It's much simpler (and better) to simply make the grace period short. 3 years or so; maybe 5 at the most. If the work is still valuable after that, you have to pay to keep exclusive rights -- which is fine, because the work is making money by then. If it maintains its value for a long time, then you can afford to pay the tax for a long time. If it doesn't, you let it go into the public domain sooner. The idea is not to make it free to maintain for as long as the work is likely to have value; it's to make it free to maintain long enough for the work to start producing revenue, both to protect small creators and to allow people to determine the value directly via actual revenue rather than by guessing.
The grace period shouldn't be that long. I'm thinking 3 years. The idea isn't to make it cheap to hold the IP for a while; it's to make it possible to start making money off it so that you can pay the tax from previous revenue -- an attempt to protect starving artists, and simultaneously allow the creator to determine the value of the work directly rather than by estimating it. The idea is to have it be free to maintain for some, but *only* some, of its commercially viable life.
The idea is to present a 3x3 grid of images and have the user select the 3 kittens from the 9 fuzzy animals. That's something computers are still quite bad at... Though you probably need to change the probability of getting it by random luck to be worse than 1/84, in practice.
The initial tax-free period would be enough to protect Linux, for the most part. Old versions of software usually aren't that interesting, for one reason or another. And I'd be more than happy to have some open source code available for use in closed source things, as long as the reverse was true. (Speaking of which... why are you allowed to claim copyright on programs for which the source is unavailable, anyway?)
And property tax certainly does apply to things other than land. Depending where you live, it applies to cars, boats, and other vehicles. I believe in some places it applies to livestock. Wikipedia also lists some durable goods, business inventory, and intangible assets (in the US).
The solution would be to have a short-duration (3 years? 5?) automatic tax-free period. Only tax things if people want to keep the copyright longer than that. For software, a version that old would frequently be uninteresting.
And you know, if that meant some open source software was available for use in closed source software, I'd be OK with that. After all, the reverse would be true too. Quid pro quo and all that.
There are plenty of possibilities, mostly relating to them wanting to use the work in question rather than simply exploit it. Want to include a song in your movie? Or make a movie based on a book? How about include a painting or photo as part of an advertisement? There are plenty of times when what matters is not owning the work, but being able to use it to create a derived work.
You also want to avoid large corporations bullying small creators -- they could use it as part of hardball negotiating tactics and taking things away from their creator if the creator can't afford to pay up. Making the work pass into the public domain makes that tactic less attractive, while retaining much of the value of the basic system. Having a way that the creator can involuntarily lose the right to use their own work is unreasonable, but if the work isn't producing money anyway then it's at least somewhat reasonable to have it pass into the public domain.
That's OK, IP is Imaginary Property anyway... the rules *should* be different, regardless of what certain people busy calling infringement theft would like us to believe.
After a number of discussions of this idea with an artist friend of mine, we came up with a couple modifications... First, the first couple years should be free. Second, the value of the property should be self-assessed -- with the caveat that someone can pay you the assessed value to put the work into the public domain (though you would have the option of retroactively raising that value for the past year and paying the appropriate tax). And finally, the nontaxed period should extend for as long as the work is not sold or otherwise generating revenue -- so it doesn't cost an artist to have works in their catalog that they haven't yet found a buyer for.
There's a relatively simple solution. First, make the first [small number] years free. Second, if someone buys it from you, that should put the work in question in the public domain, not give them ownership. If they want to make money off it, and think they can make more than you, they should be making you an offer. If they think you're abusing your copyright, and want the work available, then it should be made actually available.
For something like Linux, the end result would be that a several year old version was public domain -- which would probably be just fine as far as most people are concerned.
I've been advocating that exact idea for a while, with one slight change: if that happens, the IP in question goes into the public domain instead of to the purchaser.
There are some other things I'd change, too -- the first [small number] years should be free, for starters, to make sure that creators who don't have the budget but have a valuable idea have time to do something with it. An artist friend of mine suggested, and I'm inclined to agree, that artwork that isn't sold (ie, original paintings) should be protected for an extended period without cost. There are endelss details, but in general I love the idea...
I would assume so. There's some chance the process wouldn't like dyes and such, but I imagine that could be solved (and my guess would be it wouldn't care).
Or perhaps the ads that create an impression that results in a purchase are measurably distinct from the ads people click on. In that case, advertisers would like to data mine to see which ad impressions correlate with purchases and such.
Of course, there is the whole privacy / tracking issue...
Cotton is basically cellulose, which is chemically highly inert (it's a strong structure, and it arranges itself with all the chemically interesting bits on the inside of a spiral, so the attacking chemicals have trouble getting to them). Hydroxyl radicals aren't going to be enough to attack it agressively (though they might very slowly). This will be chemically similar to (not the same as) peroxide based bleaches, which are relatively mild (especially compared to chlorine bleach).
