I suppose I didn't explain myself as clearly as I should have.
Psychological studies show that some UIs are easier to use than others. Many companies use in-house studies to design their user interfaces. Microsoft does this--they used it to improve Win 3.11 to Windows 95, A giant leap by any standard. Of course, Apple has always done this. By allowing users to use different UIs and gauging the speed and accuracy that they perform tasks, or by allowing users to define their own interface or to dynamically interact with human-generated interfaces (hard to do with GUI's, easy to do with command line/speech) one can learn which interfaces work best.
Many of these studies are available in academic journals, available at most college libraries. There are also textbooks and other books on the subject.
One suggestion that I got in a UI design class was that Computer Scientists should get artists to help them design the user interface. (Hopefully, not a totally abstract artist:) Artists hold a better understanding of how to allow people to understand concepts with visual abstraction. To me grep makes perfect sense when explained (get regular expression). To an artist, its some weird command that they will never understand.
This leads to another question: how many artists work with programmers on KDE?
I installed MKLinux, and it worked great. It was a bit of a pain to initially install (uh...repartitioning my 4.3GB HD), but once it was there it worked great. I set it up to print to my Stylewriter 1200 and connect to the Internet. X did crash the entire system from time to time, but overall it worked well.
LinuxPPC would be better because it has a monolithic kernel which is faster, plus it's more stable (supposedly), although (from previous post) it isn't quite ready for [6789]100's yet.
As a user of KDE, one of the first things that I have noticed is that by default, the close button is next to the maximize button. Because KDE is configurable, I put the close button on the left and left maximize on the right.
Although one goal of KDE is to have the user interface immediately familiar to Windows users, what is the project going to do to correct Windows user interface problems, such as putting the close button next to the maximize button? (The problem here is that users will often accidentally press close instead of maximize and vica versa. There are many other examples in Windows, such as the confusing start menu: KDE's is better, etc. Copying the Mac is not the best thing either ex. "Use the Chooser to connect to the network AND select printers." etc.)
of the ACM. Computer magazines are not going any where soon, they are just migrating. You don't have to program a computer anymore (i.e. regular users don't have to program), so there are less magazines that follow this. I don't buy that Computer magazines are dead.
I learn more about Windows by reading Linux Journal than from reading any other magazine. Communications has some good issues-oriented articles as well as some funky state of the art. I still read Byte on the web and I've archived my Dr. Dobbs so that I can read them now that I've had enough math to follow them:)
(Yes, this is different but...) I tried to boot Linux on my 66MHz 486 PC card, but because Linux bypasses the BIOS and tries to read from the floppy directly, the system fails. Also, all of the MS utilities for fixing floppies, Win 3.11 backup (yikes!), etc. fail for the same reason. Also, the hard drive is emulated, so not going throught the BIOS killed that to.
Copyright protection bad?
on
Copyright!
·
· Score: 1
This may seem ridiculous to some of you (given the comments I read), but I think Copyrights need to be protected. Most of you think of some big record getting upset over bootleg copies of Madonna. But what about struggling artists who need revenue from their product? What about software companies who are barely making it?
Often, highly specialized software needs protection because it is only made for a few companies--The software company has to protect its investment, or it will not be able to turn a profit.
For example, if a company make label printing software that prints bar codes, it would take forever and would cost a fortune for a small to mid-sized company to develop its own bar code software. On the other hand, the investment of development would be smart for a large business. If the software costs $1,000 per user but the development costs are $20,000, then that small company would do better buying a copy.
Now, if the small company just makes a copy of the software from a friend (or something), then the software company is out $1,000 in sales. If their development cost was $250,000 for a general-purpose system to sell, that $1,000 means a lot.
As far as threats to universities, if I were the university sysadmin, I would simply respond:
To whom it may concern,
Go fuck yourself.
Sincerely,
John Doe.
p.s. Because it is the copyright holder's responsibility to protect his/her intelectual property, not ours. Let us know if you find a potential legal infringement, and we will deal with the problem appropriately.
