That is part of the reason that these 'looser pays' rules make me nervous. Truly bad actors like patent trolls have lots of ways around actually paying out, but small shops or inventors generally do not, so all it does is increase the risk associated with taking on companies with more resources.
When filing a lawsuit you generally only have to consider spending what you can afford, but having to consider what the other party can afford changes the equation dramatically.
To be fair, it is how our legal system was crafted. The US has a strong streak of 'handle your own problem, power to control your own fate' to it, and the civil suit system was built to support that. There are lots of crimes which in other countries would be prosecuted by one agency or another (for better or worse) but in the US the only redress one has is a civil suit. Even in situations where there are criminal laws on the books, the complaints about the police not doing anything even when supplied with all the evidence they need are significant. Actually convincing a prosecutor to go forward with your case can be an exercise in frustration.
Probably because the push for these devices is political rather then functional. As others have pointed out there are other ways of building cheap unregistered firearms (i.e. zip guns) that require much less fancy equipment and materials. Using the 3d parts to build a mold could lead to a more functional firearm, but then it would not be '3d printed' anymore, and it is the method that is getting people worked up, not the end result.
For the price of a good (since the tolerances on these firearms are pretty tight, thus the predicted high failure rate) printer you could probably by all the tools needed to fabricate an all metal gun from scratch.
In their pure forms, they are pretty much identical. In terms of corruption they are both just as bad and manage to spin corruption as something principled. That is why countries that have either system tend to be, well, holes of brown sticky stuff. Most industrialized nations use hybrid systems.
Stepping a little back. While we get rightly frustrated at how much money plays a part in politics, lobbying itself, including funding campaigns, is not all bad. Generally people (and groups of people) want people in office who are sympathetic to the things that matter to them. So if you want change, you find candidates who seem receptive to your cause and expend resources to help their chances of getting into office.
They can not recuse themselves because having interests is part of their job. They are representatives, presenting and supporting the interests of their supporters is a part of their function.
The problem is that it takes so much money to run a campaign, and that I place on the backs of voters. It would not be expensive if spending did not have such a big impact on voting behavior. Money works on 'us'.
Yeah, but to a degree that is not building a computer, it is buying one and putting it together. Very few people start with a spool or block of raw material and can produce a usable computer out of it.
I suspect they did download one of the working plans. When we see examples of these guns working, they tend to be made on non-consumer grade printers and we have no idea how many were printed and failed before they got a good video.
Well, beyond being, as you say, crazing fucking idiots, often it is the case that the people who want revolution are really seeking disproportionate power of their own, often with even less of the population behind them then the current government. Just look at the US, most of the pro-revolution crowd makes up fairly small groups who are angry at having to share power with others who they view as 'not real americans'.
Defending is typically more expensive then brining a suit, so even if the individual does not have the resources to make things really difficult for them, the potential for having to respond to a case probably still gives them pause, esp if they person plays some jurisdiction tricks. An individual with too much free time and a little legal knowledge can wage a pretty asymmetric attack which, while harmless to big companies, can really drain smaller ones.
What they think is not the dominant factor. They generally have less risk if they comply and then people fight then if they ignore or discount an IP claim since then the complainer could potentially claim they are not honoring safe harbor and get the actual law involved. By complying (as a private site) they keep things internal and the legal system off their back.
Because 'we will never allow XYZ', while it makes for a good speech, would not be truthful or accurate, in fact it would be downright deceitful. I would consider such a statement to be a far greater indicator of guilt then even staying quiet since it is legally not an option.
There is a huge difference between 'yeah, we will voluntarily do XYZ when asked' and 'we will comply with the law when required'.
The 'disparaging way', I think, signals a new low in slashdot posting. Slashdot was never all that professional, but it kept an appropriate minimal standard. This just reads like someone's blog rant that somehow got a bigger audience.
Some variation of this comes up now and then, this has been a topic and argument within geekdom for, well, as long as I can remember at least. Sadly I rarely see people actually starting to see from another perspective and instead just circling the wagons to defend about their misogyny.
Yeah, but when you work in an industry that fetishizes 'self learning' and often has a dim view of academic things like theory or history, things often seem like new ideas since they do not actually know much about what has already been done.
