Slashdot Mirror

PS. For more proof (not that you appear swayable by proof), visit the licensing information for one of the several free dictionaries authored by online amateurs, such as Wiktionary or the much-older EDICT.

Both descriptions, written by people who've had a serious need to research the subject accurately, claim that individual dictionary entries are copyrightable. Of course, that should've been obvious anyhow, as it is a direct consequence from the simplest statement of copyright law. Written matter IS COPYRIGHTABLE, even if non-fiction. How you could've imagined otherwise is almost baffling.

Dictionaries do fit the criteria. They owe their existence to previous dictionaries

Counterproposal: I'm about to create a very small, very abridged dictionary here :

Doug's 2004 Dictionary

Dictionary: a book that contains words and short summaries about what each word means.

Thesaurus: a book that contains words, and then lists of words that have similar meanings to the first word.

Clueless: lacking clue.

Clue: could mean `a bit of knowledge', or it has come to mean `overall knowledge, either about a specific field or about everything'.

Shizzle: a relatively new word, made up by some rapper. It's hard to tell what it means, but I suspect it means either `sure' or `sh*t'.
(c) 2004 by Doug

Ok, that's my dictionary. I've just created it, just now. It's automatically protected by copyright as soon as I write it, registered or not. The (c) 2004 bit is not required for it to be copyrighted, but I'll include it just so there's no question.

If you feel that my dictionary is not covered by copyright, this is where you need to prove your point. If you feel that it's existance is based on a previous dictionary, then you'll need to be specific about which one. Certainly, I did not consult any other texts while writing it, and do not have an edietic memory. Also, I don't recall ever looking up any of these words in a dictionary. And consider that the word `shizzle' is very new, and not likely to be found in any dictionary more than 10 years old (and therefore all would still be covered by their copyrights, unless explictly put into the public domain.)

As another counter example, consider this -- a slang dictionary ... do you feel that he's not entitled to the copyright on his work? Certainly, he does.

Another counterexample -- these people seem to think that you keep the copyright of definitions that you add to the project. If individual definitions are protected by copyrighted, would not the whole thing also be similarly protected?

Really, you've come up with a position that's pretty difficult to support.

Claiming copyright and actually having a copyrightable right are two different things, as SCO is finding out.

I think the ancestor meant to say "facetiously"

Though, "fascistic" is a word, so I don't see why "fasistically"|"fascisticly"could not be.

Today many US citizens are happy letting other first world countries like Japan and the EU (even Russia!!) lead the way and compare themselves underdeveloped 2nd world nations.

Sigh...1st, 2nd and 3rd world does not imply some sort of ranking of how developed a country is. It would be very hard for the US to compare itself to "underdeveloped 2nd world nations" since technically the 2nd world disappeared along with the Soviet Union. See http://open-dictionary.com/Third_World/.

here

If I remember right, it literally means "cut one's abdomen"
hara->abdomen
kiri->some form of the verb kiru, to cut

->seppuku
->harakiri
I wonder why they are reverse, and why seppuku is "preferrable".

Adding OGG support would be more than enough to convince me to buy an iPod.

With all due respect, I don't think Apple designs its hardware thinking personally about you (unless you're Steve Jobs, of course). Like most commercial institutions, Apple thinks in terms of "target group(s)". The target group of the people who actually know what OGG is, is too small to be relevant. Sorry guys, get used to it.

I can't really see the downside except for increased strain on the system memory, if what the article claims is true.

Well, increased strain on the system memory means less efficient harddrive caching and this means less battery life. Adding more memory would also have negative effect on battery life. So you have a serious downside here, while the only positive effect would be winning the hearts (and wallets) of the people who actually want to use Vorbis on their portable. Can you say "negligible"?

I found this and also this interesting. A Mebibyte (MiB) is 1024 bytes, and a Megabyte (MB) is now the standardized 1000 bytes.