I think you dropped this. I included a newline too. Also, you might check on your shift key, it seems a bit sporadic. Might need to look at your keyboard in general. Good tools make for good communication.
In theory, yes. The Legislative branch writes laws with no hints towards how they should be interpreted. The Executive branch arrests people or otherwise enforces those laws based on its own interpretation. The Judicial branch reviews and decides if the Executive's actions are correct based on the wording of the law.
In practice, Judicial branch depends on prior decisions and sometimes other hints, as well as their own intelligence, when deciding what a law means.
It makes sense that only lawyers should write legislation, because they would be familiar with the legalese (jargon which is relatively specific compared to its usage in ordinary contexts). In practice, any joker good at winning popularity contests can write a law, summarize it to their fellow lawmakers, and have it pass without much in the way of reviews.
That's how bad laws get passed. That and a whole lot of other ways.
The commerce clause has been the subject of a number of lawsuits, so there is a lot of prior case law which has to be considered. We basically painted ourselves into a corner at this point, and I believe it would take a major challenge to change anything, much more than an individual citizen with a legitimate complaint.
Just as an aside -.aspx tends to be crap because Microsoft's built-in objects and default settings are crap. It takes a *lot* of effort to replace default behaviour with something a normal person would expect.
In some cases, to make a minor adjustment you have to learn about ASP.NET pipeline, page rendering order, how output normally proceeds, and have to derive from an unrelated object usually in an unrelated file (app_code folder) and spread your code all over the site, just to do something you can achieve in asp 3 in mere minutes.
ASPX pages showed up on microsoft.com well before it was released to the public, I'm surprised their internal people didn't raise more objections.
If you have an experience.NET developer, you can do a lot quickly. But it takes a very long time to achieve that. Kinda like when Java sucked and it was because people used strings instead of stringbuilder, because they don't know any better. Not trying to start a Java thread, just saying it's not tied to Microsoft. Any complicated language with surface-deep "how to program in 24 hours" type examples will make failures of its developers before they become enlightened.
What's funny is, I bet a non-handicapped person is really behind this. If I were planning on doing something with the data, and it were jailed in Flash instead of perfectly acceptable HTML, I'd use any applicable lawsuit to get access to the data. Not proud of that, just sayin'.
Besides, if a blind person saw the site, they wouldn't necessarily know which data is missing. They'd have to be at least partially "in cahoots" with a sighted person.
you're still gambling on a few things. It's possible to recover from damage with parity, but in practice I've never had it work.
First, the TOC isn't duplicated AFAIK so a tiny scratch there makes the whole thing useless.
Second, parity files can be in the area that gets scratched as well - a scratch near the end of the data and beginning of parity files means you lose part of both.
Third, that a reader will be able to recover anything - usually the ones I have crap out on the whole file if there's one error, instead of getting a much as it can, so your strategy has to include some recovery tools as well. Which should be burned onto every disc you use the strategy on, so that in case the software gets pulled and DMCA notices or whatnot take down copies, it's still available.
"I can do that, let me show you how" is exactly what patents protect against.
If I invent a new way of making solar panels, I describe it fully in a patent application. Based on the abstract, experts in the field might say "I can do that, let me show you how." The difference is, they didn't think of doing it. (Or they did and found out it wasn't worthwhile.)
In this article the author mentioned how Catherine Littlefield Greene suggested to Whitney the use of a brush-like component instrumental to separate out the seeds and cotton.
Otis designed a technology system that employs flat polyurethane-coated steel belts that replace the heavy, woven steel cables which have remained the industry standard since the late 1800s
Just like in SQL, I usually find there is a simple, if inelegant, solution available for just about everything in the command prompt. It's not intuitive, barely documented, and seems pieced together and inconsistent. In other words, we should expect that to be the case, because it's always the case.
Seems like the ignorant would be better at selling things, I'd expect sales *to* the ignorant to increase. Ignorant salespeople don't have any 'tells' to determine when they are lying - because they have no idea.
From the console standpoint, fear of piracy means you can't download - the CD is essentially a dongle you need to have in order to make it go.
They could unlock consoles and sell games for $10 or $20 using a P2P like system, and I bet they'd overall sell more games. More revenue, lower profit margins, more money overall spent to fund future games.