I don't know specifically about the other fibers, but many natural fibers are chemically resistant, so I'm not surprised they say it works with wool and other things as well.
I assert that capitalists are pragmatists seeking personal gain; I doubt there's much disagreement there. Of course, there's more to it than that, but it's certainly a nontrivial piece of the way capitalist systems are assumed to operate.
If you see that as a negative, that's your own view, not mine. Personally, I think that's usually a good thing, as evidenced by the things (like computers) that it seems to result in. I also think it can be (and all too frequently is) taken to extremes, where it becomes a bad thing.
I have a relatively high opinion of well-regulated capitalism (or at least, higher than of anything else...) but I think that in the US we have a relatively poor implementation (gross oversimplification of the problems: not enough of some sorts of regulation, too much of others, not to mention some others) with plenty of room for improvement.
Certainly, though the details depend on the kind of light; since you say a dimmer, I'll assume you mean a normal 120V incandescent. It would be easier with LEDs or low voltage DC lights, harder with fluorescents.
Warning: this is a high voltage circuit. Don't kill yourself, observe normal precautions, etc. Mistakes might well fry you or the circuit. Also, in an effort to keep this as simple as possible, the wiring will not be to code -- as in, both sides of the light bulb will be potentially "hot", so you could electrocute yourself from *either* contact on the socket, not just the central one. The zeroth thing to install in this circuit is an appropriate fuse and a main power switch. A GFCI outlet wouldn't be a bad idea.
One other poster suggested a triac, but those might be a bit of a pain to work with. An easier answer might be the following. First, you need an isolated DC power source for the controller -- anything coming through a transformer is fine, but from eg a computer power supply is not fine. Next, you put a full-wave rectifier in front of the light bulb, so that it's effectively running on DC voltage (it's varying amplitude, but all the same polarity). Verify that the light bulb lights up at full brightness at this point.
Next, connect the minus end of your rectified light bulb supply and your circuit ground together. You now need a power N-channel MOSFET. It should have a voltage rating of at least 200V and a current rating several times the nominal bulb current (eg 60W bulb at 120V = 0.5A, use a MOSFET rated for at least 5A surge currents). The source connects to ground, the drain connects to one side of the bulb, and the gate connects to a pin on the microcontroller. Add another rectifier diode from the transistor drain to the rectified positive voltage, oriented so it normall doesn't conduct -- this is a freewheel diode to make sure that any inductive load the bulb presents doesn't hurt the transistor. (When you turn off the bulb very rapidly, current will continue to flow briefly, possibly overvoltaging the transistor. It shouldn't actually be an issue, but it might be, so add the diode.) Lastly, the other side of the bulb connects to the rectified wall current.
You should now have an electronically controlled light bulb -- when the gate voltage is high (roughly 4-8V, the 5V from the controller will work fine), the bulb should be on; when it's low (pulse width modulate the bulb -- basically, turn it on and off quickly, about 1000 times per second should work well. To control the brightness, simply vary how long it's turned on. So a "dim" setting might be on 200us, off 800us, and "bright" might be on 800us, off 200us. Fully on and fully off are easy.
Lastly, get a simple 5V relay capable of switching the light bulb on and off, controlled by the microcontroller. Any time the light bulb is completely off, turn it off with both the relay and the MOSFET. When the bulb is off, both sides of it are hot and a hazard; the relay fixes that. Be sure to include a freewheel diode so the relay coil doesn't damage the microcontroller.
This circuit will cause electrical noise; there's some chance some electronics operating near it will be unappreciative, but it shouldn't be too bad.
Hopefully that's easy enough to understand. Email me if you have questions.
(It isn't that I hate Apple or support patents, it is just that I hate capitalism. Can't you see the connection?)
--
DISCLAIMER: Use of this advanced computing technology does not imply an endorsement of Western industrial civilization.
But apparently you're willing to use this advanced technology even though it is the product of something that goes against your principles. How pragmatic of you. How... dare I say it... capitalist? After all, your actions seem to imply that you value your short term personal gain over your principles, and that furthermore you can absolve your conscience with a disclaimer that says the opposite. If that behavior isn't typical of the large Western corporations you claim to despise, I don't know what is...
There's a difference between real time control of the camera optics, and processing after the fact. Normal surveillance cameras (the kind they're always enhancing on TV) have very limited resolution but a wide zoom range. You can zoom in if you can control the camera, but if it wasn't zoomed in at the time the data simply *isn't there* and no amount of photoshop will recover it...
