absolutely nothing. but you seemed to miss the point. point is he got credit for "inventing" products that he didn't invent at all.
say i lived then and wanted to build a better light. i would have been unable to without first buying out the hoarder (edison). this is just another in a long string of abuses on the patent system.
While edison did in fact bring a functional product to market, that is sadly not true in most cases today. most patents filed today are done so only to have the sole "right" to bring that product to market. and if anybody else wanted to do so they would first have to buy the rights. effectively blocking any but the biggest businesses from doing so.
"The argument that people seem to be making, that these people have been given distribution rights, and therefore everyone else distributing the files also has distribution rights seems false to me."
Wrong. That is NOT The argument being made. A little more reading comprehension on your part is needed.
The argument being made is that those people who are being threatened and sued by DigiProtect for downloading files FROM THEM have not infringed. Nowhere did I see a claim that this covers other file sharers as well.
To make a little more clear to you. The claim of wilful infringement can only be made when the distribution of copyrighted material is unauthorised. In the case of this company the availability and distribution of media was authorized by the copyright holder, and therefore NOT infringement.
While you are correct on stating that these downloaders do not have the right to redistribute any data that had been downloaded, the fact still remains that the initial download from Digiprotect was authorized and legal.
That however gets a little screwy with the distribution method of choice which, by its very nature of operation, requires data to be redistributed among peers. In this case I would think the party responsible for uploading the .torrent file would be considered the original distributor.
Well put argument. I agree with you on most points. The only problem I have with it is you last point.
While HP has every right to try and control their business model, they need to do it themselves. They do not have the right to pressure other legitimate competition out of business.
There are many ways to do this. One in particular is the use of coded chips on the cartridges themselves, and has been used for many years.
You yourself use the example of carrier locked cell phones to recoup subsidies with subscription contracts. You should however also take not that it has been ruled that it is perfectly legal for a consumer to remove the subsidy lock from a locked phone and take it to whatever carrier he or she wishes. And by the same token HP should not be allowed to remove competition by forcing re-fillers out of business.
First off. Horrible example. I live in Spokane, less than a couple of hours from the reservation. I don't need to work for Siemens or any other company in the business to know that there is a problem. The fact that the reservation exists is enough to know that the problem exists.
The only point your argument can make is that he was tipped off that a company was looking into cleaning up low level waste and therefore had the opportunity to beat them to the punch.
And as far as non-competition contracts, they are in my opinion much to broad and far reaching. In most cases they effectively make it illegal to form or work for any company that may be any sort of competition. An usually for some time after you are no longer employed at the company where you signed it.
As for the Mattel case, the only reason Mattel should have any right to Bratz is if he did in fact use company time, funds, or resources for the initial work on brats. The the thought that any ideas one my have while working for a company are owned by said company is absolutely ridiculous. As far as I'm concerned its nothing more than anti competitive bs. And the judge who set the precedent for it should be shot.
off topic again. Apparently you are unable to grasp sarcasm.
That post was not a McCain advertisement. He was poking fun at John McCain and Sarah Palin. That you couldn't grasp that actually disturbs me and makes me worry for the intelligence level of the American public.
I hope the case does win. AT&T will lose out in cali. Now, not knowing the terms of Their Apple's contract with AT&T seems to me like Apple could then sell the phones unlocked in Cali and AT&T would not be able to do anything about it. That portion of the terms may then be invalid in the state. Great for apple and the consumer.
What auction? They already own the spectrum. But if Sprint would like to licence the spectrum so be it. Turn a licence deal into cash flow for the education system. I see nothing wrong with major corporations sending money back to the schools. Might even trough logic way out there and say more revenue to the school districts from giant corps would result in better educated consumers. Everybody wins.
For that matter you could stipulate that wireless equipment be furnished to the schools as part of the licensing deal.
This would create better developers and thus spurring new innovation. It's a strech I know, but any additional revenue going into our education system is a good thing.