That's fine. I bought a PS2 and only purchase used games, or the 3-packs for $20 at wal-mart. If the rest of you would join me, we can have a big downward pressure on prices. I'm playing a $3 game this week.
Or you can rent new games instead of buying - then the price doesn't matter to you at all. In fact, given that some games have 20 hours or less of gameplay, it makes sense to rent it for a week and forget about owning it. Then you would buy only the games which have good reply value, or are intended for mostly online play.
Above all, everyone needs to realize that if they pay $60 for a game, they are allowing the games to stay that high. It would only take a few weeks for game places to see zero sales, shit themselves, and drop prices.
omg. Crappy database server running on old hardware does not qualify as a database? I think you've dabbled in SQL and resent Excel junkies encroaching on your skillset.
Excel has ODBC drivers, meaning you can do anything with Excel you can with Access, except primary/foreign keys. Yes, you can write SQL. Yes you can join different tabs. You can even do triggers if you want to screw around with VBA, which excel junkies are more than happy to do.
And before you try it, know that the Excel driver is TERRIBLE. It makes assumptions about your data by scanning a set number of rows, instead of having column definitions. I have had to fake it by putting datetimes at the top of a column, so Excel doesn't think empty rows are text. Or the other way around, yielding import errors.
The way I read it when it first came out was, most of their feature requests were already in the product. So the ribbon was intended to (among other things) try to make it easier for people to find things.
You still have to know what you're looking for, and how Microsoft decided it should be classified. For example, to insert a new line of cells you don't look on the Insert ribbon - if you do, you'd see "Insert / Line" and be surprised when a graph pops up. It's not under Data, as in Insert a line of data. So I go to Home. There's an Insert option, but it's in the box labeled Cells. I don't want cells, I want a whole line. The "old way" was Insert -> Row, and the 2003 shortcut still works in 2007.
"Nine out of 10 feature requests we got for 2007 were already in the 2003 product," says Microsoft senior marketing manager Paul Coleman. "People just couldn't find them."
In addition to the pther people kicking your ass, I'd like to say that using (by default, which most users won't even ask if it can be changed) non-standard images to "advertise" a feature makes me slow down when scanning. It might have been a good idea, but visually I can't quickly see what I'm doing.
Some things are similar and therefore grouped. some are basically menus which vertically drop down. Some bring up a windowless dialog type, where older versions would have popped up a dialog (I prefer this actually, since the dialog is usually modal). Some are on/off buttons, some actually do something without additional interaction.
Like everything else, they had a good idea and good intentions, but implemented it in a very unusable way.
From left to write: paste, cut/copy, font selection, alignment, wrap text, styles all work differently. Paste actually has two places - the "Paste" command itself, and the dropdown which duplicates the formatting tool that comes up after pasting. Conditional formatting looks like pixel editing in MSPaint. Format as table looks like a paintbrush tool. The "Editing" section is misnamed, should have been whatever is short for "operations on multiple cells".
Did you know you can click what looks like a "close" button on the bottom left and open up a dialog? Oh, but for "Paste" it brings up a sidebar. Only half of them on the Home page have the option to click.
Last for now, I have to select WHICH ribbon is showing using the very menu-like selections of "Home, Insert," etc.
It's a great idea, but just terrible implementation. Whatever project manager was responsible for this, and similar disasters throughout the Windows ecosystem, should be removed from the gene pool. we don't need that kind of help.
I don't think this is a trolling comment - if you've ever gotten pulled over you've probably heard the "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about..." justification when an officer feels like searching your car.
I got pulled over for speeding on a Superbowl Sunday, and submitted to the breathalyzer. Blew a zero, and obviously the guy was on DUI patrol because now he wanted to search the car. Just giving me a speeding ticket was apparently not an option. I heard this explanation several times, along with the accusation "What's wrong, you have a little joint in there? A bit of a roach in the ashtray? If there's nothing in there then it won't hurt to have a look, right?" He wouldn't believe me, go figure. He seemed like a good guy, so I traded a search for a warning. I would not advise people to do the same, better to ask if you are free to go and pay the speeding ticket. But I'm weak sometimes when it involves outrageous fees.
I would mod this "+1 funny, in a sad frustrated sort of way"
First, it's an interview. A lot of interviews tend to be one-sided. Especially on non-controversial issues, but the interviewer is obviously not aware of any potential controversy.
