I mean, it's my understanding that an employer can terminate an employee for almost any reason imaginable, or no reason at all... and if none is given, wouldn't the onus fall on the employee to prove that the actual reason was one that is illegal?
Without copyright, any work is indistinguishable from public domain, and so absolutely no acknowledgement whatsoever needs to be given to the source. When I write open source software, I'm doing it because I'm wanting the code to stay free... if another person closes it up and happens to be better at distributing than I am, even if they didn't do anything to improve upon it, then they are getting the credit for something that I did.
No copyright means that my own wishes for my own creations can't be respected... and without copyright nobody even owes me any credit. How is that fair?
Just release the closed version yourself, with credits embedded.
If I wanted to use the GPL in the first place, then that doesn't exactly accomplish my intention... that my source code remain accessible. Also, regardless, as I had suggested before, if they had a larger distribution pipe than I do, then their version could end up being more popular than mine, not because it was higher quality, but simply because it was marketed or distributed better than what I could afford or manage. A version *without* the source code... and without so much as an acknowledgement in their more popular version, people wouldn't even necessarily know where to go to get it (or even what it had been derived from, in fact, if they didn't even use the original product name).
You don't need to know where the box is to think outside of it. In fact, the less you know about the box, the easier it *IS* to think outside of it.
But don't misinterpret that as any sort of indicator that I don't value a conventional education. It's important to learn what other people have done in the field so that you don't unessarily reinvent the wheel.
My experience with people who have been "raised up" using design patterns is that they mostly tend to think very similarly in how they would approach a given problem. While this might seem to be helpful in terms of everybody on a programming team working in a consistent style, the problem I've found is that the lack of diversity tends to, more often than not, lead to suboptimal solutions, because different ideas aren't considered and weighed out.
You would not find "my" website because I do not have my own company.
As a software programmer you do not need copyright.
Oh, I definitely do. Even for free software I put under the GPL... it's the copyright on it that legally guarantees the source code will remain free. Without copyright, another organization could appropriate it, close it up, and release a derivative work without so much as an acknowledgement that they got it from me, costing me potential reputation, and if they happen to have a higher distribution channel than I do, then the closed source work could end up even more popular than my open source one... even if they did not little or nothing to extend it.
I have no disdain at all for a formal education. But, particularly in computer science, the important thing to take from such an education is learning how to learn... because practically everything concrete that you learned in school will be obsolete before you graduate. Of course you need to learn what other people have done before you so that you don't reinvent the wheel. For what it's worth, I ended up learning about design patterns for one course I took in my last year just before I graduated. They seemed to make a whole lot of sense at the time, but it it took me some number of years after that, and in the real world of corporate software development, before I realized the problems that they bring with them
Regardless, patterns are simply tools in the box. They're not the ONLY tools in the box.
I can sort of agree with where you're coming from with this. My experience with younger programmers has often been that they are very eager to point out how they have used such-and-such a design pattern to approach a particular goal, and while that might sound impressive, it leaves one wondering if they had spent as much time thinking about the best way to accomplish the goal as they did finding a way to squeeze the problem into one particular design pattern.
I am reminded of when I recently had the misfortune of working on a project with another younger programmer who seemed extremely eager to apply design patterns to every stage of the development process, all too often without regard for whether it was the best way to solve a particular problem. I hold him no ill-will in all of this, of course... he was eager, energetic, and very well meaning. But it just seemed that sometimes he was using particular design patterns just for their own sake.
This experience, unfortunately, is far from unique. Maybe you're right about design patterns being practical... but it strikes me that there's something wrong with how they are being taught to people these days...and I find that teaching them tends to make too many programmers think alike, reducing the variety of creativity that will spring forth from a programming team.
Well I don't ever pretend to say that being imaginative should *ever* be a substitute for at least being aware of what else is going on around you, or knowing what other have done before. It goes without saying that any good programmer should be very well read. My only concern is that design patterns tend to put programmers, especially newer ones, into boxes that they will have a very hard time learning how to think outside of. They've learned all these terms that have been ingrained into them right from year one in computer science, and all to often, particularly with younger programmers, you see people applying named patterns to some problems for the sake of the pattern itself, rather than because it was really the best way to solve a particular problem. Design patterns, at least to me, come across as a means to sound impressive when discussing your software... like you know all the technical buzzwords, but in the end, they don't actually help you understand how to solve any real problems that programmers have to face.
