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Comment Re:Just a matter of time (Score 1) 74

by Elektroschock (#66242778) Attached to: EU Won't Require User-Replaceable Batteries for Wearables

This is not voted on by Parliament but Parliament could object to it. Under Article 290 TFEU, delegated acts may supplement or amend non-essential elements of a legislative act. The original legislation must define the objectives, scope, content and duration of the delegation. Parliament and the Council retain control: they may revoke the delegation or object to an individual delegated act. Here we have the Commission using a delegated act, an administrative measure, to amend the European law, without meeting the prerequisites:

"Such delegated acts shall be adopted only on account of market developments and technical and scientific progress, and provided that there are scientifically grounded concerns over the safety of end-users removing or replacing the portable battery, or in cases where there is a risk that the removal or the replacement of the battery by end-users would be in violation of any product safety requirements provided for by applicable Union law."

This is a shady legal base for the current action, so this would blow up if scrutinised by Parliament or Council. Furthermore, there is really no point of communicating to trading partners in the way that it has been done, which casts a very bad light.

Comment Just a matter of time (Score 1) 74

by Elektroschock (#66241832) Attached to: EU Won't Require User-Replaceable Batteries for Wearables

It looks more like a temporary issue, better work on compliance before the law comes back. After all the commission does not decide things:

Here is the legal base:
"The Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 89 to amend paragraph 2 of this Article by adding further products to be exempted from the removability and replaceability requirements laid down in paragraph 1 of this Article. Such delegated acts shall be adopted only on account of market developments and technical and scientific progress, and provided that there are scientifically grounded concerns over the safety of end-users removing or replacing the portable battery, or in cases where there is a risk that the removal or the replacement of the battery by end-users would be in violation of any product safety requirements provided for by applicable Union law."

I don't think this condition for the delegated act is met.

It is also offensive that the EC informs the WTO TBT but not the European Parliament.

Submission + - Where to start with the best OSS Strategy? (suse.com)

Submitted by Elektroschock
Elektroschock writes: The new European Union Open Source Strategy, presented last month, is the best in the world, says Suse. Yet it was time for chop-chop.

We say this not as a courtesy before criticism, and because the quality of the foundation is what makes the remaining work worth doing.

Submission + - What is a quantum computer good for? Absolutely nothing — yet (theverge.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: The Verge has an article about the "absolute nothing" of quantum computers. We have yet to see a quantum computer conclusively perform a single useful task. Existing machines are simply too small and error-ridden to solve commercially relevant problems.
Companies drive the hype, too. In June, Microsoft announced a new quantum computing chip named Majorana 2. It claimed the chip was a hardware advancement that accelerates its timeline to a “scalable, practical quantum computer” by 2029. But independent experts swiftly criticized the announcement. “This is complete codswallop,” Henry Legg, a physicist from the University of St. Andrews and a longtime Microsoft critic, tells The Verge.
Legg just published a paper in Nature on June 24th criticizing Microsoft’s quantum claims from a year ago — peer review takes a long time — and pointing to what he sees as major discrepancies between Microsoft’s papers and press releases. Nature included Microsoft’s rebuttal.
Researchers have made genuine progress in quantum computing — it’s just been largely incremental and too esoteric to immediately capture the public’s imagination. Proponents predict that the technology will lead to discoveries in medicine, as well as advances in materials science and machine learning. Meanwhile, many national security experts frame its development as a new Cold War competition between the US and China.
Some have imagined the quantum computer as a cyberattack tool. In 1994, computer scientist Peter Shor developed a quantum computing algorithm for factoring prime numbers that should be able to break RSA encryption, a ubiquitous family of algorithms used to secure banking and email communications. So "RSA is dead" is the repeated mantra of the quantum computing hype.
Current quantum computers like Google’s Willow are individual chips too primitive to break RSA encryption or implement drug molecule simulations. But the vision is to build scaled-up machines that can.
Similar cycles have played out several times since the technology’s beginnings. Companies announce a breakthrough; independent researchers cry hype, all while investors continue to inject money into the industry. Then investors cash out and then call it a "scam" on the public.
Henry Legg is more skeptical and thinks some have underestimated the fundamental challenges of scaling. “There’s no evidence of the scalability of any platform to the level that you would need to do useful quantum computations within a decade, or probably a couple of decades,” he says.
While researchers have made progress toward building a useful quantum computer, it’s not clear what that use should be. “It’s such a nascent technology,” says Islam. “If you ask, what is a quantum computer good for, I do not know of an application which is a sure shot.”
The Trump administration wants a useful quantum computer in two years. Are we having fun yet?

Comment From the past (Score 1) 50

Fascinating, when could we read the scroll?

There are also lots of artefacts from the last century lost. Video games from the 1980s.

One could recreate music by optical 3D scanning shellac records and combining different prints to eliminate the noise. The quality gets better. Just image a new scan of Metropolis negative with current technology Or Robert Johnson even better than in the Centennial edition..

Comment It's the beginning (Score 1) 106

I think you are reading the document wrong. The European Commission is not a legislator, it just proposes laws.

First for all there will the Digital Fairness Act presented and MEPs are free to put into it whatever they feel is suitable to protect consumers including stopping kill-games language.

Also, the MEPs could use the Cloud and Development Act to strengthen reverse engineering and interoperability rights for game servers.

The interesting aspect is here:
"Rightsholders remain in principle free to determine whether and how their protected works may
be used, including by imposing temporal limits or other conditions on the uses authorised under
licences to third parties in accordance with Union copyright law."
While that is true the limit was not announced upfront.

The European Software Directive states in Recital 13:

"(13) The exclusive rights of the author to prevent the unauthorised reproduction of his work should be subject to a limited exception in the case of a computer program to allow the reproduction technically necessary for the use of that program by the lawful acquirer. This means that the acts of loading and running necessary for the use of a copy of a program which has been lawfully acquired, and the act of correction of its errors, may not be prohibited by contract. In the absence of specific contractual provisions, including when a copy of the program has been sold, any other act necessary for the use of the copy of a program may be performed in accordance with its intended purpose by a lawful acquirer of that copy."

The EC itself will proceed with a CoC style approach:
"While a legislative initiative to establish an obligation for publishers that sell or license video
games to consumers in the European Union to keep them in a playable state, as requested by the
ECI, is not envisaged, the Commission intends to initiate stakeholder exchanges by the end of
2026 to explore the possibility of elaborating a self-regulatory/industry-led code of conduct to
improve the management of video games’ end-of-life and strengthen transparency to consumers.
In addition, the Commission plans to present its report on the application of Directive (EU)
2019/770 by the end of 2026, covering also its application to the discontinuation of digital content
and services. "

This is not the end of the road.

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