The DMCA needs an overhaul as well, primarily so that it respects standing Fair Use doctrine. It's my understanding that at present I violate the DMCA if I make a copy of a DVD, regardless of my intention to create a backup copy or simply copy it to VHS so that I can view the movie in the event that my DVD player fails (I've lost two in three years, forgive me if I'm a little paranoid). That needs to change.
There were a lot of steps between the first way and the "second" (2.0) way.
This isn't a new web. This isn't a revolutionary web. We haven't reached some magical point where it all seems new again. if anything, I'd call this Web 1.5. We're still years away from acheiving the web a lot of us imagined it becoming years ago.
So what you're saying is that "2.0" is an alpha version of a more integrated web?
Wiki/forums/reviews just remove the need for search engines and usenet to find certain kinds of information.
Myspace just removes the need for an HTML editor to run your own crappy website.
In all reality, there aren't any new services being offered in all this, just new tools that make those services somewhat more accessible and centralized. Amazon offers book reviews on their site instead of you having to look elswhere for a review. I don't really see where that's a new "version" of the web.
A bazillion Usenet newsgroups -> A bazillion web forums IRC -> AIM/MSN/ICQ/Y!M/GTalk Geocities/generic free homepage site -> Myspace/generice free blog site
Yeah...nothing about any of this 2.0 stuff is really all the new and different. I think it's really just a new generation of internet users--the first generation to never really know life without it--trying to claim that "their" internet is completely different and better than anything that came before it.
This "web 2.0" isn't some massive leap in technology. Nothing really revolutionary has been done to warrant the coining of the term or the implication that it's something new and improved. In the 10 years I've been on the internet, I've watched the slow evolution from barely-useful tool to amazing source of information to social phenomenon. Much of what is being heralded as new and amazing existed in very basic form early on; techniques are simply steadily improving.
No, he should under no circumstance ever be allowed to patent it. Patenting it would virtually guarantee that the patent would be bought by (insert major oil pumping megacorp) and stuffed on a shelf until it's forgotten, 20 years later. And, adding inslut to injury, the patent lawyers would make damn sure that the patent isn't actually revealing enough to create said engine, but detailed enough to stop anyone else from independently inventing a similar engine.
It's up to the inventor what is done with it. The only incentive I see in developing such an engine is to actually improve vehicle emissions and help people; I find it unlikely they'd allow that to be stuffed on a shelf. There would be a dozen car manufacturers clamoring to be the first with a 100 MPG vehicle on the market, license it to one of them.
An engine like that belongs to humanity, not a single individual or single corporation.
No, that engine belongs to the person who built it. He could just use it for himself and never share it with the world; if the cost of making it available is temporary exclusivity, shouldn't we make that available?
And besides...who are you to say that anything belongs to humanity? We are entitled to nothing.
I'm generally against genetic patents. What happens if someone patents a strand of DNA which I happen to have? Do I have any recourse, since I obviously developed it before they did?
I would probably support patents for modified organisms, though. An engineered strain of bacteria that produces aspirin, for example, should be patentable and protected as a method of production.
As I've said, the patent system needs to be overhauled, not removed entirely.
He said quite a bit that I agreed with, but what they want goes so far that I believe it will discourage innovation, or at least make it difficult to make an independent career of it. I think that what this would ultimately do is drive all the creative minds into corporations that would essentially be buying out their creations. The unintentional consequence of their plans would be the elimination of the the small-time inventor and larger companies taking over even the niche markets out of necessity.
What you replied to is a direct quote from the article, btw.
If it can really be disassembled and copied "in a few days", chances are pretty good it didn't deserve a patent in the first place, because it sure as hell couldn't be doing anything particularly new.
A device that performs a particular function in a substantially more efficient way doesn't deserve a patent?
Let's say some guy develops that mythical 100 MPG gasoline engine. Shouldn't he be able to patent it?
And what exactly happens to those DRM files when the original copywrite has expired???
Then that in particular should be addressed, but throwing out the whole system is ludicrous.
Thats right, even though it then becomes legal to do what you want with the file, it is still locked, and they have taken away your "fair Use" clause in the meantime.
As I said, don't agree to it if you don't like it. I for one will never buy DRM-enabled content unless it is drastically overhauled to give me greater control, but I don't believe we have any right to dictate through legislation how a company distributes content, any more than they have the right to dictate to us how it is used.
Can you think of any patentable (or patented) product where a competitor would really be able to analyse, copy, produce and market it "as soon as it comes to market" ?