Second, it would be a good idea to post a comment there, and mail the interviewer and CC the editor. Let them know that they have essentially printed an advertisement, and that some alternative viewpoint would be in order, or at least questioning the claims.
Third, and most important, ZDNet is not known for investigative journalism. They will thank you for your message and that's about it. So the only good you can really do here is leave a comment, maybe pointing back to this discussion to see what knowledgeable people in the field think about the interview.
Forgive my ignorance, are you saying that Apple does not produce and maintain documentation on something as simple as connecting something to a network? Seems like a search on Apple's website would result in more than enough information...
Is Mac maybe a home machine where Windows is more of a corporate platform? One expects to be part of a corporate network, the other not so much?
We didn't ask Stan or Jack or anyone else to make us a comic with a spider mutant in it. Without them, we wouldn't have that as a part of our culture. Like it or not, the parts of a culture which hold us together are those things we can share everywhere.
A wall is a known thing, and if I want one built I can stab the guy who made it and get someone else to build the same thing. They'd be different, but not in any way that's important. No child is going to want to grow up to be a plaster wall.
You can't stab Beethoven or Jack Kirby or Marilyn Monroe or Pablo Neruda and have someone else step in and make it work. We know what happens when they change directors on a trilogy even - not the creative mind behind the work, or the writer, just some schmoe they brought in to turn a script into a movie.
People do things differently, and sometimes the works resonate with people, and have value above that of their materials, or the work it would take to recreate it. This is called intellectual property, it has value, and it can be handed down from a father to his son just like a piece of gold or a hot rod. The difference is, at some point in its life it stops belonging to you. Yes, the government takes your intellectual property and gives it to the masses. How socialist of them! Of course, the creator is most likely dead by then, and he can no longer hand it down through the generations like a piece of gold. Instead, the people get to do with it as they wish. If it still has value, it must be a powerful artifact and worthy of keeping around and alive for so long. Let's face it, Britney Spears is not going to be all the rage when her copyrights expire, but someone will. And whatever that is will someday be as free as a Martin Luther speech, or Dante's Inferno, or The Holy Bible, a Bach Sinfonia, or a Van Gogh painting. All because of these words the founding fathers wrote: "... for a limited time". If you don't like it, find a country with a Constitution you approve of. Unless you're already in one and your rant is sour grapes, if so then neener neener.
The contract is: you make it public, eventually it will be public domain.
The founding fathers give you a limited time to control it, and the moment you created it, you accepted the contract. If you don't want people copying it, keep it locked up. Otherwise, it will eventually be public domain and you get no say in the matter. Don't like it? Move to another country.
Also, in case you want to whine some more, it was originally ~20 years. So you're getting more than was intended already.
Besides, the real problem here is when someone moves on and doesn't care what happens to it, or just dies without cleaning up all of their business. The author would have to explicitly terminate the copyright, but an abandoned/orphan work just sits around for an entire lifetime after the author dies.
There is no one to ask, no one to lift the copyright, no one to pay, no one to buy it from. It's stuck, because the copyright system is not opt-in, it's required and once you stop caring about your work it doesn't magically get freed.
So, you write something and no one buys it, or people stop buying it. It's making you no money, you forget you even created it. It's not in your will, your heirs have no idea it's yours. You die. Now someone reads your obituary and looks into your stuff. Fascinating, where can I buy this work? You can't, it's not in print. Heirs? They know nothing about it, or aren't in the business, couldn't care less, never return phone calls, whatever. If you are against Google on this one, you're saying it shouldn't even be in search results. No one can find it in the back of a library and scan it, to make it available and searchable.
I can't type in a quote that I remember reading when I was a child, and find that book, because you were selfish enough to die and not leave instructions on its care.
Looks like most of the replies already made the points I was going to make, so all I have left is an ad hominem attack. I don't see much personal info in your profile, so could you help me out to get me started?
It's not anonymous commenters criticising the police. The summary suggests that's the problem, but the subheading says
People who misrepresent themselves as officials in online comments could face civil, criminal penalties, Acevedo says.
So it's actually people pretending to be officials. Would you set up your Slashdot profile with your real name and links to your personal websites, and then give us the password? Misrepresenting yourself as another person is one thing, but this goes beyond.