I think IE IS better than Netscape. It is faster, more stable, handles Java, Javascript and VBScript fairly well--better than Netscape Communicator for sure in these areas. I like IE on the Mac better as well as on Windows.
My advice about 7.0 is from personal experience. For example, our MS-SQL 7 server has 1GB of RAM and hosts two main databases. For some odd reason, the database process will end up using all but about a couple of megabytes of RAM and then the system will crawl. This was happening about every three days. I think that we either have set it up to reboot every night or we installed the service pack that fixed it. Another problem that I've seen with SQL 7.0 is that in copying data from one server to another, it sets the wrong default decimal number size at 38, greater than what SQL Server can handle. Another problem is that when it generates SQL Scripts, it puts an 'N' in front of quotation marks in the check for object existance. If you need to rebuild or duplicate a database structure for testing or something else, you have to work around these stupid bugs. Then, when you go to the Microsoft site for the fix for the decimal number, it says "Start SQLServer with the -P38 flag" -- BUT THAT DOESN'T WORK You have to put -p38. It took me a while to figure that one out.
Let's see what else: Microsoft's copy scripts to copy from SQL 6.5 to SQL 7.0 won't work if the owner of a table is not dbo--It won't copy the tables. The server will unpredictably freak out--go extremely slow--for no appearant reason, and we'll have to either reboot or restart the MSSQLSrvr process. If you stop and start the process, it does not automatically restart the SQL Agent that may need to be doing important things. If you stop and restart the server at the command prompt, the system will not allow you to start the agent. You have to reboot the system.
And, I could go on forever with wierdness associated with SQL 7 that does not exist in 6.5: because SQL 7 was released before it is stable, just like every other Microsoft product ever made.
(In other words: this guy didn't hit the bugs that I did with 7.0, obviously.)
Linux is not a competitor of Microsoft Windows 95/98/NT/2000. This is a bad analogy. (Okay, I'm ranting now!) Linux is nothing like Windows and it was never meant to be. Linux is a solid kernel. Windows is an operating system with window manager with web browser all shoved into one annoying product. (Okay, I'll stop ranting-damnit)
Most major computer retailers sell Microsoft Windows XX with Microsoft Office or Microsoft Windows NT with Microsoft IIS and Microsoft Backoffice and Microsoft Internet Explorer.
See the problem here?
If M$ is broken up, then you'll have Microsoft AppWare's Office, Microsoft OSes' NT, Microsoft Web's IIS--and they can't share information or employees with each other. In other words, they will have to compete as individual companies. They cannot offer package deals together. So, maybe we'll see more competition and more variation in configurations on WinTel machines. Like, how about NT with a Domino server, or Linux with IIS, or Free BSD with Office.
Competition improves product quality. The more competition M$ has, the more they will have to improve their product. Without Windows, we would not have KDE or GNOME for the wonderful, kick-ass OS known as Linux!
Although I agree that Access is the problem, using Microsoft SQL Server is not the best thing, even though it is 1000 times better than Access. I would suggest looking into a "real" SQL Server, such as Oracle. Microsoft SQL Server has too many bugs and limitations. SQL 7 is not ready for the enterprise, it is bugged out beyond what should be tolerated (just check the Knowledge Base!)
SQL 6.5 is much more stable. It has limitations, such as no more than 16 tables in a view/query, but it is preferable to 7 at this service pack.
The suggestion of MySQL and Linux with ODBC using Access is not bad, as long as Access doesn't crash and/or hang as it's famous for doing. But if you use ODBC with MySQL, you could use lots of front ends/middle men: PERL in Linux or ASP in NT etc.
Setting up a MySQL Server on Linux shouldn't be any more difficult than anything else, as this poster is suggesting. It may save you money in the front and you will learn something in the end. The cost of Linux is the cost of learning--a price always worth paying.