... is that they do not scale very well to software that is supposed to be on the cutting edge of what is technologically possible today. When all you think about is in terms of named patterns, then there's a pretty good chance that you're just reinventing stuff that other people have done. Perhaps you are doing it faster, or on a newer platform, but in the end, it's still just reinvention. Real pioneering comes from thinking outside of the box, where nobody else has ever tried exploring before. If all you can do is think in terms of the named patterns that other people have already thought of, then I think that's generally only going to hold you back.
First of all, my username is mark-t because my first name is Mark, and my last name begins with "T".
I've already said above that I'm not a shill. If you don't believe that. well, that's your own problem.
As for the type of copyrights I hold, they are on software. Some of it free, and under the GPL, some of it not. I value the terms over both types of creations equally. I use the GPL when I want my work (and in particular, my source code) to stay free. When I do not, I do not use it. Copyright protects my interests in both cases. I also write software for other people... who would, in particular, be highly reticent to pay me anything if it were not for copyright.
I have no Porsche. I am not incredibly wealthy. I have no Malibu beach house. I value copyright because of what it offers me - a measure of control over what I create, even if I release it into the general population. The publishers that I write software for feel the same way, and if they didn't have copyright, I'd be out of a job (as would every computer programmer who wrote code for other people).
I push the narrative that I do because I've studied the subject extensively... and I see how copyright, since its inception, has actually benefited society by giving creators an incentive to publish, by offering them legally recognized control over the copying of their work. I've noticed that many people that don't advocate copyright think that this control is illusionary, and because it's not inherent, it shouldn't be there at all. Well, actually, it *IS* inherent... a creator has completely natural control over the copying of any work that he creates if he or she does not distribute it at all, or at least restricts its distribution to a small subset of society that they feel confident they can still control the distribution of their work within. The entire *point* of copyright is that it supposed to be a trade... The creator gets to hold on a form of the control they would have had if they never released it at all, or otherwise publicly censored themselves (I do recognize that this extended control only exists by legislation... but it is still an extension of a type of control that otherwise would have naturally existed if they had not published), and in exchange, society gets to be benefited and enriched by the publication of the work. Serendipitously, the creator might also choose to profit from their work during the term alocated for their exclusive rights on it (for what it's worth, I totally agree that existing copyright terms are far too long. They should be scaled back to no more than 20 years, on *ANY* type of work... and arguably even less than that for some types of digital content).
Of course, you might just think I'm a mindless peon, who has been brainwashed by the big corporates, and is just the sort of person that they want to cater to. Again, you'd be off the mark. I'm just somebody who recognizes that copyright, throughout its history, has been good for society, and that without it, artists would be *forced* to self- publish. Regardless of how cheap you might perceive this to be thanks to the Internet, remember that a person's distribution capacity is still going to be limited by how much money they have... not to mention that almost everything ever created will just get lost in the endless ocean of advertisement-laden link farms, cheap porn, and cat videos, and I am compelled to pre-emptively mourn for the children that would be born in such an era.
Not respecting copyright diminishes the confidence that publishers will have in it to protect their interests, and the only other thing that anyone could use to accomplish that are restrictive measures that publishers place on their works, to limit the circumstances and terms under which they utilize it completely legitimately, unless they have a high level of technical expertise. Today, we call that Digital Rights Management... and anyone can already see the headache that is for many people. It would be infinitely worse if the publishers could not even utilize copyright on their works.
You get exclusivity by putting your name and web address as an integral part on your creations
That you would even mention this indicates that you are, evidently, taking copyright as an axiomatic given. Without copyright, your name on your creation means absolutely zip, since anybody can simply remove it.
