Re: BREAKING: Lewis Page in misleading headline non-story shocker!
heyrick is right! The Register is the only place you can get proper rubbish these days!
1972 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jul 2011
On the contrary, in the language used by Lester, "or" is actually the correct word to use, not "and". If the devices are restricted to both 18,000m AND 515m/s, then they cannot exceed either. If, on the other hand, they are restricted to either 18,000m OR 515m/s, than they can exceed one, but not both.
If Lester had instead used the phrase "cannot exceed" rather than "are restricted to", then "and" would be the correct term to use. Remember, A && B == !(!A || !B); A || B == !(!A && !B).
Microsoft, 2000: "Oracle has funded or supported numerous groups that have attacked Microsoft ..., such as ...the Computer & Communications Industry Association."
2012: 'the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which Oracle says is funded "in large part" by Google.'
Awww, did the CCIA dump Oracle for Google? Is that what's really got you upset, Larry?
The Equador government can make Assange a diplomat, and this will give him diplomatic immunity.
Which isn't retroactive.
Besides, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the CIA or FBI planted the female rape 'victims' so they can trump up charges against him and to villainize him making him be hated by the public.
You're absolutely right there. In fact, I'd go as far as saying a genius would probably NOT figure that out.
Assange might have a huge ego, but I hardly believe that he can only rape to get laid.
That issue isn't about only. And this article isn't about Assange. Why do he and his supporters keep trying to make everything about him, again?
Plain and simple, the United States was out to get him and they'll use whatever means necessary to punish him for helping make them a laughing stock.
[citation needed]
When she opines that Apple and Samsung should cross-license when Samsung's case is that Apple's patents are invalid.
Not bias, practicality. Once a patent is issued, it's assumed to be valid until proved otherwise. Samsung's got a very high bar to reach, especially with a jury involved.
It can often be better (from a business perspective) to license an invalid patent* than lose a huge chunk of your business for sticking to principles.
* Not that I believe Apple wants to give them a license anyway.
Love you too. Kiss Kiss.
I take it you based your assessment of those valleys on a rigorous examination of the full-resolution pictures based firmly in your extensive experience in identifying geological features via two-dimensional analysis?
Or should we dial our Commentard Expectation Meter down from "Witty Expert" to "Bitter Wannabe"?
will gladly call Metro "Windows 8".Then I can say the following confidently and truthfully:
Windows 8 first shipped in 2010, on a phone with Windows Phone 7. Indeed, Windows Phone 7 did not function at all without Windows 8, but Microsoft didn't officially port Windows 8 to the PC until the release of Windows 8 in 2012, which includes both a desktop and Windows 8. Developers who want to write for Windows 8 still have the option to write .NET applications if they aren't comfortable writing for Windows 8. So you don't really have to use Windows 8, even if you upgrade to Windows 8. But it's recommended that you get used to Windows 8 soon, because most likely Windows 9 will only come with Windows 8.
Some people are arguing that Microsoft should bring Windows 8 to Windows 7, to cater to those users who want Windows 8 but don't want Windows 8. But others argue that that would improve adoption of Windows 8 only at the expense of Windows 8 adoption, as people realized they could install Windows 8 without the hassle of installing Windows 8. Besides, the greatest resistance is not to Windows 8, but to Windows 8.
The SF-2100 and -2200 Flash Storage Processors as they are called handle flash so sensitively that Ultrabook users may get an extra hour of battery life compared to other, non-specified controllers.
Well, anyone can play that game. I should know -- I'm more of an expert on lingual sophistry when compared to other, non-specified trolls.
It does my nut in when people claim they are using "green energy" from wind farms and the like - they aren't - they are paying a premium to their electricity supplier in order to further fund R&D into renewable energy - but the actual energy flowing into their property is coming from the National Grid - and therefore from wherever the nearest power station is.
No, they're not actually receiving and using "green" power. But they are paying green energy suppliers for the electricity. Meanwhile (let's assume their electricity actually came from a coal-based plant), the coal-based plant has given them electricity without being paid (by them, anyway) for it. So they actually lose some on that deal. Someone else, who didn't choose a green supplier but happens to live close to one, is paying the "dirty" supplier but getting "green" energy.
In this scenario, who is actually responsible for the pollution caused by the "dirty" supplier? The individual who received (through no fault of their own) that electricity or the individual who paid the supplier to generate it? Conversely, who gets credit for the renewable energy, those who happened to receive it because of the laws of physics and the layout of the grid, or those who funded the research and generation?
Well first, the concept of "significant" is wholly subjective...
Tell that to a statistician.
and second, it contradicts the absolutist terms imposed by "exclusive rights".
No, it doesn't. "Exclusive rights" pertain only to works which reach a significant level of complexity to begin with (e.g, you can't claim copyright on Middle C played on a piano for one half-beat.)