A public official needs to be trusted, and people are misrepresenting the official in a public forum. This is no different from impersonating a police officer. I could pretend to be Acevedo and give a bogus opinion on some case, and it probably would be damaging. You show up in court with a URL that quotes Acevedo, and now the question is - should a reasonable person have been able to tell that the poster is not representing the police force?
If you walked into a government office, and an official asked you to kneel down and fellate him, would you?
What if he said it was a legal request, happens all the time, sorry you didn't read the memo posted on the door when you entered?
Would you at least ask to get an independent lawyer's opinion? I would. Most businesses would. In fact, I believe there were several companies which either initially or completely refused to hand over information with just a letter. Other companies just said oh sure no problem, here's everything you could want.
If you buy sheet music from a reputable publisher (you can identify these easily because they swarm all over music educator conferences) the whole point is to study and then give a concert. Needing a separate license for that would be ridiculous - the school administration office would go crazy when they apparently had to re-buy what they already bought.
Sometimes the license comes with it, sometimes you get a different license.
I went along with the high school band on their final performance at a band competition in East Los Angeles in November of 2007. I was shocked to see signs posted all over the arena saying âoeNo Videotaping Allowed in Respect for the Copyright Owners of the Musicâ. The reason given for banning all camcorders was that there was no permission for âoemechanical reproductionâ of the songs being played. The music industry feels the need to prevent the parents from recording their own kids, because this might cut into their profits.
In this case the license is for a performance on a football field, but doesn't include recording. MPAA/RIAA are the recording guys, ASCAP/BMI are the performance guys. If you buy out of the "marching band" section, it probably includes the outside performance license.
So it does involve an extra license, but it's usually in the cost of the music. If someone arranges something copyrighted, no one has gotten paid so you're taking a risk of being audited.
It's not a big quibble, just illustrating that academics is nowhere near an automatic exclusion.
Death marking the end of copyright is a dangerous path, lest a person suddenly have a business case for "ending the copyright" prematurely. Public domain is just a click away.
Slashdot Mirror
W
I think you dropped this. I included a newline too. Also, you might check on your shift key, it seems a bit sporadic. Might need to look at your keyboard in general. Good tools make for good communication.
In theory, yes. The Legislative branch writes laws with no hints towards how they should be interpreted. The Executive branch arrests people or otherwise enforces those laws based on its own interpretation. The Judicial branch reviews and decides if the Executive's actions are correct based on the wording of the law.
In practice, Judicial branch depends on prior decisions and sometimes other hints, as well as their own intelligence, when deciding what a law means.
It makes sense that only lawyers should write legislation, because they would be familiar with the legalese (jargon which is relatively specific compared to its usage in ordinary contexts). In practice, any joker good at winning popularity contests can write a law, summarize it to their fellow lawmakers, and have it pass without much in the way of reviews.
That's how bad laws get passed. That and a whole lot of other ways.
The commerce clause has been the subject of a number of lawsuits, so there is a lot of prior case law which has to be considered. We basically painted ourselves into a corner at this point, and I believe it would take a major challenge to change anything, much more than an individual citizen with a legitimate complaint.
Just as an aside - .aspx tends to be crap because Microsoft's built-in objects and default settings are crap. It takes a *lot* of effort to replace default behaviour with something a normal person would expect.
In some cases, to make a minor adjustment you have to learn about ASP.NET pipeline, page rendering order, how output normally proceeds, and have to derive from an unrelated object usually in an unrelated file (app_code folder) and spread your code all over the site, just to do something you can achieve in asp 3 in mere minutes.
ASPX pages showed up on microsoft.com well before it was released to the public, I'm surprised their internal people didn't raise more objections.
If you have an experience .NET developer, you can do a lot quickly. But it takes a very long time to achieve that. Kinda like when Java sucked and it was because people used strings instead of stringbuilder, because they don't know any better. Not trying to start a Java thread, just saying it's not tied to Microsoft. Any complicated language with surface-deep "how to program in 24 hours" type examples will make failures of its developers before they become enlightened.
What's funny is, I bet a non-handicapped person is really behind this. If I were planning on doing something with the data, and it were jailed in Flash instead of perfectly acceptable HTML, I'd use any applicable lawsuit to get access to the data. Not proud of that, just sayin'.