I am neither a big corporate, nor a shill for a big corporate. I am a small copyright holder who values the exclusivity that copyright is supposed to offer me. Yes, I realize that my stuff will get copied without permission by individuals who do it simply because there's no real way to police it in that scale, but at least if a larger company were to try it, I could stop it. Without copyright, I couldn't. If their distribution channel is larger than mine (which is quite likely, given that they have more money), I could get effectively cut right out of benefiting from my own work. I have no problem whatsoever with artists and creators who choose to make their stuff freely available, but that's THEIR choice... and that's how it is supposed to be. Why should other people be allowed to dictate what sort of model that I wish to use?
Oh, and obviously you don't send a corporation to jail, but their license to practice business could be revoked (this is generally what happens when a company is found to have broken the law and a mere fine would not be sufficient deterrent).
Actually, it doesn't generally tend to happen that often because copyright infringement currently *IS* illegal, and if a larger company that tried to do something like that, they would find themselves in no end of trouble (depending on the scale of the infringement, somebody might even end up in jail).
Without copyright, there would be absolutely no disincentive for it to occur... do you seriously think it wouldn't?
I have no love for the copyright terms being as long as they are, but ending copyright altogether, even slowly as you suggest, would not be a good solution... it would strongly favor the publishers who have more money, and who have a larger distribution channel.
At least with copyright, the small guy can actually stop a bigger corporation from potentially profiting from his work without compensation.
I'm not sure what year your OED is, because according to the one I just looked in:
kill, destroy, or remove a large proportion of:
the inhabitants of the country had been decimated
drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of (something): public transport has been decimated
historical kill one in every ten of (a group of people, originally a mutinous Roman legion) as a punishment for the whole group: the man who is to determine whether it be necessary to decimate a large body of mutineers
Historically, the meaning of the word decimate is 'kill one in every ten of (a group of people)'. This sense has been more or less totally superseded by the later, more general sense 'kill, destroy, or remove a large proportion of', as in the virus has decimated the population. Some traditionalists argue that this is incorrect, but it is clear that it is now part of standard English.
No.... I'm suggesting that the algorithm presented above, which only ever displays the single highest scoring design, is biased against designs that haven't yet had a chance to be viewed by anybody, and thus have not had an opportunity to get a positive response, when people are already showing some favor towards others.
My point is that it is an all too sad statement about humanity that most people will tend to more or less mindlessly consume whatever they are spoon-fed. If they don't know they have other choices, they are less likely to feel negative about the choices that are presented.
As soon as it presents a design that gets a positive response, that design will have the highest percentage response and, by the algorithm described above, be the only one that gets shown unless more people later vote it down.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, it's my understanding that an employer can terminate an employee for almost any reason imaginable, or no reason at all... and if none is given, wouldn't the onus fall on the employee to prove that the actual reason was one that is illegal?
In what way is that fair?
So, ideally, they engage in a long and drawn out battle that culminates in their mutual annihilation?
No copyright means that my own wishes for my own creations can't be respected... and without copyright nobody even owes me any credit. How is that fair?
If I wanted to use the GPL in the first place, then that doesn't exactly accomplish my intention... that my source code remain accessible. Also, regardless, as I had suggested before, if they had a larger distribution pipe than I do, then their version could end up being more popular than mine, not because it was higher quality, but simply because it was marketed or distributed better than what I could afford or manage. A version *without* the source code... and without so much as an acknowledgement in their more popular version, people wouldn't even necessarily know where to go to get it (or even what it had been derived from, in fact, if they didn't even use the original product name).
You don't need to know where the box is to think outside of it. In fact, the less you know about the box, the easier it *IS* to think outside of it.
But don't misinterpret that as any sort of indicator that I don't value a conventional education. It's important to learn what other people have done in the field so that you don't unessarily reinvent the wheel.
My experience with people who have been "raised up" using design patterns is that they mostly tend to think very similarly in how they would approach a given problem. While this might seem to be helpful in terms of everybody on a programming team working in a consistent style, the problem I've found is that the lack of diversity tends to, more often than not, lead to suboptimal solutions, because different ideas aren't considered and weighed out.
You would not find "my" website because I do not have my own company.