Yes. Pretty much anything that is not electronic.
You are aware that patents extend far beyond software and electronic devices, right? There are a LOT of mechanical devices that are patentable, and mechanical devices can be disassembled and their designs copied in a matter of days.
Basically, because the politicians didn't listen to their voters, but to yesterday's industry interests instead, which led them to criminalize 20% of their voters (1.2 million file sharers, 5.2 million voters).
Argumentum ad numerum.
DRM is effectively media companies writing their own copyright laws, harming society and consumers. We have a parliament to write such laws, thank you very much.
DRM is more of a license agreement. Like any given license agreement, it spells out what you can and cannot do with what you have purchased. DRM simply takes it a step further and makes it difficult for you to violate the agreement.
(Don't think I'm defending DRM...I hate it. But you do have the option to simply not purchase DRM files)
The equivalent would be if someone sold you a product that shut down on purpose in daylight, or outside of a particular city, or under whatever condition the manufacturer hadn't approved. We call it fraud in the cases where we can relate, so I can't believe the media industry is getting away with this.
If it said on the box "this product does not work in the dark or outside Seattle" what's the problem?
Apart from that, there have been numerous horror stories about DRM abuse. Starforce and XCP come to mind.
That's like saying that P2P software should be banned because it can be (ab)used to pirate movies and music....we will require the public sector - which is quite large in Sweden, and spends quite some money - to purchase systems in a way that does not "promote the formation or continuation of monopolies on ideas and concepts". This translates to more or less requiring FOSS, or at least more open systems than are common today.
Just...wow....In short, the story about striking it rich on a patent is a fairy tale. There are way too many interests out there who don't want you to get rich on that patent, and they make very sure you won't be...
Basically, because it's hard to get a patent that isn't already claimed by someone else and because the system is abused by major corporations, let's get rid of patents.
Does he realize that this would just hand everything to big business? Every good product that any small-time inventor came up with would be instantly copied by some big company and in every Wal-Mart inside of a week. This guy wants to remove the only protection the "little guy" has from the predators.
You might want to note, though, that once the copyright has expired after five years, such activity would be totally legit. It would be no different from printing a really old book today.
FIVE YEARS??? They're insane. It can take five years for a band to work their way up from garage band to being noteworthy enough to get a recording contract. This would mean that all of their early works would be unprotected right as they became popular enough to actually make money off them.
For individually-owned copyrights, give them lifetime rights, plus five or ten years (as opposed to 75...this allows their unreleased works to be profitable for their heirs). If at any time copyrights are transfered from the creator to another individual or corporation, give them the same 5-10 years the family would get if the author died. This would encourage more creators to hang on to their rights rather than give them to corporations.
Obviously patenting has run amok and needs to be fixed, but I don't see where anyone would benefit from the elimination of patents. "Hey guys, I've got an idea...let's remove the ability to make money off massive R&D investments by making it so that people who didn't do any of the work can produce and sell a product as soon as it comes to market!"
Copyrights run way too long, but are a good thing; people work hard to produce works and should be given some legal protection so that--if they choose--they can profit from those works. It encourages the creation of new works by allowing people to make a career of it.
I really think that people who think intellectual property is a bad thing think that simply because they are out of touch. Or maybe they've just never had ideas/works that were original enough to be protected under IP laws and so they don't know what it means to have an idea stolen. Taking away the protections the law currently gives would discourage new ideas because they would no longer be profitable.
Don't play games unless you like upgrading every year.
I used to do a rebuild every two years to keep up with gaming and other software demands. That meant replacing my motherboard, cpu, video card, and (when necessary) RAM. The last time I did that was in 2002. I've averaged maybe $300 a year on non-storage upgrades since and have no intention of spending any money on hardware this year in anticipation of a legacy-free upgrade in late 2007.
Re:Wait for the next version.
on
Tech on the Cheap?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
As far as my PC's hardware, I stay right in the middle of the price curve. A friend of mine calls it the "75% mark," meaning that you get about 75% the performance of top-of-the-line for around 50% the price. That's especially true in the processor and video card markets, which account for the the costliest and most frequent upgrades.
As networking goes, I tend to avoid eBay for most of it. A lot of tech sites have forums with a for sale/for trade section where you can find what you're looking for at a much better price than eBay. I trade a lot of my old parts that I don't need for old parts that I do need.
