Well, having used the free (gratis) nagware version of Sandboxie, I found it useful enough to cough up $20 or something for a non-nagware version. Doing this in the browser is the wrong place, but running your browser in a sandbox you genuinely protect yourself from sites which scribble all over your system (cookies, history, stored passwords, changed bookmarks, dodgy add-ons,...). You *don't* protect yourself from spyware which scrapes there and then, but you can chuck away and filesystem or registry changes.
A sandbox also means that you can revert to a previously clean system should you have a time limitted demo which writes some obscure registry key.
Or the GUI equivalent. This has long been part of the pitch for desktop virtualisation, whatever the technology used: all the data stays in the datacentre. If we really need an Excel jockey to play with government data, they should be doing so using VDI or some equivalent technology.
Not a perfect solution, particularly when there are security holes which need patching, but oldversion.com has earlier version - I use Adobe Acrobat Reader v5, which covers pretty much everything I ever get sent.
The BBC iPlayer doesn't use BitTorrent, but it does use a P2P technology for distributing the DRM encumbered download versions of their programmes. The whole thing wouldn't scale without it.
If you're not putting DRM on, then vanilla BT seems a perfect and ready-made medium. The Beeb, however, sell their programmes around the world, so won't knowingly let unencumbered versions out into the wild.
Yet, at the same time, the MPAA are sponsoring a "Copyright Awareness" scheme for scouts which tells them that illegal copying is no different from property theft.
They have to decide which way they want it: either it's equivalent to property theft, in which case the penalties should be the same, or it's a different offence which merits higher penalties.
If "Intellectual Property" were like physical property, then it could be governed by the same laws. The fact that we have patent/copyright laws shows that it quite clearly isn't. The monetary value associated with a copyright or patent absolutely depends on those laws being effective, and the copyright/patent holder being able to charge royalties *every* time a copy is made.
The widespread disregarding of copyright laws *may* result in loss to the copyright holder *if* an illegal copy substitutes for a royalty bearing copy. Alternatively, if an illegal copy is used where the viewer/listener would have gone elsewhere, the copyright holder is even. And if an illegal copy results in a royalty bearing copy being subsequently purchased, the copyright holder has benefited.
Well, whether they won or lest depends on your viewpoint.
They were found guilty of libel, so in that sense they lost.
They were not found guilty on all counts, though, so some of what they had printed was deemed to be true, so in that sense the partially won.
And McDonalds has changed, at least in part because of this case, so in that sense they clearly won. I think the world is a better place for the case having taken place.
Just as these people appear to have not done. The issue with Wikipedia is not that articles can contain spurious errors, it is that people who should know better don't bother to check when they really need a more authoritative source. Veropedia won't protect us from lazy journalists.
It's also a good idea to start the conversation with "Do you have the authority to replace this item". If he answers "No", then follow up with "Please could I speak to someone who does have the authority".
From TFA "Movie pirating cost the industry $18.2 billion worldwide in 2005, the last year for which figures were available, according to the Motion Picture Association of America."
Can any of us make up figures like this and get them reported in the Washington Post?
Well, I don't know about the US, but here in GB a new printed edition of a PD work enjoys a 20 year copyright. That means that if I were to input a piece of PD Beethoven unchanged into Lilypond, the output would be my copyright for a short period.
If I were to rearrange this Beethoven, perhaps making a simpler version for beginning pianists, then this would be a significant change and I would get a full life+70 copyright on it.
This all hinges on whether he has suffered financial loss. Linden Labs have turned this into a grey area.
On the one hand, Linden Dollars are game tokens. They have absolutely no intrinsic worth in real life, nor does Second Life "property". This means that LL have no obligations to make their systems to "trading standards", and spurious losses are not uncommon.
On the other hand, alongside third parties, LL operate and profit from a currency exchange between US and Linden dollars. They manage the market to try to maintain a stable exchange rate, meaning there is a de facto value for Linden Dollars in real life, even though it is not a currency.
IMHO, the first carries more weight, and it means that the "financial loss" premise for this action is invalid. Whatever the actions taken by the defendant, the plaintiff cannot have suffered financial loss because the "currency" in which this loss has arisen has no statutory value.
Hmm, I still don't like the use of the term "Intellectual Property", because it doesn't describe the offence which has been alleged.
As far as I can tell, this is a straightforward copyright infringement case based around "look and feel" [pun unavoidable].
OTOH, it could be a lawsuit which he knows will fail, opened just to get free publicity in editorial content. In which case it's been rather successful.
