I maintain my stance DRM has no right to exist, and DRM should be resisted by any means necessary. I want to live in a DRM free future no matter the cost.
"By any means necessary"?
"... no matter the cost"?
You're not alone in opposing DRM, but what are you going to do, barricade yourself in a church tower with a Remington 700 and start plucking off studio execs one by one?
The Executive branch told the telecoms. The telecoms, who have been working with government agencies for years, very clearly knew this was illegal. They went along with it anyway. Congress was not involved in the warrantless surveillance program.
The rule of law means that the laws apply to everyone. It means that if your government asks you to do something illegal, you have a legal obligation not to obey the government. AT&T, et. al. are used to being sued by and suing the government. It's not like they're afraid of going to court. They made money circumventing the Constitution.
They should not be given amnesty, so the courts can determine the extent of their liability.
You use the future tense - I think the past tense is more appropriate.
We haven't yet taken to the streets, AK-47s in hand. One nice thing about the rule of law is that for all the absurdities of our government and our legal system, people don't generally resolve disputes in America with bullets. I think we tend to forget that a lot when we talk about how jacked up the government is, how we should kill all the laywers, etc. Life without daily bloodshed has a lot to recommend to it.
Well that, and the big smirk I get every morning when I find out how much worse things have gone in Iraq. Man, I love watching the failure of ignorant assholes who ignore good advice.
So it's about winning the argument, eh? You're not alone in predicting that invading Iraq was a bad move. But taking satisfaction in our failure in Iraq seems perverse to me. After all, although the Executive made mistakes and Congress rubber stamped them, the mistakes hurt us all (Iraqis included). Every time I see another Bush misstep, I cringe. We'll be paying for this for a long time. To me, fixing our problems is a lot more important than saying "I told you so."
If we keep going down the "us and them" path in our own politics, we'll wind up like the Sunnis and Shiites, self-righteous to the end, destroying our own country in the name of winning an argument.
It's not racist or bigoted or infringing on anyone's civil liberties - it's an accurate and reliable way to find out about possible terror attacks.
The ACLU isn't trying to eliminate all wiretapping. They're on record as saying that there are times when wiretapping is necessary. I think any but the most deluded would agree that sometimes in order to stop people from doing very bad things, you need to use wiretapping. But this is the part that many people (not just the ACLU) object to:
...without first obtaining a judge's approval
Organizations like the NSA perform valuable service in defense of the country. So does the U.S. Navy. But just as I don't want the U.S. Navy deciding to bomb dangerous countries whenever it likes, I don't want the NSA deciding when to wiretap without any judicial oversight. Our system of government was initiated by men who were very aware of the dangers of too much power concentrated in one arm of the government. That's why we divide power in our government.
In a society that values the rule of law, the involvement of an independent judiciary in anti-terrorism matters is a good thing, not something to route around out for the sake of temporary convenience.
This kind of bickering will hopefully turn some people against social networks and get some kids back to doing their own pages again instead of using lame ass templates.
I thought the whole idea was to build APIs that would tie into social networks. This should allow people to build their own sites/blogs/whatever, using any combination of custom/template/third-party widgets. How is giving people more options a bad thing? It seems to me this will open up social networks, moving them away from the gated communities we have now. This should inspire more (not less) creativity.
I'm also not sure why it is intrinsically better for "the kids" to be building their own pages, rather than using social networking template pages. I suppose it is better for those kids who want to get into web development, but for the rest of them, building pages from scratch is the drudge work, and putting their own words, images, and moving pictures into the pages is the real fun. Again, more options are better, imho. The kids that want to learn web development will still be drawn to build their own sites, and they'll now have more tools with which to hook into template-driven sites.
I must assume that building houses a court very friendly to the patent trolls, probably someone ignorant of technology enough to not recognize obviousness and prior art in the tech sector.
The primary reason is that a few years ago the ED Texas set itself up specifically to be a venue for these kinds of cases. In 2002 there were 32 patent cases in ED Texas. In 2006 there were over 10x that number. They've developed a set of local rules that favor rapid resolution of cases. If you're a smaller patent troll going up against a larger patent holder, you want a speedy resolution. Otherwise, the big patent holder can bleed you dry with motion after motion, and extended discovery. The judges in ED Texas aren't idiots, and from what I've heard, the jurors aren't either.
Still, the combination of local rules and a pro-plaintiff bias add up to a very favorable venue for trolls.
Games usually teach you specifically to think inside the box and follow the set rules, so I'm just not so sure it's good training for problem-solving.