Excessive exposure of disturbed individuals to graphically violent games may reenforce existing violent tendencies. Coupled with a disconnect from reality, these conditions may result in the real-world application of themes observed in the game environment, including--but not limited to--assault, robbery, rape, torture, and murder. Please note the existing ESRB rating and seek professional help if you feel the desire to replicate game scenarios in real life.
They can fix their OS so it does not have holes, but they can't illegally enter a market by bundling with their monopoly and they can't enter the market separately, because then they are leveraging the holes they have left in the monopoly to double-dip on customers. Both are illegal.
MS could argue that with Windows Defender they are creating a proactive way to deal with undiscovered holes. No developer is psychic; they can't see every problem up front. Example: http://www.debian.org/security/2006/ Oh no Debian has vulnerabilities!
MS has learned that there is no one answer to security holes. They released Firewall with SP2 to take care of a wide number of security threats rather than wait for every hole to be found and patched. There are still plenty of software firewall products on the market that are better than WFW for any number of reasons. That's what will keep the market open: WD will work, but others will work better.
No OS is free of holes. Windows controls market share, so holes are more likely to be exploited. They also are trying to make a simple, easy-to-use OS, which tends to be more vulnerable. My Linux box is a lot more secure than my Windows box (or so I'm told, neither has had an intrusion since being set up), but to gain that security I have to sacrifice things like the ability to install a software package in one step.
Hell, I'm four levels deep in dependency hell trying to get something to compile and I've got at least one more package to download tonight in hopes that it'll work. That never happens with Windows; at worst I've had to installed Java or GTK so that something ported from Linux would work.
So explain to me how Google making this information freely profitable (rather than patenting it all) is biopiracy? They're looking to sequence every species and make that information available to anyone who wants it so that Mr. Evil Scientist no longer has the opportunity to monopolize any naturally-occuring genetic sequence.
I'm just waiting for the day I get sued for patent infringement because I have some dormant strand of DNA that happens to match something someone patented.
Slashdot Mirror
The DMCA needs an overhaul as well, primarily so that it respects standing Fair Use doctrine. It's my understanding that at present I violate the DMCA if I make a copy of a DVD, regardless of my intention to create a backup copy or simply copy it to VHS so that I can view the movie in the event that my DVD player fails (I've lost two in three years, forgive me if I'm a little paranoid). That needs to change.
There were a lot of steps between the first way and the "second" (2.0) way.
This isn't a new web. This isn't a revolutionary web. We haven't reached some magical point where it all seems new again. if anything, I'd call this Web 1.5. We're still years away from acheiving the web a lot of us imagined it becoming years ago.
So what you're saying is that "2.0" is an alpha version of a more integrated web?
Wiki/forums/reviews just remove the need for search engines and usenet to find certain kinds of information.
Myspace just removes the need for an HTML editor to run your own crappy website.
In all reality, there aren't any new services being offered in all this, just new tools that make those services somewhat more accessible and centralized. Amazon offers book reviews on their site instead of you having to look elswhere for a review. I don't really see where that's a new "version" of the web.
A bazillion Usenet newsgroups -> A bazillion web forums
IRC -> AIM/MSN/ICQ/Y!M/GTalk
Geocities/generic free homepage site -> Myspace/generice free blog site
Yeah...nothing about any of this 2.0 stuff is really all the new and different. I think it's really just a new generation of internet users--the first generation to never really know life without it--trying to claim that "their" internet is completely different and better than anything that came before it.
Family friendly needs to go bye bye permanently.
I agree. I mean, who wants games made for 8-year-olds?
Oh, wait...8-year-olds and their parents do.
This "web 2.0" isn't some massive leap in technology. Nothing really revolutionary has been done to warrant the coining of the term or the implication that it's something new and improved. In the 10 years I've been on the internet, I've watched the slow evolution from barely-useful tool to amazing source of information to social phenomenon. Much of what is being heralded as new and amazing existed in very basic form early on; techniques are simply steadily improving.
No, he should under no circumstance ever be allowed to patent it. Patenting it would virtually guarantee that the patent would be bought by (insert major oil pumping megacorp) and stuffed on a shelf until it's forgotten, 20 years later. And, adding inslut to injury, the patent lawyers would make damn sure that the patent isn't actually revealing enough to create said engine, but detailed enough to stop anyone else from independently inventing a similar engine.
It's up to the inventor what is done with it. The only incentive I see in developing such an engine is to actually improve vehicle emissions and help people; I find it unlikely they'd allow that to be stuffed on a shelf. There would be a dozen car manufacturers clamoring to be the first with a 100 MPG vehicle on the market, license it to one of them.