I think what the author is getting at is a way for Netflix to get around streaming contracts as long as they have a physical DVD of the work. This has been tried and legally did not work.
One thing to keep in mind is that rights are complicated, and often there is a lot more involved then a studio waking up one day and deciding to allow a particular bit of media to be streamed. Often the way contracts are written, well, they left out this scenario, esp for older stuff, and various piece of content that go into a work may or may not be covered. A classic example is the inclusion of music, when music is put into a piece the people who produced the movie do not 100% own that music, they have the right to use it in their work and certain types of distribution. If you want a streaming version of the film you have to go back and rewrite the contract to get that permission. It can be a complicated, expensive, and time consuming process.
On the other hand, once a DVD is pressed, what can be done with it is pretty well established, so as long as the disks exist Netflix can rent them.
Yeah, but then you would have to pay for them, and residents get resentful at the idea of schools having nice things. How can they afford the latest gadgets and vacations if schools are teaching children with their money?
There was never such a time. Slashdot has always had a pretty good variety of tech people, so for some it would be daunting, some it would not, depending on how close it was to their own domain knowledge.
To be fair, they have their place. They are excellent tools for creating a table of data with a chart that can be emailed to other people and read.
Sadly, one of the big selling points for spreadsheets is their application. Pretty much any computer being used for work will have something that can read and display excel spreadsheets, you can send one to anyone and not have to worry about what they have installed. Then again you can get the same level of compatibility by outputting PDFs from matlab or something slightly saner like that....
Eh, I think it can be legitimately argued that spreadsheets are a bad place to do complex things. Even people who are skilled at setting them up produce work that is difficult to examine and track. In many ways it is a technology that it still stuck in the 80s, even though they keep throwing in more and more complex functionality, but the method of storing and organizing the logic is dated in a bad (rather then proven) way.
Even teaching students matlab would probably be an improvement, but excel is what they default to teaching anyone outside math and CS, building all the coursework around it.
Slashdot Mirror
That is part of the reason that these 'looser pays' rules make me nervous. Truly bad actors like patent trolls have lots of ways around actually paying out, but small shops or inventors generally do not, so all it does is increase the risk associated with taking on companies with more resources.
When filing a lawsuit you generally only have to consider spending what you can afford, but having to consider what the other party can afford changes the equation dramatically.
To be fair, it is how our legal system was crafted. The US has a strong streak of 'handle your own problem, power to control your own fate' to it, and the civil suit system was built to support that. There are lots of crimes which in other countries would be prosecuted by one agency or another (for better or worse) but in the US the only redress one has is a civil suit. Even in situations where there are criminal laws on the books, the complaints about the police not doing anything even when supplied with all the evidence they need are significant. Actually convincing a prosecutor to go forward with your case can be an exercise in frustration.
Probably because the push for these devices is political rather then functional. As others have pointed out there are other ways of building cheap unregistered firearms (i.e. zip guns) that require much less fancy equipment and materials. Using the 3d parts to build a mold could lead to a more functional firearm, but then it would not be '3d printed' anymore, and it is the method that is getting people worked up, not the end result.
For the price of a good (since the tolerances on these firearms are pretty tight, thus the predicted high failure rate) printer you could probably by all the tools needed to fabricate an all metal gun from scratch.
Because they can pay other people with them? Or they can sell them at exchanges for currencies that can be used for paying other people?
In their pure forms, they are pretty much identical. In terms of corruption they are both just as bad and manage to spin corruption as something principled. That is why countries that have either system tend to be, well, holes of brown sticky stuff. Most industrialized nations use hybrid systems.
Stepping a little back. While we get rightly frustrated at how much money plays a part in politics, lobbying itself, including funding campaigns, is not all bad. Generally people (and groups of people) want people in office who are sympathetic to the things that matter to them. So if you want change, you find candidates who seem receptive to your cause and expend resources to help their chances of getting into office.
They can not recuse themselves because having interests is part of their job. They are representatives, presenting and supporting the interests of their supporters is a part of their function.
The problem is that it takes so much money to run a campaign, and that I place on the backs of voters. It would not be expensive if spending did not have such a big impact on voting behavior. Money works on 'us'.
Yeah, but to a degree that is not building a computer, it is buying one and putting it together. Very few people start with a spool or block of raw material and can produce a usable computer out of it.