And the customer who has paid for their legitimate DVD has to sit through an unskippable piece about how bad copyright infringing copies are, while the person who buys an infringing copy is spared this nonsense.
No, the whole EULA thing came about because of a court ruling that before software was used, it had to be copied from the distribution media into your computer. It is this act of copying which is subject to the EULA - so long as the software stays on the CD you can do whatever you like with it.
Stinks, but there you are - what you buy is the CD, but in order to use it in a computer you have to copy it into aid computer, and a massive raft of conditions is attached to this act of copying.
Indeed, I would have thought that any missile could be retargetted or destroyed in flight. Or are Russian missiles still so primitive that they have to input the destination using thumbwheels?
Yes, but when I was looking at documentation formats in '90s, there was quite a bit of interest around SGML - this was in the days before MS Word was ubiquitous. The HTML DTD was created precisely to provide a structure for documents which were to be rendered as web pages, and it was Netscape who "extended" the syntax of HTML to add elements and attributes which broke the SGML standards.
The problem was a lack of good and inexpensive SGML tools at the time - though in its Novell days, an excellent Wordperfect SGML edition was briefly around, which gave users the ability to edit documents in a structured way, yet see them as they were to be rendered. Alas, it was about the time that WP lost their way, and MS started hoovering up with their technically inferior product.
What grieves me is not so much that MS Word is so widely used for letters and reports, but that big companies and organisations use it for large scale documentation, for which it is *so* badly suited. If government want to use it for sending letters then I'm not too bothered, but when they ask for statistical returns to be sent in Excel format it makes my flesh creep.
No, you're not buying a right to view the content, you're buying the physical disc. However, to view the film, you have to copy the film from that disc into your computer/DVD player, and it is this act of copying which is subject to the EULA. That's the difference between a book and a DVD - you don't have to photocopy the book in order to read it.
RMS's essay The Right to Read is based around reading an eBook for this reason.
I remember when this method was in development. We knew that what was being done was so unusual as to be almost sure to be unique, but needed a way to protect our right to use the method. We were correctly advised by our UK patent agent that our only options were to either publish or file for a patent. As we were in the middle of a contractual negotiation, we absolutely couldn't publish, so had to file a patent application to lay down a prior art date.
First to file does work, but it means that from your prior art date you only get ~18 months before your work is published. But a UK patent filing is relatively inexpensive, and at least provides a means of levelling the playing field - a lapsed patent application is still prior art.
Since then the BBC for one have prepared a mechanism to simplify their news pages so that the infrastructure can cope with far more visitors, serving essentially static content.
I was working three years ago on behalf of a government agency whose dynamically generated website maxed out because of something happening (questions were asked in the house). We had to design a simplified site with a small set of statically updated pages, automatically updated every 15 minutes, and were back in business in 48 hours. Since then the static site has been deployed on a few occasions.
If there were another "big news day" I would expect the BBC to hold up - dunno about other providers.
Nintendo's game plan is surely influenced by the fact that Sony hasn't launched PS3 other than North America. They have the European and Asian market buzz to themselves - the news channels here in GB are full of stories about Wii, while there has been nothing about PS3 because it doesn't launch until March.
If I were Nintendo I'd want to be getting units into the European markets pronto before people start holding back their purchases for the PS3 launch. For the unlucky ones there is a waiting list for Wiis to be delivered in the new year - there is no waiting list for PS3.
Whatever, I've got a Wii safely tucked away for my children's Christmas present (just had to make sure it worked properly - took a while coz i needed to check all the games in Wii sports). No way I'd have bought them a PS3 at launch prices.
Blank cassette tapes, video tape, CDROM, DVD media?
Hard disc drives, because they could be used to hold illegally copied music?
WiFi equipment, which could be used to listen to illegally copied music around the home?
Internet connectivity, which can be used to download illegally copied music?
Postage, which could be used to send illegally copied music on CDs to accomplices (we used to call them friends)?
Petrol (gasoline), which powers the cars which could be used to transport illegally copied music around?
We come back to the issue that because something can be used for an illegal purpose, that doesn't mean that there should be a presumption that it will be so used. Does an iPod have a legitimate purpose, and would the majority of its usage be for this legal purpose?