Sounds great to me. I personally own a sony minidisc player, which to my ears, sounds much better than mp3. I hava always maintained that the audio quality is higher than mp3 at a lower bitrate. But I also have sensitive ears. Mp3 compression causes digital artifacts that are audible as very high frequency harmonics. There is a reason profresional portable recording decks use high density minidiscs (and thus the ATRAC format)and not mp3 compression.
But I am not suprised that they are dumping the format. It is yet another example of a proprietary format (better it may be. remember betamax?) that sony tried to lock people into. Licence the technology and make it available, maybe people would actually use it. BlurRay is doomed to failure for that very reason.
You give me credit for that commentNeverhood, but i did not come up with it. Just laughed really hard when i heard it.
Maybe I am now guilty of copyright infringement.
And one more thing.
John. Maybe you should get your reading scores up before you post. The comparison is to WHY people are dl'ng music istead of puchasing. It is not comparing speed limits to cracking down.
Another lemming. Go jump.
Ok. I know this has been stated in the past. But let me restate in anothers words.
For those last comic standing fans, one comic put it this way. (cant remember his name)
I hate the fbi ads at the begining of movies. They say "You wouldn't steal a car." Right. I wouldn't steal a car. But if my buddy called up and said "Hey I just got a brand new BMW. Would you like me to burn you a copy?" I might think about it.
Seriously. It's a COPY. An seriously if you think the $15 goes to "covering costs" you are just as brainwashed as the rest of them. Go get in line. Effing Lemmings.
Screw the iPhone. At the risk of starting a flame war, it is just another overpriced box from apple. Just a rehash of current technology mixed into one unit, hyped, and sold as a "lifestyle" device while not bringing anything really new to the table.
I second the interest in the OpenMoko project. Essentially the same as an iphone but, get this, totally open source and 200 bucks cheaper. I never understood the desire of people to pay obsene amounts of money for a name.
It's astonishing how one false Idea can be interpreten and run with in nearly every single comment.
The ban on cell phones has nothing to do with arcraft avionics. All the flight electronics in any moder plane are heavily shielded.
Ask yourselves this. What happens when you go to higher ground with your cell phone?
You get a better signal don't you. That is because you have a better line of sight signal path to the tower. Under normal operation you will only ever have line of sight to a single tower. Two if moving between cells. Three at best on flat terrain.
No lets get up even higher. You see where I'm going? Now I'm not going to do the math but when you look out the windows at 30,000 feet you can visibly see across an entire state. How many cell towers is that? Which one to connect to? If you place a call it has the potential to jam your current frequency on all those towers. making it unusable for other customers.
Using cell phones on airplanes at altitude has the potential to cause major problems on ther ground, hence the ban.
The technology to reject signals not coming from the avionics has been around for a long time. It's called signal rejection (imagine that) Your tv has it, just to make the picture a tiny bit clearer.
Morever, it has been proven that even with amplified cellular signals show no deflection in any of the the navigational equipment.
Nothing to do with glide slope either. Mr. James Hinkly up there is not a pilot. Neither am I. but I do know that in the event of ILS indicator failure upon landing, two things would happen. 1. Tower would inform you radar says you are too low. 2. The landing slope indicator lights on the runway, which have no mechanical or electronic components, would be red. That means your are too low. Not a tough thing to rely on. esier than looking at instuments.
To sum up. No interference on plane.
Screws up cell networks on ground.
Who cares about net access on plane? Getta life.
I am begining to wonder how many of TechDirts readers are actually tech savvy? But I suppose that moniker no longer has anything to do with ones ability to read or understand the english language.
On multiple occasions in this article and its post, and I'll add one here, it has been stated that this was an offer given to people at checkout. For those of you that don't understand check out, checkout is the point where you have finished your online shopping spree and are preparing to pay for your purchase. The credit card is most likely now sitting in front of the user, ready to be given to the evil giant online retailer.
One way or the other amazon was gettng the card number, either for the purchase or the service.
Warning. Prepare for flaming in the following posts.
Also, I was one of those guys taking calls for Video Professor. Contrary to what janine writes, the charges were not fraudulant. Numerus times in during the sale it is stated that the customer will be charged $79 if they do not return at leas one of the cd's within 10 days.
