Although most phones let you make an emergency call no matter what, don't they? I know mine does even when it is pin and keypad locked. You can type pretty much any of the common emergency numbers (911, 112, 000), and it unlocks the phone to call the local emergency number (It appears to nothing until you have typed the entire number). I don't see why these phones would be any different.
When I originally read about this, I wondered what the quality would be like. A brief googling suggests that the files are about 150-200MB, which seems like the quality should be better than I was expecting.
Does anyone have any first hand experience with the downloaded episodes? How is the quality on a pc or tv screen?
But this is just more of the same misinformation. How would patenting "how the gene works" have any affect on medicine. They could patent a method for producing a synthetic drug that has the same effect as a gene.
Without financial incentives for doing the (extremely expensive) research required to produce these drugs, the drugs would not be invented for at least the life of the patent. These are not obvious inventions. They are not just reporting their observations of how a naturally occuring chemical works (if they did, then the patent would fail the utility test).
Yes - patents lock out competitors (for up to 20 years): That's the whole point. After the patent expires, the invention then becomes public domain.
I would rather have the drugs invented now, and pay more for them for the next 20 years, than wait a couple of decades or more hoping that some kind soul donates millions of dollars of research to the good of the community.
I don't think such patents should be allowed. It's like a company owning a piece of me -- and I wasn't even paid for it!
For the last time people, they are not patenting the DNA that exists in your body, or your bodies ability to reproduce cells with those genes. They are patenting methods and technologies _related_ to those genes: Methods for testing the existence of that gene, methods for manipulating that gene, etc.
Unless you happen to be a large biotech company, these patents are unlikely to have any noticable impact on you.
Regarding patent expiry, utility patents have always been 20 years in the US, haven't they? Copyright and Patent law are very, very different, and I am not aware of anything suggesting they are planning on extending the term of any patents. Like many people, I believe that software patents should be a lot shorter than 20 years, but that is another matter entirely.
There seem to be a few people pointing this out, but the logic is flawed. While Mythbusters is certainly an interesting and entertaining show, the fact that their attempt did not work does not mean that it cannot be done.
The logic can work around the other way. If a single attempt works, then the concept is plausible. If a single attempt fails, then all you can really deduce is that that particular attempt failed. Sure, have enough independent trials fail, and you may start to question the feasibility, but that is not the case here.
Of course by the same logic, showing that the idea is feasible does not mean that Archimedes was able to do it. You're going to be pretty hard pressed to find decent evidence that a "death-ray" was successfully used by the Greeks, even if it were true.
It really depends on what you mean by "free to use RUP". RUP is a customisable, end-to-end process, which I suppose anyone can follow if they can remember all of the bits. As with any end-to-end process though, it is not much use unless it is documented. The software to tailor the process, and the actual process documentation are not free.
While TFA does not really make it clear which bits of RUP are donated, I imagine IBM is at least donating some instantiation of the process, which includes documented procedures and workflows, along with document templates, etc.
Without this donation, Eclipse could probably use something similar to RUP (I suppose they could use some version of it that happens to be in someone's head - but remember, IANAL), however it would be like Chinese whispers: Like all organisations who define their own processes, they are going to make the same mistakes that everyone else has made time and time again. Very few people are able to simply remember everything that needs to be done from the original idea for a software project, through to the packaging of a product.
It seems preferable to letting the plane drop out of the sky to me.
Different planes have different limitations. According to my link, some planes need the pilot to "join" them to the radio beams - others can be automated from take-off to landing. I'm not sure how accurate that claim is, but I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be possibe.
Also, pilots are encouraged to practice in clear weather so they can perform them in bad weather. Autolanding is technically able to land in zero visability.
> > Doesn't the plane know it has lost cabin pressure? > No. It's a plane. We could replace the word "know" with "detect", and lose the patronising response altogether.
> > If it's on autopilot why can't it reduce altitude so the people can regain consciousness? > Because it's on autopilot. The captain set the autopilot's target altitude, turned it on, > and then keeled over. The autopilot held the altitude as long as it could. So change the way autopilot works, which is what the OP was getting at. Clearly, something can be improved here: The fact that a plane will happily fly until it runs out of fuel, when it could probably have detected that the chances of the pilots being concious were remote at best is a part of the plane that could be designed much better.
> > Hell, why can't it just declare an emergency and automatically land at the > > nearest airport after receiving an OK signal from the airport that it's safe to land[?]
> And if it has to crash land, it can go for a nice long trip to the plane hospital, and > maybe the plane doctor will give it a nice lollipop! Yeah, that sounds good. Why the sarcastic answer on this one? Auto-landing is used all the time - see http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=48 2344 for more info.
