It is difficult to discuss foreign patent systems unless you're quite familiar with them. I hesitate to do so.
However, let's say, hypothetically, that it was the US that decided to do this, instead of Brazil. In that case, they'd be perfectly justified in that action. It would decidedly not, repeat NOT, be stealing. The patent holder was GRANTED that patent by the US because it was felt that doing so would have a public benefit. But ultimately, if there is a greater public benefit to be had in not granting, revoking, ignoring, etc. a patent, then THAT is the appropriate course of action.
Yes, there is a danger that this sort of thing could remove incentives for the research to be done. That has to be weighed when making the decision: would the greatest public benefit come about by this course of action, even in the long run? Again though, the interests of the patent holder itself are not particularly important. No one can say with certainty what the result will be. The argument that patents are necessary is belied by the limited term of a patent; all patent holders lose the exclusivity of the rights to their invention, it's just a matter of time. Why? Because it is beneficial to the public that this be the case. It's highly unlikely that an everlasting patent (and the corresponding powerful, long-lived and dangerous monopolies that would arise) would really spur the inventor on. Or at least, that's the decision that's been made, and has been stuck with for centuries.
Don't go around thinking that this is a bad thing. If Brazil fulfills its duty to its people, that's the most that can be hoped for. This type of decision does not prevent innovation, at worst (and its unknown if this will be the case) it merely slows it.
You also make the mistake of believing that there is such a thing as "Intellectual Property." There is not. Any examination of the nature of property and the nature of information such as ideas will reveal the truth. Brazil cannot steal what is unstealable. And if they choose not to grant any rights to the inventor, there is no external authority from which the inventor might gain those rights. They do not come about as a consequence of his labors, they are a grant made by the government, at the direction of its citizens, and for some particular public aim.
This doesn't really mean that GUI's are inferior to CLI's - merely that UI in general is still not particularly advanced. Sadly, I can't make one due to a lack of skill and resources, but for a while I've advocated combining both user interfaces together.
For example: Think of the GUI as being very akin to gesture in a pre-verbal society. People can't talk to one another, but they can point at objects, and make either make one of a very, very small number of commonly recognized gestures to indicate some action to be taken on it, or point to some object that represents such an action. (which is a simple noun-verb construction, really) CLI's appear to be more powerful, but this is not entirely true. Although it is akin to verbal communication, in which abstract concepts can be related pretty succinctly, there is a certain amount of complexity that is difficult to remove, without incurring a cost due to human factors. (e.g. it is faster to use the mouse for many commands, particularly rarely used ones, because you can select it from a list faster than you can remember how to invoke it from the CLI with appropriate syntax, or the shortcut for it)
I propose having a gui with a one or two line text parser stashed somewhere. (whether there would be a universal one, or multiple ones, based on focus, I can't say without there being some actual work done). We could then avail ourselves of: 1) Ordinary GUI usage, where the CLI is ignored; 2) Ordinary CLI usage, where the GUI is ignored; 3) A partial combination of the two, where text commands can have much more feature rich visual output (e.g. looking at a graph instead of combing through top) or hopefully 4) where both types of commands are used interchangably in total cooperation.
An example of this might be that I want to do some operations on files that I have on my computer. I use the mouse to navigate through a folder structure with plain English names that could be difficult to express in a CLI, depending on its syntax. There are loads of files of all sorts in it, and I only want the files with certain file names. Unfortunately, the names aren't in any spacial organization. So I type in a regular expression to select them in the CLI, and they become selected, with appropriate visual feedback. I can then drag them, with the mouse to a different directory, as convenient. What's important is that I do NOT have to switch modes between a GUI and CLI, at least as explicitly as one has to do so today. (with a seperate shell window that does not follow the focus of the GUI, AFAIK) There are simply two parallel methods of controlling the computer, which I may use at will, with a minimum of additional effort.