The problem here is that the script is and subsequent sale is worded in such a way as to be very confusing to the caller. I don't think I ever had one caller who was really comfortable with the sale, but only about 1 in five people actually aske questins to clarify the details. Once those simple questions are asked it becomes apparent what will happen and the sale is dead.
This is not an uncommon practice. 99% of the infomercials you see on television come with an offer for something else. This is often hidden in the sale or worded in such a way as to be misleading.
While having above average reading comprehension skills myself (not bragging) I cactch on to these things the first time I read the script.
A word of advice Most infomercial sale tactics are ILLEGAL!! The most common tactic used is called "bait-and-switch". You are offered one product and sold another for a higher price. Unfortunately companies get by with this because there are relatively small percentages of complaints. If more people would report incidents like this to the bbb we would not be in this situation.
OK. enough of my rant. Any bets on how many people still don't get the post?
guess what no it is not.
The Eniac was nothing more than a giant, tube driven calculator. There was no storage device to save your software. The logic WAS hardwired, literally. Programmed by changing wired connections
between banks of tubes. The software was mounds of paper on which the "programs", or rather connection diagrams, were written.
Modern computers do the exact same thing. Just with more transistors instead of vacuum tubes.
Hardware and software should not be viewed as seperate entities. Hardware is the base for all software. Without hardware software cannot exist. You can in fact make software that will move you from one place to another, using hardware as a means for the actual moving.
Back to the patent issue.
I agree all pantents are patents on ideas, wether hardware or software.
I also agree that the only thing a patent does is to allow inventors to sit on their laurels.
Let's say I invent somthing that would make your life better. I also get a patent on this great new invention, an overly broad one. Let us also say that everybody wants one.
So I start making lots of money on my great invention. Pretty soon other people want in on the action. Not knowing about googles patent search function, A competitor brings a slightly better, but remarkably similar product to market. Knowing they have infringed on my patent, I get to sue and put them out of businees.
Now with my compitition out of the way I get to keep 100% of the market share. I'm fat and rich screw the little guy.
Now lets say there is no such thing as a patent and everybod is free to copy my invention. After a short while on the market my invention is copied 100 times. You can now buy it from kids on the corner who have moved on from just selling lemonade.
Since my invention is now being sold on the corner for 50 cents. I can no longer make money selling it.
But of course I need to make money. In order to do that I must make my invention better before my 12 year old compitition.
Wow, what just happened? I was FORCED to innovate! Amazing huh.
Really simple. If I want to make money I must make my product better. Really simple idea. No hiding behind the patent to stay in business.
Who wins in this scenario. You, the consumer.
Well the 12 year old selling lemonade too. He doesn't have to spend his day squeezing lemons anymore.
Wow. I love it when people are so exited to post first that they forget to read the article.
This was not spem, It was Phishing.
In case Mr. Anon up there doesn't know the difference. Spam is for the most part advertisements sent en mass to get you to buy something. spammers make money off the clicks. And no, they don't wait for your permission before sending you spam. If they did it wouldn't be spam, rather it wold be a legitimate opt in advertisement.
PHISHING on the onther hand is an attemt to gain your trust to the point that you will be willing to disclose personal information that could be used to compromise your or somebody elses security.
Working for AOL we were constantly recieveing mail about our secure ID's. This was an attempt to comprimise our servers.
Back to the post. I would have to agree with Joe on this one. The act of not informing students who's data was lost is pure negligence. They had a right to know so they could take the steps necessary to ensure they did not become victems of fraud.
For the record, windows also uses UTC. You can also specify any number of time servers to sync with. If your mahcine still won't set itself properly, allow windows update to run. And for those of you too cheap to buy a legit copy of windows(cant really blame ya though), update the registry yourself.
So quit complaining because you are too lazy to fix it.
Re:
absolutely nothing. but you seemed to miss the point. point is he got credit for "inventing" products that he didn't invent at all.
say i lived then and wanted to build a better light. i would have been unable to without first buying out the hoarder (edison). this is just another in a long string of abuses on the patent system.