I think there are relatively few people here who argue that the *for profit* use of copyrighted materials in an infringing manner is a bad thing. It's the non-commercial use that gets people riled up. Of course, there will be people who disagree in either direction, but I think the majority on Slashdot thinks that way (or something similar).
If the photo had no value, then they wouldn't have felt like using it. There are lots of bad cityscapes; producing a decent one requires at least some skill -- and there is certainly labor involved in taking the time to do it. Your lack of appreciation does not mean there is no skill, or that the photo has no value.
Of course there should be consequences for a real boy who did this. But they should come from family / friends / community, not the legal system -- unless the intent was to cause her to commit suicide, in which case it's questionable in my mind. The solution to such problems isn't new laws, but I think it should be just as obvious that it's also not to tell the victim to ignore it and stop whining. That's a spectacularly callous and nonproductive response.
It wasn't just hate mail; it was far more perverse than that. They created a fake persona (of a cute boy) who pretended to be interested in her. They then cultivated an emotionally intimate relationship, before having the "boy" turn around and proceed to actively attack her sense of self worth. Would you really send to the spam box mail from someone who was your significant other yesterday, or would you read it even if they had started calling you names for no reason in the last email? I agree it was her decision, but the other people involved certainly bear some responsibility. The situation was nowhere near as simple as it seems you'd like it to be. I doubt that new laws are the right answer, but neither is "ignore it and stop whining."
People on the internet are diverse. Those of us who complain about the RIAA and modern pop music aren't necessarily the same ones downloading their wares. It's no more reasonable to lump all internet users together than it is to lump all musicians or RIAA employees -- less so, in fact, seeing as it's a larger and more diverse group.
Oh, and I have bought CDs I torrented. In fact, I've got a couple sitting in an online shopping cart waiting for another addition or two. You may find it odd, but exposure to music results in purchases.
My guess would be "lots" since the H bonds don't "wear out". Normal polymers wear out by occasionally having covalent bonds break, which then don't repair.
On the flip side, this probably exhibits "cold flow" -- if you put it under tension, it will slowly and permanently deform. Over short time spans, it will be elastic, over long spans it will deform. For many applications that won't matter, but for some it will make it completely unusable.
Slashdot Mirror
It's much simpler (and better) to simply make the grace period short. 3 years or so; maybe 5 at the most. If the work is still valuable after that, you have to pay to keep exclusive rights -- which is fine, because the work is making money by then. If it maintains its value for a long time, then you can afford to pay the tax for a long time. If it doesn't, you let it go into the public domain sooner. The idea is not to make it free to maintain for as long as the work is likely to have value; it's to make it free to maintain long enough for the work to start producing revenue, both to protect small creators and to allow people to determine the value directly via actual revenue rather than by guessing.
The grace period shouldn't be that long. I'm thinking 3 years. The idea isn't to make it cheap to hold the IP for a while; it's to make it possible to start making money off it so that you can pay the tax from previous revenue -- an attempt to protect starving artists, and simultaneously allow the creator to determine the value of the work directly rather than by estimating it. The idea is to have it be free to maintain for some, but *only* some, of its commercially viable life.
Just use kittens instead...
The idea is to present a 3x3 grid of images and have the user select the 3 kittens from the 9 fuzzy animals. That's something computers are still quite bad at... Though you probably need to change the probability of getting it by random luck to be worse than 1/84, in practice.
The initial tax-free period would be enough to protect Linux, for the most part. Old versions of software usually aren't that interesting, for one reason or another. And I'd be more than happy to have some open source code available for use in closed source things, as long as the reverse was true. (Speaking of which... why are you allowed to claim copyright on programs for which the source is unavailable, anyway?)
And property tax certainly does apply to things other than land. Depending where you live, it applies to cars, boats, and other vehicles. I believe in some places it applies to livestock. Wikipedia also lists some durable goods, business inventory, and intangible assets (in the US).
The solution would be to have a short-duration (3 years? 5?) automatic tax-free period. Only tax things if people want to keep the copyright longer than that. For software, a version that old would frequently be uninteresting.
And you know, if that meant some open source software was available for use in closed source software, I'd be OK with that. After all, the reverse would be true too. Quid pro quo and all that.
There are plenty of possibilities, mostly relating to them wanting to use the work in question rather than simply exploit it. Want to include a song in your movie? Or make a movie based on a book? How about include a painting or photo as part of an advertisement? There are plenty of times when what matters is not owning the work, but being able to use it to create a derived work.
