There is a better way. I don't claim to know what it is; it's possible that it might not have even been discovered yet. But there's always a better way, and rather than slavishly imitating older designs we should be working to find newer ones.
I agree. However, I don't mind continuing to use existing methods, if they, in toto, work well, until better methods are found.
Thus, I absolutely agree that MacOS labels needed serious improvement. But that's not an excuse for abandoning a useful feature (one which I used constantly, and would love to have on Windows), particularly since there's little to indicate that it's being improved upon and that the improvements will be shipped out anytime soon.
That said of course, I really liked MacOS spaciality with regards to arrangement of icons and windows, and would like to get it back. In fact there's a ton of good MacOS features that I wish I had available right now, despite their failings, which should be corrected ASAP.
Re:If Ars Technica is so concerned about usability
on
A Better Finder?
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· Score: 1
I'd say that it dates to when people started to use paper. Even writing by hand on paper tends to encourage black ink on the light background. Before that writing was carved into things -- stone, clay, sand, etc.
Re:I don't agree with the article
on
A Better Finder?
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· Score: 1
Meh. It was just that kind of dissatisfaction with the status quo that's led to pretty much every UI improvement. What's wrong with wanting things to be better?
There is no license. It's just owned. Frankly the concept that software can be licensed generally (in the EULA sense, not site licenses or the GPL which is different anyway) is hotly contested.
Though a corporation is certainly welcome to build a CD library and loan out physical CDs to its employees, copying them digitally is just a plain ol' copyright violation.
Naw. Space shifting is a fair use. However, they'd be in some trouble if users could access a work simultaneously.
First, you'd have to establish that you bought the games. I.e. you're denying that the EULA had any effect whatsoever, because if you only licensed the game section 109 is not applicable at all. I'd hope that EULAs can be invalidated en masse, but it'll pit the entire software industry against you.
Second, I don't think that a general purpose computer becomes a limited purpose computer merely because it isn't being fully utilized. The law appears to apply more to set-top consoles AFAICT.
At any rate, as already noted, I'm not a lawyer and I therefore cannot give legal advice. You shouldn't rely on what I've pointed out. I strongly suggest that you find a lawyer who specializes in copyright law, with a healthy knowledge of contract and sales law and is licensed to practice in your jurisdiction.
17 USC 109(a) permits the owner of a copy of a copyrighted work to use or dispose of that copy as they like, including renting it. Subsection (b)(1)(A) makes an exception for computer software and sound recordings, but subsection (b)(1)(B)(ii) points out that (b)(1)(A) is not applicable to software used for a limited purpose computer designed for playing video games.
So, provided that the owner of the particular game cartridge or disc wants to rent it out, and provided that it is for a console and not a general purpose computer, you can just go ahead and do it.
Well that's actually pretty interesting, and that could certainly continue to work on more modern displays. And of course a better sensor could differentiate between colors perhaps, allowing more than one target to be checked per frame.
CRTs work by sweeping a beam of electrons across the face of the screen which cause the screen to glow. The beam moves so rapidly that you can't see it. But the photocell in the light gun can.
Because the console knows precisely where on the screen the beam is at any particular time, it can determine where on the screen the gun is pointed at because it only sees the beam at certain times; times that correspond to a particular location on screen.
Screens that don't have an electron beam won't work with the light guns. We'll wind up having to put little cameras or something inside of them so that they can recognize what part of the screen they're seeing.
The basic technology here is very, very old. IIRC light pens were in use by the military back in the 50's.
I don't think that's very good at all. Were that so, I'd imagine that you'd see/.ers sending out tons of spam on behalf of the MPAA/RIAA in an effort to stick them with the bill.
Personally, I loathe spam, but I don't see a way to get rid of it that is compatable with civil liberties. I just accept it as being a minor bother that is part and parcel of having a free society, and if some individual doesn't like it, they can always set up filters and such to get rid of it, or get their ISP to filter for them.
The right to speak would be meaningless if people were unable to hear what was being said. Dare you propose that the framers were trying to protect a useless right? Of course not.