That's right. If you claim a domain name, you have 7 days to put something useful on it--not just "Under Construction". And you can't put "This name for sale," or even imply it, for two years under penalty of death. You have to put some useful information there or offer some service for a fee or free. Then, you have to get 100 hits in the next 90 days and build a house (okay, maybe skip the house). And, then you have homesteaded the domain name. Future generations (or subsidiaries) can inherit it and split it up as they like.
I use the Windows 2000 terminal server from at home at 26,000 bps and it screams. It has a faster response time than my host 233MHz NT 4.0 machine's own response time for UI (no big feat). The Win2K terminal server is based on Citrix.
It this comes to Linux, this would be an excelent replacement for X11 over a modem which is slower than $#1+. It will be worth the ca$h.
This sounds a lot like a microcode processor (processor+apparatus) except that this processor is more fault tolerant and the microcode controller (analagous to the apparatus) is external to the processor instead of integrated into it.
I can't work through complex algorithms that take several pages from my monitor. I find it is much more efficient on paper. I can go from one part to another much faster, and I can see large-scale concepts better on paper.
I think it's a display size issue. I don't have problems on 21" monitors. I guess it's a size issue.
Hemp is one of the best plants to make paper out of. It has a much higher yield than trees for making paper. Too bad it's illegal to grow it in the United States. Read William Bartrom's "Travels" (all 400+ pages!!!) to see just how much it was grown and accepted just over 200 years ago:)
Copyright protects a realization of a product and the law is as broad as the courts are willing to let it be. For example, if I perform a piece of music without lyrics from purchased sheet music or from memory, that is not copyright infringement. I believe it is different if the music has lyrics because of the the way that ASCAP works. You are supposed to pay per performance--it has to do with law regarding the realization of written word.
Also, it is illegal to photocopy any copyrighted material. I guess if you retype data from a book and place it in a different database, such as on a disk, it is a different realization. I think the first example in the article is wrong--you can't publish a photocopy of anything copyrighted.
Copyright lasts until 50 years after the author's death. You can't photocopy "1984" because the Orwell has not been dead for more than 50 years. Also, you could write something similar to 1984-same plot, similar character names, but different characteristics such as setting and characters, then you could publish it and not infringe.
It's very confusing and intricate law. I think there should be some protection for this, but not 50 years after the authors death. That is much too long. There should be a different copyright for this type of information--10 years perhaps?
I was refering to the fact that they are all ubiquitous--they are all everywhere. If there are 270M guns and 270M people, you've got a lot of people with a lot of guns. And drugs--joints are still 3 for $5 (or maybe more after inflation).
Most people don't own guns (I don't), but in the culture that I am immersed in, there are several guns per household, 90% are used for hunting Deer and Ducks. Big woop. They're all legal. If these guns were taken away from these people, there would be an explosion in the deer population since they have no remaining predators besides people. Bow and black powder hunting is a pain in the butt and only the most die-hard hunters will do it, like people around here where it is deeply rooted in culture and comming of age rituals. (Yes, I do live in the U.S. and there are places that have comming of age rituals such as smearing fresh blood over the youth that kills his first deer, but I digress.)
My point is that guns and weed are ubiquitous (sold on every street corner) and software, the minute it is released, often becomes ubiquitous. Guns and weed cannot be stopped, because too many people in our society including law enforcement, especially those that live in the sticks (guns), don't want them to be stopped. So the analagy is flawed on a certain level, but I don't think it's bad.
second operating system. This is what our University CS department decided. Due to a new certification that they wanted to get, they needed to teach two platforms. We already had Suns running Solaris, and IBM running MVS, and SGIs running IRIX. No one wants to learn MVS, so they added NT and Visual Studio.
As a side note, at work I'm required to develop using Microsoft products. I chose Visual Studio; Particularily Visual J++. I was unable to find very much info about J++ and the reviews I read were mostly favorable. Then I learned about the Microsoft Delegate, a so-called Java language extension that was basically a function pointer (how OO can you get!) All M$ generated code had these stupid delegates all over the place, because WFC is C++ and relies on function pointers instead of object pointers that Java uses. In the end, you get a bastardized product that can only be ported by completely rewriting the entire GUI.