Now admittedly, the accident refered to in the article happened on a Leer Jet, so they are unlikely to have the same technology as a commercial liner, but I don't think the post was deserving of your somewhat harsh response.
Not sure how on topic this is, but I thought that one of the terms of GPL was that you couldn't put more restrictive terms on an existing license. How can a project move to GPL3 if it is more restrictive than GPL2?
What is to stop someone from just putting an existing project under a commercial license? What makes GPL3 so special that GPL2 projects can move to it without breaking their own licensing terms?
My understanding is that US law treats "telephone systems" differently to computer systems.
I used to be involved with a company that made VOIP desk-phones (which plugged into IP-enabled telephone switches), and although these were technically connected to a computer network, we were limited as to what kind of encryption we could put on them when selling in the US.
At the time (this is going back a few years), we did not have such a problem with the software-on-pc type voip product, as this was treated as a computer system.
It looks to me they want to reinterpret definition of a "telephone system".
You may need to help out the non-Americans here. My constitution says nothing of the sort.;)
Most certainly. Many stores sell excess inventory at or below cost because it is better than throwing it away.
But they choose to - you can't force them to. They do so when the demand for the product at full price drops below a certain point. You can't just walk into a shop and demand that they give you their goods at or below cost because you know they're ultimately going to drop the price at some point in the future. This analogy actually applies to the movie industry quite well. I buy lots of DVDs once the demand falls, and the price gets down around $5 - but only if I am willing to put off seeing the movie (otherwise I have to pay the same price as everyone else.
You tell me now. Do media companies deserve to deprive the public domain for 120 years?
That is a separate issue. These people are not being accused of pirating Mickey Mouse cartoons. They willfully distributed a movie that had not even been released. Yes, I think copyright protection is too long in the US, but that is a separate issue, to the article.
Would you have so quickly supported Prohibition, Slavery, Segregation or miscongenation laws when they were in fashion with those who make the laws?
The fact that there have been bad laws does not make all laws bad. Just because Joe Citizen thinks that the age of concent laws are archaic, it does not mean he can go around flouting them.
Do you really think history will really judge copyright law the same way as those laws? With the exception of Prohibition (which I'll get to below), all of those laws had a major impact on the quality of life, or fundamental rights of its "victims". If you really see yourself as a victim here because your right to watch copyright material for free is being eroded, then I think you need to get a little perspective.
One of your ealier posts compared the punishments of piracy with those of drug trafficing. There are a lot of people out there who think that current drug laws are just like Prohibition, and that people should be able to decide for themselves if they want to take drugs. Should these people be allowed to break drug laws?
The guy who complained loudly had a cracked screen, didn't he? I agree a scratched screen is pretty minor (you should see my cell phone, which sits in the same pocket as my keys!), but cracks would be pretty annoying.
You still fail to understand the difference between something you can make a copy of and something you can't.
Why does it matter? Your logic is that theft of non-tangable things does not affect the person (or corporation) you are stealing from. Lets get back to the loaf of bread: A large portion of the price of a loaf of bread goes as profit to the person (or supermarket) selling the loaf of bread. No-one in their right mind would consider it to be fair of you to steal that loaf of bread, even if you left behind the shopkeepers costs. You have no right to take something that is not yours without the permission of the person who owns it.
There are real costs involved in making and distributing a movie. Those costs (plus an element of profit), are spread across those who pay for movies legitimately. Are you claiming that these guys who uploaded Star Wars did not have any impact on revenue?
You assume that most pirates would have paid if it wasn't available for free.
No I don't. I just don't think that pirates should be entitled to watch a movie they haven't paid for. They are not being forced to watch it.
MOST people who pirate things do so because they can't afford to and are living beyond their means...
That argument can apply to any kind of theft, and is a load of garbage anyway. Most of them would have downloaded Star Wars onto their uber-pc. They'd be students and professionals, who would go out with friends frequently and spend much more than the cost of a ticket on food and booze. They choose to live that way. If they can't afford something they *want*, they should cut back on something else like everyone else does.
Finally, let's not forget that this article is not about the geeks who download the movie - It is about some people who had access to a movie before it was released, and decided to upload it to the net. This was not done out of necessity, or greed. These people made a conscious and malicious decision to do what they did. They must have known that what they were doing was illegal, and that there would be consequences if they got caught. To claim that their actions cost the production companies nothing is every bit as silly as the argument that every copy that was downloaded cost the production companies the price of a movie ticket.