An engine like that belongs to humanity, not a single individual or single corporation.
No, that engine belongs to the person who built it. He could just use it for himself and never share it with the world; if the cost of making it available is temporary exclusivity, shouldn't we make that available?
And besides...who are you to say that anything belongs to humanity? We are entitled to nothing.
So no one would have any new ideas without copyright/patent law?
/sarcasm
Yes. That's exactly what "discourage" means..."to eliminate entirely".
I'm generally against genetic patents. What happens if someone patents a strand of DNA which I happen to have? Do I have any recourse, since I obviously developed it before they did?
I would probably support patents for modified organisms, though. An engineered strain of bacteria that produces aspirin, for example, should be patentable and protected as a method of production.
As I've said, the patent system needs to be overhauled, not removed entirely.
He said quite a bit that I agreed with, but what they want goes so far that I believe it will discourage innovation, or at least make it difficult to make an independent career of it. I think that what this would ultimately do is drive all the creative minds into corporations that would essentially be buying out their creations. The unintentional consequence of their plans would be the elimination of the the small-time inventor and larger companies taking over even the niche markets out of necessity.
What you replied to is a direct quote from the article, btw.
If it can really be disassembled and copied "in a few days", chances are pretty good it didn't deserve a patent in the first place, because it sure as hell couldn't be doing anything particularly new.
A device that performs a particular function in a substantially more efficient way doesn't deserve a patent?
Let's say some guy develops that mythical 100 MPG gasoline engine. Shouldn't he be able to patent it?
And what exactly happens to those DRM files when the original copywrite has expired???
Then that in particular should be addressed, but throwing out the whole system is ludicrous.
Thats right, even though it then becomes legal to do what you want with the file, it is still locked, and they have taken away your "fair Use" clause in the meantime.
As I said, don't agree to it if you don't like it. I for one will never buy DRM-enabled content unless it is drastically overhauled to give me greater control, but I don't believe we have any right to dictate through legislation how a company distributes content, any more than they have the right to dictate to us how it is used.
LinuxP2P: Patents provide a huge financial incentive for inventors and researchers. Won't abolishing them effectively stop innovation?
Can you think of any patentable (or patented) product where a competitor would really be able to analyse, copy, produce and market it "as soon as it comes to market" ?
Yes. Pretty much anything that is not electronic.
You are aware that patents extend far beyond software and electronic devices, right? There are a LOT of mechanical devices that are patentable, and mechanical devices can be disassembled and their designs copied in a matter of days.
Basically, because the politicians didn't listen to their voters, but to yesterday's industry interests instead, which led them to criminalize 20% of their voters (1.2 million file sharers, 5.2 million voters).
...we will require the public sector - which is quite large in Sweden, and spends quite some money - to purchase systems in a way that does not "promote the formation or continuation of monopolies on ideas and concepts". This translates to more or less requiring FOSS, or at least more open systems than are common today.
...In short, the story about striking it rich on a patent is a fairy tale. There are way too many interests out there who don't want you to get rich on that patent, and they make very sure you won't be...
Argumentum ad numerum.
DRM is effectively media companies writing their own copyright laws, harming society and consumers. We have a parliament to write such laws, thank you very much.
DRM is more of a license agreement. Like any given license agreement, it spells out what you can and cannot do with what you have purchased. DRM simply takes it a step further and makes it difficult for you to violate the agreement.
(Don't think I'm defending DRM...I hate it. But you do have the option to simply not purchase DRM files)
The equivalent would be if someone sold you a product that shut down on purpose in daylight, or outside of a particular city, or under whatever condition the manufacturer hadn't approved. We call it fraud in the cases where we can relate, so I can't believe the media industry is getting away with this.
If it said on the box "this product does not work in the dark or outside Seattle" what's the problem?
Apart from that, there have been numerous horror stories about DRM abuse. Starforce and XCP come to mind.
That's like saying that P2P software should be banned because it can be (ab)used to pirate movies and music.
Just...wow.
Basically, because it's hard to get a patent that isn't already claimed by someone else and because the system is abused by major corporations, let's get rid of patents.
Does he realize that this would just hand everything to big business? Every good product that any small-time inventor came up with would be instantly copied by some big company and in every Wal-Mart inside of a week. This guy wants to remove the only protection the "little guy" has from the predators.
You might want to note, though, that once the copyright has expired after five years, such activity would be totally legit. It would be no different from printing a really old book today.