Oh, I definitely do. Even for free software I put under the GPL... it's the copyright on it that legally guarantees the source code will remain free. Without copyright, another organization could appropriate it, close it up, and release a derivative work without so much as an acknowledgement that they got it from me, costing me potential reputation, and if they happen to have a higher distribution channel than I do, then the closed source work could end up even more popular than my open source one... even if they did not little or nothing to extend it.
I have no disdain at all for a formal education. But, particularly in computer science, the important thing to take from such an education is learning how to learn... because practically everything concrete that you learned in school will be obsolete before you graduate. Of course you need to learn what other people have done before you so that you don't reinvent the wheel. For what it's worth, I ended up learning about design patterns for one course I took in my last year just before I graduated. They seemed to make a whole lot of sense at the time, but it it took me some number of years after that, and in the real world of corporate software development, before I realized the problems that they bring with them
I can sort of agree with where you're coming from with this. My experience with younger programmers has often been that they are very eager to point out how they have used such-and-such a design pattern to approach a particular goal, and while that might sound impressive, it leaves one wondering if they had spent as much time thinking about the best way to accomplish the goal as they did finding a way to squeeze the problem into one particular design pattern.
I am reminded of when I recently had the misfortune of working on a project with another younger programmer who seemed extremely eager to apply design patterns to every stage of the development process, all too often without regard for whether it was the best way to solve a particular problem. I hold him no ill-will in all of this, of course... he was eager, energetic, and very well meaning. But it just seemed that sometimes he was using particular design patterns just for their own sake.
This experience, unfortunately, is far from unique. Maybe you're right about design patterns being practical... but it strikes me that there's something wrong with how they are being taught to people these days...and I find that teaching them tends to make too many programmers think alike, reducing the variety of creativity that will spring forth from a programming team.
Well I don't ever pretend to say that being imaginative should *ever* be a substitute for at least being aware of what else is going on around you, or knowing what other have done before. It goes without saying that any good programmer should be very well read. My only concern is that design patterns tend to put programmers, especially newer ones, into boxes that they will have a very hard time learning how to think outside of. They've learned all these terms that have been ingrained into them right from year one in computer science, and all to often, particularly with younger programmers, you see people applying named patterns to some problems for the sake of the pattern itself, rather than because it was really the best way to solve a particular problem. Design patterns, at least to me, come across as a means to sound impressive when discussing your software... like you know all the technical buzzwords, but in the end, they don't actually help you understand how to solve any real problems that programmers have to face.
... is that they do not scale very well to software that is supposed to be on the cutting edge of what is technologically possible today. When all you think about is in terms of named patterns, then there's a pretty good chance that you're just reinventing stuff that other people have done. Perhaps you are doing it faster, or on a newer platform, but in the end, it's still just reinvention. Real pioneering comes from thinking outside of the box, where nobody else has ever tried exploring before. If all you can do is think in terms of the named patterns that other people have already thought of, then I think that's generally only going to hold you back.
First of all, my username is mark-t because my first name is Mark, and my last name begins with "T".
I've already said above that I'm not a shill. If you don't believe that. well, that's your own problem.
As for the type of copyrights I hold, they are on software. Some of it free, and under the GPL, some of it not. I value the terms over both types of creations equally. I use the GPL when I want my work (and in particular, my source code) to stay free. When I do not, I do not use it. Copyright protects my interests in both cases. I also write software for other people... who would, in particular, be highly reticent to pay me anything if it were not for copyright.
I have no Porsche. I am not incredibly wealthy. I have no Malibu beach house. I value copyright because of what it offers me - a measure of control over what I create, even if I release it into the general population. The publishers that I write software for feel the same way, and if they didn't have copyright, I'd be out of a job (as would every computer programmer who wrote code for other people).