I would assume that C++ in Visual Studio is more true to the philosophy of C++: a function-based language that supports OO extensions, but this shows just how little M$ respects current philosophy and doctrine of current programming practices. To me, VS is a bad choice, and Code Warrior or Borland development systems would be better.
What always bothers me about these export laws is that if a Terrorist group really wanted to get a copy of some encryption software, they could have someone buy it in the US and mail a copy overseas, perhaps on a copied CD (or 10 different copies). I could think of a million other ways to do this. Mail it from Canada! Mexico! You can drive over without a thought. FTP it. XModem transfer it. How the hell is anyone going to know what is on it and that someone is breaking the law. Laws like this do not stop criminal elements from using the products, they just make it a tiny bit harder for them to get their hands on them.
This is the same with modern gun control legislation. Making guns illegal doesn't stop criminals from getting guns, only law-abiding citizens. There are now more guns in the US than their are people, and there is no stoping anyone from getting one. The same with weed, Same with computers, powerful microprocessors, and strong encryption. They can't be stopped!
The characteristic that I have used to define Dead Can Dance and Indigo Girls as borderline art music is that both groups experiment with music and build their music on a heritage of other music. Their music is not sentimental or trivial. For example, I like Melissa Ethridge alot, but her music is very sentimental and very simple. I would never consider it art music, though it is great rock n' roll. The Indigo Girls are well aware of advanced tonal harmony and how to use it. They incorporate many key changes and modulations in their music, as well as some very interesting chord progressions. Most popular artists have trouble with a secondary dominant.
The Indigo Girls started out underground and have moved into the mainstream. The were introduced to the world because of REM and are now a Sony artist--Sony bought their record company CBS (AKA Columbia). (Shows how out of touch I am with pop--thought they were still underground;)
It seems like Sony is putting a clause in their contract that is in the shady part of the law. There is no law governing domain names except the InterNIC. As court cases are won and lost, the laws governing domain names will be defined by precident until the US Congress and other international law making bodies pass legislation.
To take to issue bands and music, I am of the (albiet unpopular) opinion that popular music is a comodity. It is not "Art." Art music is not made by a bunch of guys in a garage who band on guitars. Neither is it made by bands struggling in clubs.
Sony would never in their life get away with a clause like that with composers like Phillip Glass or Steve Reich, or performers like Yo Yo Ma. They would tell Sony to kiss their ass and go home and write some more music. With The Spice Girls or Green Day, they would sign it in a minute...because they are interested in business, not art. In the end, a small percentage of bands make a profit off of their records. The others get dropped. Smaller serious composers and performers would not sign either, though they would never be asked because they would never be seen.
On the fringes, you do have bands like Dead Can Dance and the Indigo Girls who take their music seriously and are not interested in business, more than making a living. They are both successful underground bands playing around the world. They didn't need PR because they live on the strength of their music which proliferates itself through its powerfulness and grace.
In the end, it is the music that matters. Fuck Sony and their stupid fucking domain names. The smart artist would register "SonySucks.com" as their domain name--doesn't have anything to do with the band:)
Make them an offer they can't refuse. Wave benefits in their face like health insurance, 401K, and other tax free stuff. Give them nice offices and make them sign contracts for x months, years, etc. They will probably take the bait. Also, try to generate a pleasant work environment.
I used to work as a contractor and was hired by a company I was working for. It's a lot more stable plus I don't have to deal with all the crap at tax time. I like going to the doctor and not having to pay full price and other stuff like getting $1100 CAT scans for free. I like my 401K. And, I like the people and the place that I work with. I don't have to be a salesman to get work--it's just there.
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I suppose I didn't explain myself as clearly as I should have.