Now, you may choose not to listen, but that's incumbent upon YOU.
If you don't want spam or junk mail or junk faxes or door to door solicitors, just tell the senders not to intrude on your privacy and property.
BUT unless you take affirmative action, it seems perfectly safe to presume that having a phone line or an email account with no reasonable sort of notice to outsiders is implicit permission to use those resources to get in touch with you. Otherwise why on earth would you have them be publicly accessible?
All intellectual property law is governed solely by federal laws; states can't enact any laws for copyrights, patents or trademarks.
That's not entirely true. States _could_ enact such laws under the Constitution, and have. Congress can disallow it, however.
Plus there is a healthy system of state trademarks -- in fact some types of marks are only issued by states.
Also you forgot the fourth type of IP, trade secrets, which are entirely governed by state laws.
At any rate, considering the effects, I think that we have far too many felonies. Low class felonies should be misdemeanors, or the stigma (including, e.g. loss of voting rights) should be lessened on felons.
Not that copyright infringement should be criminal at all; civil enforcement alone is far superior IMO. If there had to be criminal enforcement, it should be limited to seizure of infringing copies.
You're right -- I'd forgotten about how long it took Virginia and Vermont to get around to upholding the promise to ratify the Bill of Rights.
At any rate, I'm saying that at or near the time of its passage, the First Amendment could have been interpreted to void the copyright clause. But it's pretty much too late for that argument to hold any water now.
Well, no; the 1790 Copyright Act is proof of that. The First Amendment came after the copyright clause. It _could_ have, coming later in time, overridden the clause. It just hasn't been interpreted to do so.
Yeah, I know, but I didn't want to get into too technical of a discussion.
Section 106 restricts everyone but the author from making full use without the author's consent (since use is an inherent right but can be abridged), and then sections 107 through 119, plus some others scattered around, are exceptions to the general rules of section 106.
17 USC 106 prohibits the copying and distribution of copyrighted materials. There are various exceptions to this, but none of them are prone to work for something like P2P sharing.
And while you're right in that actual damages are difficult to show, statutory damages are a substitute for that; if the plaintiff thinks it'll be hard for them to prove damages, they'll take the statutory. If they think that the damages are sufficiently high however, and are likely enough to be proven, they'll go for the actual damages.
As an aside, consider the Napster case. You cannot have contributory or vicarious infringement without someone being a direct infringer. Napster tried to defend their users and failed; the courts felt that infringement on a P2P network had occurred.
There is one other, but it's unusual: merger. That is, if turns out that there are very few ways of expressing a particular idea, copyrights on the expressions will be voided. But you'd have to challenge the copyright and prove the merger of expression and idea.
So when people talk of water seeking its own level, does that mean that water has a particular desire, or that it just tends to flow to the lowest place available?
Do you have something against anthropomorphication? Did a furry kill your parents?
This is why if I were going to be attack ships at sea, I'd get letters of marque and reprisal. Then it's all perfectly legal, and not piracy at all, but privateering.
I'm sure there's got to be a tiny backwater country that'd be willing to grant such rights.;)
On the other hand, spam NEVER contains anything the slightest bit useful... It's all scams and semi-illegal schemes and obnoxious, often obscene, almost always completely unprofessional looking, sales pitches for complete and utter crap no one in their right mind could ever possibly be interested in
That's a judgment call. Clearly someone is interested in this; we've seen that some spammers have commercial success, and others would surely stop if they were spending so much time in fruitless endeavor. That doesn't mean that the rate of return is high: it might be one positive respondent per million spams sent. But there is some interest. Certainly there are probably religious movements that are less appealing but no one supports banning their attempts to proselytize.