I push the narrative that I do because I've studied the subject extensively... and I see how copyright, since its inception, has actually benefited society by giving creators an incentive to publish, by offering them legally recognized control over the copying of their work. I've noticed that many people that don't advocate copyright think that this control is illusionary, and because it's not inherent, it shouldn't be there at all. Well, actually, it *IS* inherent... a creator has completely natural control over the copying of any work that he creates if he or she does not distribute it at all, or at least restricts its distribution to a small subset of society that they feel confident they can still control the distribution of their work within. The entire *point* of copyright is that it supposed to be a trade... The creator gets to hold on a form of the control they would have had if they never released it at all, or otherwise publicly censored themselves (I do recognize that this extended control only exists by legislation... but it is still an extension of a type of control that otherwise would have naturally existed if they had not published), and in exchange, society gets to be benefited and enriched by the publication of the work. Serendipitously, the creator might also choose to profit from their work during the term alocated for their exclusive rights on it (for what it's worth, I totally agree that existing copyright terms are far too long. They should be scaled back to no more than 20 years, on *ANY* type of work... and arguably even less than that for some types of digital content).
Of course, you might just think I'm a mindless peon, who has been brainwashed by the big corporates, and is just the sort of person that they want to cater to. Again, you'd be off the mark. I'm just somebody who recognizes that copyright, throughout its history, has been good for society, and that without it, artists would be *forced* to self- publish. Regardless of how cheap you might perceive this to be thanks to the Internet, remember that a person's distribution capacity is still going to be limited by how much money they have... not to mention that almost everything ever created will just get lost in the endless ocean of advertisement-laden link farms, cheap porn, and cat videos, and I am compelled to pre-emptively mourn for the children that would be born in such an era.
Not respecting copyright diminishes the confidence that publishers will have in it to protect their interests, and the only other thing that anyone could use to accomplish that are restrictive measures that publishers place on their works, to limit the circumstances and terms under which they utilize it completely legitimately, unless they have a high level of technical expertise. Today, we call that Digital Rights Management... and anyone can already see the headache that is for many people. It would be infinitely worse if the publishers could not even utilize copyright on their works.
That you would even mention this indicates that you are, evidently, taking copyright as an axiomatic given. Without copyright, your name on your creation means absolutely zip, since anybody can simply remove it.
I am neither a big corporate, nor a shill for a big corporate. I am a small copyright holder who values the exclusivity that copyright is supposed to offer me. Yes, I realize that my stuff will get copied without permission by individuals who do it simply because there's no real way to police it in that scale, but at least if a larger company were to try it, I could stop it. Without copyright, I couldn't. If their distribution channel is larger than mine (which is quite likely, given that they have more money), I could get effectively cut right out of benefiting from my own work. I have no problem whatsoever with artists and creators who choose to make their stuff freely available, but that's THEIR choice... and that's how it is supposed to be. Why should other people be allowed to dictate what sort of model that I wish to use?
Oh, and obviously you don't send a corporation to jail, but their license to practice business could be revoked (this is generally what happens when a company is found to have broken the law and a mere fine would not be sufficient deterrent).
Actually, it doesn't generally tend to happen that often because copyright infringement currently *IS* illegal, and if a larger company that tried to do something like that, they would find themselves in no end of trouble (depending on the scale of the infringement, somebody might even end up in jail).
Without copyright, there would be absolutely no disincentive for it to occur... do you seriously think it wouldn't?
Last time I checked, it actually already was a crime. One that can, in some cases, even carry a jail term.
I have no love for the copyright terms being as long as they are, but ending copyright altogether, even slowly as you suggest, would not be a good solution... it would strongly favor the publishers who have more money, and who have a larger distribution channel.
At least with copyright, the small guy can actually stop a bigger corporation from potentially profiting from his work without compensation.
[NT]
I really don't know why this is even being considered.
For reason that should be plainly obvious, it also reminds me of the Matrix... just with the opposite color.
So... yes?
Food and water.
No.... I'm suggesting that the algorithm presented above, which only ever displays the single highest scoring design, is biased against designs that haven't yet had a chance to be viewed by anybody, and thus have not had an opportunity to get a positive response, when people are already showing some favor towards others.
My point is that it is an all too sad statement about humanity that most people will tend to more or less mindlessly consume whatever they are spoon-fed. If they don't know they have other choices, they are less likely to feel negative about the choices that are presented.
My remark was on the algorithm that the poster above had presented... not the article.
As soon as it presents a design that gets a positive response, that design will have the highest percentage response and, by the algorithm described above, be the only one that gets shown unless more people later vote it down.