If you run through a particular problem in a game enough times, dying and being resurrected each time, eventually you'll move through the problem because the game only provides you with a limited set of options. In real life, you don't have the luxury of attacking problems by trying your options until one of them works.
It's not difficult to make accurate headlines. Just because the rest of the media has become a cesspool of inaccuracy and imprecision doesn't mean Slashdot should slouch to that level of lower expectations.
If the headline for this article were "Analyst claims Apple makes $831 on each AT&T iPhone", it would be less sensational, but certainly more accurate.
The fact is, that while it is indeed a derivative work, that is not fair use, and she did use a copyrighted work without authorization.
True, the fact that the work is derivative doesn't mean it is a fair use of the original work. But I'm curious why you think her use of Prince's song in this particular video wouldn't withstand a fair use affirmative defense?
The issuance of a patent only provides a presumption of validity. If Amazon decides to sue someone for running afoul of this patent, the defendant in such a case will be able to marshall all kinds of evidence that the patent was at the very least, precluded by prior art and was obvious.
Remember that issuance of a bad patent isn't the end of the world. The patent system was designed to be fault-tolerant. If Amazon wants to sue on the basis of their bad patent, they'll face difficulties in court, not to mention in the court of public opinion.
Greenpeace is an advocacy group. It uses the same marketing techniques as politicians, for-profit companies, and everyone else. They go for the big target. I think they're being honest in admitting it.
The "On Sale" statutory bar of 102(b) applies. If the invention is placed on sale in the US by anyone, more than a year before the filing of the patent application, the application will not be granted.
Therefore your own prior art can invalidate your attempt to obtain a patent on something you've already brought to market.
I think you misunderstand my purposefully inflammatory rhetoric. I am saying what I am saying in order to arouse a reaction.
Is it surprising that your purposefully inflammatory rhetoric has been misunderstood?
Originally you wrote:
My ancestors fought in order to have equitable pay for work, decent working conditions, and something approaching a society where there is a reasonable middle-class. This is the kind of thing that seeks to have the U.S. be like a third-world nation.
It's rather clear that you're talking about the United States and the effect offshoring has on American workers.
But now you say:
They then "steal" a little bit of wealth from the Chinese or Indian worker as well as from the person who will purchase the products of those same workers.
So now it's no longer about protecting American workers. It's about protecting overseas workers and American consumers?
Your assessment of the sought after patents in question values them far too highly. The fact that IBM has patents on certain methods of conducting offshoring won't deny other companies the ability to offshore, given that the patents *if granted* are going to be narrowly tailored. There is a tremendous amount of prior art in the offshoring business, and there are are already plenty of companies engaged in the practice. Plus, business method claims aren't easy to patent. The USPTO scrutinizes them very carefully, and even if granted it can take four years or more, by which time the claimed methods may not even be of much use to IBM or anyone else. An application for a patent like this is really low on the list of things to be freaked out about.
Then again, based on your earlier comments, I'm not sure if you actually support offshoring or are opposed to it. You seem to be opposed to large corporations making money, regardless of whether they're offshoring or not. Maybe you should be directing your fervor at corporate personhood instead of patent claims.
It is time to rise up! Time to start the revolution. This MUST NOT be permitted.
If you're upset that these big companies are seeking business method patents for processes that may or may not even pan out in the marketplace, I'm puzzled. The method patents will only allow certain companies to use certain methods to perform some of their business functions offshore. This will allow them to keep others from using the same carefully defined methods, or will force other companies to license those methods. Either way, outsourcing is no longer the Soup-to-Nuts-Slam-Dunk Solution many companies thought it would be.
If you're upset about outsourcing, I wonder how you run your Open Source consulting firm. After all, a huge chunk of the software you're dealing with was created by people in countries other than the United States, and I'd hazard a guess that most of the work done on those programs wasn't done in North-East Ohio. In essence, you've outsourced millions of hours worth of work to the people who developed the software you're using. You, as a provider of technical services, are able to compete more effectively because of their labor.
If you were truly serious about being a mercantist, you wouldn't be leveraging so much labor from outside the US in your own business.
Finally, this statement is bizarre:
If the only comparative advantage is that one workforce has rights to decent working condition and decent wages and one doesn't, then fuck economics.
The Indian economy has taken off after decades in the doldrums. There is a rapidly developing middle class in China for the first time. The United States has a tremendously powerful economy that is extremely efficient at creating new markets. Do you seriously contend that the world would be better off without global trade? Or is it just that you feel entitled, as an American, to live in a world free of competition? We got rich first, so screw everyone else?
