If the Pentagon wants something that works to alter mood at a distance, they should look up Ross Adey's work with the Lida microwave mood-alteration device. The Koreans were reputed to have used a variant as an effective brainwashing tool. However the Lida as tested by Adey was used principally for imposing quiescence in agitated individuals and crowds-- kind of a radio-frequency phenothiazine. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine creating different moods, or fear, would be feasible with a little re-engineering. This line of research is doubtless highly classified, but I can't imagine that would hinder the Pentagon. (They may have pushed to have Adey's work classified in the first place.)
Well it sure as hell isn't.docx though. Nothing different here re MS' future practices, just helping, as an earlier poster said, prevent bitrot of the old stuff.
Aha! Your mentioning the Commodore 64 puts me in mind of my second computer, a VIC-20. Does no one remember the Scott Adams graphic adventures that ran (from cartridges, I think) on this? I have blissfully nostalgic memories of playing "Pirate Adventure", where saying the right incantation in a London flat could transport you through a whirlpool graphic to Pirate Island, where you could meet a parrot who kept going "Pieces of Eight!" Remember how creative you had to get with those two word commands (TAKE KEY, KICK DOOR)? My favorite was one of the last ones-- your map would say to go ten paces from the last landmark and dig: the command was "GO TEN".
God that was fun. Must have been because I was young, because no game in the past 20 years has interested me even remotely.
And some would say that those names and their work have become so much part of our culture that you shouldn't have to pay. It's been a few decades since they started. They made some money, they made their names. Now maybe it belongs to all of us.
There is no maybe about it. Our culture is ours and not the cash cow of powerful corporate interests. The life of the creator or someone he designates, plus 21 years, is plenty. That's the test for perpetuities in law and it seems to me like a good measurement for copyright too.
It's all a geek dream anyway, that people doing work for free is going to somehow outperform people who do their jobs to get paid and rely on that payment to sustain the quality of living they are used to.
Nonsense. A half-million hobby coders can trounce 10,000 paid Microsoft programmers any day. They have done so already and they continue to do so. The only thing you might expect is that Vista and OS X would have more unified design (in Vista's case, the unifying design concept does not even serve their users so much as corporate interests). Vista is overdesigned malware and OS X is still borrowing from the FOSS movement.
Apple and FreeBSD / Linux may continue to grow closer until it's hard to tell them apart and Quartz / Aqua will just be one of the better Window managers, maybe or maybe not worth buying Apple hardware. Linux has more legs than you suspect.
I'm the opposite of you. I was trying out OS X after years with Windows and signficant experience with Linux. Even with Fink, not enough good Gnome and KDE GUI stuff runs under OS X... you still have to buy software for many uses. The Mac GUI is beautiful, slick and elegant, but it is a bit paternalistic, too-- no easy / safe way to stop a file move or copy, no easy way to shut down when an app that's running is not in the mood to let you, and lots of delays with the twirling pinwheel disc and no way to kill the app (short of finding the PID via top and typing "kill" in a root console window). At the end of the day, for me, Debian Etch is better, and I find myself booting less and less into OS X and more and more into good old Debian. Amarok is far better than iTunes, in my opinion. Photoshop, etc.? I still have my old Windows box for that. A KVM switch completes the setup. For what I do every day, you cannot beat Debian for responsiveness, control, transparency, and price.
Fortunately, at least some members of the Judiciary Committee are at least aware that the consumer groups have legitimate points to make. Berman, who chairs the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, announced that his subcommittee would hold a hearing next week on the issue.
"As a cosponsor, I obviously feel very strongly that we must strengthen enforcement efforts to fight piracy and counterfeiting," Berman said. "At the hearing, we will be hearing testimony from both industry experts and from labor and consumer advocates to make sure that in doing so, we don't deny appropriate access to America's intellectual property."
The biggest reason Apple should want to acquire Adobe is that Apple could evolve the apps so they are really satisfactory only under an Apple OS and on an Apple hardware platform. Kind of like "embrace and extend", except it's Apple, and so I think we're not supposed to call it that.
I went to the Holyoke, MA Best Buy to buy a Canon Powershot camera. As I handed over my credit card the salesman started the high-pressure extended warranty pitch. I can generally stop such, but this guy was amazing.
Him: Do you want the extended warranty?
Me: No, I never buy those. Let's just finish the transaction.
Him: Buy why don't you want it?
Me: I don't care to discuss my reasons. Can we go on?
Him: Do you think it's too much money? Maybe we can do a deal.