You're just playing with definitions, and I don't think the law agrees with you. (Most countries tend to treat copyright material as "property")
Sure, it is not the same as stealing a loaf of bread, but it is not that far from jumping on a bus without paying the fare, or asking some guy to mow your lawn, then not paying him.
By pirating a movie, you are denying the copyright holder of income that was rightfully theirs (assuming you would have paid money to see the movie). How do you determine if you would have paid? If someone don't want to see the movie, then fine. If someone doesn't want to see the movie (as the people who pirate it clearly do), then they should stop being such cheap-arses, and pay like anyone else.
I'm no authority, but according to this site, treatments for 65 disorders have been created from adult stem cells, while none have yet been made from embryonic stem cells.
And if no more research were to be done, the only thing you could guarantee is that it would continue to be the case. As much as I hate analogies, research into nuclear fission is responsible for the 441 nuclear plants in use worldwide today. Nuclear Fusion research has given us none. Should we give up on research into fission power?
AFAIK, adult stem cell research has been happening for about 40 years now; Embryonic stem cell research has only been happening since 1998. That is certainly not enough time to get any real "human" results (as your link points out). There are however a number of examples of embryonic stem cells being used to treat rats, etc. Embryonic research is important, because it allows us to compare different approaches, and may help us understand the mechanics of stem cells better.
... but it grieves me to think that embryos will be created with the intent of destroying them,
There are ways of obtaining embryonic stem cells that don't need you to create the embryos for that purpose. Embryos are currently created artificially with the intention of creating a new life. The embryos that do not get used, are ultimately destroyed.
Because you can reverse a life sentence if you find someone is wrongly convicted. You can't reverse an execution.
What does that have to do with the question posed by ThatDamnMurphyGuy? You can't always reverse the creation of an unused embryo like you can a jail sentence. There comes a point in time when the embryo needs to be destroyed. I don't know the medicine of it, but it seems plausible that stem cell harvesting could take place instead of the destruction. The problem with analogies, are they are nothing more than analogies.
As an interesting side note, the probability of an implanted embryo surviving is very low. (Casual perusal of web suggests anywhere between 50% and 90% of embryos do not survive - depending on which reports you beleive). The actual act of implanting an embryo will probably kill that embryo. Is that analogous to 90% of criminals dying as they walk out of prison?
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Although most phones let you make an emergency call no matter what, don't they? I know mine does even when it is pin and keypad locked. You can type pretty much any of the common emergency numbers (911, 112, 000), and it unlocks the phone to call the local emergency number (It appears to nothing until you have typed the entire number). I don't see why these phones would be any different.
When I originally read about this, I wondered what the quality would be like. A brief googling suggests that the files are about 150-200MB, which seems like the quality should be better than I was expecting.
Does anyone have any first hand experience with the downloaded episodes? How is the quality on a pc or tv screen?
But this is just more of the same misinformation. How would patenting "how the gene works" have any affect on medicine. They could patent a method for producing a synthetic drug that has the same effect as a gene.
Without financial incentives for doing the (extremely expensive) research required to produce these drugs, the drugs would not be invented for at least the life of the patent. These are not obvious inventions. They are not just reporting their observations of how a naturally occuring chemical works (if they did, then the patent would fail the utility test).
Yes - patents lock out competitors (for up to 20 years): That's the whole point. After the patent expires, the invention then becomes public domain.
I would rather have the drugs invented now, and pay more for them for the next 20 years, than wait a couple of decades or more hoping that some kind soul donates millions of dollars of research to the good of the community.
I don't think such patents should be allowed. It's like a company owning a piece of me -- and I wasn't even paid for it!
For the last time people, they are not patenting the DNA that exists in your body, or your bodies ability to reproduce cells with those genes. They are patenting methods and technologies _related_ to those genes: Methods for testing the existence of that gene, methods for manipulating that gene, etc.
Unless you happen to be a large biotech company, these patents are unlikely to have any noticable impact on you.
Regarding patent expiry, utility patents have always been 20 years in the US, haven't they? Copyright and Patent law are very, very different, and I am not aware of anything suggesting they are planning on extending the term of any patents. Like many people, I believe that software patents should be a lot shorter than 20 years, but that is another matter entirely.
There seem to be a few people pointing this out, but the logic is flawed. While Mythbusters is certainly an interesting and entertaining show, the fact that their attempt did not work does not mean that it cannot be done.
The logic can work around the other way. If a single attempt works, then the concept is plausible. If a single attempt fails, then all you can really deduce is that that particular attempt failed. Sure, have enough independent trials fail, and you may start to question the feasibility, but that is not the case here.