Besides, if a blind person saw the site, they wouldn't necessarily know which data is missing. They'd have to be at least partially "in cahoots" with a sighted person.
I blame sighted people for the whole mess.
you're still gambling on a few things. It's possible to recover from damage with parity, but in practice I've never had it work.
First, the TOC isn't duplicated AFAIK so a tiny scratch there makes the whole thing useless.
Second, parity files can be in the area that gets scratched as well - a scratch near the end of the data and beginning of parity files means you lose part of both.
Third, that a reader will be able to recover anything - usually the ones I have crap out on the whole file if there's one error, instead of getting a much as it can, so your strategy has to include some recovery tools as well. Which should be burned onto every disc you use the strategy on, so that in case the software gets pulled and DMCA notices or whatnot take down copies, it's still available.
"I can do that, let me show you how" is exactly what patents protect against.
If I invent a new way of making solar panels, I describe it fully in a patent application. Based on the abstract, experts in the field might say "I can do that, let me show you how." The difference is, they didn't think of doing it. (Or they did and found out it wasn't worthwhile.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin
"I can do that, let me show you how."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otis_Elevator_Company
"I can do that, let me show you how."
Damned near anything invented before 1700 falls in this category - obvious when someone mentions it, but remains uninvented and unobvious until then.
Just like in SQL, I usually find there is a simple, if inelegant, solution available for just about everything in the command prompt. It's not intuitive, barely documented, and seems pieced together and inconsistent. In other words, we should expect that to be the case, because it's always the case.
Seems like the ignorant would be better at selling things, I'd expect sales *to* the ignorant to increase. Ignorant salespeople don't have any 'tells' to determine when they are lying - because they have no idea.
From the console standpoint, fear of piracy means you can't download - the CD is essentially a dongle you need to have in order to make it go.
They could unlock consoles and sell games for $10 or $20 using a P2P like system, and I bet they'd overall sell more games. More revenue, lower profit margins, more money overall spent to fund future games.
That's fine. I bought a PS2 and only purchase used games, or the 3-packs for $20 at wal-mart. If the rest of you would join me, we can have a big downward pressure on prices. I'm playing a $3 game this week.
Or you can rent new games instead of buying - then the price doesn't matter to you at all. In fact, given that some games have 20 hours or less of gameplay, it makes sense to rent it for a week and forget about owning it. Then you would buy only the games which have good reply value, or are intended for mostly online play.
Above all, everyone needs to realize that if they pay $60 for a game, they are allowing the games to stay that high. It would only take a few weeks for game places to see zero sales, shit themselves, and drop prices.
omg. Crappy database server running on old hardware does not qualify as a database? I think you've dabbled in SQL and resent Excel junkies encroaching on your skillset.
Excel has ODBC drivers, meaning you can do anything with Excel you can with Access, except primary/foreign keys. Yes, you can write SQL. Yes you can join different tabs. You can even do triggers if you want to screw around with VBA, which excel junkies are more than happy to do.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/195951
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/178717
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/141284
And before you try it, know that the Excel driver is TERRIBLE. It makes assumptions about your data by scanning a set number of rows, instead of having column definitions. I have had to fake it by putting datetimes at the top of a column, so Excel doesn't think empty rows are text. Or the other way around, yielding import errors.
But it does work as a database.
The way I read it when it first came out was, most of their feature requests were already in the product. So the ribbon was intended to (among other things) try to make it easier for people to find things.
You still have to know what you're looking for, and how Microsoft decided it should be classified. For example, to insert a new line of cells you don't look on the Insert ribbon - if you do, you'd see "Insert / Line" and be surprised when a graph pops up. It's not under Data, as in Insert a line of data. So I go to Home. There's an Insert option, but it's in the box labeled Cells. I don't want cells, I want a whole line. The "old way" was Insert -> Row, and the 2003 shortcut still works in 2007.