I suspect they did download one of the working plans. When we see examples of these guns working, they tend to be made on non-consumer grade printers and we have no idea how many were printed and failed before they got a good video.
Heh. That would indeed be even cheaper, and probably taste better.
Well, beyond being, as you say, crazing fucking idiots, often it is the case that the people who want revolution are really seeking disproportionate power of their own, often with even less of the population behind them then the current government. Just look at the US, most of the pro-revolution crowd makes up fairly small groups who are angry at having to share power with others who they view as 'not real americans'.
Defending is typically more expensive then brining a suit, so even if the individual does not have the resources to make things really difficult for them, the potential for having to respond to a case probably still gives them pause, esp if they person plays some jurisdiction tricks. An individual with too much free time and a little legal knowledge can wage a pretty asymmetric attack which, while harmless to big companies, can really drain smaller ones.
Sometimes a state does need to be overthrown, but it is always replaced with another one (which hopefully is better, often is worse).
What they think is not the dominant factor. They generally have less risk if they comply and then people fight then if they ignore or discount an IP claim since then the complainer could potentially claim they are not honoring safe harbor and get the actual law involved. By complying (as a private site) they keep things internal and the legal system off their back.
And of course they are blaming the economic damage on getting caught as opposed to, well, what they were doing.
Because 'we will never allow XYZ', while it makes for a good speech, would not be truthful or accurate, in fact it would be downright deceitful. I would consider such a statement to be a far greater indicator of guilt then even staying quiet since it is legally not an option.
There is a huge difference between 'yeah, we will voluntarily do XYZ when asked' and 'we will comply with the law when required'.
The 'disparaging way', I think, signals a new low in slashdot posting. Slashdot was never all that professional, but it kept an appropriate minimal standard. This just reads like someone's blog rant that somehow got a bigger audience.
Yeah, but it does not really work as a transporter, thus if you wish to get from A to B it is not that impressive.
Some variation of this comes up now and then, this has been a topic and argument within geekdom for, well, as long as I can remember at least. Sadly I rarely see people actually starting to see from another perspective and instead just circling the wagons to defend about their misogyny.
Yeah, but when you work in an industry that fetishizes 'self learning' and often has a dim view of academic things like theory or history, things often seem like new ideas since they do not actually know much about what has already been done.
I think what the author is getting at is a way for Netflix to get around streaming contracts as long as they have a physical DVD of the work. This has been tried and legally did not work.
One thing to keep in mind is that rights are complicated, and often there is a lot more involved then a studio waking up one day and deciding to allow a particular bit of media to be streamed. Often the way contracts are written, well, they left out this scenario, esp for older stuff, and various piece of content that go into a work may or may not be covered. A classic example is the inclusion of music, when music is put into a piece the people who produced the movie do not 100% own that music, they have the right to use it in their work and certain types of distribution. If you want a streaming version of the film you have to go back and rewrite the contract to get that permission. It can be a complicated, expensive, and time consuming process.
On the other hand, once a DVD is pressed, what can be done with it is pretty well established, so as long as the disks exist Netflix can rent them.
Yeah, but then you would have to pay for them, and residents get resentful at the idea of schools having nice things. How can they afford the latest gadgets and vacations if schools are teaching children with their money?
There was never such a time. Slashdot has always had a pretty good variety of tech people, so for some it would be daunting, some it would not, depending on how close it was to their own domain knowledge.
To be fair, they have their place. They are excellent tools for creating a table of data with a chart that can be emailed to other people and read.
Sadly, one of the big selling points for spreadsheets is their application. Pretty much any computer being used for work will have something that can read and display excel spreadsheets, you can send one to anyone and not have to worry about what they have installed. Then again you can get the same level of compatibility by outputting PDFs from matlab or something slightly saner like that....
Eh, I think it can be legitimately argued that spreadsheets are a bad place to do complex things. Even people who are skilled at setting them up produce work that is difficult to examine and track. In many ways it is a technology that it still stuck in the 80s, even though they keep throwing in more and more complex functionality, but the method of storing and organizing the logic is dated in a bad (rather then proven) way.
Even teaching students matlab would probably be an improvement, but excel is what they default to teaching anyone outside math and CS, building all the coursework around it.