While edison did in fact bring a functional product to market, that is sadly not true in most cases today. most patents filed today are done so only to have the sole "right" to bring that product to market. and if anybody else wanted to do so they would first have to buy the rights. effectively blocking any but the biggest businesses from doing so.
Re: Frosty840
"The argument that people seem to be making, that these people have been given distribution rights, and therefore everyone else distributing the files also has distribution rights seems false to me."
Wrong. That is NOT The argument being made. A little more reading comprehension on your part is needed.
The argument being made is that those people who are being threatened and sued by DigiProtect for downloading files FROM THEM have not infringed. Nowhere did I see a claim that this covers other file sharers as well.
To make a little more clear to you. The claim of wilful infringement can only be made when the distribution of copyrighted material is unauthorised. In the case of this company the availability and distribution of media was authorized by the copyright holder, and therefore NOT infringement.
While you are correct on stating that these downloaders do not have the right to redistribute any data that had been downloaded, the fact still remains that the initial download from Digiprotect was authorized and legal.
That however gets a little screwy with the distribution method of choice which, by its very nature of operation, requires data to be redistributed among peers. In this case I would think the party responsible for uploading the .torrent file would be considered the original distributor.
Re:
Well put argument. I agree with you on most points. The only problem I have with it is you last point.
While HP has every right to try and control their business model, they need to do it themselves. They do not have the right to pressure other legitimate competition out of business.
There are many ways to do this. One in particular is the use of coded chips on the cartridges themselves, and has been used for many years.
You yourself use the example of carrier locked cell phones to recoup subsidies with subscription contracts. You should however also take not that it has been ruled that it is perfectly legal for a consumer to remove the subsidy lock from a locked phone and take it to whatever carrier he or she wishes. And by the same token HP should not be allowed to remove competition by forcing re-fillers out of business.
Re: I'm of split mind on this
First off. Horrible example. I live in Spokane, less than a couple of hours from the reservation. I don't need to work for Siemens or any other company in the business to know that there is a problem. The fact that the reservation exists is enough to know that the problem exists.
The only point your argument can make is that he was tipped off that a company was looking into cleaning up low level waste and therefore had the opportunity to beat them to the punch.
And as far as non-competition contracts, they are in my opinion much to broad and far reaching. In most cases they effectively make it illegal to form or work for any company that may be any sort of competition. An usually for some time after you are no longer employed at the company where you signed it.
As for the Mattel case, the only reason Mattel should have any right to Bratz is if he did in fact use company time, funds, or resources for the initial work on brats. The the thought that any ideas one my have while working for a company are owned by said company is absolutely ridiculous. As far as I'm concerned its nothing more than anti competitive bs. And the judge who set the precedent for it should be shot.
Re: Re: Simple-a-fy the message
off topic again. Apparently you are unable to grasp sarcasm.
That post was not a McCain advertisement. He was poking fun at John McCain and Sarah Palin. That you couldn't grasp that actually disturbs me and makes me worry for the intelligence level of the American public.
I hope the case does win. AT&T will lose out in cali. Now, not knowing the terms of Their Apple's contract with AT&T seems to me like Apple could then sell the phones unlocked in Cali and AT&T would not be able to do anything about it. That portion of the terms may then be invalid in the state. Great for apple and the consumer.
Get the corperations to help.
What auction? They already own the spectrum. But if Sprint would like to licence the spectrum so be it. Turn a licence deal into cash flow for the education system. I see nothing wrong with major corporations sending money back to the schools. Might even trough logic way out there and say more revenue to the school districts from giant corps would result in better educated consumers. Everybody wins.
For that matter you could stipulate that wireless equipment be furnished to the schools as part of the licensing deal.
This would create better developers and thus spurring new innovation. It's a strech I know, but any additional revenue going into our education system is a good thing.
Must not have encoded it properly.
Sounds great to me. I personally own a sony minidisc player, which to my ears, sounds much better than mp3. I hava always maintained that the audio quality is higher than mp3 at a lower bitrate. But I also have sensitive ears. Mp3 compression causes digital artifacts that are audible as very high frequency harmonics. There is a reason profresional portable recording decks use high density minidiscs (and thus the ATRAC format)and not mp3 compression.
