How do legislators think that banning profanity/slander/theft/rape/incest/etcyougettheid eabynow is going to fix anything? People that do this, we even have our own ACes here, are people that NEED HELP. Most communities fail to understand and help other people. We need to figure out why.
"If you want to reduce corruption, get rid of the power that politicians have to dole out special treatment to different corporations and industries."
I'm not political active, and this may seem like a dumb question. But excactly HOW does this reduce corruption? Isn't this just the matter of pushing power completely over to corporations, including the corruption?
Personally I think the US is trying to prove by example that you can go into excactly the same traps as USSR have. It's in the mindset of the people and their organizations, not in the rules and laws you make up.
Minds shift over time. An action from someone to shift other minds, will lead to an opposite reaction at a later point of time. Unfortunately, we're BAD at understanding ourselves, not because we can't, but because we don't WANT TO.
Well, pendulums do swing back and forth. If you want stability, then you gotta keep the balance.
I think the mindset and will of change of mindset came before people actually started adopting the business-term consumer. So this is probably a sign that we should join Hare Krishna or put transistors into our brains or something.
You mean like DeCSS was made just for viewing DVDs under Linux? It's too bad that argument is so undefendable, even though it is in many cases true (in many others false).
Information is information. It can never be bound to one corner of the universe forever. An OSS project like this would have to UNSCRAMBLE the signal, and from there you can do pretty much as you please with the information.
My guess is that the DMCA would apply here because you've now circumvented a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. It doesn't matter that the rest of the sourcecode does something else with the information. THEY WANT TO MAKE THE ALGORITHMS ILLEGAL TO USE BY ANYONE BUT THEMSELVES.
Gained some information now? (Man I'm TIRED of these discussions, I want a vacation!;-)
Taping from a digital TV is no harder than putting a video camera in front of it. Of course, you may get sync problems, but I'm sure you can filter that out with a good algo.
Another thing, the moment this starts affecting ordinary (normal?) people's lives, they're not gonna take it. There ARE limits to what your "elected" representatives can do, but I'm sure they'll pass a law soon to bypass that.
"because if you don't protect a copyright, you lose it"
That's trademarks, not copyright, not patents.
"MP3 allows for extremely high-quality copies of music. A cassette tape has noticable degredation in sound and tape hiss"
It depends what compression ratio you're looking for. Why not go for the Real Thing, store it in WAV files or raw sound-files like we did 9 years ago? Why not ban PCs when you're first at it, and make it a felony to copy anything without permission?
Btw, why isn't DAC recordings made illegal and hunted down in the same fashion? It's been there for years, and has better quality than most MP3 files out there.
Quality isn't really the issue here at all, it's what they want you to stare blindly at. Members of the RIAA are realizing that they are made partly obsolete. Their solution to this is to bribe politicians to pass draconian laws so they can keep their artificial limitations and near-monopoly on music and entertainment.
Great idea! Of course someone could make a new SimCity, and attract other Sims into migrating there too. And then you got SimEarth, where someone controls Gaia on which everyone lives:-)
It's incredible you don't get modded up one point for this. Oh well..
This is exactly why I think Rambus' businessmodel will fail in the long term. Development is only truly inventive in a competitive market, whereas Rambus is trying to seize an Intellectual monopoly on all development of PC memory technology. People will eventually get fed up with this, and develop more healthier models of developing technology, without being strangled by artificial pricing and boneheaded solutions.
It's just amazing how many well-speaking persons are trying to state the obvious without any depth knowledge to offer on the issue. Especially when concerned with Law, some people seem to think it's an end to all discussion.
"There seems to be a real issue with slashdot's perception of intellectual property right."
"A real issue". Like, you don't agree with it? You talk as if your opinion really mattered because you follow the norm, and everyone should follow you.
I guess many Slashdotters have a problem with IP when they receive cease-and-desist letters on something they have made that violates a patent or new "digital laws". I find it comforting that alot of people on here hasn't lost their common sense. However, this community is NOT homogenous.