Once again, we see the behaviour of an industry which knows it is in its death throes. The distribution of music from artists to consumers will have been effectively disintermediated within 10 years, so the interests of the music distribution business are now limitted to squeezing the last cash they can from their historic position of influence. They don't care who they piss off because in time they will lose the customers whatever they do. Think SCO.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, having used the free (gratis) nagware version of Sandboxie, I found it useful enough to cough up $20 or something for a non-nagware version. Doing this in the browser is the wrong place, but running your browser in a sandbox you genuinely protect yourself from sites which scribble all over your system (cookies, history, stored passwords, changed bookmarks, dodgy add-ons, ...). You *don't* protect yourself from spyware which scrapes there and then, but you can chuck away and filesystem or registry changes.
A sandbox also means that you can revert to a previously clean system should you have a time limitted demo which writes some obscure registry key.
Or the GUI equivalent. This has long been part of the pitch for desktop virtualisation, whatever the technology used: all the data stays in the datacentre. If we really need an Excel jockey to play with government data, they should be doing so using VDI or some equivalent technology.
Not a perfect solution, particularly when there are security holes which need patching, but oldversion.com has earlier version - I use Adobe Acrobat Reader v5, which covers pretty much everything I ever get sent.
The BBC iPlayer doesn't use BitTorrent, but it does use a P2P technology for distributing the DRM encumbered download versions of their programmes. The whole thing wouldn't scale without it.
If you're not putting DRM on, then vanilla BT seems a perfect and ready-made medium. The Beeb, however, sell their programmes around the world, so won't knowingly let unencumbered versions out into the wild.
Yet, at the same time, the MPAA are sponsoring a "Copyright Awareness" scheme for scouts which tells them that illegal copying is no different from property theft.
They have to decide which way they want it: either it's equivalent to property theft, in which case the penalties should be the same, or it's a different offence which merits higher penalties.
Sigh,
If "Intellectual Property" were like physical property, then it could be governed by the same laws. The fact that we have patent/copyright laws shows that it quite clearly isn't. The monetary value associated with a copyright or patent absolutely depends on those laws being effective, and the copyright/patent holder being able to charge royalties *every* time a copy is made.
The widespread disregarding of copyright laws *may* result in loss to the copyright holder *if* an illegal copy substitutes for a royalty bearing copy. Alternatively, if an illegal copy is used where the viewer/listener would have gone elsewhere, the copyright holder is even. And if an illegal copy results in a royalty bearing copy being subsequently purchased, the copyright holder has benefited.
Well, whether they won or lest depends on your viewpoint.
They were found guilty of libel, so in that sense they lost.
They were not found guilty on all counts, though, so some of what they had printed was deemed to be true, so in that sense the partially won.
And McDonalds has changed, at least in part because of this case, so in that sense they clearly won. I think the world is a better place for the case having taken place.
Just as these people appear to have not done. The issue with Wikipedia is not that articles can contain spurious errors, it is that people who should know better don't bother to check when they really need a more authoritative source. Veropedia won't protect us from lazy journalists.
It's also a good idea to start the conversation with "Do you have the authority to replace this item". If he answers "No", then follow up with "Please could I speak to someone who does have the authority".
From TFA "Movie pirating cost the industry $18.2 billion worldwide in 2005, the last year for which figures were available, according to the Motion Picture Association of America."
Can any of us make up figures like this and get them reported in the Washington Post?
Well, I don't know about the US, but here in GB a new printed edition of a PD work enjoys a 20 year copyright. That means that if I were to input a piece of PD Beethoven unchanged into Lilypond, the output would be my copyright for a short period.
If I were to rearrange this Beethoven, perhaps making a simpler version for beginning pianists, then this would be a significant change and I would get a full life+70 copyright on it.
This all hinges on whether he has suffered financial loss. Linden Labs have turned this into a grey area.
On the one hand, Linden Dollars are game tokens. They have absolutely no intrinsic worth in real life, nor does Second Life "property". This means that LL have no obligations to make their systems to "trading standards", and spurious losses are not uncommon.
On the other hand, alongside third parties, LL operate and profit from a currency exchange between US and Linden dollars. They manage the market to try to maintain a stable exchange rate, meaning there is a de facto value for Linden Dollars in real life, even though it is not a currency.
IMHO, the first carries more weight, and it means that the "financial loss" premise for this action is invalid. Whatever the actions taken by the defendant, the plaintiff cannot have suffered financial loss because the "currency" in which this loss has arisen has no statutory value.
Hmm, I still don't like the use of the term "Intellectual Property", because it doesn't describe the offence which has been alleged.
As far as I can tell, this is a straightforward copyright infringement case based around "look and feel" [pun unavoidable].