But I am not suprised that they are dumping the format. It is yet another example of a proprietary format (better it may be. remember betamax?) that sony tried to lock people into. Licence the technology and make it available, maybe people would actually use it. BlurRay is doomed to failure for that very reason.
You give me credit for that commentNeverhood, but i did not come up with it. Just laughed really hard when i heard it.
Maybe I am now guilty of copyright infringement.
And one more thing.
John. Maybe you should get your reading scores up before you post. The comparison is to WHY people are dl'ng music istead of puchasing. It is not comparing speed limits to cracking down.
Another lemming. Go jump.
http://www.youtube.com/v/v9KcVFN7qlc
Says it all.
Ok. I know this has been stated in the past. But let me restate in anothers words.
For those last comic standing fans, one comic put it this way. (cant remember his name)
I hate the fbi ads at the begining of movies. They say "You wouldn't steal a car." Right. I wouldn't steal a car. But if my buddy called up and said "Hey I just got a brand new BMW. Would you like me to burn you a copy?" I might think about it.
Seriously. It's a COPY. An seriously if you think the $15 goes to "covering costs" you are just as brainwashed as the rest of them. Go get in line. Effing Lemmings.
Screw the iPhone. At the risk of starting a flame war, it is just another overpriced box from apple. Just a rehash of current technology mixed into one unit, hyped, and sold as a "lifestyle" device while not bringing anything really new to the table.
I second the interest in the OpenMoko project. Essentially the same as an iphone but, get this, totally open source and 200 bucks cheaper. I never understood the desire of people to pay obsene amounts of money for a name.
It's astonishing how one false Idea can be interpreten and run with in nearly every single comment.
The ban on cell phones has nothing to do with arcraft avionics. All the flight electronics in any moder plane are heavily shielded.
Ask yourselves this. What happens when you go to higher ground with your cell phone?
You get a better signal don't you. That is because you have a better line of sight signal path to the tower. Under normal operation you will only ever have line of sight to a single tower. Two if moving between cells. Three at best on flat terrain.
No lets get up even higher. You see where I'm going? Now I'm not going to do the math but when you look out the windows at 30,000 feet you can visibly see across an entire state. How many cell towers is that? Which one to connect to? If you place a call it has the potential to jam your current frequency on all those towers. making it unusable for other customers.
Using cell phones on airplanes at altitude has the potential to cause major problems on ther ground, hence the ban.
The technology to reject signals not coming from the avionics has been around for a long time. It's called signal rejection (imagine that) Your tv has it, just to make the picture a tiny bit clearer.
Morever, it has been proven that even with amplified cellular signals show no deflection in any of the the navigational equipment.
Nothing to do with glide slope either. Mr. James Hinkly up there is not a pilot. Neither am I. but I do know that in the event of ILS indicator failure upon landing, two things would happen. 1. Tower would inform you radar says you are too low. 2. The landing slope indicator lights on the runway, which have no mechanical or electronic components, would be red. That means your are too low. Not a tough thing to rely on. esier than looking at instuments.
To sum up. No interference on plane.
Screws up cell networks on ground.
Who cares about net access on plane? Getta life.
nicely put 42. i believe your post is the answere to the life, univers and everything.
i guess my novel of a post was too long. they want to review it firs.
I am begining to wonder how many of TechDirts readers are actually tech savvy? But I suppose that moniker no longer has anything to do with ones ability to read or understand the english language.
On multiple occasions in this article and its post, and I'll add one here, it has been stated that this was an offer given to people at checkout. For those of you that don't understand check out, checkout is the point where you have finished your online shopping spree and are preparing to pay for your purchase. The credit card is most likely now sitting in front of the user, ready to be given to the evil giant online retailer.
One way or the other amazon was gettng the card number, either for the purchase or the service.
Warning. Prepare for flaming in the following posts.
Also, I was one of those guys taking calls for Video Professor. Contrary to what janine writes, the charges were not fraudulant. Numerus times in during the sale it is stated that the customer will be charged $79 if they do not return at leas one of the cd's within 10 days.