"rmbs is an intellectual property firm: this means they only do r&d. if they can't patent something or get a licence for it they're screwd"
How such a company was allowed at the JEDEC meetings beats me.
"have you seen the p4 benchmarks (sorry forgot the site). they show a p4 with rmbs to outperform anything that has been here."
This is a ridiculous argument and test case. What does it prove that a P4 with RDRAM beats "anything that has been here"? I'm assuming you mean the PC-market, but wouldn't a comparative test between P4 RDRAM and SDRAM/DDRAM (with the best motherboards for each) be better?
"you say rmbs is expensive? The prices have been coming down all this year and since the new partitioning of dies yield even bigger."
You talk as if price reduction in the technology marketplace is something astonishing. This is old news. Only comparisons are worth something.
"rmbs royalities are only about 3%. This means that the manufacturers got most of the money anyway. The problem is that the chip industry hasn't come up with anything very original on their own "
Gee, they should be happy they get most of the money from their products? These companies came up with SDRAM didn't they? It's not as if the patent is very original either. At least it's a much cheaper, reliable and faster (relatively) memory-technology than RDRAM.
"(yea, have you seen ddr work? no, because it doesn't and it takes another half year utnil it does. all these rmbs bashers claim that rdram is crap, overseeing that ddr doensn't work at all)."
You're talking out of your ass. I have DDR-memory at home in my GeForce-card. It certainly works, and the tests shows it to be stupidly much faster than SDRAM for the same card (at high memory throughput). Now faced with SDRAM and RDRAM for my motherboard-memory, my choice is simple. SDRAM gives the most bang for the bucks. DDRAM will be comparable to RDRAM in every respect, yes, maybe even beat it, not only in price. You also seem to forget that you have to buy the most expensive RDRAM (P800) to get any good results with it.
"Now they tried screwing rmbs and try to win in court."
Rambus' business-model is totally way off. They expect their royalties for making what anyone in the business can make for themselves? It seems Rambus is only in for money and monopoly position, not to produce anything competitive and _simple_. Being sly and speculative shouldn't be endorsed by the law.
Microsoft has a monopoly in the COMMERCIAL DESKTOP MARKETPLACE - with Windows and Office, and can do pretty much as they please. This situation is stifling competition and development. As a result, many other Office suites and OSes are being released for FREE (aka StarOffice and BeOS PE). Because MS is entirely DOMINATING the desktop market - there isn't really much money to be made by other companies.
Not very many people are earning a living by developing Linux, it's more like a hobby. So Linux isn't really in the same marketplace as Windows/Office.
I think Linux, or other open and free OS/Office suites, will eventually prevail anyways. However, what's wrong with correcting the market-situation so that other commercial companies can compete on the same level as Microsoft? This has happened with AT&T and IBM before, and it will happen again when it's necessary.
Open standards means NOONE files any patents. I have no idea if Rambus truly came up with their idea all by themselves, but that really doesn't matter. This was an agreement of coming up with- and sharing new memory technology. Which means that the companies develop and open up their specs, which Rambus did. Rambus being the bastards they are violated that agreement by patenting their specs afterwards. What they did isn't fair to the other companies at all.
But everything is good as long as it's legal right?
"Anyway besides trashing Microsoft, I hope you relies the Microsoft's modal of software development is the more modular then any other company/group has ever created. Everything in windows is modular, I could re-write the spell checker for Word, or use Words spell checker from a webpage."
You must be joking, right? MS' idea of modularization is a joke.
"Actually, if you are allowed to makes copies of your software its ususally because the license you agreed to allows it."
Actually no:-)
Copying software for personal use is considered Fair Use by most civilized countries. As long as you're not distributing your legally bought software or gaining unauthorized access (cracking), it should be OK. This has been proven in court in the US too I believe.
Everyone who wants to bend over to shrink-wrap licenses please do so. It's your life, not mine.
Anyone who have read transcripts from Judge Jackson know that he knew what he was talking about. Microsoft IS a monopoly, just like AT&T and many others before. When a huge company strangles the market, killing off all competition, something must be done by the government.