You also want to avoid large corporations bullying small creators -- they could use it as part of hardball negotiating tactics and taking things away from their creator if the creator can't afford to pay up. Making the work pass into the public domain makes that tactic less attractive, while retaining much of the value of the basic system. Having a way that the creator can involuntarily lose the right to use their own work is unreasonable, but if the work isn't producing money anyway then it's at least somewhat reasonable to have it pass into the public domain.
That's OK, IP is Imaginary Property anyway... the rules *should* be different, regardless of what certain people busy calling infringement theft would like us to believe.
After a number of discussions of this idea with an artist friend of mine, we came up with a couple modifications... First, the first couple years should be free. Second, the value of the property should be self-assessed -- with the caveat that someone can pay you the assessed value to put the work into the public domain (though you would have the option of retroactively raising that value for the past year and paying the appropriate tax). And finally, the nontaxed period should extend for as long as the work is not sold or otherwise generating revenue -- so it doesn't cost an artist to have works in their catalog that they haven't yet found a buyer for.
There's a relatively simple solution. First, make the first [small number] years free. Second, if someone buys it from you, that should put the work in question in the public domain, not give them ownership. If they want to make money off it, and think they can make more than you, they should be making you an offer. If they think you're abusing your copyright, and want the work available, then it should be made actually available.
For something like Linux, the end result would be that a several year old version was public domain -- which would probably be just fine as far as most people are concerned.
I've been advocating that exact idea for a while, with one slight change: if that happens, the IP in question goes into the public domain instead of to the purchaser.
There are some other things I'd change, too -- the first [small number] years should be free, for starters, to make sure that creators who don't have the budget but have a valuable idea have time to do something with it. An artist friend of mine suggested, and I'm inclined to agree, that artwork that isn't sold (ie, original paintings) should be protected for an extended period without cost. There are endelss details, but in general I love the idea...
I would assume so. There's some chance the process wouldn't like dyes and such, but I imagine that could be solved (and my guess would be it wouldn't care).
You, sir, need to play more Nethack.
Or perhaps the ads that create an impression that results in a purchase are measurably distinct from the ads people click on. In that case, advertisers would like to data mine to see which ad impressions correlate with purchases and such.
Of course, there is the whole privacy / tracking issue...
Cotton is basically cellulose, which is chemically highly inert (it's a strong structure, and it arranges itself with all the chemically interesting bits on the inside of a spiral, so the attacking chemicals have trouble getting to them). Hydroxyl radicals aren't going to be enough to attack it agressively (though they might very slowly). This will be chemically similar to (not the same as) peroxide based bleaches, which are relatively mild (especially compared to chlorine bleach).
I don't know specifically about the other fibers, but many natural fibers are chemically resistant, so I'm not surprised they say it works with wool and other things as well.
I assert that capitalists are pragmatists seeking personal gain; I doubt there's much disagreement there. Of course, there's more to it than that, but it's certainly a nontrivial piece of the way capitalist systems are assumed to operate.
If you see that as a negative, that's your own view, not mine. Personally, I think that's usually a good thing, as evidenced by the things (like computers) that it seems to result in. I also think it can be (and all too frequently is) taken to extremes, where it becomes a bad thing.
I have a relatively high opinion of well-regulated capitalism (or at least, higher than of anything else...) but I think that in the US we have a relatively poor implementation (gross oversimplification of the problems: not enough of some sorts of regulation, too much of others, not to mention some others) with plenty of room for improvement.
Certainly, though the details depend on the kind of light; since you say a dimmer, I'll assume you mean a normal 120V incandescent. It would be easier with LEDs or low voltage DC lights, harder with fluorescents.
Warning: this is a high voltage circuit. Don't kill yourself, observe normal precautions, etc. Mistakes might well fry you or the circuit. Also, in an effort to keep this as simple as possible, the wiring will not be to code -- as in, both sides of the light bulb will be potentially "hot", so you could electrocute yourself from *either* contact on the socket, not just the central one. The zeroth thing to install in this circuit is an appropriate fuse and a main power switch. A GFCI outlet wouldn't be a bad idea.
One other poster suggested a triac, but those might be a bit of a pain to work with. An easier answer might be the following. First, you need an isolated DC power source for the controller -- anything coming through a transformer is fine, but from eg a computer power supply is not fine. Next, you put a full-wave rectifier in front of the light bulb, so that it's effectively running on DC voltage (it's varying amplitude, but all the same polarity). Verify that the light bulb lights up at full brightness at this point.
