While I in no way support the use of the backscatter scanners....
I find it funny that you ridicule the TSA for doing the exact same thing that what you praise others for.
The TSA is the defendant here. They have been called out as violating a passenger rights (which they still may have done) and in response they released evidence which they felt would indemnify them.
How is this different than someone posting a legal notice from the RIAA or other tyrannical organization to their website with a list of reasons why the notice was uncalled for?
In fact this method is exactly what you highlighted as being more effective than taking someone to court for over copyright violation. Call the offender out in public, and watch his (her) status go down the tube.
Certainly they don't win any style points, but it seems like an effective way to prevent hyperbole and lawsuits, especially at a time when their public opinion is about to take a huge nosedive now that travelers are realizing that they are submitting themselves to a strip search, in violation of our Constitution, just for the convenience of air travel...
"...It is more to blame on management and business being too damned greedy...."
Let me guess. You're one of those who believe "the fat cats" make their money on the backs of their employee's.... am right?
1. What company is in business for the sake of keeping people employed? That is not their purpose. Their purpose is to make money. Sometimes that means having to spend money to keep your employee's happy. But that is an investment - not charity. (it takes lots of man hours and money to constantly fire/hire/train. If you best people are leaving for other companies i.e. brain-drain, you're screwed) On the flip side it would be commercially stupid to keep 500 employees when you only need 50. Keeping non-productive employees hanging around will do nothing more than drain your capitol - and you will go out of business - which means everyone looses their job.
2. If you're not being compensated adequately for your skill set then why the hell are you at that company? If it's the only game in town, then why the hell are you staying in that town? How about some personal responsibilty for improving your own situation?
Union people love to talk about how "their the ones who built the company..." That's BS. You got hired to do a job at a certain salary. That salary is all the company owes you and all it has ever owed you and is all it will ever owe you. $50K for 10 years is Half a million dollars. And you think the company somehow owes you more than that?
I apologize. It's something that I was pulling out of faulty memory. I tend to think of a Monocoque to mean "one piece". The revolutionary manufacturing process was the way the frame pieces were extruded out of aluminum - not cnc'd
"...But, rather than looking at the damage it would do to the existing economic order, look at the business opportunities generated by it. Today there are many thousands of people who make a living creating 3D models and doing texturing for them. (Mostly for places like MVU, where you can sell meshes and skins for 3d avatars) While some jobs would be lost in other sectors, the 3d modeler and "skinner" sectors would boom...."
It's an excellent point. However it ignore advances. And the field is advancing quickly. $100K-$1M for a quality 3d printer 10-15 years ago. $60K for one 5 years ago. $30K for a high-end/small business" today. $15K for low-end business/high end hobbyist today. less than $300 for the DIY - today.
Cars for years, like the Acura NSX were CNC'd out of a solid piece of aluminum (for the frame/monocoque). Any reason why that couldn't be done "locally". How about in your garage?
Price drops, technology advances. Today's prototype shop is tomorrow print shop. Do you make copies by going to Kinko's? Or do you just adjust the "number of copies" option in the print dialog box?
(lost something along the way -sorry for the repost)
"...But, rather than looking at the damage it would do to the existing economic order, look at the business opportunities generated by it. Today there are many thousands of people who make a living creating 3D models and doing texturing for them. (Mostly for places like MVU, where you can sell meshes and skins for 3d avatars) While some jobs would be lost in other sectors, the 3d modeler and "skinner" sectors would boom...."
It's an excellent point. However it ignore advances. And the field is advancing quickly. $100K-$1M for a quality 3d printer 10-15 years ago. $60K for one 5 years ago. $30K for a high-end/small business" today. $15K for low-end business/high end hobbyist today.
"...But, rather than looking at the damage it would do to the existing economic order, look at the business opportunities generated by it. Today there are many thousands of people who make a living creating 3D models and doing texturing for them. (Mostly for places like MVU, where you can sell meshes and skins for 3d avatars) While some jobs would be lost in other sectors, the 3d modeler and "skinner" sectors would boom...."
