well yes and no on the copyright thing...standard disclaimers, i'm not a lawyer, yada yada, go and hire yourself one, yada yada...
but...
my understanding of it as (as a web developer) that there is "work for hire" where someone essentially works as an employee of a company and produces the work which belongs to the company who hired the coders, etc. , under the agreement, and then there's all other work, which is automatically copyrighted to the creator at the creation.
first things first. end their rights to beta-test immediately. if you don't have a beta testing contract, get one and send it out to all your testers with the requirement that they agree to it in order to have rights to continue beta testing.
and get a lawyer to write them a nasty letter. while it costs you something to do and i don't believe they have a legal leg to stand on, it's got to be worth it for your piece of mind. and let's face it--if their arguement was worth diddly, everyone who ever complained about windows would be getting a piece of the pie...
Users aren't the cash cow here -- corporations are. Companies regular throw goofy sums of cash into marketing and Yahoo could get fat feeding at that corporate tit.
Yahoo's already sucked that tit raw with their latest increase. they went from charging $200 nonrefundable bucks one time to be considered (that's not included, it's condisered) for a business listing to requiring $300 yearly for any business to be considered for a listed.
ouch...describing fp97 as a "programming utility" makes my brain hurt!! ye-ow.
and for the record, html is _not_ a programming language, lest this be an area of confusion. it's a markup language. but i digress.
while publisher's wizards are more ubiquitous the fp wizards, they both had wizards that could ultimately produce web pages (if you want to use the term very loosely to described the jumbled-up-propriatary-web-developers-nightmare mess of characters that these programs produce and try to pass off as html).
i absolutely don't see a difference between what frontpage, publisher, word, and probably a host of other applications--both offline and on--do from what ibm is wanting to patent. am i missing something here?
i was the wife who was afraid of computers a few years (oh, it seems like a lifetime!) ago. i thought he was insane and the whole computer thing was 1) too hard, 2)scary and 3) a massive waste of time and money. but i wanted my husband to be happy so i smiled and tried to listen while my eyes glazed over when he raphsodized over the mysterious inner workings of this ugly box sitting in my living room.
what brought be around was when we when he snagged a little desktop publishing program. cheesy clipart, zillions of fonts, all that crap. suddenly, i could see some fun and productive stuff i could do with it. (ok, well productive is perhaps a bit of a stretch--our first project was writing a christmas newsletter. but it was fun and we did it together.)
eventually, he also got some "cute" games like bubble bobble and rainbow island, and we played them together. we raced for the little goodies that dropped down as we played. i never felt pressured or pushed, but he just put that computer out there and made sure there was stuff on it i liked and was interested in--money management programs, word processing programs, desktop publishing programs, that kind of thing. he was there in a flash anytime i had a problem with the computer, and made sure it was fixed pronto and i didn't end up feeling foolish for "messing something up." later on i started to get intereted in the internet, and he got me a copy of frontpage and some graphics programs. i made some butt-ugly webpages and had a good time with it.
and gradually, slowly, i started to become more and more comfortable with it. now we play baulder's gate together a lot, and in the past we've spent time playing diablo--i also like the sims. i'm also a web developer now, so i've clearly gotten over my fear of machines.
so i would say, get your wife some stuff she would be interested in and don't start off with the involved games, which may not appeal to her in the beginning and may require more of a commitment to learning how to play than she's initially interested in. the computer is intimidating when you're first starting out because it can make you feel stupid.
so, to sum up: find things to put on the computer that can make her life easier and more fun. with games, start off with very simple and cute games, and make sure she knows that you value the interaction with her more than the gameplay itself. go slowly and don't push her. support her efforts to do things independently on the computer (and if she screws something up, fix it goodnaturedly). and after you've spent some time doing something together on the computer, let her know you've enjoyed doing it with her. feeling closer to my husband after we'd spent time working on something together on the computer was the most powerful positive reinforcement i could have gotten.
