Don't forget that one half of the copyright bargain is disclosure, in
return for giving the library of Congress a copy of the work to archive
the copyright owner gets enhanced legal redress. No disclosure, well
sort the mess out yourself.
You're confusing patent protection with copyright. Disclosure is part of the patent bargain but it is not part of the copyright bargain. There is no reason for it to be.
In the case of copyright, the item to be copyrighted should be so unique that the only way one might realistically infringe is to actually copy from the source. In this case the onus would reasonably fall upon the copier to license the material.
In the case of patent protection, the idea to be patented could easily be conceived by a great many persons independently. So disclosure is the only hope that one would have that any new idea one thinks of and wants to use isn't already patented. (Disclosure is also supposed to benefit society, theoretically.) (And yes, I know that "ideas" aren't patentable, only implementations. We all know that's a load of crap in practice, however.)
Copyrights are about stopping people from using other people's works. Patents are about stopping everyone from using an idea, no matter who originated it, irrespective of whether any plagiarism might have been involved.
Having a song in your head that you can't identify ranks right up there
with having a bit of popcorn stuck between your teeth. you can't get
squat done until you get the matter resolved...
Ain't that the truth. This idea came to me because I was looking for over a year for a song I heard once or twice on the local light jazz station. No lyrics so no way to search for it. I only found it because some other radio station used a few seconds of it in an ad and I was able to track down the guy who put the ad together. Sometimes I think the RIAA should pay us for all the grief they put us through.:-)
(It turned out to be "In the Full Moon Light" by 3rd Force.)
Okay, themefinder.org is pretty close to what I was thinking of--I guess there's nothing new under the sun. To what they're doing I'd maybe add searching on rhythmic patterns, but they seem to have the key piece.
To get a better database, I was thinking you could go the IMDB route--have people enter the data for "fun". Put the database under an appropriate open license and you could probably get people to go for that.
As for how to keeping the RIAA at bay, it doesn't seem to me that they'd have the legal right to block this sort of tool. That won't stop them from suing, of course. More practically, you could provide links so that people could buy the CDs they find from a partner like CDnow--that would probably hold off the RIAA.
I'd like there to be a site where I can enter a bit of a melody and find info on matching tunes. It's irritating as hell to know of a track, be able to hum it, and not be able to buy it because no one knows what it is.
I have some interesting ideas about how to do this if someone wants to fund it.:-)
(Not using humming as input, though, because some IP squatter has already
patented that.)
I gave my "consultancy" a name (Math Dogs) that I hope will draw this sort of work. We'll see how it goes.
I can sympathize with the problem of an outsider trying to hire a technically proficient programmer. It's not that easy to evaluate people's skills even as an insider.
If I have a chance to look at some of the work the person has done, I'll pick the most glaring programming style faux pas and ask them how they feel about it. A really good programmer will react a little sheepishly and offer that that's something that definitely needs to be fixed, etc. If I get a negative answer, I might ask a few more probing questions to see if they can figure out the problem (thus showing potential). If the light hasn't clicked on by then, they're either really green or clueless.
(Note that I'm not talking about controversial matters of style like preferred tab width or "vi or emacs". I'm talking about problems like "massive code redundancy in desperate need of refactoring" that good programmers will normally feel quite uncomfortable with.)
This sort of a future might (might) be benign if everyone shared the same lack of privacy (and therefore shared equally in the benefits).
This will never happen. Does anyone seriously believe that Dick Cheney or Bill Gates will allow everyone to pick through their bank records, or that Microsoft and McDonald's will allow the general public to listen in on every part of their business dealings?
This is really about determining how little privacy those who are not rich and powerful will have.Ba aa aa...
The only method,
however, that they have to prevent people from exercising their Fair Use rights (among others) is to make a
condition of receiving the work not to do exercise those rights.
IANAL, but I believe that the right to fair use of works is inalienable, or should be. The copyright bargain between copyright holders and society is already heavily biased against society. Tilting it further by allowing holders to withhold fair use of their works as well seems inexcusable.
It's possible that I did misinterpret; reading it again it seems equivocal.
Regarding being an admin that "wants to save trees and business resources", I think your intentions are benign, but that it's very bad for admins to have to or choose to enforce (or be saddled with enforcing) these sorts of restrictions. This is the kind of thing that gives sysadmins a bad name, and is one more way to make corporate drone's lives a living hell.