It's an excellent point. However it ignore advances. And the field is advancing quickly. $100K-$1M for a quality 3d printer 10-15 years ago. $60K for one 5 years ago. $30K for a high-end/small business" today. $15K for low-end business/high end hobbyist today.
Take a browse through Thingiverse (http://www.thingiverse.com/).
Realize that the site has been up for *maybe" two years.
Realize that they are almost ALL hobbyist.
Realize how many 3D Files are on the net that can be easily converted to tool paths with simple software readily (and freely) available.
Think to yourself "If these individuals are printing useable stuff now (as in today, this very second), what's left for my industry in the near future?" "How many years before they are printing larger things with multiple material types?"
Yes - we will be replicating soon - with nothing (or at least no cost).
First: In the near future (less than a lifetime) we will have printers that can print at the molecular if not atomic level.
Second: At some point (less certain timeframe) we will have a molecular defragger. A device that breaks down any "thing" (solid, liquid, gas) into its molecular or atomic "parts"
Third: Someone will release the design to the molecular defragger on the 'net. Then someone will release a design that combines the two into one machine. You'll print it out, raid your local dump, and have all the raw materials you need to replicate (or create new) just about anything you want.
I've been watching/living the DIY/Make revolution for the past 7 years with great enthusiasm. The desktop 3d printer of today change little. The desktop replicator of tomorrow changes EVERYTHING.
And like Freak (previous poster above) who realizes mid-stream that --oops yeah... that is the future (and congrats on being man enough to state that out loud by the way) this will catch many, many people off guard.
This will not be a RIAA issue - but damn straight it's going to be a shockwave in the political and manufacturing worlds.
Not only does this destroy China's emerging middle class (there because of manufacturing boon for the past couple of generations) but can you imagine the absolute shock and fear this will have on Unions?
What becomes important? Three things:
1. The people with the ideas.
2. The raw materials.
3. Marketing.
Right now the mini revolution is that $3000-$15000 "desktop" printers are being purchased and setup by mom-and-pop shops (along with a huge following of DIY hobbyist) to build one-off and short-run prototypes and products. What do they need? A gerbs file and your money. That's it. These are the families that just 15 years ago would have gone into the T-Shirt printing business.
Of course we will not all have 3d printers on our desk anymore than we all have laser quality printers on our desk (... oh wait....). The point is that as the machines become smaller and cheaper the more likely we will have one ourselves.
And once we are printing atoms instead of epoxy, there are no (well...few) limits to what one can have.
What will it take to replicate? A stereo camera that can create a scatter plot (tons of them out there) will get a design for the things a 3d design doesn't already exist for. The printer. The materials.
For the thousands of things that are already encoded in 3d (http://www.thingiverse.com/) - just share the file and print.
Yes. Resistance is futile. But damn straight there will be resistance.
I don't know how it could be any more blatant an attack on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and an attempt to sway an election by blocking access to information.
I agree that it is a travesty that there are cases where murders and repeat offenders get off easier. But I take the side that those punishments should be stiffer - not that this punishment should be lessened.
If TechDirt where taken down it would be a serious crime and I would expect the perpetrators to be held accountable - and I assume you (readers of techdirt) would too.
If Mike Masnick were to run for office and his personal political website received a similar DDoS I would expect his supporters here to rally and demand those responsible to be punished with the full weight of the law behind it.
One isn't trying be passed off as the other. You would have been better off comparing older Nissan to older Toyota or any number of lines of the GM family or ford vs mercury.
Even then it is the same car - same factory and the only thing that is different is *maybe* some trim and the badge.
Maybe you mean something more like the Honda Insight vs the Toyota Prius. In this case the design is licensed - and while maybe confusing to the consumer - not illegal.