Slashdot Mirror
well yes and no on the copyright thing...standard disclaimers, i'm not a lawyer, yada yada, go and hire yourself one, yada yada...
but...
my understanding of it as (as a web developer) that there is "work for hire" where someone essentially works as an employee of a company and produces the work which belongs to the company who hired the coders, etc. , under the agreement, and then there's all other work, which is automatically copyrighted to the creator at the creation.
first things first. end their rights to beta-test immediately. if you don't have a beta testing contract, get one and send it out to all your testers with the requirement that they agree to it in order to have rights to continue beta testing.
and get a lawyer to write them a nasty letter. while it costs you something to do and i don't believe they have a legal leg to stand on, it's got to be worth it for your piece of mind. and let's face it--if their arguement was worth diddly, everyone who ever complained about windows would be getting a piece of the pie...
speaking of which, where's my check, bill?
Users aren't the cash cow here -- corporations are. Companies regular throw goofy sums of cash into marketing and Yahoo could get fat feeding at that corporate tit.
Yahoo's already sucked that tit raw with their latest increase. they went from charging $200 nonrefundable bucks one time to be considered (that's not included, it's condisered) for a business listing to requiring $300 yearly for any business to be considered for a listed.
ouch.
ouch...describing fp97 as a "programming utility" makes my brain hurt!! ye-ow.
and for the record, html is _not_ a programming language, lest this be an area of confusion. it's a markup language. but i digress.
while publisher's wizards are more ubiquitous the fp wizards, they both had wizards that could ultimately produce web pages (if you want to use the term very loosely to described the jumbled-up-propriatary-web-developers-nightmare mess of characters that these programs produce and try to pass off as html).
i absolutely don't see a difference between what frontpage, publisher, word, and probably a host of other applications--both offline and on--do from what ibm is wanting to patent. am i missing something here?
i was the wife who was afraid of computers a few years (oh, it seems like a lifetime!) ago. i thought he was insane and the whole computer thing was 1) too hard, 2)scary and 3) a massive waste of time and money. but i wanted my husband to be happy so i smiled and tried to listen while my eyes glazed over when he raphsodized over the mysterious inner workings of this ugly box sitting in my living room.
what brought be around was when we when he snagged a little desktop publishing program. cheesy clipart, zillions of fonts, all that crap. suddenly, i could see some fun and productive stuff i could do with it. (ok, well productive is perhaps a bit of a stretch--our first project was writing a christmas newsletter. but it was fun and we did it together.)
eventually, he also got some "cute" games like bubble bobble and rainbow island, and we played them together. we raced for the little goodies that dropped down as we played. i never felt pressured or pushed, but he just put that computer out there and made sure there was stuff on it i liked and was interested in--money management programs, word processing programs, desktop publishing programs, that kind of thing. he was there in a flash anytime i had a problem with the computer, and made sure it was fixed pronto and i didn't end up feeling foolish for "messing something up." later on i started to get intereted in the internet, and he got me a copy of frontpage and some graphics programs. i made some butt-ugly webpages and had a good time with it.
and gradually, slowly, i started to become more and more comfortable with it. now we play baulder's gate together a lot, and in the past we've spent time playing diablo--i also like the sims. i'm also a web developer now, so i've clearly gotten over my fear of machines.
so i would say, get your wife some stuff she would be interested in and don't start off with the involved games, which may not appeal to her in the beginning and may require more of a commitment to learning how to play than she's initially interested in. the computer is intimidating when you're first starting out because it can make you feel stupid.
so, to sum up: find things to put on the computer that can make her life easier and more fun. with games, start off with very simple and cute games, and make sure she knows that you value the interaction with her more than the gameplay itself. go slowly and don't push her. support her efforts to do things independently on the computer (and if she screws something up, fix it goodnaturedly). and after you've spent some time doing something together on the computer, let her know you've enjoyed doing it with her. feeling closer to my husband after we'd spent time working on something together on the computer was the most powerful positive reinforcement i could have gotten.