Psychological studies show that some UIs are easier to use than others. Many companies use in-house studies to design their user interfaces. Microsoft does this--they used it to improve Win 3.11 to Windows 95, A giant leap by any standard. Of course, Apple has always done this. By allowing users to use different UIs and gauging the speed and accuracy that they perform tasks, or by allowing users to define their own interface or to dynamically interact with human-generated interfaces (hard to do with GUI's, easy to do with command line/speech) one can learn which interfaces work best.
Many of these studies are available in academic journals, available at most college libraries. There are also textbooks and other books on the subject.
One suggestion that I got in a UI design class was that Computer Scientists should get artists to help them design the user interface. (Hopefully, not a totally abstract artist:) Artists hold a better understanding of how to allow people to understand concepts with visual abstraction. To me grep makes perfect sense when explained (get regular expression). To an artist, its some weird command that they will never understand.
This leads to another question: how many artists work with programmers on KDE?
I installed MKLinux, and it worked great. It was a bit of a pain to initially install (uh...repartitioning my 4.3GB HD), but once it was there it worked great. I set it up to print to my Stylewriter 1200 and connect to the Internet. X did crash the entire system from time to time, but overall it worked well.
LinuxPPC would be better because it has a monolithic kernel which is faster, plus it's more stable (supposedly), although (from previous post) it isn't quite ready for [6789]100's yet.
As a user of KDE, one of the first things that I have noticed is that by default, the close button is next to the maximize button. Because KDE is configurable, I put the close button on the left and left maximize on the right.
Although one goal of KDE is to have the user interface immediately familiar to Windows users, what is the project going to do to correct Windows user interface problems, such as putting the close button next to the maximize button? (The problem here is that users will often accidentally press close instead of maximize and vica versa. There are many other examples in Windows, such as the confusing start menu: KDE's is better, etc. Copying the Mac is not the best thing either ex. "Use the Chooser to connect to the network AND select printers." etc.)
Henry Lafleur
of the ACM. Computer magazines are not going any where soon, they are just migrating. You don't have to program a computer anymore (i.e. regular users don't have to program), so there are less magazines that follow this. I don't buy that Computer magazines are dead.
I learn more about Windows by reading Linux Journal than from reading any other magazine. Communications has some good issues-oriented articles as well as some funky state of the art. I still read Byte on the web and I've archived my Dr. Dobbs so that I can read them now that I've had enough math to follow them:)
Long live computer magazines!
(Yes, this is different but...)
I tried to boot Linux on my 66MHz 486 PC card, but because Linux bypasses the BIOS and tries to read from the floppy directly, the system fails. Also, all of the MS utilities for fixing floppies, Win 3.11 backup (yikes!), etc. fail for the same reason. Also, the hard drive is emulated, so not going throught the BIOS killed that to.
This may seem ridiculous to some of you (given the comments I read), but I think Copyrights need to be protected. Most of you think of some big record getting upset over bootleg copies of Madonna. But what about struggling artists who need revenue from their product? What about software companies who are barely making it?
Often, highly specialized software needs protection because it is only made for a few companies--The software company has to protect its investment, or it will not be able to turn a profit.
For example, if a company make label printing software that prints bar codes, it would take forever and would cost a fortune for a small to mid-sized company to develop its own bar code software. On the other hand, the investment of development would be smart for a large business. If the software costs $1,000 per user but the development costs are $20,000, then that small company would do better buying a copy.
Now, if the small company just makes a copy of the software from a friend (or something), then the software company is out $1,000 in sales. If their development cost was $250,000 for a general-purpose system to sell, that $1,000 means a lot.
As far as threats to universities, if I were the university sysadmin, I would simply respond:
To whom it may concern,
Go fuck yourself.
Sincerely,
John Doe.
p.s. Because it is the copyright holder's responsibility to protect his/her intelectual property, not ours. Let us know if you find a potential legal infringement, and we will deal with the problem appropriately.
p.p.s.Have a nice day.
I think IE IS better than Netscape. It is faster, more stable, handles Java, Javascript and VBScript fairly well--better than Netscape Communicator for sure in these areas. I like IE on the Mac better as well as on Windows.