"..."We're loosing the middle-to-low income 40 year olds who make up the core of our audience as well as the youth demographic with disposable income who define where an industry is going, we are in very deep doo doo."..."
Except the dirty little secret of Cable is that their core demographics is in the 50s-60s and aging (no offense to those who are in their 50s and 60s). They've already lost the 20-30 somethings.
"... the image of the cord-cutter had been that of a "cutting-edge technologist" .... "The reality is it's someone who's 40 years old and poor and settling for a dog's breakfast of Netflix and short-form video."..."
Cables been cut for 10 years now. My current demographic:
Age: 38 (close)
Income: upper-middle
Breakfast: Cereal (I'm not one for Dog Chow)- Enjoy the weekly shows (The Event, Chuck, Colbert, Bones, Caprica, Modern Family {all on Hulu} - I guess those are "short-form video")
Profession: Software Developer (though it's true I'm not a gadget freak)
I don't know. I haven't seen the Crimzon Rose packaging.
But if they are using the same font, same clear on the bottom, white on the top plastic bag, same style of "wavy lines" - and only the name is different (and conveniently stocked next to each other) then yup. Customers are probably thinking they are buying one thing and only realize the mix-up when their kids bring it to their attention.
Via Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent):
There are four primary incentives embodied in the patent system: to invent in the first place; to disclose the invention once made; to invest the sums necessary to experiment, produce and market the invention; and to design around and improve upon earlier patents.
....
One effect of modern patent usage is that a small-time inventor can use the exclusive right status to become a licensor. This allows the inventor to accumulate capital from licensing the invention and may allow innovation to occur because he or she may choose to not manage a manufacturing buildup for the invention. Thus the inventor's time and energy can be spent on pure innovation, allowing others to concentrate on manufacturability....
"...So basically you're saying that selling stuff for cheaper is now criminal or something?..."
It's not criminal to sell things cheaper - or to create products that can be sold cheaper. It is criminal to take another persons unique creation and claim it as your own - or worse, claim that the item you are selling is the thing you're copying.
Here's another example. I went to Dave's market (a grocery store) and saw that Teddy Gramms were being sold for $1.00/box. GREAT! I'll take them home to my kids. When I got home my wife said "why did you buys these - they're junk" "I thought you let the kids have Teddy Gramms" I replied. "I do, but these are aren't 'Teddy Gramms', they are 'Teddy Bears'".
Someone had duplicated the "Teddy Gramms" packaging, replaced the word "Gramms" with "Bears" and sold a sub-par product at (obviously) a cheap price.
That's not competing, that's basically a bait-n-switch. The consumer thinks he's getting one thing (because he recognized the packaging without paying attention to the actual words) and got something else entirely. And something he probably wouldn't have bought had the difference been more obvious.
Now Dave's is a relatively small chain. But it still has the power to have custom-packaged goods. Extrapolate that to the rubberband story and it's clear why there are laws to protect the consumer and the enterprising business from the predatory practices of large companies like Walmart.
There are very clear laws on deceiving the consumer. You'll probably find that the rubber-band "competition" would not exist without Walmart - and will likely die once Walmart is done with them.
As silly/stupid as it may seem, the actual concept is quite clever. A bracelet that takes the shape of a distinct - usually cartoon - character/shape when taken off. Kids love them. The name and the design together make them recognizable to the consumer.
The idea of patent law is to allow a company a chance to make money from their innovation before a copy-cat behemoth (like Walmart) forces them out of business.
There are all sorts of reasons to hate the copyright/trademark/patent law in the US. I'm not sure that this case is one of them however.
This seems to me be the classic case where it works to protect the small guy from 800lbs gorilla.
On the post: If You Don't Get Every Detail Of Your TSA Detention Exactly Right, The TSA May Publicly Shame You
While I in no way support the use of the backscatter scanners....
The TSA is the defendant here. They have been called out as violating a passenger rights (which they still may have done) and in response they released evidence which they felt would indemnify them.