"Nine out of 10 feature requests we got for 2007 were already in the 2003 product," says Microsoft senior marketing manager Paul Coleman. "People just couldn't find them."
http://www.wired.com/software/softwarereviews/news/2007/01/72596
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/114467/is-microsofts-ribbon-ui-really-that-great-from-a-usability-perspective
http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/maryb/2009/07/13/dont-like-the-ribbon-you-will/
http://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/note/666e1143-e735-4d8e-a98a-931fda130235/pivic/Tech
http://www.betanews.com/article/Top-5-obvious-feature-enhancements-to-Microsoft-Office-2010/1247509742/2
http://www.factplace.com/microsoft_onenote_12.htm
In addition to the pther people kicking your ass, I'd like to say that using (by default, which most users won't even ask if it can be changed) non-standard images to "advertise" a feature makes me slow down when scanning. It might have been a good idea, but visually I can't quickly see what I'm doing.
Some things are similar and therefore grouped. some are basically menus which vertically drop down. Some bring up a windowless dialog type, where older versions would have popped up a dialog (I prefer this actually, since the dialog is usually modal). Some are on/off buttons, some actually do something without additional interaction.
Like everything else, they had a good idea and good intentions, but implemented it in a very unusable way.
From left to write: paste, cut/copy, font selection, alignment, wrap text, styles all work differently. Paste actually has two places - the "Paste" command itself, and the dropdown which duplicates the formatting tool that comes up after pasting. Conditional formatting looks like pixel editing in MSPaint. Format as table looks like a paintbrush tool. The "Editing" section is misnamed, should have been whatever is short for "operations on multiple cells".
Did you know you can click what looks like a "close" button on the bottom left and open up a dialog? Oh, but for "Paste" it brings up a sidebar. Only half of them on the Home page have the option to click.
Last for now, I have to select WHICH ribbon is showing using the very menu-like selections of "Home, Insert," etc.
It's a great idea, but just terrible implementation. Whatever project manager was responsible for this, and similar disasters throughout the Windows ecosystem, should be removed from the gene pool. we don't need that kind of help.
Too bad, everyone knows there is no alternative, only XUL.
I don't think this is a trolling comment - if you've ever gotten pulled over you've probably heard the "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about..." justification when an officer feels like searching your car.
I got pulled over for speeding on a Superbowl Sunday, and submitted to the breathalyzer. Blew a zero, and obviously the guy was on DUI patrol because now he wanted to search the car. Just giving me a speeding ticket was apparently not an option. I heard this explanation several times, along with the accusation "What's wrong, you have a little joint in there? A bit of a roach in the ashtray? If there's nothing in there then it won't hurt to have a look, right?" He wouldn't believe me, go figure. He seemed like a good guy, so I traded a search for a warning. I would not advise people to do the same, better to ask if you are free to go and pay the speeding ticket. But I'm weak sometimes when it involves outrageous fees.
I would mod this "+1 funny, in a sad frustrated sort of way"
First, it's an interview. A lot of interviews tend to be one-sided. Especially on non-controversial issues, but the interviewer is obviously not aware of any potential controversy.
Second, it would be a good idea to post a comment there, and mail the interviewer and CC the editor. Let them know that they have essentially printed an advertisement, and that some alternative viewpoint would be in order, or at least questioning the claims.
Third, and most important, ZDNet is not known for investigative journalism. They will thank you for your message and that's about it. So the only good you can really do here is leave a comment, maybe pointing back to this discussion to see what knowledgeable people in the field think about the interview.
Forgive my ignorance, are you saying that Apple does not produce and maintain documentation on something as simple as connecting something to a network? Seems like a search on Apple's website would result in more than enough information...
Is Mac maybe a home machine where Windows is more of a corporate platform? One expects to be part of a corporate network, the other not so much?
We didn't ask Stan or Jack or anyone else to make us a comic with a spider mutant in it. Without them, we wouldn't have that as a part of our culture. Like it or not, the parts of a culture which hold us together are those things we can share everywhere.
A wall is a known thing, and if I want one built I can stab the guy who made it and get someone else to build the same thing. They'd be different, but not in any way that's important. No child is going to want to grow up to be a plaster wall.
You can't stab Beethoven or Jack Kirby or Marilyn Monroe or Pablo Neruda and have someone else step in and make it work. We know what happens when they change directors on a trilogy even - not the creative mind behind the work, or the writer, just some schmoe they brought in to turn a script into a movie.