The problem here is that the script is and subsequent sale is worded in such a way as to be very confusing to the caller. I don't think I ever had one caller who was really comfortable with the sale, but only about 1 in five people actually aske questins to clarify the details. Once those simple questions are asked it becomes apparent what will happen and the sale is dead.
This is not an uncommon practice. 99% of the infomercials you see on television come with an offer for something else. This is often hidden in the sale or worded in such a way as to be misleading.
While having above average reading comprehension skills myself (not bragging) I cactch on to these things the first time I read the script.
A word of advice Most infomercial sale tactics are ILLEGAL!! The most common tactic used is called "bait-and-switch". You are offered one product and sold another for a higher price. Unfortunately companies get by with this because there are relatively small percentages of complaints. If more people would report incidents like this to the bbb we would not be in this situation.
OK. enough of my rant. Any bets on how many people still don't get the post?
Just because everybody is jacked on the whole piracy issuee.
09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0
RE:
guess what no it is not.
The Eniac was nothing more than a giant, tube driven calculator. There was no storage device to save your software. The logic WAS hardwired, literally. Programmed by changing wired connections
between banks of tubes. The software was mounds of paper on which the "programs", or rather connection diagrams, were written.
Modern computers do the exact same thing. Just with more transistors instead of vacuum tubes.
Hardware and software should not be viewed as seperate entities. Hardware is the base for all software. Without hardware software cannot exist. You can in fact make software that will move you from one place to another, using hardware as a means for the actual moving.
Back to the patent issue.
I agree all pantents are patents on ideas, wether hardware or software.
I also agree that the only thing a patent does is to allow inventors to sit on their laurels.
Let's say I invent somthing that would make your life better. I also get a patent on this great new invention, an overly broad one. Let us also say that everybody wants one.
So I start making lots of money on my great invention. Pretty soon other people want in on the action. Not knowing about googles patent search function, A competitor brings a slightly better, but remarkably similar product to market. Knowing they have infringed on my patent, I get to sue and put them out of businees.
Now with my compitition out of the way I get to keep 100% of the market share. I'm fat and rich screw the little guy.
Now lets say there is no such thing as a patent and everybod is free to copy my invention. After a short while on the market my invention is copied 100 times. You can now buy it from kids on the corner who have moved on from just selling lemonade.
Since my invention is now being sold on the corner for 50 cents. I can no longer make money selling it.
But of course I need to make money. In order to do that I must make my invention better before my 12 year old compitition.
Wow, what just happened? I was FORCED to innovate! Amazing huh.
Really simple. If I want to make money I must make my product better. Really simple idea. No hiding behind the patent to stay in business.
Who wins in this scenario. You, the consumer.
Well the 12 year old selling lemonade too. He doesn't have to spend his day squeezing lemons anymore.
Learn to read first.
Wow. I love it when people are so exited to post first that they forget to read the article.
This was not spem, It was Phishing.
In case Mr. Anon up there doesn't know the difference. Spam is for the most part advertisements sent en mass to get you to buy something. spammers make money off the clicks. And no, they don't wait for your permission before sending you spam. If they did it wouldn't be spam, rather it wold be a legitimate opt in advertisement.
PHISHING on the onther hand is an attemt to gain your trust to the point that you will be willing to disclose personal information that could be used to compromise your or somebody elses security.
Working for AOL we were constantly recieveing mail about our secure ID's. This was an attempt to comprimise our servers.
Back to the post. I would have to agree with Joe on this one. The act of not informing students who's data was lost is pure negligence. They had a right to know so they could take the steps necessary to ensure they did not become victems of fraud.
For the record, windows also uses UTC. You can also specify any number of time servers to sync with. If your mahcine still won't set itself properly, allow windows update to run. And for those of you too cheap to buy a legit copy of windows(cant really blame ya though), update the registry yourself.
So quit complaining because you are too lazy to fix it.
And burn it shall.
Glad to see the house of cards the RIAA has buit for itself is starting to blow over.
Now where is that wolf?