(Microsoft doesn't do everything wrong #:-]
My advice about 7.0 is from personal experience. For example, our MS-SQL 7 server has 1GB of RAM and hosts two main databases. For some odd reason, the database process will end up using all but about a couple of megabytes of RAM and then the system will crawl. This was happening about every three days. I think that we either have set it up to reboot every night or we installed the service pack that fixed it. Another problem that I've seen with SQL 7.0 is that in copying data from one server to another, it sets the wrong default decimal number size at 38, greater than what SQL Server can handle. Another problem is that when it generates SQL Scripts, it puts an 'N' in front of quotation marks in the check for object existance. If you need to rebuild or duplicate a database structure for testing or something else, you have to work around these stupid bugs. Then, when you go to the Microsoft site for the fix for the decimal number, it says "Start SQLServer with the -P38 flag" -- BUT THAT DOESN'T WORK You have to put -p38. It took me a while to figure that one out.
Let's see what else: Microsoft's copy scripts to copy from SQL 6.5 to SQL 7.0 won't work if the owner of a table is not dbo--It won't copy the tables. The server will unpredictably freak out--go extremely slow--for no appearant reason, and we'll have to either reboot or restart the MSSQLSrvr process. If you stop and start the process, it does not automatically restart the SQL Agent that may need to be doing important things. If you stop and restart the server at the command prompt, the system will not allow you to start the agent. You have to reboot the system.
And, I could go on forever with wierdness associated with SQL 7 that does not exist in 6.5: because SQL 7 was released before it is stable, just like every other Microsoft product ever made.
(In other words: this guy didn't hit the bugs that I did with 7.0, obviously.)
Linux is not a competitor of Microsoft Windows 95/98/NT/2000. This is a bad analogy. (Okay, I'm ranting now!) Linux is nothing like Windows and it was never meant to be. Linux is a solid kernel. Windows is an operating system with window manager with web browser all shoved into one annoying product. (Okay, I'll stop ranting-damnit)
Most major computer retailers sell Microsoft Windows XX with Microsoft Office or Microsoft Windows NT with Microsoft IIS and Microsoft Backoffice and Microsoft Internet Explorer.
See the problem here?
If M$ is broken up, then you'll have Microsoft AppWare's Office, Microsoft OSes' NT, Microsoft Web's IIS--and they can't share information or employees with each other. In other words, they will have to compete as individual companies. They cannot offer package deals together. So, maybe we'll see more competition and more variation in configurations on WinTel machines. Like, how about NT with a Domino server, or Linux with IIS, or Free BSD with Office.
Competition improves product quality. The more competition M$ has, the more they will have to improve their product. Without Windows, we would not have KDE or GNOME for the wonderful, kick-ass OS known as Linux!
Although I agree that Access is the problem, using Microsoft SQL Server is not the best thing, even though it is 1000 times better than Access. I would suggest looking into a "real" SQL Server, such as Oracle. Microsoft SQL Server has too many bugs and limitations. SQL 7 is not ready for the enterprise, it is bugged out beyond what should be tolerated (just check the Knowledge Base!)
SQL 6.5 is much more stable. It has limitations, such as no more than 16 tables in a view/query, but it is preferable to 7 at this service pack.
The suggestion of MySQL and Linux with ODBC using Access is not bad, as long as Access doesn't crash and/or hang as it's famous for doing. But if you use ODBC with MySQL, you could use lots of front ends/middle men: PERL in Linux or ASP in NT etc.
Setting up a MySQL Server on Linux shouldn't be any more difficult than anything else, as this poster is suggesting. It may save you money in the front and you will learn something in the end. The cost of Linux is the cost of learning--a price always worth paying.
That's right. If you claim a domain name, you have 7 days to put something useful on it--not just "Under Construction". And you can't put "This name for sale," or even imply it, for two years under penalty of death. You have to put some useful information there or offer some service for a fee or free. Then, you have to get 100 hits in the next 90 days and build a house (okay, maybe skip the house). And, then you have homesteaded the domain name. Future generations (or subsidiaries) can inherit it and split it up as they like.