Me: No, I positively do not want it. Please stop discussing it and finish the transaction.
Him: But why wouldn't you want it?
Me: I never buy them. Listen, I want to talk with your manager. I don't want to be harassed with this sales pitch any longer.
Him: Man, it's not a pitch! I always buy the warranty. What a lot of hassle it has saved me!
Me: (Loudly): Is there a manager in the store? A manager?
Him: You are making a disturbance. What is the matter with you?
Me: What is the matter with me is that I am tired of you. I want to talk with your boss.
(Manager arrives)
Manager: What is the problem here?
Me: I have repeatedly told this salesman to stop pushing the extended warranty on me, but he will not shut up about it.
Manager: We sell all of these cameras with extended warranties.
Me: But I am not buying it. Now can we finish the transaction?
Manager: Let me tell you why you ought to have the extended warranty and then you will understand.
Me: That's a lost sale, pal. (Walked out of store.)
And if not, then why do they persist? Just on principle alone? Despite what some here have implied, this can't be a cash cow for them -- the settlements offered are relatively low, and I can't imagine that they are not running in the red on these endeavors when you look at the bottom line.
I think the point is they make more from each settlement than the cost of extorting it. True, not a cash cow, but it certainly costs them nothing. In dollars.
Chargeback rights mostly do not exist anymore. They make you jump through thousands of hoops and may cancel your credit card. The balance has swung heavily in favor of the merchant. Some car rental companies won't even accept a debit (vs. a credit) card because your bank (vs. CitiCorp or MBNA) *actually might* give you the chargeback power. And if you wait more than a few months your chances of accomplishing anything vanish or dwindle to nothingness.
And YouTube's eclecticism, the thing that made it so great, is already gone. Last week, a search for "Beatles Ed Sullivan" yielded a dozen clips of their first US appearances. Now there's nothing, just junk. Thanks, corporate America, for locking up our culture again.
But here the real party in interest has isolated the patents in a troll holding company (Acacia) and its own use of patents cannot therefore be called into question. Does anyone doubt that Microsoft is the real party in interest?
Slashdot Mirror
It will never happen. Corporate America can do what it likes to individual Americans, who can't do a damned thing about it as a rule.
If the Pentagon wants something that works to alter mood at a distance, they should look up Ross Adey's work with the Lida microwave mood-alteration device. The Koreans were reputed to have used a variant as an effective brainwashing tool. However the Lida as tested by Adey was used principally for imposing quiescence in agitated individuals and crowds-- kind of a radio-frequency phenothiazine. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine creating different moods, or fear, would be feasible with a little re-engineering. This line of research is doubtless highly classified, but I can't imagine that would hinder the Pentagon. (They may have pushed to have Adey's work classified in the first place.)
Well it sure as hell isn't .docx though. Nothing different here re MS' future practices, just helping, as an earlier poster said, prevent bitrot of the old stuff.
Aha! Your mentioning the Commodore 64 puts me in mind of my second computer, a VIC-20. Does no one remember the Scott Adams graphic adventures that ran (from cartridges, I think) on this? I have blissfully nostalgic memories of playing "Pirate Adventure", where saying the right incantation in a London flat could transport you through a whirlpool graphic to Pirate Island, where you could meet a parrot who kept going "Pieces of Eight!" Remember how creative you had to get with those two word commands (TAKE KEY, KICK DOOR)? My favorite was one of the last ones-- your map would say to go ten paces from the last landmark and dig: the command was "GO TEN".
God that was fun. Must have been because I was young, because no game in the past 20 years has interested me even remotely.
Getting old....
There is no maybe about it. Our culture is ours and not the cash cow of powerful corporate interests. The life of the creator or someone he designates, plus 21 years, is plenty. That's the test for perpetuities in law and it seems to me like a good measurement for copyright too.
People skills should not be overlooked. It is important you be able to get people to like you.
This got a belly laugh out of me. I wish I had mod points.
OK, I'll accept that as true, but what repository are you thinking of?
You must be new here.
Nonsense. A half-million hobby coders can trounce 10,000 paid Microsoft programmers any day. They have done so already and they continue to do so. The only thing you might expect is that Vista and OS X would have more unified design (in Vista's case, the unifying design concept does not even serve their users so much as corporate interests). Vista is overdesigned malware and OS X is still borrowing from the FOSS movement.