It's just overwhelming and impossible to cope with
I'd disagree. It may not be perfectly effortless to seperate the wheat from the chaff as it were, but the same thing applies to junk mail, and a minimal burden is basically the price you pay for having an email box that can be sent to from anyone, i.e. for not whitelisting.
spam should be illegal: it costs ME money
People keep saying this: I don't believe it. Got some proof?
the right to free speech is obviously not a right to intrusive free speech
To some extent it is. Grabbing someone isn't a matter of speech, it's battery. Standing in someone's way OTOH, in a public thoroughfare is generally okay (after all, it's not as though you have a right to exclude him). There can be time, place, and manner restrictions, but not so much as to create absolute restrictions.
So. If you have a phone, that's an implicit invitation to be called. When you answer the phone YOU have chosen to listen to someone at least long enough to come to the decision as to whether or not to hang up. They obviously can't make the handset jump off of the hook themselves. You've let someone in, and if you hang up, you cannot blame anyone but yourself for having picked up to begin with.
It's just like going door to door -- it's assumed that you permit people to knock unless you take steps otherwise. And if there is a knock, the knocker isn't making you answer, you are. It is by NO means intrusive. Because you're free to waste your time answering every single phone call or knock at the door if you want to, and you likely _do_ want to.
In sum, no one is forcing you to pick up the phone and listen to their sales pitch. You did it voluntarily, knowing that it could be anyone on the other end of the line.
Only if you tell someone not to solicit you in a way that's reasonably likely to put them on notice are you ever going to shift the burden!
Sure it is. You have an email address, you've basically made it available to people to email you. You didn't give anyone notice otherwise. This is why I can mail you truckloads of junk mail: you have a mailbox.
It's less burdensome for you to delete spam than it is to throw away junk mail. And email doesn't effectively arrive (i.e. enter your awareness) at inconvenient times of day -- only when you take the effort to check your mail.
Freedom of speech means you're going to have to put up with other people's speech that you don't like. No one's forcing you to listen to it, but if you want to participate in society, you're basically stuck with it.
Most of your comments seem focused on unsolicited commercial phone calls. I agree that time, place or manner restrictions are fine. But they don't allow total exclusion either. No calls between 7pm-8am could work. No calls at all is not okay.
It's not as though you're required to have a phone, set it to ring, answer it, or listen to the call. But having availed yourself of the benefits of having a phone, it is YOUR responsibility to shield yourself from all unwanted intrusions.
No-call lists work because they're essentially the equivalent of a 'no solicitors' sign for your phone. Fail to give warning, and you're fair game my friend.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. However, I don't mind continuing to use existing methods, if they, in toto, work well, until better methods are found.
Thus, I absolutely agree that MacOS labels needed serious improvement. But that's not an excuse for abandoning a useful feature (one which I used constantly, and would love to have on Windows), particularly since there's little to indicate that it's being improved upon and that the improvements will be shipped out anytime soon.
That said of course, I really liked MacOS spaciality with regards to arrangement of icons and windows, and would like to get it back. In fact there's a ton of good MacOS features that I wish I had available right now, despite their failings, which should be corrected ASAP.
I'd say that it dates to when people started to use paper. Even writing by hand on paper tends to encourage black ink on the light background. Before that writing was carved into things -- stone, clay, sand, etc.
Meh. It was just that kind of dissatisfaction with the status quo that's led to pretty much every UI improvement. What's wrong with wanting things to be better?
There is no license. It's just owned. Frankly the concept that software can be licensed generally (in the EULA sense, not site licenses or the GPL which is different anyway) is hotly contested.
Naw. Space shifting is a fair use. However, they'd be in some trouble if users could access a work simultaneously.
Well to be honest, I have doubts that it'll work.
First, you'd have to establish that you bought the games. I.e. you're denying that the EULA had any effect whatsoever, because if you only licensed the game section 109 is not applicable at all. I'd hope that EULAs can be invalidated en masse, but it'll pit the entire software industry against you.
Second, I don't think that a general purpose computer becomes a limited purpose computer merely because it isn't being fully utilized. The law appears to apply more to set-top consoles AFAICT.
At any rate, as already noted, I'm not a lawyer and I therefore cannot give legal advice. You shouldn't rely on what I've pointed out. I strongly suggest that you find a lawyer who specializes in copyright law, with a healthy knowledge of contract and sales law and is licensed to practice in your jurisdiction.