If I rob your house, but don't steal a "significant" quantity of goods, does that mean I now have the moral "right" to call your goods my exclusive property?
It has been successfully argued (usually by those on your side of this debate) that copyright infringement is not theft. Since that has been well-proven, I won't bother to repeat it here. Suffice to say that one of the many differences between the two is the significance factor.
But if these "two rather weak individual cases" are not enough to convince you, I can easily furnish you with many more...
I asked for data, not anecdotal evidence. The closest you come to that is your "about 980,000" figure. But that is based on an overly broad search term on YouTube, which has so much derivative and rehashed content that I'd guess less than 1 in 50 of those results actually represents a unique case.
The "thousands of years" of contributions may not be relevant to the legal argument, but they certainly are relevant to the moral argument.
Since this is a discussion about an article about law, and not moral philosophy, your moral argument is out of place to begin with. Even so, you do no justice to it with these emotional arguments. Provide some good statistics and logical analysis rather than anecdotal evidence and emotional hyperbole (e.g, "tip of the iceberg", "go back to the days when we tamed fire", etc.)
Indeed it's the contradiction between the law and morality in copyright that I have the greatest objection to...
The law is not a moral device. It's a social construct. Copyright law, especially, is not a law of moral enforcement. I'm not going to take the time to explain this basic difference to you, as there are plenty of resources which can do that. Some of them even have pictures!
You seem to have missed the crucial point that if the entire purpose of metadata is to establish "ownership", and there are multiple instances of independently produced but essentially the same works, none of which ever contained the others' metadata to begin with, then how exactly does metatdata help the Intellectual Monopolist's cause?
And that isn't an "edge case", it's the entire foundation of Intellectual Monopoly, which claims "exclusive rights" to creative works, all of which are inescapably derivative, and that's why "creative" works within each category are all so alike. Protecting metadata in verbatim copies is therefore somewhat moot, under the circumstances, if all examples of the genre are copies anyway, and even the "original" ... isn't.
Your entire argument is predicated on the assertion that these multiple instances are the rule, rather than the exception, and that all modern works are derivative. Yet the only support you've provided for this assertion is two rather weak individual cases. Prove, with valid research and statistical analysis, that the majority of modern works are significantly derivative.
You'll notice I went from "derivative" to "significantly derivative" there. This is because it's easy to argue that nearly every modern work must be derivative to some degree. But simply using the same words or key signature or imagery is not in se plagiarism. A much greater degree of similarity between an original work and a subsequent work needs to be shown to support a case of plagiarism.
Furthermore, neither of the cases you presented involved "independently produced but essentially the same" works. In the first case, the defendants were aware of the original image and of the copyright on it (one of them had previously settled for a similarly infringing work). The second case involved the sampling, or cognizant use, of a piece of music. In both cases, the latter works were produced with awareness of preceding works and thus could not be considered to be truly "independently produced."
I'm just trying to figure out why you think your so-called "edge cases" are exceptions rather than the rule
Well, partly because that's inherent in the definition of the term "edge case", but mostly because I made the apparently incorrect assumption that you wanted to provide a logical argument rather than an emotional one, and thus could be counted on to provide a significant proportion of the evidence available. If two cases are a significant proportion of the cases which fit your argument, then we are talking about exceptions rather than the rule. If, on the other hand, you have evidence that shows that a significant percentage of copyright disputes involve "independently produced but essentially the same" works, please provide it.
As for the unlimited attribution metadata you propose, that might be difficult, given the innumerable, potentially uncredited and largely forgotten or unknown contributors, spanning thousands of years...
Well, since there is no jurisdiction where copyright extends to thousands of years, that's really not a problem. While the retention of metadata past the end of copyright might be useful for academic purposes, it's not necessary from a legal standpoint.
Finally, I think I need to explain the screwdriver/nail issue a little better to you. The primary issue that metadata governance is intended to resolve is that of orphan works (and the potential abuse of that concept.) Currently, it can be difficult for an individual who wishes to use a work to identify and thus properly compensate/attribute the original creator of the work because of missing metadata (whether cause by the original creator not including metadata or by an intermediary stripping out the metadata during some conversion process.) It is also an easy exercise for a willful infringer to remove the metadata from a work and then claim ignorance. With proper metadata governance, the missing metadata would become a very rare event, and hence the claim of ignorance of the original source would be much harder to sustain. This is a completely different issue than that of recreating a photoshopped image or sampling/remixing a piece of music. It's also very different from the philosophical argument between Intellectual Monopolists, as you call them, and Creative Anarchists, as it's beginning to appear that you are.
How exactly would metadata help stop those dastardly "thieves" who dare to compose photos that are merely similar to others, such as in the infamous Temple Island case, for example?