As much as possible, people need to have as many choices as possible about the way they get their work done.
PGP-sign your document--then no one will be able to pass their changes off as your version (without great difficulty). This solves your problem and doesn't create obnoxious ones for your readers.
(If what you really want is for your readers not to be able to change your document at all, you need to get over that. People always have been able to modify paper copies of documents, generally for the greater good. It's impossible to prevent this in anything resembling a livable society.)
Computers are here to serve people and not to control them.
Similarly, the purpose of your computer is to serve you, not some distant control-freak deciding whether you should or shouldn't print a file, should or shouldn't edit a file, should or shouldn't be able to read text in the font of your choice, should or shouldn't be subjected to a pop-up advertisement, etc.
Insist on the control due you, or you soon may find yourself with none.
Yes, you do own the physical CD. No, you don't own the contents.
Yes, the GPL does give you very broad (but not "full") rights to use, modify, and redistribute the code. No, this doesn't make the FSF evil, nor necessarily even anti-copyright; the GPL itself relies heavily on copyright law.
In particular I would
advise staying away from the "Substantial non-infringing use" defense as it is disappearing quickly
That's pretty scary. So my car that I used to buy my computer that I used to download an (unauthorized) mp3 becomes a tool of infringement (even though it has "substantial non-infringing use") and thus Ford, GM, etc, can be found to be contributory infringers?
The idea that you own a work that you had no
hand in creating
What the hell are you talking about? There's nothing like this in the GPL or the FSF's philosophy. Is this a troll, or just a mindless slam on the FSF?
As for "it's just not yours", have you ever repeated a joke or used a recipe that you heard, without obtaining the proper authorization from the original author? The situation isn't that simple, is it?
Copyright was intended to be a carefully considered bargain between authors and society. Just stamping your feet and saying "it's mine because I made it and you can't do anything with it" is unreasonable. The appropriate balance is more complicated.
It seems to me that both of these are possible. Aside from defacing web sites for political purposes (Cracktivism), one can also write free software for political purposes (Hacktivism). Take Ogg Vorbis, for example.
Video has sync issues that audio doesn't really have. An analog audio line signal is pretty much equivalent to the signal you perceive with your ears. That's not really true with video.
Good points. If this bothers you, you may find SUBTERFUGUE interesting. It provides a means for you not to have to totally trust every program you run.
(It runs under vanilla Linux 2.4 and a Debian package is available, but it is kind of slow and alpha.)
Dr. Atkinson's approach seems to be "if you don't like the message, shoot the messenger". Whatever its flaws may be, the SAT is hardly worthless; it may be the best and most objective standardized test of academic potential ever devised.
Dr. Atkinson and others seem to be annoyed that certain recognizable groups (e.g., Hispanics and African-Americans) don't do well on these tests. Guess what? These groups aren't inherently any dimmer than the rest of the population, but there's little wrong with the SAT either.
The real problem here is with the schools, and with communities' attitudes towards them. Teachers are paid crap and given little of the honor and respect that they deserve, being amongst society's most important people. The low level of education funding, particularly in low-income areas like inner cities, is a national tragedy. Poor SAT scores can be traced back to poorly funded schools and bad attitudes towards education in general. These are the real problems we need to deal with.
Viruses probably are quite expensive, but this is not a generic cost. They should be accounted for primarily as a cost of choosing Microsoft, just as lung cancer should be accounted for primarily as a result of smoking.
Over a slow SSH connection vi is faster and feels more responsive.
Huh? Both editors do more-or-less optimal screen redrawing. Why would emacs be slower than vi over ssh (as opposed to the innate difference, which would be present for any terminal)?
Age does matter, although not necessarily for the reasons your bosses think. Age generally means extended experience (think "decades"), and that gives a perspective that you won't get in a few years, no matter how prolific you are.
When I was young(er), I was up for just about anything, programming-wise. Long hours of coding and debugging didn't faze me, and I rarely considered the farther future of what I was doing. I really didn't care that much as long as I was having fun (i.e., programming).