Good luck though.
17 USC 109(a) permits the owner of a copy of a copyrighted work to use or dispose of that copy as they like, including renting it. Subsection (b)(1)(A) makes an exception for computer software and sound recordings, but subsection (b)(1)(B)(ii) points out that (b)(1)(A) is not applicable to software used for a limited purpose computer designed for playing video games.
So, provided that the owner of the particular game cartridge or disc wants to rent it out, and provided that it is for a console and not a general purpose computer, you can just go ahead and do it.
Well that's actually pretty interesting, and that could certainly continue to work on more modern displays. And of course a better sensor could differentiate between colors perhaps, allowing more than one target to be checked per frame.
Yes... I remember when Bungie was basically trying to garner support from the Mac community that way too. And now look at 'em.
CRTs work by sweeping a beam of electrons across the face of the screen which cause the screen to glow. The beam moves so rapidly that you can't see it. But the photocell in the light gun can.
Because the console knows precisely where on the screen the beam is at any particular time, it can determine where on the screen the gun is pointed at because it only sees the beam at certain times; times that correspond to a particular location on screen.
Screens that don't have an electron beam won't work with the light guns. We'll wind up having to put little cameras or something inside of them so that they can recognize what part of the screen they're seeing.
The basic technology here is very, very old. IIRC light pens were in use by the military back in the 50's.
I don't think that's very good at all. Were that so, I'd imagine that you'd see /.ers sending out tons of spam on behalf of the MPAA/RIAA in an effort to stick them with the bill.
Personally, I loathe spam, but I don't see a way to get rid of it that is compatable with civil liberties. I just accept it as being a minor bother that is part and parcel of having a free society, and if some individual doesn't like it, they can always set up filters and such to get rid of it, or get their ISP to filter for them.
Absolutely wrong.
The right to speak would be meaningless if people were unable to hear what was being said. Dare you propose that the framers were trying to protect a useless right? Of course not.
Now, you may choose not to listen, but that's incumbent upon YOU.
If you don't want spam or junk mail or junk faxes or door to door solicitors, just tell the senders not to intrude on your privacy and property.
BUT unless you take affirmative action, it seems perfectly safe to presume that having a phone line or an email account with no reasonable sort of notice to outsiders is implicit permission to use those resources to get in touch with you. Otherwise why on earth would you have them be publicly accessible?
All intellectual property law is governed solely by federal laws; states can't enact any laws for copyrights, patents or trademarks.
That's not entirely true. States _could_ enact such laws under the Constitution, and have. Congress can disallow it, however.
Plus there is a healthy system of state trademarks -- in fact some types of marks are only issued by states.
Also you forgot the fourth type of IP, trade secrets, which are entirely governed by state laws.
At any rate, considering the effects, I think that we have far too many felonies. Low class felonies should be misdemeanors, or the stigma (including, e.g. loss of voting rights) should be lessened on felons.
Not that copyright infringement should be criminal at all; civil enforcement alone is far superior IMO. If there had to be criminal enforcement, it should be limited to seizure of infringing copies.
You're right -- I'd forgotten about how long it took Virginia and Vermont to get around to upholding the promise to ratify the Bill of Rights.
At any rate, I'm saying that at or near the time of its passage, the First Amendment could have been interpreted to void the copyright clause. But it's pretty much too late for that argument to hold any water now.
Well, no; the 1790 Copyright Act is proof of that. The First Amendment came after the copyright clause. It _could_ have, coming later in time, overridden the clause. It just hasn't been interpreted to do so.
Yeah, I know, but I didn't want to get into too technical of a discussion.
Section 106 restricts everyone but the author from making full use without the author's consent (since use is an inherent right but can be abridged), and then sections 107 through 119, plus some others scattered around, are exceptions to the general rules of section 106.
17 USC 106 prohibits the copying and distribution of copyrighted materials. There are various exceptions to this, but none of them are prone to work for something like P2P sharing.