.. why give them your money? Stupid is as stupid does
The bigger picture is that this is yet another one of those corporate slippery slopes.
At one time there was a first broadcaster to watermark their logo on every TV show you watch. Now they all do it.
Some intrepid lawyer at a credit card company thought it would be a good idea to include terms for binding arbitration in every customer contract. Now they all do it.
Once upon a time you could go to a movie theater without being bombarded by fuggin' Pepsi ads. Now they all do it.
The technique is straightforward. A huge company with vast legal resources will create terms of contract that are annoying, but just a little bit less annoying than the transaction cost of replacing that company with another one. They've annoyed you, but like a frog being boiled in water, you figure you can live with it. Pretty soon all of the company's competitors are doing the same thing, and now you have no other recourse, even if you wanted to go through the time, expense, and hassle of switching.
I was a grunt back in the dark ages (late 80's) and I can't tell you how glad I am that we didn't have to lug that crap around with us. The amount we did have to carry was already a killing load; the senior NCO's, who got their start in Vietnam, always told us exactly what we should throw away, and were unanimous in their opinion we were still carrying too much stuff. (And they had heard the same thing from their Korea-veteran sergeants.)
I was a grunt in the early 90s, and it was of course the same problem. I was in a "light" infantry battalion. You know the joke there, of course.
SLA Marshall, in his esteemed study of combat load and its effect on battlefield performance, figured that the average soldier's load shouldn't exceed 1/3 of his weight. I recall that during one NTC rotation in the lovely Mojave Desert, all of my normal load plus my "fag bag" full of maps and code books and assorted crap, and the transmitter they forced platoon leaders to lug around, I was hauling 110 pounds. Of course it was all "necessary".
Grunts from the time of the Roman Legions have probably been complaining about excessive load.
Slashdot Mirror
I maintain my stance DRM has no right to exist, and DRM should be resisted by any means necessary. I want to live in a DRM free future no matter the cost.
"By any means necessary"?
"... no matter the cost"?
You're not alone in opposing DRM, but what are you going to do, barricade yourself in a church tower with a Remington 700 and start plucking off studio execs one by one?
After all, the UN is a model of efficiency and transparency. It should be easy to share control of the Internet!
So is it fault of telcoms or government?
The Executive branch told the telecoms. The telecoms, who have been working with government agencies for years, very clearly knew this was illegal. They went along with it anyway. Congress was not involved in the warrantless surveillance program.
The rule of law means that the laws apply to everyone. It means that if your government asks you to do something illegal, you have a legal obligation not to obey the government. AT&T, et. al. are used to being sued by and suing the government. It's not like they're afraid of going to court. They made money circumventing the Constitution.
They should not be given amnesty, so the courts can determine the extent of their liability.
...until one actually gets produced and you can point us to a page that shows video of the thing working properly.
In the mean time, you might as well point us to Heinline short stories and YouTube clips of Luke zipping around on his landspeeder.
You use the future tense - I think the past tense is more appropriate.
We haven't yet taken to the streets, AK-47s in hand. One nice thing about the rule of law is that for all the absurdities of our government and our legal system, people don't generally resolve disputes in America with bullets. I think we tend to forget that a lot when we talk about how jacked up the government is, how we should kill all the laywers, etc. Life without daily bloodshed has a lot to recommend to it.
Well that, and the big smirk I get every morning when I find out how much worse things have gone in Iraq. Man, I love watching the failure of ignorant assholes who ignore good advice.
So it's about winning the argument, eh? You're not alone in predicting that invading Iraq was a bad move. But taking satisfaction in our failure in Iraq seems perverse to me. After all, although the Executive made mistakes and Congress rubber stamped them, the mistakes hurt us all (Iraqis included). Every time I see another Bush misstep, I cringe. We'll be paying for this for a long time. To me, fixing our problems is a lot more important than saying "I told you so."
If we keep going down the "us and them" path in our own politics, we'll wind up like the Sunnis and Shiites, self-righteous to the end, destroying our own country in the name of winning an argument.
It's not racist or bigoted or infringing on anyone's civil liberties - it's an accurate and reliable way to find out about possible terror attacks.