While it may be interesting to argue technicalities in a court of Law, the fact is most of these "tech-cases" are about freedom and other Law-issues. However, Microsoft wants to argue details about how to implement an OS with a browser "their way", which is completely besides the point and the final ruling. Tech-issues would only shift the focus AWAY from important issues, like freedom, privacy and general legality, which is what courts are all about.
"Tech-courts" would be a VERY BAD THING. It would fragment an already complex court-system further. I suspect it could become yet another loop-hole for huge corporations, funding whatever judges they want this week.
What is Microsoft basically saying here?
"The hell with the Judges, we want our own courts!!"
Everyone everywhere should cringe at the very thought of this. Educate the Judges on technical issues, don't replace your legal system.
void main()
{
for (int i=10; --i >= 0; )
{
printf("Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!");
}
}
and:
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
So every possible ad is downloaded into the TiVo? I don't know how a TiVo works, but if it doesn't work that way, they will be uploading personal information about you.
Slashdot Mirror
How do legislators think that banning profanity/slander/theft/rape/incest/etcyougettheid eabynow is going to fix anything? People that do this, we even have our own ACes here, are people that NEED HELP. Most communities fail to understand and help other people. We need to figure out why.
- Steeltoe
"If you want to reduce corruption, get rid of the power that politicians have to dole out special treatment to different corporations and industries."
I'm not political active, and this may seem like a dumb question. But excactly HOW does this reduce corruption? Isn't this just the matter of pushing power completely over to corporations, including the corruption?
- Steeltoe
Personally I think the US is trying to prove by example that you can go into excactly the same traps as USSR have. It's in the mindset of the people and their organizations, not in the rules and laws you make up.
Minds shift over time. An action from someone to shift other minds, will lead to an opposite reaction at a later point of time. Unfortunately, we're BAD at understanding ourselves, not because we can't, but because we don't WANT TO.
- Steeltoe
Well, pendulums do swing back and forth. If you want stability, then you gotta keep the balance.
I think the mindset and will of change of mindset came before people actually started adopting the business-term consumer. So this is probably a sign that we should join Hare Krishna or put transistors into our brains or something.
- Steeltoe
You mean like DeCSS was made just for viewing DVDs under Linux? It's too bad that argument is so undefendable, even though it is in many cases true (in many others false).
;-)
Information is information. It can never be bound to one corner of the universe forever. An OSS project like this would have to UNSCRAMBLE the signal, and from there you can do pretty much as you please with the information.
My guess is that the DMCA would apply here because you've now circumvented a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. It doesn't matter that the rest of the sourcecode does something else with the information. THEY WANT TO MAKE THE ALGORITHMS ILLEGAL TO USE BY ANYONE BUT THEMSELVES.
Gained some information now? (Man I'm TIRED of these discussions, I want a vacation!
- Steeltoe
People bending over deserves what they get.
Myself, I have no belief this will be the "wave of the future". There's simply no market for it. Sure, they'll try.
10 years from now they'll refer to it as the Dark Ages, and we'll be huntin' for petrol.
- MadMax Steeltoe
Taping from a digital TV is no harder than putting a video camera in front of it. Of course, you may get sync problems, but I'm sure you can filter that out with a good algo.
Another thing, the moment this starts affecting ordinary (normal?) people's lives, they're not gonna take it. There ARE limits to what your "elected" representatives can do, but I'm sure they'll pass a law soon to bypass that.
- Steeltoe
"Records go platinum, and the artist goes bankrupt." That's what happened to TLC.
Not only that, but the record companies are/was in the process of buying new laws, to deny artists their rights to bankrupt themselves.
They want to keep'em as personal slaves I guess..
- Steeltoe
"because if you don't protect a copyright, you lose it"
That's trademarks, not copyright, not patents.