FIVE YEARS??? They're insane. It can take five years for a band to work their way up from garage band to being noteworthy enough to get a recording contract. This would mean that all of their early works would be unprotected right as they became popular enough to actually make money off them.
For individually-owned copyrights, give them lifetime rights, plus five or ten years (as opposed to 75...this allows their unreleased works to be profitable for their heirs). If at any time copyrights are transfered from the creator to another individual or corporation, give them the same 5-10 years the family would get if the author died. This would encourage more creators to hang on to their rights rather than give them to corporations.
Bad idea.
Obviously patenting has run amok and needs to be fixed, but I don't see where anyone would benefit from the elimination of patents. "Hey guys, I've got an idea...let's remove the ability to make money off massive R&D investments by making it so that people who didn't do any of the work can produce and sell a product as soon as it comes to market!"
Copyrights run way too long, but are a good thing; people work hard to produce works and should be given some legal protection so that--if they choose--they can profit from those works. It encourages the creation of new works by allowing people to make a career of it.
I really think that people who think intellectual property is a bad thing think that simply because they are out of touch. Or maybe they've just never had ideas/works that were original enough to be protected under IP laws and so they don't know what it means to have an idea stolen. Taking away the protections the law currently gives would discourage new ideas because they would no longer be profitable.
Will it run...ahh, nevermind.
For one thing they only support windoze.
Yeah, I mean they're going to lose so much business only supporting 95% of the market...
Mandatory BETAMAX reference satisfied.
You insensitive clod.
Don't play games unless you like upgrading every year.
I used to do a rebuild every two years to keep up with gaming and other software demands. That meant replacing my motherboard, cpu, video card, and (when necessary) RAM. The last time I did that was in 2002. I've averaged maybe $300 a year on non-storage upgrades since and have no intention of spending any money on hardware this year in anticipation of a legacy-free upgrade in late 2007.
As far as my PC's hardware, I stay right in the middle of the price curve. A friend of mine calls it the "75% mark," meaning that you get about 75% the performance of top-of-the-line for around 50% the price. That's especially true in the processor and video card markets, which account for the the costliest and most frequent upgrades.
As networking goes, I tend to avoid eBay for most of it. A lot of tech sites have forums with a for sale/for trade section where you can find what you're looking for at a much better price than eBay. I trade a lot of my old parts that I don't need for old parts that I do need.
If you can find such sales, they're great. Of course, I never can...if they're listed, I've never seen them even when I lived in a major metro area.
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING
Excessive exposure of disturbed individuals to graphically violent games may reenforce existing violent tendencies. Coupled with a disconnect from reality, these conditions may result in the real-world application of themes observed in the game environment, including--but not limited to--assault, robbery, rape, torture, and murder. Please note the existing ESRB rating and seek professional help if you feel the desire to replicate game scenarios in real life.
They can fix their OS so it does not have holes, but they can't illegally enter a market by bundling with their monopoly and they can't enter the market separately, because then they are leveraging the holes they have left in the monopoly to double-dip on customers. Both are illegal.
MS could argue that with Windows Defender they are creating a proactive way to deal with undiscovered holes. No developer is psychic; they can't see every problem up front. Example: http://www.debian.org/security/2006/ Oh no Debian has vulnerabilities!
MS has learned that there is no one answer to security holes. They released Firewall with SP2 to take care of a wide number of security threats rather than wait for every hole to be found and patched. There are still plenty of software firewall products on the market that are better than WFW for any number of reasons. That's what will keep the market open: WD will work, but others will work better.
No OS is free of holes. Windows controls market share, so holes are more likely to be exploited. They also are trying to make a simple, easy-to-use OS, which tends to be more vulnerable. My Linux box is a lot more secure than my Windows box (or so I'm told, neither has had an intrusion since being set up), but to gain that security I have to sacrifice things like the ability to install a software package in one step.
Hell, I'm four levels deep in dependency hell trying to get something to compile and I've got at least one more package to download tonight in hopes that it'll work. That never happens with Windows; at worst I've had to installed Java or GTK so that something ported from Linux would work.
So explain to me how Google making this information freely profitable (rather than patenting it all) is biopiracy? They're looking to sequence every species and make that information available to anyone who wants it so that Mr. Evil Scientist no longer has the opportunity to monopolize any naturally-occuring genetic sequence.
I'm just waiting for the day I get sued for patent infringement because I have some dormant strand of DNA that happens to match something someone patented.