How is this different than someone posting a legal notice from the RIAA or other tyrannical organization to their website with a list of reasons why the notice was uncalled for?
In fact this method is exactly what you highlighted as being more effective than taking someone to court for over copyright violation. Call the offender out in public, and watch his (her) status go down the tube.
Certainly they don't win any style points, but it seems like an effective way to prevent hyperbole and lawsuits, especially at a time when their public opinion is about to take a huge nosedive now that travelers are realizing that they are submitting themselves to a strip search, in violation of our Constitution, just for the convenience of air travel...
-CF
On the post: Professional Unions And The Labor Struggles Of The 21st Century
Re: Re: Unions VS Non Union
Let me guess. You're one of those who believe "the fat cats" make their money on the backs of their employee's.... am right?
1. What company is in business for the sake of keeping people employed? That is not their purpose. Their purpose is to make money. Sometimes that means having to spend money to keep your employee's happy. But that is an investment - not charity. (it takes lots of man hours and money to constantly fire/hire/train. If you best people are leaving for other companies i.e. brain-drain, you're screwed) On the flip side it would be commercially stupid to keep 500 employees when you only need 50. Keeping non-productive employees hanging around will do nothing more than drain your capitol - and you will go out of business - which means everyone looses their job.
2. If you're not being compensated adequately for your skill set then why the hell are you at that company? If it's the only game in town, then why the hell are you staying in that town? How about some personal responsibilty for improving your own situation?
Union people love to talk about how "their the ones who built the company..." That's BS. You got hired to do a job at a certain salary. That salary is all the company owes you and all it has ever owed you and is all it will ever owe you. $50K for 10 years is Half a million dollars. And you think the company somehow owes you more than that?
-CF
On the post: Getting Ready For When The Industry Tries To Kill 3D Printers
Re: Re: Re: Re: Interesting - one more try
That was bad on my part.
-CF
On the post: Getting Ready For When The Industry Tries To Kill 3D Printers
Re: Re: Interesting - one more try
It's an excellent point. However it ignore advances. And the field is advancing quickly. $100K-$1M for a quality 3d printer 10-15 years ago. $60K for one 5 years ago. $30K for a high-end/small business" today. $15K for low-end business/high end hobbyist today. less than $300 for the DIY - today.
Cars for years, like the Acura NSX were CNC'd out of a solid piece of aluminum (for the frame/monocoque). Any reason why that couldn't be done "locally". How about in your garage?
Price drops, technology advances. Today's prototype shop is tomorrow print shop. Do you make copies by going to Kinko's? Or do you just adjust the "number of copies" option in the print dialog box?
-CF
On the post: Getting Ready For When The Industry Tries To Kill 3D Printers
Re: Interesting
"...But, rather than looking at the damage it would do to the existing economic order, look at the business opportunities generated by it. Today there are many thousands of people who make a living creating 3D models and doing texturing for them. (Mostly for places like MVU, where you can sell meshes and skins for 3d avatars) While some jobs would be lost in other sectors, the 3d modeler and "skinner" sectors would boom...."
It's an excellent point. However it ignore advances. And the field is advancing quickly. $100K-$1M for a quality 3d printer 10-15 years ago. $60K for one 5 years ago. $30K for a high-end/small business" today. $15K for low-end business/high end hobbyist today.
On the post: Getting Ready For When The Industry Tries To Kill 3D Printers
Re: Interesting
It's an excellent point. However it ignore advances. And the field is advancing quickly. $100K-$1M for a quality 3d printer 10-15 years ago. $60K for one 5 years ago. $30K for a high-end/small business" today. $15K for low-end business/high end hobbyist today.
On the post: Getting Ready For When The Industry Tries To Kill 3D Printers
Re: This is silly
Realize that the site has been up for *maybe" two years.
Realize that they are almost ALL hobbyist.