OTOH, it could be a lawsuit which he knows will fail, opened just to get free publicity in editorial content. In which case it's been rather successful.
And the customer who has paid for their legitimate DVD has to sit through an unskippable piece about how bad copyright infringing copies are, while the person who buys an infringing copy is spared this nonsense.
No, the whole EULA thing came about because of a court ruling that before software was used, it had to be copied from the distribution media into your computer. It is this act of copying which is subject to the EULA - so long as the software stays on the CD you can do whatever you like with it.
Stinks, but there you are - what you buy is the CD, but in order to use it in a computer you have to copy it into aid computer, and a massive raft of conditions is attached to this act of copying.
Indeed, I would have thought that any missile could be retargetted or destroyed in flight. Or are Russian missiles still so primitive that they have to input the destination using thumbwheels?
Yes, but when I was looking at documentation formats in '90s, there was quite a bit of interest around SGML - this was in the days before MS Word was ubiquitous. The HTML DTD was created precisely to provide a structure for documents which were to be rendered as web pages, and it was Netscape who "extended" the syntax of HTML to add elements and attributes which broke the SGML standards.
The problem was a lack of good and inexpensive SGML tools at the time - though in its Novell days, an excellent Wordperfect SGML edition was briefly around, which gave users the ability to edit documents in a structured way, yet see them as they were to be rendered. Alas, it was about the time that WP lost their way, and MS started hoovering up with their technically inferior product.
What grieves me is not so much that MS Word is so widely used for letters and reports, but that big companies and organisations use it for large scale documentation, for which it is *so* badly suited. If government want to use it for sending letters then I'm not too bothered, but when they ask for statistical returns to be sent in Excel format it makes my flesh creep.
Hmm, call me cynical, but do we think that RTD's contract with the BBC may be up for renewal, and he's trying to scare them into upping his rate?
No, you're not buying a right to view the content, you're buying the physical disc. However, to view the film, you have to copy the film from that disc into your computer/DVD player, and it is this act of copying which is subject to the EULA. That's the difference between a book and a DVD - you don't have to photocopy the book in order to read it.
RMS's essay The Right to Read is based around reading an eBook for this reason.
Like throughput computing you mean? $1Billion of revenue so far, and that's just the first iteration.
I remember when this method was in development. We knew that what was being done was so unusual as to be almost sure to be unique, but needed a way to protect our right to use the method. We were correctly advised by our UK patent agent that our only options were to either publish or file for a patent. As we were in the middle of a contractual negotiation, we absolutely couldn't publish, so had to file a patent application to lay down a prior art date.
First to file does work, but it means that from your prior art date you only get ~18 months before your work is published. But a UK patent filing is relatively inexpensive, and at least provides a means of levelling the playing field - a lapsed patent application is still prior art.
Since then the BBC for one have prepared a mechanism to simplify their news pages so that the infrastructure can cope with far more visitors, serving essentially static content.
I was working three years ago on behalf of a government agency whose dynamically generated website maxed out because of something happening (questions were asked in the house). We had to design a simplified site with a small set of statically updated pages, automatically updated every 15 minutes, and were back in business in 48 hours. Since then the static site has been deployed on a few occasions.
If there were another "big news day" I would expect the BBC to hold up - dunno about other providers.
Strictly it's not an acronym unless it is commonly pronounced as a word.
NATO is an acronym, KVM isn't.
Nintendo's game plan is surely influenced by the fact that Sony hasn't launched PS3 other than North America. They have the European and Asian market buzz to themselves - the news channels here in GB are full of stories about Wii, while there has been nothing about PS3 because it doesn't launch until March.
If I were Nintendo I'd want to be getting units into the European markets pronto before people start holding back their purchases for the PS3 launch. For the unlucky ones there is a waiting list for Wiis to be delivered in the new year - there is no waiting list for PS3.
Whatever, I've got a Wii safely tucked away for my children's Christmas present (just had to make sure it worked properly - took a while coz i needed to check all the games in Wii sports). No way I'd have bought them a PS3 at launch prices.
We come back to the issue that because something can be used for an illegal purpose, that doesn't mean that there should be a presumption that it will be so used. Does an iPod have a legitimate purpose, and would the majority of its usage be for this legal purpose?
Once again, we see the behaviour of an industry which knows it is in its death throes. The distribution of music from artists to consumers will have been effectively disintermediated within 10 years, so the interests of the music distribution business are now limitted to squeezing the last cash they can from their historic position of influence. They don't care who they piss off because in time they will lose the customers whatever they do. Think SCO.