Yes, they 'make it easier to infringe', but the line between what TPB is doing and what e.g. the roads are doing (helping bank robbers get away, the horror!) is one of degree, and more importantly, it isn't clear where the line is - or if one can be drawn. Yet the court drew the line, and the consequences will be felt in many other areas, to society's detriment.
Or maybe not. Who wants to file the first suit against politicians for making it easier for companies to pollute our environment? Or making it too easy for people to die on the streets homeless and penniless? The possibilities are endless!
In that sense, TPB is certainly 'good for society', regardless of whether you consider their actions detrimental in other respects.
There's a huge discussion on obfuscation techniques and VPN solutions for consumers -- they're ignoring the upcoming EU directive on mandatory requirement to keep logs. Ergo, when anonymisation services keep logs, you're no longer anonymous.
Anonymity doesn't matter if traffic is encrypted. You have no idea what two people may be transferring to each other, so how can you possibly charge them with anything? Just because they can track who is using encrypted transfers means nothing.
But is gets worse. Knowing, and yes, we have years of data to back this up but knowing that the population generally increases (*with the exception of Germany which is almost a negative population growth rate) [...]
No, just about every affluent country has negative population growth. The total populations of affluent countries are increasing only due to immigration.
Paradoxically, spreading a more energy-consuming lifestyle, ie. a higher standard of living, would result in lower or negative total population growth to the point where our energy needs may also stabilize. This is also disregarding advances in efficiency, which do come along now and again.
Or our energy needs may continually increase. Hard to say really. What is certain however, is that the harder it is to develop more energy sources, the more expensive energy will become, and our energy consumption will plateau from that alone (and likely drive more developments in efficiency). Basic economics.
Just the opposite. The ability of a company or companies to monetize a new invention is actually one measure of its novelty, at least in the US system as it exists today.
In order to patent, it must not be common knowledge to practitioners in the field. Monetization has nothing to do with this particular clause. You can monetize plenty of old technologies, but they are disqualified because the techniques are common knowledge.
Of course, then comes the onerous task of determining what lead time between publication of the technique and patent grant suffices for something to become common knowledge and hence no longer eligible for patent (and it's often dependent on the field).
1. Invent something. 2. Wait for others to invent it too and start using it. 3. File for the patent. 4. Sue everyone who had been using your invention. 5. Profit!
Actually, if everyone is using it, it is no longer innovative, ie. it is common knowledge to experts in the field, and so would not qualify for a patent.
I agree. There are different types of secrecy/obscurity with useful properties. Time-limited secrets are useful because they convey the advantage of surprise. Unguessable data strings are used as unforgeable references, aka capabilities in security parlance, and they have strong mathematical properties which make them useful for this purpose. Asymmetric crypto uses a closely held, secret key to encrypt/decrypt sensitive data, and the keys have well-known mathematical properties which them infeasible to guess or derive from the cipher text.
These types of secrets can be useful, but I don't see how blueprints fall into any of these categories, and I'm hard-pressed to understand what type of security would be provided by keeping such a secret that isn't better provided some other way.
By this logic, we should let our wartime enemies know all the details of our troop sizes, locations and movements.
No, the time sensitivity gives that information different properties than blueprints. Troop movements constantly change, while blueprints are fixed. You should not be relying on the secrecy of the latter for that reason.
Security through obscurity is bad because it is unreliable. While it's true that "black hats cannot prepare in advance to meet a countermeasure which they are unaware of", it is also true that you cannot be certain that they are unaware of it, so relying on it is just plain stupid.
The fatality rate of measles is 3 in 1,000, and we're more interested in the child stat given it's what all the hoopla is over. If we're dealing with vaccines in general, not MMR in particular, all risk factors taken together will up that number considerably I'd wager.20% is probably an exaggeration, then again our population density is much higher than in the past, so who knows how an epidemic would affect us now.
Heck, if they're renouncing science for vaccines, why not renounce science entirely? Extremely high fatality rate there.
Ask her this: if you had to choose between 20% of children dying from measles and other childhood diseases, or saving them all but inflicting 2% of them with autism, which would you choose?
Some of the smarter ones might argue that it's a false dichotomy, but it's not. That is the real choice facing these believers now, who assume the maximally pessimistic possibility that vaccines are somehow causing autism, which doesn't look likely, and a resulting high autism incidence. If they still wouldn't vaccinate, they are dangerously irrational to the point of criminal negligence IMO. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Show me numbers for Apple's revenue from hardware (iPod, iPhone, desktops, laptops, XServe), and software (Mac OS X, XCode, iWorks, Final Cut Pro), and services (.Mac, iTunes), then tell me with a straight face they are not a hardware company.
Solution is simple: if you care about portability, develop on Mono from the get-go. If you don't care, then should we really care what you're developing with?
MonoDevelop and SharpDevelop are very reasonable replacements for VS.NET (and the free VS Express Editions are also pretty reasonable). You can even get VS to compile using Mono.
The only nice parts of VS IMO are the code completion, inline API documentation, documentation stubs, debugger, and even the limited refactoring support. I don't really use anything else, but really, what more do you need?
Actually, they narrowed patent law back in the 70s, it's just the lower courts ignored their guidelines for years until the Supreme Court started overruling them.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, they 'make it easier to infringe', but the line between what TPB is doing and what e.g. the roads are doing (helping bank robbers get away, the horror!) is one of degree, and more importantly, it isn't clear where the line is - or if one can be drawn. Yet the court drew the line, and the consequences will be felt in many other areas, to society's detriment.
Or maybe not. Who wants to file the first suit against politicians for making it easier for companies to pollute our environment? Or making it too easy for people to die on the streets homeless and penniless? The possibilities are endless!