Wouldn't that be fun?
I use the Windows 2000 terminal server from at home at 26,000 bps and it screams. It has a faster response time than my host 233MHz NT 4.0 machine's own response time for UI (no big feat). The Win2K terminal server is based on Citrix.
It this comes to Linux, this would be an excelent replacement for X11 over a modem which is slower than $#1+. It will be worth the ca$h.
This sounds a lot like a microcode processor (processor+apparatus) except that this processor is more fault tolerant and the microcode controller (analagous to the apparatus) is external to the processor instead of integrated into it.
Interesting.
I can't work through complex algorithms that take several pages from my monitor. I find it is much more efficient on paper. I can go from one part to another much faster, and I can see large-scale concepts better on paper.
I think it's a display size issue. I don't have problems on 21" monitors. I guess it's a size issue.
io.com! Are they still $12 a month?
SGIs running IRIX have a much better on-screen DPI. They are much more pleasant to look at. Of course, they cost a little more;)
Hemp is one of the best plants to make paper out of. It has a much higher yield than trees for making paper. Too bad it's illegal to grow it in the United States. Read William Bartrom's "Travels" (all 400+ pages!!!) to see just how much it was grown and accepted just over 200 years ago:)
Copyright protects a realization of a product and the law is as broad as the courts are willing to let it be. For example, if I perform a piece of music without lyrics from purchased sheet music or from memory, that is not copyright infringement. I believe it is different if the music has lyrics because of the the way that ASCAP works. You are supposed to pay per performance--it has to do with law regarding the realization of written word.
Also, it is illegal to photocopy any copyrighted material. I guess if you retype data from a book and place it in a different database, such as on a disk, it is a different realization. I think the first example in the article is wrong--you can't publish a photocopy of anything copyrighted.
Copyright lasts until 50 years after the author's death. You can't photocopy "1984" because the Orwell has not been dead for more than 50 years. Also, you could write something similar to 1984-same plot, similar character names, but different characteristics such as setting and characters, then you could publish it and not infringe.
It's very confusing and intricate law. I think there should be some protection for this, but not 50 years after the authors death. That is much too long. There should be a different copyright for this type of information--10 years perhaps?
I was refering to the fact that they are all ubiquitous--they are all everywhere. If there are 270M guns and 270M people, you've got a lot of people with a lot of guns. And drugs--joints are still 3 for $5 (or maybe more after inflation).
Most people don't own guns (I don't), but in the culture that I am immersed in, there are several guns per household, 90% are used for hunting Deer and Ducks. Big woop. They're all legal. If these guns were taken away from these people, there would be an explosion in the deer population since they have no remaining predators besides people. Bow and black powder hunting is a pain in the butt and only the most die-hard hunters will do it, like people around here where it is deeply rooted in culture and comming of age rituals. (Yes, I do live in the U.S. and there are places that have comming of age rituals such as smearing fresh blood over the youth that kills his first deer, but I digress.)
My point is that guns and weed are ubiquitous (sold on every street corner) and software, the minute it is released, often becomes ubiquitous. Guns and weed cannot be stopped, because too many people in our society including law enforcement, especially those that live in the sticks (guns), don't want them to be stopped. So the analagy is flawed on a certain level, but I don't think it's bad.
second operating system. This is what our University CS department decided. Due to a new certification that they wanted to get, they needed to teach two platforms. We already had Suns running Solaris, and IBM running MVS, and SGIs running IRIX. No one wants to learn MVS, so they added NT and Visual Studio.
As a side note, at work I'm required to develop using Microsoft products. I chose Visual Studio; Particularily Visual J++. I was unable to find very much info about J++ and the reviews I read were mostly favorable. Then I learned about the Microsoft Delegate, a so-called Java language extension that was basically a function pointer (how OO can you get!) All M$ generated code had these stupid delegates all over the place, because WFC is C++ and relies on function pointers instead of object pointers that Java uses. In the end, you get a bastardized product that can only be ported by completely rewriting the entire GUI.