Now that I'm approaching my dotage (I'm 36), I've realized that I can be extremely productive doing nothing at all. At a small scale, this means I spend a lot more time thinking ahead, planning, designing, and quite a bit less time coding and especially debugging. I admire the wisdom in Linus' quote "Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet get the work done".
In the larger scheme of things, it means that I can watch a software project for a week or two (sometimes just a few minutes) and have a pretty solid idea of whether it will succeed or fail. If it's doomed, the most productive thing I can do is find a different project to work on.
Call it wisdom or call it cynicism, but it's valuable.
(I do have sympathy, and envy, for your position. In my early years, I had a lot of difficulty getting bosses to even take me seriously enough to hire me to do programming. In my late teens/early twenties I was digging ditches and flipping burgers.)
Yes he is. There should be many voices, of course, but his is a crucial one. He's the strongest and most legitimate voice for the philosophy of software freedom, as opposed to the details-oriented voices of open source and hackers in general.
And as for this herring about what he's coded lately, (a) he's doing what really needs to be done now, and (b) he did the key work on several crucial pieces of infrastructure, pretty much in a dark hole, before "open source" became trendy. As far as I'm concerned, if he never writes another line of code, he's earned his voice.
Slashdot Mirror
Sheesh.
You're confusing patent protection with copyright. Disclosure is part of the patent bargain but it is not part of the copyright bargain. There is no reason for it to be.
In the case of copyright, the item to be copyrighted should be so unique that the only way one might realistically infringe is to actually copy from the source. In this case the onus would reasonably fall upon the copier to license the material.
In the case of patent protection, the idea to be patented could easily be conceived by a great many persons independently. So disclosure is the only hope that one would have that any new idea one thinks of and wants to use isn't already patented. (Disclosure is also supposed to benefit society, theoretically.) (And yes, I know that "ideas" aren't patentable, only implementations. We all know that's a load of crap in practice, however.)
Copyrights are about stopping people from using other people's works. Patents are about stopping everyone from using an idea, no matter who originated it, irrespective of whether any plagiarism might have been involved.
--Mike
Ain't that the truth. This idea came to me because I was looking for over a year for a song I heard once or twice on the local light jazz station. No lyrics so no way to search for it. I only found it because some other radio station used a few seconds of it in an ad and I was able to track down the guy who put the ad together. Sometimes I think the RIAA should pay us for all the grief they put us through. :-)
(It turned out to be "In the Full Moon Light" by 3rd Force.)
--Mike
To get a better database, I was thinking you could go the IMDB route--have people enter the data for "fun". Put the database under an appropriate open license and you could probably get people to go for that.
As for how to keeping the RIAA at bay, it doesn't seem to me that they'd have the legal right to block this sort of tool. That won't stop them from suing, of course. More practically, you could provide links so that people could buy the CDs they find from a partner like CDnow--that would probably hold off the RIAA.
--Mike
I have some interesting ideas about how to do this if someone wants to fund it. :-)
(Not using humming as input, though, because some IP squatter has already patented that.)
--Mike
I can sympathize with the problem of an outsider trying to hire a technically proficient programmer. It's not that easy to evaluate people's skills even as an insider.
If I have a chance to look at some of the work the person has done, I'll pick the most glaring programming style faux pas and ask them how they feel about it. A really good programmer will react a little sheepishly and offer that that's something that definitely needs to be fixed, etc. If I get a negative answer, I might ask a few more probing questions to see if they can figure out the problem (thus showing potential). If the light hasn't clicked on by then, they're either really green or clueless.
(Note that I'm not talking about controversial matters of style like preferred tab width or "vi or emacs". I'm talking about problems like "massive code redundancy in desperate need of refactoring" that good programmers will normally feel quite uncomfortable with.)
--Mike
This will never happen. Does anyone seriously believe that Dick Cheney or Bill Gates will allow everyone to pick through their bank records, or that Microsoft and McDonald's will allow the general public to listen in on every part of their business dealings?
This is really about determining how little privacy those who are not rich and powerful will have. Ba aa aa...
--Mike
IANAL, but I believe that the right to fair use of works is inalienable, or should be. The copyright bargain between copyright holders and society is already heavily biased against society. Tilting it further by allowing holders to withhold fair use of their works as well seems inexcusable.