"MP3 allows for extremely high-quality copies of music. A cassette tape has noticable degredation in sound and tape hiss"
It depends what compression ratio you're looking for. Why not go for the Real Thing, store it in WAV files or raw sound-files like we did 9 years ago? Why not ban PCs when you're first at it, and make it a felony to copy anything without permission?
Btw, why isn't DAC recordings made illegal and hunted down in the same fashion? It's been there for years, and has better quality than most MP3 files out there.
Quality isn't really the issue here at all, it's what they want you to stare blindly at. Members of the RIAA are realizing that they are made partly obsolete. Their solution to this is to bribe politicians to pass draconian laws so they can keep their artificial limitations and near-monopoly on music and entertainment.
- Steeltoe
I thought people were posting to get heard, not to get modded up a few points.
Disclaimer: I know my karma will just plummet by posting this. Alas, I just wanted to get heard..
- Steeltoe
Wow, Slashdot sure is witty today. Just read those posts. Hillarious! :-)
Uuuh, do I have to say something funny too?
- Steeltoe
Doh!
Great idea! Of course someone could make a new SimCity, and attract other Sims into migrating there too. And then you got SimEarth, where someone controls Gaia on which everyone lives :-)
- Steeltoe
But comparisons between older systems ARE beneficial. I believe anyone buying the latest K-7, P-4 and 1.whatnot Ghz CPUs get what they deserve.
:-)
The "bleeding edge" has a name for a good reason
- Steeltoe
It's incredible you don't get modded up one point for this. Oh well..
This is exactly why I think Rambus' businessmodel will fail in the long term. Development is only truly inventive in a competitive market, whereas Rambus is trying to seize an Intellectual monopoly on all development of PC memory technology. People will eventually get fed up with this, and develop more healthier models of developing technology, without being strangled by artificial pricing and boneheaded solutions.
- Steeltoe
It's just amazing how many well-speaking persons are trying to state the obvious without any depth knowledge to offer on the issue. Especially when concerned with Law, some people seem to think it's an end to all discussion.
"There seems to be a real issue with slashdot's perception of intellectual property right."
"A real issue". Like, you don't agree with it? You talk as if your opinion really mattered because you follow the norm, and everyone should follow you.
I guess many Slashdotters have a problem with IP when they receive cease-and-desist letters on something they have made that violates a patent or new "digital laws". I find it comforting that alot of people on here hasn't lost their common sense. However, this community is NOT homogenous.
- Steeltoe
"rmbs is an intellectual property firm: this means they only do r&d. if they can't patent something or get a licence for it they're screwd"
How such a company was allowed at the JEDEC meetings beats me.
"have you seen the p4 benchmarks (sorry forgot the site). they show a p4 with rmbs to outperform anything that has been here."
This is a ridiculous argument and test case. What does it prove that a P4 with RDRAM beats "anything that has been here"? I'm assuming you mean the PC-market, but wouldn't a comparative test between P4 RDRAM and SDRAM/DDRAM (with the best motherboards for each) be better?
"you say rmbs is expensive? The prices have been coming down all this year and since the new partitioning of dies yield even bigger."
You talk as if price reduction in the technology marketplace is something astonishing. This is old news. Only comparisons are worth something.
"rmbs royalities are only about 3%. This means that the manufacturers got most of the money anyway. The problem is that the chip industry hasn't come up with anything very original on their own "
Gee, they should be happy they get most of the money from their products? These companies came up with SDRAM didn't they? It's not as if the patent is very original either. At least it's a much cheaper, reliable and faster (relatively) memory-technology than RDRAM.
"(yea, have you seen ddr work? no, because it doesn't and it takes another half year utnil it does. all these rmbs bashers claim that rdram is crap, overseeing that ddr doensn't work at all)."
You're talking out of your ass. I have DDR-memory at home in my GeForce-card. It certainly works, and the tests shows it to be stupidly much faster than SDRAM for the same card (at high memory throughput). Now faced with SDRAM and RDRAM for my motherboard-memory, my choice is simple. SDRAM gives the most bang for the bucks. DDRAM will be comparable to RDRAM in every respect, yes, maybe even beat it, not only in price. You also seem to forget that you have to buy the most expensive RDRAM (P800) to get any good results with it.