Realize how many 3D Files are on the net that can be easily converted to tool paths with simple software readily (and freely) available.
Think to yourself "If these individuals are printing useable stuff now (as in today, this very second), what's left for my industry in the near future?" "How many years before they are printing larger things with multiple material types?"
Does it still seem silly?
Come back and report.
-CF
On the post: Getting Ready For When The Industry Tries To Kill 3D Printers
Re:
The mechanism and algorithm is practically identical:
Print epoxy (instead of ink) droplets useing XY coordinates for a slice of what you're producing.
Drop the Z coordinate by 1.
Repeat.
On the post: Getting Ready For When The Industry Tries To Kill 3D Printers
Re: Something out of nothing
First: In the near future (less than a lifetime) we will have printers that can print at the molecular if not atomic level.
Second: At some point (less certain timeframe) we will have a molecular defragger. A device that breaks down any "thing" (solid, liquid, gas) into its molecular or atomic "parts"
Third: Someone will release the design to the molecular defragger on the 'net. Then someone will release a design that combines the two into one machine. You'll print it out, raid your local dump, and have all the raw materials you need to replicate (or create new) just about anything you want.
-CF
On the post: Getting Ready For When The Industry Tries To Kill 3D Printers
My Favorite Subject
And like Freak (previous poster above) who realizes mid-stream that --oops yeah... that is the future (and congrats on being man enough to state that out loud by the way) this will catch many, many people off guard.
This will not be a RIAA issue - but damn straight it's going to be a shockwave in the political and manufacturing worlds.
Not only does this destroy China's emerging middle class (there because of manufacturing boon for the past couple of generations) but can you imagine the absolute shock and fear this will have on Unions?
What becomes important? Three things:
1. The people with the ideas.
2. The raw materials.
3. Marketing.
And that is it.
Supply chain? done.
Retail outlets? done.
Manufacturing facilities? done.
Right now the mini revolution is that $3000-$15000 "desktop" printers are being purchased and setup by mom-and-pop shops (along with a huge following of DIY hobbyist) to build one-off and short-run prototypes and products. What do they need? A gerbs file and your money. That's it. These are the families that just 15 years ago would have gone into the T-Shirt printing business.
Of course we will not all have 3d printers on our desk anymore than we all have laser quality printers on our desk (... oh wait....). The point is that as the machines become smaller and cheaper the more likely we will have one ourselves.
And once we are printing atoms instead of epoxy, there are no (well...few) limits to what one can have.
What will it take to replicate? A stereo camera that can create a scatter plot (tons of them out there) will get a design for the things a 3d design doesn't already exist for. The printer. The materials.
For the thousands of things that are already encoded in 3d (http://www.thingiverse.com/) - just share the file and print.
Yes. Resistance is futile. But damn straight there will be resistance.
I love it! Thanks for bringing the topic up Mike.
-CF
On the post: 30 Months In Prison For Denial Of Service Hit On Politicians' Websites
Re: @ChronoFish: taking a web site down is *not* a "serious crime".
On the post: 30 Months In Prison For Denial Of Service Hit On Politicians' Websites
Re: Pretty serious crime
I don't know how it could be any more blatant an attack on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and an attempt to sway an election by blocking access to information.
I agree that it is a travesty that there are cases where murders and repeat offenders get off easier. But I take the side that those punishments should be stiffer - not that this punishment should be lessened.
If TechDirt where taken down it would be a serious crime and I would expect the perpetrators to be held accountable - and I assume you (readers of techdirt) would too.
If Mike Masnick were to run for office and his personal political website received a similar DDoS I would expect his supporters here to rally and demand those responsible to be punished with the full weight of the law behind it.
-CF
On the post: Elastic Wristband Maker Sues Walmart For Copyright Infringement
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Even then it is the same car - same factory and the only thing that is different is *maybe* some trim and the badge.