--Mike
Regarding being an admin that "wants to save trees and business resources", I think your intentions are benign, but that it's very bad for admins to have to or choose to enforce (or be saddled with enforcing) these sorts of restrictions. This is the kind of thing that gives sysadmins a bad name, and is one more way to make corporate drone's lives a living hell.
As much as possible, people need to have as many choices as possible about the way they get their work done.
--Mike
(If what you really want is for your readers not to be able to change your document at all, you need to get over that. People always have been able to modify paper copies of documents, generally for the greater good. It's impossible to prevent this in anything resembling a livable society.)
--Mike
Similarly, the purpose of your computer is to serve you, not some distant control-freak deciding whether you should or shouldn't print a file, should or shouldn't edit a file, should or shouldn't be able to read text in the font of your choice, should or shouldn't be subjected to a pop-up advertisement, etc.
Insist on the control due you, or you soon may find yourself with none.
--Mike
Yes, you do own the physical CD. No, you don't own the contents.
Yes, the GPL does give you very broad (but not "full") rights to use, modify, and redistribute the code. No, this doesn't make the FSF evil, nor necessarily even anti-copyright; the GPL itself relies heavily on copyright law.
--Mike
That's pretty scary. So my car that I used to buy my computer that I used to download an (unauthorized) mp3 becomes a tool of infringement (even though it has "substantial non-infringing use") and thus Ford, GM, etc, can be found to be contributory infringers?
--Mike
What the hell are you talking about? There's nothing like this in the GPL or the FSF's philosophy. Is this a troll, or just a mindless slam on the FSF?
As for "it's just not yours", have you ever repeated a joke or used a recipe that you heard, without obtaining the proper authorization from the original author? The situation isn't that simple, is it?
Copyright was intended to be a carefully considered bargain between authors and society. Just stamping your feet and saying "it's mine because I made it and you can't do anything with it" is unreasonable. The appropriate balance is more complicated.
--Mike
--Mike
--Mike
(It runs under vanilla Linux 2.4 and a Debian package is available, but it is kind of slow and alpha.)
--Mike
Why do the media corporations even have a seat at the table here? They don't buy disks--we consumers do.
Vote with your wallet.
--Mike
Dr. Atkinson and others seem to be annoyed that certain recognizable groups (e.g., Hispanics and African-Americans) don't do well on these tests. Guess what? These groups aren't inherently any dimmer than the rest of the population, but there's little wrong with the SAT either.
The real problem here is with the schools, and with communities' attitudes towards them. Teachers are paid crap and given little of the honor and respect that they deserve, being amongst society's most important people. The low level of education funding, particularly in low-income areas like inner cities, is a national tragedy. Poor SAT scores can be traced back to poorly funded schools and bad attitudes towards education in general. These are the real problems we need to deal with.
--Mike
--Mike
--Mike
Huh? Both editors do more-or-less optimal screen redrawing. Why would emacs be slower than vi over ssh (as opposed to the innate difference, which would be present for any terminal)?
--Mike
When I was young(er), I was up for just about anything, programming-wise. Long hours of coding and debugging didn't faze me, and I rarely considered the farther future of what I was doing. I really didn't care that much as long as I was having fun (i.e., programming).
Now that I'm approaching my dotage (I'm 36), I've realized that I can be extremely productive doing nothing at all. At a small scale, this means I spend a lot more time thinking ahead, planning, designing, and quite a bit less time coding and especially debugging. I admire the wisdom in Linus' quote "Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet get the work done".
In the larger scheme of things, it means that I can watch a software project for a week or two (sometimes just a few minutes) and have a pretty solid idea of whether it will succeed or fail. If it's doomed, the most productive thing I can do is find a different project to work on.
Call it wisdom or call it cynicism, but it's valuable.
(I do have sympathy, and envy, for your position. In my early years, I had a lot of difficulty getting bosses to even take me seriously enough to hire me to do programming. In my late teens/early twenties I was digging ditches and flipping burgers.)
--Mike
And as for this herring about what he's coded lately, (a) he's doing what really needs to be done now, and (b) he did the key work on several crucial pieces of infrastructure, pretty much in a dark hole, before "open source" became trendy. As far as I'm concerned, if he never writes another line of code, he's earned his voice.
--Mike
--Mike