In the same way that you use a screwdriver to pound in a nail. Metadata doesn't solve the problem you linked to because it's not designed to. The problem you linked to appears to be an edge case, about which even the judge involved was not happy because it wasn't really well covered by the law. I doubt that it's representative of the majority of copyright issues.
And what use is metadata when so much of what is purportedly an "original", copyrighted work is actually a blatant rip-off?
Well, in the second case you linked to, if metadata were included in the actual original, then the stripping of it to produce the rip-off would have been a crime, would it not? And leaving it in would have been the proof of copying that the original artist needed. So either way the original artist would have had some more legal recourse.
Using and preserving metadata, by law or otherwise, seems rather moot, under the circumstances. We'd need to have a voting system to decide which plagiarist's metadata to preserve, and even then it would still be a somewhat arbitrary decision, given the highly and inescapably derivative nature of all supposedly "creative" works.
No voting system would be needed. The rule would be very simple: preserve ALL the metadata. Then each work would have a derivation tree from which you could determine the sources. As a side benefit, you'd eventually be able to get a good idea of how derivative a work is just by the size of the metadata.
You can't determine the value of a solution solely by the existence of edge cases, of which there will always be some. You need to determine how effective it will be overall -- and accept a reasonable level of ineffectiveness. 100% effective solutions don't exist.
"Lappy" is an Americanism? I've only heard it from Europeans.
But a quick look through the double-tounge dictionary (<a href='http://www.waywordradio.org/lappy_2/>http://www.waywordradio.org/lappy_2/</a>) does seem to indicate that the earliest use was from someone in the US.
I still feel that it's wrong to tar an entire nation or geographic region with the crimes of a few individuals, however. I suggest we use the more appropriate term "pretentious-wanker-ism".
I do, however, use the term "tabby" quite often, but in my defense, I am a cat person.
So any theory of long runout landslides on Earth must also work for avalanches on Iapetus.
This is a common logical fallacy. Two events with similar appearances "must" have the same explanation, even though they occur in very different environments with very different materials. It's actually quite possible that the long runout landslides and the ice avalanches are extended by entirely different factors. It's just not appealing to our human sensibilities, which tend to push us towards a single unifying explanation for everything.
If that was true, then I simply acquire a cheap FRAND patent (most of them earn very little, so this shouldn't cost too much). Then I contact apple, and tell them I want $1m per iPhone. There's no way they'll accept that, so they'll refuse.
You're missing an important piece here. If a patent is applicable to a device, the device manufacturer should never refuse to pay a license. They should negotiate the license terms. The correct response to your extortionate plan should be "$1m per device is way too high. Let's negotiate a fair and reasonable license."
At that point, you are obligated to negotiate FRAND terms because Apple agreed that licensing your patent was necessary, and agreed to negotiate terms.
If Samsung is correct, however, Apple essentially said "we don't need your stinking license", which might, if their devices are shown to be infringing, allow Samsung to charge whatever they like.
but the downside is that MS doesn't integrate well at all with the open web stack (LAMP and the like) and the Java world.
Sez who? We've got several Java systems storing their data in MS SQL right now, no problem -- and I've worked on a few projects where Apache, PHP, and even MySQL talked with MS SQL fine. I haven't done any of that work with Linux specifically, so I won't comment there, but I can safely say that 4/5 of your comment is bunk.
Of course this means that CO2 increases AFTER the planet begins a warming cycle. That doth not play well with the CAGW camp, now does it?
Actually, it plays right into their hands. We already know, experimentally, that CO2 can trap heat, leading to warming. If research shows that warming is likely to increase CO2 as well, then we have a feedback loop. The faster it happens, the more vicious the cycle.
In short, if step 1 is increased atmospheric CO2 and 2 is warming, we have
1 -> 2 -> 1 -> 2 -> 1 (repeat ad infinitum.)
For example, if a user says a photo should be visible in the geographic region of San Francisco, to members of a certain group the user belongs to, and to "friends of friends," the system would add up all of these options and generate a summary explaining what it all means.
I believe Messrs. Cantor, Euler, and Venn can all show prior art.
WTF, USPTO? Seriously? I mean, really, allowing the patenting of a simple application of set theory?
I think the whole problem though is the way IP is handled by the courts. If samsung had made an iTab that was an identical clone of the iPad, apple can't go to the court and get a sensible judgement just based on that. They have to sue based on very specific things (best case a design patent, but more usually stuff like patents on a particular type of scrolling or something). And the court won't accept a massive list of such features that make up the product, so they have to pick a few key features.
I think the whole problem is that IP is handled by courts. This mess is being repeated, ad nauseam, with different results, in every distinct jurisdiction in the world. End result: conflicting decisions, conflicting remedies, 600 different variations just to satisfy the different remedies. The first step in any dispute between international entities should be the selection of a single jurisdiction for the dispute. And hopefully this step would be difficult enough and take long enough to dissuade those without serious complaints.