Maybe you mean something more like the Honda Insight vs the Toyota Prius. In this case the design is licensed - and while maybe confusing to the consumer - not illegal.
-CF
On the post: Elastic Wristband Maker Sues Walmart For Copyright Infringement
Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: New Cable Talking Point Against Cord Cutters: They May Be Cutting, But They're Poor Nobodies
Re:
Except the dirty little secret of Cable is that their core demographics is in the 50s-60s and aging (no offense to those who are in their 50s and 60s). They've already lost the 20-30 somethings.
-CF
On the post: New Cable Talking Point Against Cord Cutters: They May Be Cutting, But They're Poor Nobodies
He's Almost partially correct
Cables been cut for 10 years now. My current demographic:
Age: 38 (close)
Income: upper-middle
Breakfast: Cereal (I'm not one for Dog Chow)- Enjoy the weekly shows (The Event, Chuck, Colbert, Bones, Caprica, Modern Family {all on Hulu} - I guess those are "short-form video")
Profession: Software Developer (though it's true I'm not a gadget freak)
-CF
On the post: Elastic Wristband Maker Sues Walmart For Copyright Infringement
Re: Re: Re: Re:
But if they are using the same font, same clear on the bottom, white on the top plastic bag, same style of "wavy lines" - and only the name is different (and conveniently stocked next to each other) then yup. Customers are probably thinking they are buying one thing and only realize the mix-up when their kids bring it to their attention.
-CF
On the post: Elastic Wristband Maker Sues Walmart For Copyright Infringement
Re: Re: Re: Re:
There are four primary incentives embodied in the patent system: to invent in the first place; to disclose the invention once made; to invest the sums necessary to experiment, produce and market the invention; and to design around and improve upon earlier patents.
....
One effect of modern patent usage is that a small-time inventor can use the exclusive right status to become a licensor. This allows the inventor to accumulate capital from licensing the invention and may allow innovation to occur because he or she may choose to not manage a manufacturing buildup for the invention. Thus the inventor's time and energy can be spent on pure innovation, allowing others to concentrate on manufacturability....
On the post: Elastic Wristband Maker Sues Walmart For Copyright Infringement
Re: Re:
It's not criminal to sell things cheaper - or to create products that can be sold cheaper. It is criminal to take another persons unique creation and claim it as your own - or worse, claim that the item you are selling is the thing you're copying.
Here's another example. I went to Dave's market (a grocery store) and saw that Teddy Gramms were being sold for $1.00/box. GREAT! I'll take them home to my kids. When I got home my wife said "why did you buys these - they're junk" "I thought you let the kids have Teddy Gramms" I replied. "I do, but these are aren't 'Teddy Gramms', they are 'Teddy Bears'".
Someone had duplicated the "Teddy Gramms" packaging, replaced the word "Gramms" with "Bears" and sold a sub-par product at (obviously) a cheap price.
That's not competing, that's basically a bait-n-switch. The consumer thinks he's getting one thing (because he recognized the packaging without paying attention to the actual words) and got something else entirely. And something he probably wouldn't have bought had the difference been more obvious.
Now Dave's is a relatively small chain. But it still has the power to have custom-packaged goods. Extrapolate that to the rubberband story and it's clear why there are laws to protect the consumer and the enterprising business from the predatory practices of large companies like Walmart.
-CF
On the post: Elastic Wristband Maker Sues Walmart For Copyright Infringement
Re: Re:
As silly/stupid as it may seem, the actual concept is quite clever. A bracelet that takes the shape of a distinct - usually cartoon - character/shape when taken off. Kids love them. The name and the design together make them recognizable to the consumer.
The idea of patent law is to allow a company a chance to make money from their innovation before a copy-cat behemoth (like Walmart) forces them out of business.
There are all sorts of reasons to hate the copyright/trademark/patent law in the US. I'm not sure that this case is one of them however.
This seems to me be the classic case where it works to protect the small guy from 800lbs gorilla.
Next >>