It actually does make sense to reduce fines if they cooperate. If they didnt it would take more money to convict them.
But if the fines, after cooperation discount, are not more than the profit raised by the crime, multiplied by a factor based on a good estimate of the percentage of the time companies do this and get away with it, then it is no deterrent.
Sadly, in the western world today, this is exactly the situation with pretty much all regulation of industry. No deterrent. Just a cost of doing business, paying off the state occasionally when you get caught.
You, sir, obviously dont have a clue what you are talking about. For starters, flash isnt even a codec. You're comparing a container to a codec, that's not even apples and oranges, that's apples and boxes.
Google are a search company. They have a complete patent library.
There's every possibility that they have, in fact, gone through all the patents.
The trouble is even that wont give you an authoritative answer under this screwed up patent regime. So yes it's a fair assumption that both Theora and WebM have been thoroughly checked out by legal. It's also a fair assumption they found some patents that might appear to apply to them (this will be the case for anything you do) and that legal concluded those patents were invalid and would be defeated in court were they asserted. It's a fair assumption that the holders of those patents would have already asserted them if their own legal teams did not concurr that the risk of invalidation was high. But until and unless they actually go to court, no one can know for sure.
You must be very new here if you think people dont care about software freedom.
Many projects use firefox code. Iceweasel is probably the least forked, it removes the auto-update crap that isnt appropriate in most modern linux OSs and adds some privacy-protection features. There are many more, mostly using the rendering engine but building native GUIs around it and often adding unique features in the process, off the top of my head I can think of a few... galleon, epiphany, swiftweasel, flock.
It would be better to abolish patents entirely.
But as long as that isnt happening, this looks like the first and only idea I've seen for patching the system that could conveivably work.
The phrases are independent. The first expresses the *reason* for the second, it does not modify or limit it.
And yes, the security of a *free* state does depend, as the founders clearly understood, on an armed citizenry instead of a standing army. Most people that style themselves as defenders of the second amendment seem to miss that context, unfortunately.
Sure, the 'patent holder' has the option. If a binding promise not to sue for the duration of the patent were to be made, that patent would no longer be a worry. But that isnt the case, nor is it likely to be the case, with most patents. Which only makes sense - what is the point of going to the time and expense of obtaining a patent if you dont intend to ever assert it?
And sure, patents might be technically compatible with 'open source' software, if you construe that to mean simply that the source is available (not enough to satisfy the open source definition, by the way.) But I dont give a crap about open source, except insofar as it overlaps/coïncides with free software, and (absent binding promise not to assert the patent in any way) patents are entirely incompatible with free software. They are a much bigger problem than closed source.
After all, if you create a 'standard' with a closed, binary mushware implementation as the only spec, I can still legally disassemble it, intercept it on the wire, etc. I can reverse-engineer it and create a free implementation. It may not be easy, but it's a technical problem. On the other hand, if you create a 'standard' with beautiful, complete, comprehensible documentation and publish the source for your reference implementation, place all this in the public domain, but hold a patent on a key bit of the tech, the solvable technical difficulties have been replaced with unsolvable legal ones.
I used Apple for several years. They made very nice computers. I still cant get a Windows or Linux portable to handle the lid close event properly - dead easy on an Apple running OSX. We still have a couple of iMacs here and they are nice machines.
But the iPhone and iPad are total crap. And it looks like OS X is progressively following the same road to crapville, even while Apple neglects that product line to focus on them. Very sad and disappointing.
I *do* think that it makes sense going forward to focus a lot on the portable devices. That is clearly where there is room for market expansion, and that market is going to be very important for the future. But if it goes forward in the way Apple is trying to take it forward... that is a nightmare.
Patent law has become completely perverted and is no longer even vaguely related to its constitutional form.
I remember in school I was taught that a patent had to lay out information so that you could sit down and read it and learn exactly how to do something new and useful and entirely non-obvious. In return for teaching everyone how to do this, the patent holder got a short term monopoly. Even that system was subject to considerable doubt as to whether the cost was worth it, as the normal thing with inventions was that there were several inventors who hit on the same thing very nearly simultaneously. But at least it made some sense.
Read a patent lately? They usually dont describe anything new or useful, and even when they do, they certainly dont do so in a way that would actually impart the necessary information to do it yourself. The old patent system may have been a bad trade in most or all cases, but it was a trade - now there is no trade at all. Just a pile of impenetrable gibberish filed to get a monopoly.
He had two programs (games, which he had bought) which *required* that compatibility shim to run.
He had a third program (steam) which *prevented* him from running those programs, which he owned, in the compatibility mode they required, on his own machine.
The problem here (assuming what he wrote is accurate) is that the third program has effectively denied him control of his own machine.
"(For the curious: Commandos:BEL and Commandos:BTCoD only supported Win9x, but Steam explicitly prevents you from running anything in Win9x compatibility mode; as a result the "Save game" functionality was broken,"
To be frank, I've never heard of anybody having specific issues with it (people have general issues with DRM, as do I, but nobody can ever say "this thing doesn't work and it should")
Game I bought and paid for (multiple copies of, in fact) before they came up with 'steam' suddenly quit working without it. That is a clear case of 'this thing doesnt work and it should.' They would not refund my purchases or offer any sort of remedy that didnt involve giving control of my computer to them by installing this steam thing. They will never get another penny from me.
Slashdot Mirror
At least one is quite a blogger.
It actually does make sense to reduce fines if they cooperate. If they didnt it would take more money to convict them. But if the fines, after cooperation discount, are not more than the profit raised by the crime, multiplied by a factor based on a good estimate of the percentage of the time companies do this and get away with it, then it is no deterrent. Sadly, in the western world today, this is exactly the situation with pretty much all regulation of industry. No deterrent. Just a cost of doing business, paying off the state occasionally when you get caught.