The ACLU isn't trying to eliminate all wiretapping. They're on record as saying that there are times when wiretapping is necessary. I think any but the most deluded would agree that sometimes in order to stop people from doing very bad things, you need to use wiretapping. But this is the part that many people (not just the ACLU) object to:
Organizations like the NSA perform valuable service in defense of the country. So does the U.S. Navy. But just as I don't want the U.S. Navy deciding to bomb dangerous countries whenever it likes, I don't want the NSA deciding when to wiretap without any judicial oversight. Our system of government was initiated by men who were very aware of the dangers of too much power concentrated in one arm of the government. That's why we divide power in our government.
In a society that values the rule of law, the involvement of an independent judiciary in anti-terrorism matters is a good thing, not something to route around out for the sake of temporary convenience.
This kind of bickering will hopefully turn some people against social networks and get some kids back to doing their own pages again instead of using lame ass templates.
I thought the whole idea was to build APIs that would tie into social networks. This should allow people to build their own sites/blogs/whatever, using any combination of custom/template/third-party widgets. How is giving people more options a bad thing? It seems to me this will open up social networks, moving them away from the gated communities we have now. This should inspire more (not less) creativity.
I'm also not sure why it is intrinsically better for "the kids" to be building their own pages, rather than using social networking template pages. I suppose it is better for those kids who want to get into web development, but for the rest of them, building pages from scratch is the drudge work, and putting their own words, images, and moving pictures into the pages is the real fun. Again, more options are better, imho. The kids that want to learn web development will still be drawn to build their own sites, and they'll now have more tools with which to hook into template-driven sites.
I must assume that building houses a court very friendly to the patent trolls, probably someone ignorant of technology enough to not recognize obviousness and prior art in the tech sector.
The primary reason is that a few years ago the ED Texas set itself up specifically to be a venue for these kinds of cases. In 2002 there were 32 patent cases in ED Texas. In 2006 there were over 10x that number. They've developed a set of local rules that favor rapid resolution of cases. If you're a smaller patent troll going up against a larger patent holder, you want a speedy resolution. Otherwise, the big patent holder can bleed you dry with motion after motion, and extended discovery. The judges in ED Texas aren't idiots, and from what I've heard, the jurors aren't either.
Still, the combination of local rules and a pro-plaintiff bias add up to a very favorable venue for trolls.
Games usually teach you specifically to think inside the box and follow the set rules, so I'm just not so sure it's good training for problem-solving.
If you run through a particular problem in a game enough times, dying and being resurrected each time, eventually you'll move through the problem because the game only provides you with a limited set of options. In real life, you don't have the luxury of attacking problems by trying your options until one of them works.
"Analyst: Apple makes $831 per AT&T iPhone"
Apple Makes $831 On Each AT&T iPhone
It's not difficult to make accurate headlines. Just because the rest of the media has become a cesspool of inaccuracy and imprecision doesn't mean Slashdot should slouch to that level of lower expectations.
If the headline for this article were "Analyst claims Apple makes $831 on each AT&T iPhone", it would be less sensational, but certainly more accurate.
The fact is, that while it is indeed a derivative work, that is not fair use, and she did use a copyrighted work without authorization.
True, the fact that the work is derivative doesn't mean it is a fair use of the original work. But I'm curious why you think her use of Prince's song in this particular video wouldn't withstand a fair use affirmative defense?
The issuance of a patent only provides a presumption of validity. If Amazon decides to sue someone for running afoul of this patent, the defendant in such a case will be able to marshall all kinds of evidence that the patent was at the very least, precluded by prior art and was obvious.
Remember that issuance of a bad patent isn't the end of the world. The patent system was designed to be fault-tolerant. If Amazon wants to sue on the basis of their bad patent, they'll face difficulties in court, not to mention in the court of public opinion.
Greenpeace is an advocacy group. It uses the same marketing techniques as politicians, for-profit companies, and everyone else. They go for the big target. I think they're being honest in admitting it.
You assume that they have not been paid off to make sure they don't have a defense.
Right. Because every time a court decision doesn't go the way we like, it must mean someone was bribed. I see the logic.
"... the list of OSI-compatible licenses."
Why trim, when you can grow!
... but is it as good as Amiga 5?
Only matters if it's someone else's prior art.
The "On Sale" statutory bar of 102(b) applies. If the invention is placed on sale in the US by anyone, more than a year before the filing of the patent application, the application will not be granted.
Therefore your own prior art can invalidate your attempt to obtain a patent on something you've already brought to market.
I think you misunderstand my purposefully inflammatory rhetoric. I am saying what I am saying in order to arouse a reaction.
