evil, we Slashdotters have an orgy of analysis and in the end do absolutely nothing.
I think you're projecting your inadequacies onto the Slashdot crowd, and I don't like it one (flipped) bit (snicker). How do you know what other Slashdotters do in response to any article posted here? You assume that because you have an orgy of analysis and then do nothing, that everybody else does the same. Why don't you get off of YOUR lazy ass and donate, and stop worrying about MY ASS and everyone else's?
And why should Slashdot do anything to make it easier to donate to any particular cause? The EFF already makes it pretty easy, and anyone who was inclined to donate knows where to look to discover where to send the money.
Here it is, enjoy!
From the article: "When someone provides a link without my permission, which grants a user access to a part of my website without going first to my site's home page, the user may experience something different from what I intended when I established my website," Bruce Sunstein, an intellectual property law attorney, said.
If I read a book backwards, I will have an exerience other than what the author intended. Have I infringed his copyright? No.
If I play a LP at 45 rpm instead of 33 1/3 rpm, I will have a different experience than what the publisher and recording artist intended. Have I infringed their copyright? No.
If I set fire to a piece of sheet music instead of placing it on my music stand, I will have a different experience of the work than if I had used it as the publisher intended. But have I infringed anyone's copyright? No.
If I read a website with a text-to-speech converter (assuming there's plaintext to read in the first place), I will have a different experience of the site than the publisher intended. Have I infringed his copyright? No.
I don't know what is wrong with these "intellectual property" people, but they are creating a new oxymoron, it seems to me. There is very little intellectualism discernable in intellectal property theory.
Wow Tom7, you really told me. On Slashdot even. What ever will I do about my reputation now? You've ruined it. Boo hoo hoo.
Feel better?
Why not? email is a great way to distribute all sorts of binary files; send it off and forget it. No waiting for slow HTTP downloads.
No, just a slow POP3 download.
And why should I have to manually compress files before sending? Computers are supposed to make my life easier.
No they are not. They are supposed to support the stock price. Silly boy. Go sit in the corner!
Just think - if computers actually DID make your life easier, you'd never want or need to buy another one. That kind of short-sighted business model may have flown in early 2000, but this is 2002. The bubble has burst, it's time for real business.
Ever since we stopped allowing people to receive executable attachments (thanks to MIMEdefang!), the virii have all but disappeared. There is no need to scan for virii on a mail server. Just get rid of executable attachments (there's a big list of them in MIMEdefang's example configuration). All these trojans use stupid Outlook auto-execute tricks/bugs/features to propagate. Executables shouldn't be sent as a direct attachment anyway. Either wrap it up in a zip file (the recipient has no excuse when he infects himself) or put it up on the ftp site and send a URL. This has got to be one of the basic elements of securing a network where Outlook users lurk - no executable attachments (picture Joan Crawford on a rampage).
MIMEdefang also gives us the ability to call Mail::Spamassassin from a sendmail Milter, something Spamassassin itself does not yet support. The latest version also supports the File::Scan module for writing virus scanners in perl.
"They're essentially hackers and rippers," Hemming said. "Basically our brand name is being damaged quite significantly by these activities."
Yeah I can understand that. After all, consumers have associated the Kazaa brand with intrusive spy software. Removing the spyware does great harm the Kazaa brand, which everyone knows and expects to be full of it.
Having named some games in this genre, I think anyone else can recall several more advernture games that are essentially an interactive novel.
why does everyone always associate spiritualist with the supernatural?
Because they are synonyms.
And what is so irrational about it?
I described what was irrational about it. It is nonsensical, by definition.
If we are all made up of matter and enery and matter and energy are neither created or destroyed. Then where does our energy go when we die?
The matter in your body goes six feet under, or is burned and the remains placed in a urn, or is dumped into the sea, or is frozen in Dahmer's refrigerator, or....
Matter can change form to energy and energy to matter, so then we become part of the universe again.
So you aren't part of the universe while you are alive, is that it?
We are all star stuff... (babylon 5)
That is not a spiritualist outlook. Anthropic perhaps, but not spiritualist.
Spiritualist == irrationalist. The moment you agree that the supernatural is possible, every idea becomes equally credible. If the supernatural exists, then it is just as likely that your opinions about spirituality were implanted in your mind last Thursday by god, along with fake memories of your life and what you believed before then. Go ahead, try to disprove it. You can't. That is what is wrong with the idea of the supernatural. It makes any attempt to understand anything futile.
Is this to be believed? Microsoft cannot tell what their own code does? That explains a lot, but is it really the truth? Somehow I don't think so.
Computers can make problems requiring complex repetitive calculations a much less onerous task to solve. I highly recommend that people apply computers to difficult scientific questions.
Don't believe it will happen? Happens all the time with shareholder lawsuits. There are law firms that specialize in watching for sharp stock value drops and filing class-action lawsuits on behalf of the shareholders.
There are some of us who call this "compeuppance" or an example of "you reap what you sow." I think it is appropriately ironic that corporations - legal entities created and defended by lawyers - are plagued by fleas shed from the big dogs the corps have been breeding all these years. I say "Let them scratch."