You, sir, obviously dont have a clue what you are talking about. For starters, flash isnt even a codec. You're comparing a container to a codec, that's not even apples and oranges, that's apples and boxes.
The trouble is even that wont give you an authoritative answer under this screwed up patent regime. So yes it's a fair assumption that both Theora and WebM have been thoroughly checked out by legal. It's also a fair assumption they found some patents that might appear to apply to them (this will be the case for anything you do) and that legal concluded those patents were invalid and would be defeated in court were they asserted. It's a fair assumption that the holders of those patents would have already asserted them if their own legal teams did not concurr that the risk of invalidation was high. But until and unless they actually go to court, no one can know for sure.
Unfortunately the patent system is so broken there just is no way to authoritatively declare anything patent-free.
You must be very new here if you think people dont care about software freedom.
Many projects use firefox code. Iceweasel is probably the least forked, it removes the auto-update crap that isnt appropriate in most modern linux OSs and adds some privacy-protection features. There are many more, mostly using the rendering engine but building native GUIs around it and often adding unique features in the process, off the top of my head I can think of a few... galleon, epiphany, swiftweasel, flock.
You telling me NASA doesnt even use parity memory? Seriously?
Compression helps if the problem is network throughput. It actually makes things *worse* if the problem is an old computer - i.e. slower processor.
He's right, it's not free software. It's freeware.
Yes, it is evil.
The whole patent system is evil.
Until it can be abolished, any practical solution is going to involve 'getting your hands dirty' as the phrase goes.
The alternative, continuation of the status quo, is infinitely more evil.
It would be better to abolish patents entirely. But as long as that isnt happening, this looks like the first and only idea I've seen for patching the system that could conveivably work.
The phrases are independent. The first expresses the *reason* for the second, it does not modify or limit it.
And yes, the security of a *free* state does depend, as the founders clearly understood, on an armed citizenry instead of a standing army. Most people that style themselves as defenders of the second amendment seem to miss that context, unfortunately.
Sure, the 'patent holder' has the option. If a binding promise not to sue for the duration of the patent were to be made, that patent would no longer be a worry. But that isnt the case, nor is it likely to be the case, with most patents. Which only makes sense - what is the point of going to the time and expense of obtaining a patent if you dont intend to ever assert it?
And sure, patents might be technically compatible with 'open source' software, if you construe that to mean simply that the source is available (not enough to satisfy the open source definition, by the way.) But I dont give a crap about open source, except insofar as it overlaps/coïncides with free software, and (absent binding promise not to assert the patent in any way) patents are entirely incompatible with free software. They are a much bigger problem than closed source.
After all, if you create a 'standard' with a closed, binary mushware implementation as the only spec, I can still legally disassemble it, intercept it on the wire, etc. I can reverse-engineer it and create a free implementation. It may not be easy, but it's a technical problem. On the other hand, if you create a 'standard' with beautiful, complete, comprehensible documentation and publish the source for your reference implementation, place all this in the public domain, but hold a patent on a key bit of the tech, the solvable technical difficulties have been replaced with unsolvable legal ones.
.wmv is not a codec.
I used Apple for several years. They made very nice computers. I still cant get a Windows or Linux portable to handle the lid close event properly - dead easy on an Apple running OSX. We still have a couple of iMacs here and they are nice machines.
But the iPhone and iPad are total crap. And it looks like OS X is progressively following the same road to crapville, even while Apple neglects that product line to focus on them. Very sad and disappointing.
I *do* think that it makes sense going forward to focus a lot on the portable devices. That is clearly where there is room for market expansion, and that market is going to be very important for the future. But if it goes forward in the way Apple is trying to take it forward... that is a nightmare.
Fixed that for you.
Have yet to see any other distro beat it, to be honest.
Sure, fancier installers abound, but that doesnt make them more usable.
You *must* have meant to type slackware...
Patent law has become completely perverted and is no longer even vaguely related to its constitutional form.
I remember in school I was taught that a patent had to lay out information so that you could sit down and read it and learn exactly how to do something new and useful and entirely non-obvious. In return for teaching everyone how to do this, the patent holder got a short term monopoly. Even that system was subject to considerable doubt as to whether the cost was worth it, as the normal thing with inventions was that there were several inventors who hit on the same thing very nearly simultaneously. But at least it made some sense.
Read a patent lately? They usually dont describe anything new or useful, and even when they do, they certainly dont do so in a way that would actually impart the necessary information to do it yourself. The old patent system may have been a bad trade in most or all cases, but it was a trade - now there is no trade at all. Just a pile of impenetrable gibberish filed to get a monopoly.
Umm no.
He had two programs (games, which he had bought) which *required* that compatibility shim to run.
He had a third program (steam) which *prevented* him from running those programs, which he owned, in the compatibility mode they required, on his own machine.
The problem here (assuming what he wrote is accurate) is that the third program has effectively denied him control of his own machine.
Referring back to your first post:
"(For the curious: Commandos:BEL and Commandos:BTCoD only supported Win9x, but Steam explicitly prevents you from running anything in Win9x compatibility mode; as a result the "Save game" functionality was broken,"
So what?
So *some* of their stuff doesnt work in compatibility mode, therefore they prevent you from running any of them that way?
Regardless, you are missing my point. The fact that they *can* do this indicates their software is malware to begin with.
Game I bought and paid for (multiple copies of, in fact) before they came up with 'steam' suddenly quit working without it. That is a clear case of 'this thing doesnt work and it should.' They would not refund my purchases or offer any sort of remedy that didnt involve giving control of my computer to them by installing this steam thing. They will never get another penny from me.
The fact that they can even think about imposing such control over your computer should tell you something.
That certainly wasnt my experience.