Of course by the same logic, showing that the idea is feasible does not mean that Archimedes was able to do it. You're going to be pretty hard pressed to find decent evidence that a "death-ray" was successfully used by the Greeks, even if it were true.
It really depends on what you mean by "free to use RUP". RUP is a customisable, end-to-end process, which I suppose anyone can follow if they can remember all of the bits. As with any end-to-end process though, it is not much use unless it is documented. The software to tailor the process, and the actual process documentation are not free.
While TFA does not really make it clear which bits of RUP are donated, I imagine IBM is at least donating some instantiation of the process, which includes documented procedures and workflows, along with document templates, etc.
Without this donation, Eclipse could probably use something similar to RUP (I suppose they could use some version of it that happens to be in someone's head - but remember, IANAL), however it would be like Chinese whispers: Like all organisations who define their own processes, they are going to make the same mistakes that everyone else has made time and time again. Very few people are able to simply remember everything that needs to be done from the original idea for a software project, through to the packaging of a product.
It seems preferable to letting the plane drop out of the sky to me. Different planes have different limitations. According to my link, some planes need the pilot to "join" them to the radio beams - others can be automated from take-off to landing. I'm not sure how accurate that claim is, but I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be possibe. Also, pilots are encouraged to practice in clear weather so they can perform them in bad weather. Autolanding is technically able to land in zero visability.
It doesn't seem all that silly to me..
8 2344 for more info.
> > Doesn't the plane know it has lost cabin pressure?
> No. It's a plane.
We could replace the word "know" with "detect", and lose the patronising response altogether.
> > If it's on autopilot why can't it reduce altitude so the people can regain consciousness?
> Because it's on autopilot. The captain set the autopilot's target altitude, turned it on,
> and then keeled over. The autopilot held the altitude as long as it could.
So change the way autopilot works, which is what the OP was getting at. Clearly, something can be improved here: The fact that a plane will happily fly until it runs out of fuel, when it could probably have detected that the chances of the pilots being concious were remote at best is a part of the plane that could be designed much better.
> > Hell, why can't it just declare an emergency and automatically land at the
> > nearest airport after receiving an OK signal from the airport that it's safe to land[?]
> And if it has to crash land, it can go for a nice long trip to the plane hospital, and
> maybe the plane doctor will give it a nice lollipop! Yeah, that sounds good.
Why the sarcastic answer on this one? Auto-landing is used all the time - see http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=4
Now admittedly, the accident refered to in the article happened on a Leer Jet, so they are unlikely to have the same technology as a commercial liner, but I don't think the post was deserving of your somewhat harsh response.
Not sure how on topic this is, but I thought that one of the terms of GPL was that you couldn't put more restrictive terms on an existing license. How can a project move to GPL3 if it is more restrictive than GPL2?
What is to stop someone from just putting an existing project under a commercial license? What makes GPL3 so special that GPL2 projects can move to it without breaking their own licensing terms?
My understanding is that US law treats "telephone systems" differently to computer systems.
I used to be involved with a company that made VOIP desk-phones (which plugged into IP-enabled telephone switches), and although these were technically connected to a computer network, we were limited as to what kind of encryption we could put on them when selling in the US.
At the time (this is going back a few years), we did not have such a problem with the software-on-pc type voip product, as this was treated as a computer system.
It looks to me they want to reinterpret definition of a "telephone system".
Read your Constitution.
;)
You may need to help out the non-Americans here. My constitution says nothing of the sort.
Most certainly. Many stores sell excess inventory at or below cost because it is better than throwing it away.
But they choose to - you can't force them to. They do so when the demand for the product at full price drops below a certain point. You can't just walk into a shop and demand that they give you their goods at or below cost because you know they're ultimately going to drop the price at some point in the future. This analogy actually applies to the movie industry quite well. I buy lots of DVDs once the demand falls, and the price gets down around $5 - but only if I am willing to put off seeing the movie (otherwise I have to pay the same price as everyone else.
You tell me now. Do media companies deserve to deprive the public domain for 120 years?
That is a separate issue. These people are not being accused of pirating Mickey Mouse cartoons. They willfully distributed a movie that had not even been released. Yes, I think copyright protection is too long in the US, but that is a separate issue, to the article.
Would you have so quickly supported Prohibition, Slavery, Segregation or miscongenation laws when they were in fashion with those who make the laws?
The fact that there have been bad laws does not make all laws bad. Just because Joe Citizen thinks that the age of concent laws are archaic, it does not mean he can go around flouting them.