People do things differently, and sometimes the works resonate with people, and have value above that of their materials, or the work it would take to recreate it. This is called intellectual property, it has value, and it can be handed down from a father to his son just like a piece of gold or a hot rod. The difference is, at some point in its life it stops belonging to you. Yes, the government takes your intellectual property and gives it to the masses. How socialist of them! Of course, the creator is most likely dead by then, and he can no longer hand it down through the generations like a piece of gold. Instead, the people get to do with it as they wish. If it still has value, it must be a powerful artifact and worthy of keeping around and alive for so long. Let's face it, Britney Spears is not going to be all the rage when her copyrights expire, but someone will. And whatever that is will someday be as free as a Martin Luther speech, or Dante's Inferno, or The Holy Bible, a Bach Sinfonia, or a Van Gogh painting. All because of these words the founding fathers wrote: "... for a limited time". If you don't like it, find a country with a Constitution you approve of. Unless you're already in one and your rant is sour grapes, if so then neener neener.
The contract is: you make it public, eventually it will be public domain.
The founding fathers give you a limited time to control it, and the moment you created it, you accepted the contract. If you don't want people copying it, keep it locked up. Otherwise, it will eventually be public domain and you get no say in the matter. Don't like it? Move to another country.
Also, in case you want to whine some more, it was originally ~20 years. So you're getting more than was intended already.
Besides, the real problem here is when someone moves on and doesn't care what happens to it, or just dies without cleaning up all of their business. The author would have to explicitly terminate the copyright, but an abandoned/orphan work just sits around for an entire lifetime after the author dies.
There is no one to ask, no one to lift the copyright, no one to pay, no one to buy it from. It's stuck, because the copyright system is not opt-in, it's required and once you stop caring about your work it doesn't magically get freed.
So, you write something and no one buys it, or people stop buying it. It's making you no money, you forget you even created it. It's not in your will, your heirs have no idea it's yours. You die. Now someone reads your obituary and looks into your stuff. Fascinating, where can I buy this work? You can't, it's not in print. Heirs? They know nothing about it, or aren't in the business, couldn't care less, never return phone calls, whatever. If you are against Google on this one, you're saying it shouldn't even be in search results. No one can find it in the back of a library and scan it, to make it available and searchable.
I can't type in a quote that I remember reading when I was a child, and find that book, because you were selfish enough to die and not leave instructions on its care.
Looks like most of the replies already made the points I was going to make, so all I have left is an ad hominem attack. I don't see much personal info in your profile, so could you help me out to get me started?
It's not anonymous commenters criticising the police. The summary suggests that's the problem, but the subheading says
So it's actually people pretending to be officials. Would you set up your Slashdot profile with your real name and links to your personal websites, and then give us the password? Misrepresenting yourself as another person is one thing, but this goes beyond.
A public official needs to be trusted, and people are misrepresenting the official in a public forum. This is no different from impersonating a police officer. I could pretend to be Acevedo and give a bogus opinion on some case, and it probably would be damaging. You show up in court with a URL that quotes Acevedo, and now the question is - should a reasonable person have been able to tell that the poster is not representing the police force?
If you walked into a government office, and an official asked you to kneel down and fellate him, would you?
What if he said it was a legal request, happens all the time, sorry you didn't read the memo posted on the door when you entered?
Would you at least ask to get an independent lawyer's opinion? I would. Most businesses would. In fact, I believe there were several companies which either initially or completely refused to hand over information with just a letter. Other companies just said oh sure no problem, here's everything you could want.
If you buy sheet music from a reputable publisher (you can identify these easily because they swarm all over music educator conferences) the whole point is to study and then give a concert. Needing a separate license for that would be ridiculous - the school administration office would go crazy when they apparently had to re-buy what they already bought.
Sometimes the license comes with it, sometimes you get a different license.
http://kswenson.wordpress.com/2008/03/16/the-right-to-royalty-free-memories/
In this case the license is for a performance on a football field, but doesn't include recording. MPAA/RIAA are the recording guys, ASCAP/BMI are the performance guys. If you buy out of the "marching band" section, it probably includes the outside performance license.
So it does involve an extra license, but it's usually in the cost of the music. If someone arranges something copyrighted, no one has gotten paid so you're taking a risk of being audited.
It's not a big quibble, just illustrating that academics is nowhere near an automatic exclusion.
Death marking the end of copyright is a dangerous path, lest a person suddenly have a business case for "ending the copyright" prematurely. Public domain is just a click away.
I read slashdot to *escape* the workplace, not relive it.
*sigh*