Apple and FreeBSD / Linux may continue to grow closer until it's hard to tell them apart and Quartz / Aqua will just be one of the better Window managers, maybe or maybe not worth buying Apple hardware. Linux has more legs than you suspect.
I'm the opposite of you. I was trying out OS X after years with Windows and signficant experience with Linux. Even with Fink, not enough good Gnome and KDE GUI stuff runs under OS X... you still have to buy software for many uses. The Mac GUI is beautiful, slick and elegant, but it is a bit paternalistic, too-- no easy / safe way to stop a file move or copy, no easy way to shut down when an app that's running is not in the mood to let you, and lots of delays with the twirling pinwheel disc and no way to kill the app (short of finding the PID via top and typing "kill" in a root console window). At the end of the day, for me, Debian Etch is better, and I find myself booting less and less into OS X and more and more into good old Debian. Amarok is far better than iTunes, in my opinion. Photoshop, etc.? I still have my old Windows box for that. A KVM switch completes the setup. For what I do every day, you cannot beat Debian for responsiveness, control, transparency, and price.
Good question; it's been around a while. There's even a Latin version:
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes"
From TFA:
Fortunately, at least some members of the Judiciary Committee are at least aware that the consumer groups have legitimate points to make. Berman, who chairs the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, announced that his subcommittee would hold a hearing next week on the issue. "As a cosponsor, I obviously feel very strongly that we must strengthen enforcement efforts to fight piracy and counterfeiting," Berman said. "At the hearing, we will be hearing testimony from both industry experts and from labor and consumer advocates to make sure that in doing so, we don't deny appropriate access to America's intellectual property."You work for MS in their blog spin department, right?
The biggest reason Apple should want to acquire Adobe is that Apple could evolve the apps so they are really satisfactory only under an Apple OS and on an Apple hardware platform. Kind of like "embrace and extend", except it's Apple, and so I think we're not supposed to call it that.
I went to the Holyoke, MA Best Buy to buy a Canon Powershot camera. As I handed over my credit card the salesman started the high-pressure extended warranty pitch. I can generally stop such, but this guy was amazing.
Him: Do you want the extended warranty?
Me: No, I never buy those. Let's just finish the transaction.
Him: Buy why don't you want it?
Me: I don't care to discuss my reasons. Can we go on?
Him: Do you think it's too much money? Maybe we can do a deal.
Me: No, I positively do not want it. Please stop discussing it and finish the transaction.
Him: But why wouldn't you want it?
Me: I never buy them. Listen, I want to talk with your manager. I don't want to be harassed with this sales pitch any longer.
Him: Man, it's not a pitch! I always buy the warranty. What a lot of hassle it has saved me!
Me: (Loudly): Is there a manager in the store? A manager?
Him: You are making a disturbance. What is the matter with you?
Me: What is the matter with me is that I am tired of you. I want to talk with your boss.
(Manager arrives)
Manager: What is the problem here?
Me: I have repeatedly told this salesman to stop pushing the extended warranty on me, but he will not shut up about it.
Manager: We sell all of these cameras with extended warranties.
Me: But I am not buying it. Now can we finish the transaction?
Manager: Let me tell you why you ought to have the extended warranty and then you will understand.
Me: That's a lost sale, pal. (Walked out of store.)
I'll bet there are a LOT more like this.
I think the point is they make more from each settlement than the cost of extorting it. True, not a cash cow, but it certainly costs them nothing. In dollars.
Chargeback rights mostly do not exist anymore. They make you jump through thousands of hoops and may cancel your credit card. The balance has swung heavily in favor of the merchant. Some car rental companies won't even accept a debit (vs. a credit) card because your bank (vs. CitiCorp or MBNA) *actually might* give you the chargeback power. And if you wait more than a few months your chances of accomplishing anything vanish or dwindle to nothingness.
Their promise also says nothing about not asserting patent rights against USERS of the software that comes out of such open-source projects.
Wow, he's right. My time on /. is always merry.
And YouTube's eclecticism, the thing that made it so great, is already gone. Last week, a search for "Beatles Ed Sullivan" yielded a dozen clips of their first US appearances. Now there's nothing, just junk. Thanks, corporate America, for locking up our culture again.
Or, they could be looking for some kind of evoked potential similar to the "Q"-meter response to tell what ads are really getting through!
Hits the nail right on the head.
I have never seen what could turn out to be a better lawsuit incubator.
But here the real party in interest has isolated the patents in a troll holding company (Acacia) and its own use of patents cannot therefore be called into question. Does anyone doubt that Microsoft is the real party in interest?