In that sense, TPB is certainly 'good for society', regardless of whether you consider their actions detrimental in other respects.
Indeed, it is a form of civil disobedience.
Where do we have a right to copy others' work?
Where do you get the right to say you own an idea?
I suggest that if a person is 2 years beyond average lifespan, no government money be spent on hospitalization or surgery.
The problem with this, is that average lifespan will likely fall as a result of this policy.
It needs to perform at least on the level of a Dothan 600MHz before I'm interested - web surfing is already a pain at that level of performance.
The iPhone CPU is clocked to run at 400MHz, and it's browsing performance, is perfectly acceptable, even with Javascript.
Scroll wheel up == volume up. Simple.
There's a huge discussion on obfuscation techniques and VPN solutions for consumers -- they're ignoring the upcoming EU directive on mandatory requirement to keep logs. Ergo, when anonymisation services keep logs, you're no longer anonymous.
Anonymity doesn't matter if traffic is encrypted. You have no idea what two people may be transferring to each other, so how can you possibly charge them with anything? Just because they can track who is using encrypted transfers means nothing.
No, just about every affluent country has negative population growth. The total populations of affluent countries are increasing only due to immigration.
Paradoxically, spreading a more energy-consuming lifestyle, ie. a higher standard of living, would result in lower or negative total population growth to the point where our energy needs may also stabilize. This is also disregarding advances in efficiency, which do come along now and again.
Or our energy needs may continually increase. Hard to say really. What is certain however, is that the harder it is to develop more energy sources, the more expensive energy will become, and our energy consumption will plateau from that alone (and likely drive more developments in efficiency). Basic economics.
Just the opposite. The ability of a company or companies to monetize a new invention is actually one measure of its novelty, at least in the US system as it exists today.
In order to patent, it must not be common knowledge to practitioners in the field. Monetization has nothing to do with this particular clause. You can monetize plenty of old technologies, but they are disqualified because the techniques are common knowledge.
Of course, then comes the onerous task of determining what lead time between publication of the technique and patent grant suffices for something to become common knowledge and hence no longer eligible for patent (and it's often dependent on the field).
1. Invent something.
2. Wait for others to invent it too and start using it.
3. File for the patent.
4. Sue everyone who had been using your invention.
5. Profit!
Actually, if everyone is using it, it is no longer innovative, ie. it is common knowledge to experts in the field, and so would not qualify for a patent.
Better yet, Anonymous Coward!
I agree. There are different types of secrecy/obscurity with useful properties. Time-limited secrets are useful because they convey the advantage of surprise. Unguessable data strings are used as unforgeable references, aka capabilities in security parlance, and they have strong mathematical properties which make them useful for this purpose. Asymmetric crypto uses a closely held, secret key to encrypt/decrypt sensitive data, and the keys have well-known mathematical properties which them infeasible to guess or derive from the cipher text.
These types of secrets can be useful, but I don't see how blueprints fall into any of these categories, and I'm hard-pressed to understand what type of security would be provided by keeping such a secret that isn't better provided some other way.
By this logic, we should let our wartime enemies know all the details of our troop sizes, locations and movements.
No, the time sensitivity gives that information different properties than blueprints. Troop movements constantly change, while blueprints are fixed. You should not be relying on the secrecy of the latter for that reason.
Security through obscurity is bad because it is unreliable. While it's true that "black hats cannot prepare in advance to meet a countermeasure which they are unaware of", it is also true that you cannot be certain that they are unaware of it, so relying on it is just plain stupid.
What sort of security depends on the secrecy of a helicopter's blueprints? Honestly.
Exactly. Of course, if you use the Petname Toolbar, none of these attacks work.
The fatality rate of measles is 3 in 1,000, and we're more interested in the child stat given it's what all the hoopla is over. If we're dealing with vaccines in general, not MMR in particular, all risk factors taken together will up that number considerably I'd wager.20% is probably an exaggeration, then again our population density is much higher than in the past, so who knows how an epidemic would affect us now.
Heck, if they're renouncing science for vaccines, why not renounce science entirely? Extremely high fatality rate there.
Yes, because N=1 trumps N=10,000 every time.
Ask her this: if you had to choose between 20% of children dying from measles and other childhood diseases, or saving them all but inflicting 2% of them with autism, which would you choose?
Some of the smarter ones might argue that it's a false dichotomy, but it's not. That is the real choice facing these believers now, who assume the maximally pessimistic possibility that vaccines are somehow causing autism, which doesn't look likely, and a resulting high autism incidence. If they still wouldn't vaccinate, they are dangerously irrational to the point of criminal negligence IMO. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Show me numbers for Apple's revenue from hardware (iPod, iPhone, desktops, laptops, XServe), and software (Mac OS X, XCode, iWorks, Final Cut Pro), and services (.Mac, iTunes), then tell me with a straight face they are not a hardware company.
Mac OS X will probably never attain the same stability or support as it does on Apple hardware, so lots of people will probably stick with Apple.
What about VIA? They seem to do just fine.
Solution is simple: if you care about portability, develop on Mono from the get-go. If you don't care, then should we really care what you're developing with?
MonoDevelop and SharpDevelop are very reasonable replacements for VS.NET (and the free VS Express Editions are also pretty reasonable). You can even get VS to compile using Mono.
The only nice parts of VS IMO are the code completion, inline API documentation, documentation stubs, debugger, and even the limited refactoring support. I don't really use anything else, but really, what more do you need?
Actually, they narrowed patent law back in the 70s, it's just the lower courts ignored their guidelines for years until the Supreme Court started overruling them.
It might not be a blip on your radar, but what about someone making $20k or less a year?
And yet, statistically speaking, the poor are having far more children than the rich. Somehow they're affording it.