Do you really think history will really judge copyright law the same way as those laws? With the exception of Prohibition (which I'll get to below), all of those laws had a major impact on the quality of life, or fundamental rights of its "victims". If you really see yourself as a victim here because your right to watch copyright material for free is being eroded, then I think you need to get a little perspective.
One of your ealier posts compared the punishments of piracy with those of drug trafficing. There are a lot of people out there who think that current drug laws are just like Prohibition, and that people should be able to decide for themselves if they want to take drugs. Should these people be allowed to break drug laws?
The guy who complained loudly had a cracked screen, didn't he? I agree a scratched screen is pretty minor (you should see my cell phone, which sits in the same pocket as my keys!), but cracks would be pretty annoying.
http://www.nanoflaw.com/pictures.html
You still fail to understand the difference between something you can make a copy of and something you can't.
Why does it matter? Your logic is that theft of non-tangable things does not affect the person (or corporation) you are stealing from. Lets get back to the loaf of bread: A large portion of the price of a loaf of bread goes as profit to the person (or supermarket) selling the loaf of bread. No-one in their right mind would consider it to be fair of you to steal that loaf of bread, even if you left behind the shopkeepers costs. You have no right to take something that is not yours without the permission of the person who owns it.
There are real costs involved in making and distributing a movie. Those costs (plus an element of profit), are spread across those who pay for movies legitimately. Are you claiming that these guys who uploaded Star Wars did not have any impact on revenue?
You assume that most pirates would have paid if it wasn't available for free.
No I don't. I just don't think that pirates should be entitled to watch a movie they haven't paid for. They are not being forced to watch it.
MOST people who pirate things do so because they can't afford to and are living beyond their means...
That argument can apply to any kind of theft, and is a load of garbage anyway. Most of them would have downloaded Star Wars onto their uber-pc. They'd be students and professionals, who would go out with friends frequently and spend much more than the cost of a ticket on food and booze. They choose to live that way. If they can't afford something they *want*, they should cut back on something else like everyone else does.Finally, let's not forget that this article is not about the geeks who download the movie - It is about some people who had access to a movie before it was released, and decided to upload it to the net. This was not done out of necessity, or greed. These people made a conscious and malicious decision to do what they did. They must have known that what they were doing was illegal, and that there would be consequences if they got caught. To claim that their actions cost the production companies nothing is every bit as silly as the argument that every copy that was downloaded cost the production companies the price of a movie ticket.
You're just playing with definitions, and I don't think the law agrees with you. (Most countries tend to treat copyright material as "property")
Sure, it is not the same as stealing a loaf of bread, but it is not that far from jumping on a bus without paying the fare, or asking some guy to mow your lawn, then not paying him.
By pirating a movie, you are denying the copyright holder of income that was rightfully theirs (assuming you would have paid money to see the movie). How do you determine if you would have paid? If someone don't want to see the movie, then fine. If someone doesn't want to see the movie (as the people who pirate it clearly do), then they should stop being such cheap-arses, and pay like anyone else.
I'm no authority, but according to this site, treatments for 65 disorders have been created from adult stem cells, while none have yet been made from embryonic stem cells.
And if no more research were to be done, the only thing you could guarantee is that it would continue to be the case. As much as I hate analogies, research into nuclear fission is responsible for the 441 nuclear plants in use worldwide today. Nuclear Fusion research has given us none. Should we give up on research into fission power?
AFAIK, adult stem cell research has been happening for about 40 years now; Embryonic stem cell research has only been happening since 1998. That is certainly not enough time to get any real "human" results (as your link points out). There are however a number of examples of embryonic stem cells being used to treat rats, etc. Embryonic research is important, because it allows us to compare different approaches, and may help us understand the mechanics of stem cells better.
There are ways of obtaining embryonic stem cells that don't need you to create the embryos for that purpose. Embryos are currently created artificially with the intention of creating a new life. The embryos that do not get used, are ultimately destroyed.
Because you can reverse a life sentence if you find someone is wrongly convicted. You can't reverse an execution.
What does that have to do with the question posed by ThatDamnMurphyGuy? You can't always reverse the creation of an unused embryo like you can a jail sentence. There comes a point in time when the embryo needs to be destroyed. I don't know the medicine of it, but it seems plausible that stem cell harvesting could take place instead of the destruction. The problem with analogies, are they are nothing more than analogies.
As an interesting side note, the probability of an implanted embryo surviving is very low. (Casual perusal of web suggests anywhere between 50% and 90% of embryos do not survive - depending on which reports you beleive). The actual act of implanting an embryo will probably kill that embryo. Is that analogous to 90% of criminals dying as they walk out of prison?
Oh, and IANAD either :).