"Now they tried screwing rmbs and try to win in court."
Rambus' business-model is totally way off. They expect their royalties for making what anyone in the business can make for themselves? It seems Rambus is only in for money and monopoly position, not to produce anything competitive and _simple_. Being sly and speculative shouldn't be endorsed by the law.
- Steeltoe
Microsoft has a monopoly in the COMMERCIAL DESKTOP MARKETPLACE - with Windows and Office, and can do pretty much as they please. This situation is stifling competition and development. As a result, many other Office suites and OSes are being released for FREE (aka StarOffice and BeOS PE). Because MS is entirely DOMINATING the desktop market - there isn't really much money to be made by other companies.
Not very many people are earning a living by developing Linux, it's more like a hobby. So Linux isn't really in the same marketplace as Windows/Office.
I think Linux, or other open and free OS/Office suites, will eventually prevail anyways. However, what's wrong with correcting the market-situation so that other commercial companies can compete on the same level as Microsoft? This has happened with AT&T and IBM before, and it will happen again when it's necessary.
- Steeltoe
You really ought to read the post again?
Open standards means NOONE files any patents. I have no idea if Rambus truly came up with their idea all by themselves, but that really doesn't matter. This was an agreement of coming up with- and sharing new memory technology. Which means that the companies develop and open up their specs, which Rambus did. Rambus being the bastards they are violated that agreement by patenting their specs afterwards. What they did isn't fair to the other companies at all.
But everything is good as long as it's legal right?
- Steeltoe
"Anyway besides trashing Microsoft, I hope you relies the Microsoft's modal of software development is the more modular then any other company/group has ever created. Everything in windows is modular, I could re-write the spell checker for Word, or use Words spell checker from a webpage."
You must be joking, right? MS' idea of modularization is a joke.
- Steeltoe
No "moderator gods" moderate on dmoz.org, not users and not XX points per category from each users IP.
Don't misunderstand me, dmoz.org is great, but it lacks the automatics of a search-engine.
- Steeltoe
"Actually, if you are allowed to makes copies of your software its ususally because the license you agreed to allows it."
:-)
Actually no
Copying software for personal use is considered Fair Use by most civilized countries. As long as you're not distributing your legally bought software or gaining unauthorized access (cracking), it should be OK. This has been proven in court in the US too I believe.
Everyone who wants to bend over to shrink-wrap licenses please do so. It's your life, not mine.
- Steeltoe
Anyone who have read transcripts from Judge Jackson know that he knew what he was talking about. Microsoft IS a monopoly, just like AT&T and many others before. When a huge company strangles the market, killing off all competition, something must be done by the government.
While it may be interesting to argue technicalities in a court of Law, the fact is most of these "tech-cases" are about freedom and other Law-issues. However, Microsoft wants to argue details about how to implement an OS with a browser "their way", which is completely besides the point and the final ruling. Tech-issues would only shift the focus AWAY from important issues, like freedom, privacy and general legality, which is what courts are all about.
"Tech-courts" would be a VERY BAD THING. It would fragment an already complex court-system further. I suspect it could become yet another loop-hole for huge corporations, funding whatever judges they want this week.
What is Microsoft basically saying here?
"The hell with the Judges, we want our own courts!!"
Everyone everywhere should cringe at the very thought of this. Educate the Judges on technical issues, don't replace your legal system.
- Steeltoe
What's the difference between:
void main()
{
for (int i=10; --i >= 0; )
{
printf("Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!");
}
}
and:
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!
- Steeltoe
So every possible ad is downloaded into the TiVo? I don't know how a TiVo works, but if it doesn't work that way, they will be uploading personal information about you.
- Steeltoe
Isn't it better than turning old and grey, suddenly realizing that you never had ANY FUN in your life?
Entertainment is supposed to be fun. If it isn't fun anymore, do something else. Just don't lose perspective on why you did play those games.
- Steeltoe