And while you're right in that actual damages are difficult to show, statutory damages are a substitute for that; if the plaintiff thinks it'll be hard for them to prove damages, they'll take the statutory. If they think that the damages are sufficiently high however, and are likely enough to be proven, they'll go for the actual damages.
As an aside, consider the Napster case. You cannot have contributory or vicarious infringement without someone being a direct infringer. Napster tried to defend their users and failed; the courts felt that infringement on a P2P network had occurred.
There is one other, but it's unusual: merger. That is, if turns out that there are very few ways of expressing a particular idea, copyrights on the expressions will be voided. But you'd have to challenge the copyright and prove the merger of expression and idea.
So when people talk of water seeking its own level, does that mean that water has a particular desire, or that it just tends to flow to the lowest place available?
Do you have something against anthropomorphication? Did a furry kill your parents?
This is why if I were going to be attack ships at sea, I'd get letters of marque and reprisal. Then it's all perfectly legal, and not piracy at all, but privateering.
;)
I'm sure there's got to be a tiny backwater country that'd be willing to grant such rights.
Ah, you made the classical logical fallacy of assuming that breasts were phones. Don't feel too bad -- lots of people make that mistake.
I do that routinely. ;)
That's a judgment call. Clearly someone is interested in this; we've seen that some spammers have commercial success, and others would surely stop if they were spending so much time in fruitless endeavor. That doesn't mean that the rate of return is high: it might be one positive respondent per million spams sent. But there is some interest. Certainly there are probably religious movements that are less appealing but no one supports banning their attempts to proselytize.
It's just overwhelming and impossible to cope with
I'd disagree. It may not be perfectly effortless to seperate the wheat from the chaff as it were, but the same thing applies to junk mail, and a minimal burden is basically the price you pay for having an email box that can be sent to from anyone, i.e. for not whitelisting.
spam should be illegal: it costs ME money
People keep saying this: I don't believe it. Got some proof?
To some extent it is. Grabbing someone isn't a matter of speech, it's battery. Standing in someone's way OTOH, in a public thoroughfare is generally okay (after all, it's not as though you have a right to exclude him). There can be time, place, and manner restrictions, but not so much as to create absolute restrictions.
So. If you have a phone, that's an implicit invitation to be called. When you answer the phone YOU have chosen to listen to someone at least long enough to come to the decision as to whether or not to hang up. They obviously can't make the handset jump off of the hook themselves. You've let someone in, and if you hang up, you cannot blame anyone but yourself for having picked up to begin with.
It's just like going door to door -- it's assumed that you permit people to knock unless you take steps otherwise. And if there is a knock, the knocker isn't making you answer, you are. It is by NO means intrusive. Because you're free to waste your time answering every single phone call or knock at the door if you want to, and you likely _do_ want to.
In sum, no one is forcing you to pick up the phone and listen to their sales pitch. You did it voluntarily, knowing that it could be anyone on the other end of the line.
Only if you tell someone not to solicit you in a way that's reasonably likely to put them on notice are you ever going to shift the burden!
Sure it is. You have an email address, you've basically made it available to people to email you. You didn't give anyone notice otherwise. This is why I can mail you truckloads of junk mail: you have a mailbox.
It's less burdensome for you to delete spam than it is to throw away junk mail. And email doesn't effectively arrive (i.e. enter your awareness) at inconvenient times of day -- only when you take the effort to check your mail.
Freedom of speech means you're going to have to put up with other people's speech that you don't like. No one's forcing you to listen to it, but if you want to participate in society, you're basically stuck with it.
Most of your comments seem focused on unsolicited commercial phone calls. I agree that time, place or manner restrictions are fine. But they don't allow total exclusion either. No calls between 7pm-8am could work. No calls at all is not okay.
It's not as though you're required to have a phone, set it to ring, answer it, or listen to the call. But having availed yourself of the benefits of having a phone, it is YOUR responsibility to shield yourself from all unwanted intrusions.
No-call lists work because they're essentially the equivalent of a 'no solicitors' sign for your phone. Fail to give warning, and you're fair game my friend.