I would assume that C++ in Visual Studio is more true to the philosophy of C++: a function-based language that supports OO extensions, but this shows just how little M$ respects current philosophy and doctrine of current programming practices. To me, VS is a bad choice, and Code Warrior or Borland development systems would be better.
What always bothers me about these export laws is that if a Terrorist group really wanted to get a copy of some encryption software, they could have someone buy it in the US and mail a copy overseas, perhaps on a copied CD (or 10 different copies). I could think of a million other ways to do this. Mail it from Canada! Mexico! You can drive over without a thought. FTP it. XModem transfer it. How the hell is anyone going to know what is on it and that someone is breaking the law. Laws like this do not stop criminal elements from using the products, they just make it a tiny bit harder for them to get their hands on them.
This is the same with modern gun control legislation. Making guns illegal doesn't stop criminals from getting guns, only law-abiding citizens. There are now more guns in the US than their are people, and there is no stoping anyone from getting one. The same with weed, Same with computers, powerful microprocessors, and strong encryption. They can't be stopped!
Microsuck - I typed this after trying to fix another stupid M$ problem on our network. (Again, I'm offtopic yet again!!!!!)
Now THAT is stupid.
(slightly tangental and off topic, but I couldn't resist.)
The characteristic that I have used to define Dead Can Dance and Indigo Girls as borderline art music is that both groups experiment with music and build their music on a heritage of other music. Their music is not sentimental or trivial. For example, I like Melissa Ethridge alot, but her music is very sentimental and very simple. I would never consider it art music, though it is great rock n' roll. The Indigo Girls are well aware of advanced tonal harmony and how to use it. They incorporate many key changes and modulations in their music, as well as some very interesting chord progressions. Most popular artists have trouble with a secondary dominant.
The Indigo Girls started out underground and have moved into the mainstream. The were introduced to the world because of REM and are now a Sony artist--Sony bought their record company CBS (AKA Columbia). (Shows how out of touch I am with pop--thought they were still underground;)
It seems like Sony is putting a clause in their contract that is in the shady part of the law. There is no law governing domain names except the InterNIC. As court cases are won and lost, the laws governing domain names will be defined by precident until the US Congress and other international law making bodies pass legislation.
To take to issue bands and music, I am of the (albiet unpopular) opinion that popular music is a comodity. It is not "Art." Art music is not made by a bunch of guys in a garage who band on guitars. Neither is it made by bands struggling in clubs.
Sony would never in their life get away with a clause like that with composers like Phillip Glass or Steve Reich, or performers like Yo Yo Ma. They would tell Sony to kiss their ass and go home and write some more music. With The Spice Girls or Green Day, they would sign it in a minute...because they are interested in business, not art. In the end, a small percentage of bands make a profit off of their records. The others get dropped. Smaller serious composers and performers would not sign either, though they would never be asked because they would never be seen.
On the fringes, you do have bands like Dead Can Dance and the Indigo Girls who take their music seriously and are not interested in business, more than making a living. They are both successful underground bands playing around the world. They didn't need PR because they live on the strength of their music which proliferates itself through its powerfulness and grace.
In the end, it is the music that matters. Fuck Sony and their stupid fucking domain names. The smart artist would register "SonySucks.com" as their domain name--doesn't have anything to do with the band:)
Make them an offer they can't refuse. Wave benefits in their face like health insurance, 401K, and other tax free stuff. Give them nice offices and make them sign contracts for x months, years, etc. They will probably take the bait. Also, try to generate a pleasant work environment.
I used to work as a contractor and was hired by a company I was working for. It's a lot more stable plus I don't have to deal with all the crap at tax time. I like going to the doctor and not having to pay full price and other stuff like getting $1100 CAT scans for free. I like my 401K. And, I like the people and the place that I work with. I don't have to be a salesman to get work--it's just there.