This remote-disabling feature is available on high end car alarms. The alarm includes a hidden GPS receiver and cell phone. The owner is alerted by pager or SMS when the car alarm goes off. The owner can call the car's hidden cell receiver, enter a PIN, and the next time the car comes to a stop, the ignition cutout activates. The disabled car then signals the owner its location.
I was offered this system when I bought my Durango in 1998, but not all components to the service were available at that time, so I got a conventional ignore-this-siren-too alarms with ignition cutout. But no remote disabling, no GPS coordinates, no hidden cellphone with PIN. I can start my car with the keychain remote, though. That's kinda nice.
That does sound better. I found that some of the suggestions it was recording were things like CNN war coverage, or the local newscast. That's because I like Discovery Wings channel and NPR's Frontline, which are usually classed as "news/documentary/war" or somesuch, same categories as CNN war coverage and local news.
Q. Why should a donor include the operating system with their PC donation?
A. It is a legal requirement that pre-installed operating systems remain with a machine for the life of the machine. If a company or individual donates a machine to your school, it must be donated with the operating system that was installed on the PC.
Ok, that sounds pretty dubious, but let's accept it for the sake of argument. Now on to the contradiction:
Q. Can I upgrade the operating system on a donated machine?
A. Yes, once the machine and installed operating system is transferred to your school or institution you own the PC and the licensed software. You can upgrade via Microsoft Academic Licensing Programs: Microsoft School Agreement Subscription, Microsoft Campus Agreement Subscription, Microsoft Academic Open or Microsoft Academic Select. Contact your preferred Microsoft Authorized Education Reseller for details.
OK, so which is it? Does the school license the software on the used PC, or do they own it?
If they own it, what was the status of ownership by the donor, prior to the donation? Did the owner own it? If he owned it, then he does not have to transfer it with the PC, since it is his property to do with as he sees fit. If he did not own it, how come the school becomes the owner when they accept transfer of the license from the donor? Does this mean we can "launder" EULA's by donating each other the PCs we wish to buy? Seems like receiving a donated OS with a donated PC is the way to own the OS instead of just becoming a licensee.
1) For the most part the user interface is the same. The update seems to have focused on improvements to the core app. For example the now playing list draws much faster.
2) It records many more shows from the suggestions list which is good. I bumped my tivo up to 100+ hours a while back and it used to record only 3-4 unscheduled shows a day. Now it graps something like 10 and really makes use of all that space.
Only 3 or 4 a day? I upgraded my DirecTiVo to 225 hours (2 x 120GB hdd), and it recorded everything in sight. I guess you rarely use the ThumbsUp/ThumbsDown buttons? I use them all the time. When the extra space appeared after the upgrade, the unit was recording suggestions practically all day long. My "Now Showing" list took five minutes to draw sometimes. I turned off automatic recording of suggestions to avoid the lengthy delays.
Now if they've speeded up drawing "Now Showing" I may turn that feature back on.
BTW, I'm almost completely used to the continuous HD chatter from the little black box on top of the TV now... I should have put in 5400 rpm drives, but the 7200s were on sale.
What kind of "half-decent" machine lacks a 20 cent cable from the CD drive to the soundcard? :)
If you leave the audio on the CD in RedBook format, you can just send a command every now and then to the CD player to change tracks. There's no I/O or CPU bottlneck. Makes it easy to change soundtracks too, without having to fiddle with a mp3 import program (Motor City Online), or fiddle with scripts (Tribes2): just put in a different CD.
What if your employer asks you to take it so you can be more productive? It's just for this big push to get the new product out by the deadline.
What if at some future time when this drug is commonplace, you can't get a job in your field unless you agree to take the pill during the work week?
What if the traditional work week disappears, replaced by 168 non-stop hours of wakeful, productive work?
People are fond of responding to workplace privacy issues by pointing out that you're being paid for your time, and shouldn't be surfing or getting high or whatever, and so spyware and logging and drug tests are to be expected, and are an employer's right. How is this really any different? You don't have to work at a place that requires 168 hours of wakefulness, but if every employer in your town who has a position in your field is requiring this drug to be taken as a condition of employment, your kinda SOL.
Is that enough ethical questions for ya?
They [DirecTV] give you a static IP for the same price as everyone else's dynamic service.
Not in PacBell territory, they don't. If the ILEC that DirecTV must deal with does not offer static, then neither does DirecTV. I asked specifically about this when they sent me the offer, and they said static IP is not available in Southern California because PacBell makes all the reseller ISPs use PPPoE.
The only DSL users in PacBell-land that get static are business DSL and a handful of grandfathered PacBell residential static IP customers. Everybody else - including all resellers - have been forced to PPPoE.
Food is not data, restaurants are not ISPs. When I download a file, there is no chef at the data center cooking it up for me from ingredients in his pantry.
There are too many "almost nevers", "may haves", and "might bes" in your counterargument. Even if I accept your premise (which I don't), it is too conditional to offer any help in crafting law or policy to help curb child abuse. We can't be throwing people into prison for what they might have done. As a practical matter, there simply is not enough room because no one wants to fund more prisons, or allow them to be built in an area where there are enough law enforcement personnel to staff it. As a constitional matter, you are advocating establishment of thought crimes. Virtual kiddie porn cannot be anything but a thought crime, since it involves no children.