Next, connect the minus end of your rectified light bulb supply and your circuit ground together. You now need a power N-channel MOSFET. It should have a voltage rating of at least 200V and a current rating several times the nominal bulb current (eg 60W bulb at 120V = 0.5A, use a MOSFET rated for at least 5A surge currents). The source connects to ground, the drain connects to one side of the bulb, and the gate connects to a pin on the microcontroller. Add another rectifier diode from the transistor drain to the rectified positive voltage, oriented so it normall doesn't conduct -- this is a freewheel diode to make sure that any inductive load the bulb presents doesn't hurt the transistor. (When you turn off the bulb very rapidly, current will continue to flow briefly, possibly overvoltaging the transistor. It shouldn't actually be an issue, but it might be, so add the diode.) Lastly, the other side of the bulb connects to the rectified wall current.
You should now have an electronically controlled light bulb -- when the gate voltage is high (roughly 4-8V, the 5V from the controller will work fine), the bulb should be on; when it's low (pulse width modulate the bulb -- basically, turn it on and off quickly, about 1000 times per second should work well. To control the brightness, simply vary how long it's turned on. So a "dim" setting might be on 200us, off 800us, and "bright" might be on 800us, off 200us. Fully on and fully off are easy.
Lastly, get a simple 5V relay capable of switching the light bulb on and off, controlled by the microcontroller. Any time the light bulb is completely off, turn it off with both the relay and the MOSFET. When the bulb is off, both sides of it are hot and a hazard; the relay fixes that. Be sure to include a freewheel diode so the relay coil doesn't damage the microcontroller.
This circuit will cause electrical noise; there's some chance some electronics operating near it will be unappreciative, but it shouldn't be too bad.
Hopefully that's easy enough to understand. Email me if you have questions.
(It isn't that I hate Apple or support patents, it is just that I hate capitalism. Can't you see the connection?)
--
DISCLAIMER: Use of this advanced computing technology does not imply an endorsement of Western industrial civilization.
But apparently you're willing to use this advanced technology even though it is the product of something that goes against your principles. How pragmatic of you. How... dare I say it... capitalist? After all, your actions seem to imply that you value your short term personal gain over your principles, and that furthermore you can absolve your conscience with a disclaimer that says the opposite. If that behavior isn't typical of the large Western corporations you claim to despise, I don't know what is...
There's a difference between real time control of the camera optics, and processing after the fact. Normal surveillance cameras (the kind they're always enhancing on TV) have very limited resolution but a wide zoom range. You can zoom in if you can control the camera, but if it wasn't zoomed in at the time the data simply *isn't there* and no amount of photoshop will recover it...
some relatively minor IP infringement
I think there are relatively few people here who argue that the *for profit* use of copyrighted materials in an infringing manner is a bad thing. It's the non-commercial use that gets people riled up. Of course, there will be people who disagree in either direction, but I think the majority on Slashdot thinks that way (or something similar).
taking a photo of a cityscape is hardly a skill.
If the photo had no value, then they wouldn't have felt like using it. There are lots of bad cityscapes; producing a decent one requires at least some skill -- and there is certainly labor involved in taking the time to do it. Your lack of appreciation does not mean there is no skill, or that the photo has no value.
Of course there should be consequences for a real boy who did this. But they should come from family / friends / community, not the legal system -- unless the intent was to cause her to commit suicide, in which case it's questionable in my mind. The solution to such problems isn't new laws, but I think it should be just as obvious that it's also not to tell the victim to ignore it and stop whining. That's a spectacularly callous and nonproductive response.
It wasn't just hate mail; it was far more perverse than that. They created a fake persona (of a cute boy) who pretended to be interested in her. They then cultivated an emotionally intimate relationship, before having the "boy" turn around and proceed to actively attack her sense of self worth. Would you really send to the spam box mail from someone who was your significant other yesterday, or would you read it even if they had started calling you names for no reason in the last email? I agree it was her decision, but the other people involved certainly bear some responsibility. The situation was nowhere near as simple as it seems you'd like it to be. I doubt that new laws are the right answer, but neither is "ignore it and stop whining."
Aren't they just wordier versions of "make clean, cheap energy"?
People on the internet are diverse. Those of us who complain about the RIAA and modern pop music aren't necessarily the same ones downloading their wares. It's no more reasonable to lump all internet users together than it is to lump all musicians or RIAA employees -- less so, in fact, seeing as it's a larger and more diverse group.
Oh, and I have bought CDs I torrented. In fact, I've got a couple sitting in an online shopping cart waiting for another addition or two. You may find it odd, but exposure to music results in purchases.
My guess would be "lots" since the H bonds don't "wear out". Normal polymers wear out by occasionally having covalent bonds break, which then don't repair.
On the flip side, this probably exhibits "cold flow" -- if you put it under tension, it will slowly and permanently deform. Over short time spans, it will be elastic, over long spans it will deform. For many applications that won't matter, but for some it will make it completely unusable.