Is it surprising that your purposefully inflammatory rhetoric has been misunderstood?
Originally you wrote:
My ancestors fought in order to have equitable pay for work, decent working conditions, and something approaching a society where there is a reasonable middle-class. This is the kind of thing that seeks to have the U.S. be like a third-world nation.
It's rather clear that you're talking about the United States and the effect offshoring has on American workers.
But now you say:
They then "steal" a little bit of wealth from the Chinese or Indian worker as well as from the person who will purchase the products of those same workers.
So now it's no longer about protecting American workers. It's about protecting overseas workers and American consumers?
Your assessment of the sought after patents in question values them far too highly. The fact that IBM has patents on certain methods of conducting offshoring won't deny other companies the ability to offshore, given that the patents *if granted* are going to be narrowly tailored. There is a tremendous amount of prior art in the offshoring business, and there are are already plenty of companies engaged in the practice. Plus, business method claims aren't easy to patent. The USPTO scrutinizes them very carefully, and even if granted it can take four years or more, by which time the claimed methods may not even be of much use to IBM or anyone else. An application for a patent like this is really low on the list of things to be freaked out about.
Then again, based on your earlier comments, I'm not sure if you actually support offshoring or are opposed to it. You seem to be opposed to large corporations making money, regardless of whether they're offshoring or not. Maybe you should be directing your fervor at corporate personhood instead of patent claims.
It is time to rise up! Time to start the revolution. This MUST NOT be permitted.
If you're upset that these big companies are seeking business method patents for processes that may or may not even pan out in the marketplace, I'm puzzled. The method patents will only allow certain companies to use certain methods to perform some of their business functions offshore. This will allow them to keep others from using the same carefully defined methods, or will force other companies to license those methods. Either way, outsourcing is no longer the Soup-to-Nuts-Slam-Dunk Solution many companies thought it would be.
If you're upset about outsourcing, I wonder how you run your Open Source consulting firm. After all, a huge chunk of the software you're dealing with was created by people in countries other than the United States, and I'd hazard a guess that most of the work done on those programs wasn't done in North-East Ohio. In essence, you've outsourced millions of hours worth of work to the people who developed the software you're using. You, as a provider of technical services, are able to compete more effectively because of their labor.
If you were truly serious about being a mercantist, you wouldn't be leveraging so much labor from outside the US in your own business.
Finally, this statement is bizarre:
If the only comparative advantage is that one workforce has rights to decent working condition and decent wages and one doesn't, then fuck economics.
The Indian economy has taken off after decades in the doldrums. There is a rapidly developing middle class in China for the first time. The United States has a tremendously powerful economy that is extremely efficient at creating new markets. Do you seriously contend that the world would be better off without global trade? Or is it just that you feel entitled, as an American, to live in a world free of competition? We got rich first, so screw everyone else?
Gibbon's Decline and Fall is a good place to start.
I really need to read that one some day. Definitely a weak spot in my reading.
Thanks for the info.
The bigger picture is that this is yet another one of those corporate slippery slopes.
The technique is straightforward. A huge company with vast legal resources will create terms of contract that are annoying, but just a little bit less annoying than the transaction cost of replacing that company with another one. They've annoyed you, but like a frog being boiled in water, you figure you can live with it. Pretty soon all of the company's competitors are doing the same thing, and now you have no other recourse, even if you wanted to go through the time, expense, and hassle of switching.
I'd love to see a source for that if you have one.
Giving in to those complaints was a major factor in the drop in effectiveness of the legions . . .
I was a grunt back in the dark ages (late 80's) and I can't tell you how glad I am that we didn't have to lug that crap around with us. The amount we did have to carry was already a killing load; the senior NCO's, who got their start in Vietnam, always told us exactly what we should throw away, and were unanimous in their opinion we were still carrying too much stuff. (And they had heard the same thing from their Korea-veteran sergeants.)
I was a grunt in the early 90s, and it was of course the same problem. I was in a "light" infantry battalion. You know the joke there, of course.
SLA Marshall, in his esteemed study of combat load and its effect on battlefield performance, figured that the average soldier's load shouldn't exceed 1/3 of his weight. I recall that during one NTC rotation in the lovely Mojave Desert, all of my normal load plus my "fag bag" full of maps and code books and assorted crap, and the transmitter they forced platoon leaders to lug around, I was hauling 110 pounds. Of course it was all "necessary".
Grunts from the time of the Roman Legions have probably been complaining about excessive load.