I imagine that it would require a little reworking of GUIs, and an entirely new shell, so as to have a syntax that matched up very well. (e.g. if there is a visual 'desktop' as the root of the GUI, the root of the fs and CLI would be the same. Given that fs's are already abstract from the reality of disk sectors, and directories are a purely human organizational system, further abstraction is entirely possible and not a bad thing) The CLI would also need to be able to respond well to GUI commands... that sort of thing. I think it's all possible, I just wish someone would work on it, as I can't. (but would probably like a good one)
Sure you can. You can do a capture through a TV card. DivX is crappy enough - particularly at small sizes - that no one's gonna notice the difference.
And furthermore, trading pirated video over the Internet is small, small potatoes. The big pirates ignore CSS. It's generally not a big thing to them. Maybe they change the region codes at most. But they own the big industrial presses in Asia that make legitimate discs as well, just making some extras for themselves. Totally indistinguishable from the ordinary ones, they are.
There's loads of ways to pirate DVDs without DeCSS, and it's by no means necessary. You should probably look into it more.
Well part of it is that we can't just honor treaties. If treaties carried the full weight of law, it would mean that the President and a majority of the Senate could short-circuit the House.
Treaties need to be enabled after being agreed to by the ordinary legislative process. But there's no guarantee that they will be, or that they won't be unchanged, or that such laws could be constitutional.
The layout is not protected under the copyright of the text itself. Go ahead - print up Stephen King's latest with a different font and paper size, and not get sued.
Besides, my late grandfather had a photographic memory, and could recite the contents of books with nary a flaw, and liked to show off by telling people to refer to particular paragraphs on certain pages, etc.
Heck, even a close paraphrase is still a derivative work, and would qualify as an infringement.
Well, the media shifting doctrine in... which is it again? The 7th circuit? Would permit one to do so, would it not? (it's not circumventing CSS at that point, as it has already been decrypted legally)
There is not a fully stocked and operational courtroom inside your Replay. Messages coming out of it don't necessarily reflect the realities of the situation. It can say that the sky is zebra-striped too, and it holds just as little weight.
The market doesn't fix lots of things. It's not magic, and the end results of following the dictates of the market are not guaranteed to take you to the same place that you'd get if you followed the ideals of a good and functional society.
That would be awful. There is nothing I can think of that's worse than a judge owing anyone anything. Having gotten their position, I can't imagine that they're so foolish as to believe they owe favors.
Well, there's a great deal of contention regarding the CA electrical utilities, and I don't live there so I haven't followed it closely. But electrical utilities have been regualted for a long time, and several of the very highly regulated ones in CA (e.g. in LA, which is a city-owned utility, IIRC) stayed up perfectly fine.
It was a mishmash of little regulation in some sectors, and excessive regulation in others that seems to be responsible, coupled with a few other factors, like a drought in the northwest, reducing the supply of electricity.
It's possible that deregulating more might have avoided it, and it's certain, given the lack of such failures for the many decades prior, that more regulation would have also avoided it. (similarly, the fairly well-regulated utilities all across the rest of the country, and world also tend to stay up pretty darn well)
As for those who are in favor of decreased regulation, I would like to know why. If you're not going to benefit directly from it (e.g. if you owned or worked for one of those giants) or you don't think that you could become one, what good does it do you?
Roughly I see you preferring the dream of having a big slice of pie, than the modern-day ideal of being able to work with a small slice, and work up. Monopolies do not respond to competition by competiting in turn, but by preventing such competition from ocurring in the first place. They are such a success of capitalism, that their weight prevents it from functioning for the reasons we like it.
ATT was a monopoly (though it had to accept regulation or be broken up long ago, and eventually was anyway) and kept people from developing third party telco hardware, phone book covers, etc. They laughed at the Internet when it was practically handed to them. They never really did anything with regards to cellphones, or faxes, both of which were old hat. (faxes were invented over a hundred years ago, IIRC)
I don't mind not overly regulating certain companies, but in exchange they have to be in a position where they need not be. MS is too powerful to be left alone. Either reduce its power and leave it alone, or let it remain powerful, but harnessed so as to avoid abuses.
No, we're mostly capitalists, we mostly have a free market, but the goals of a decent society may not match 100% with the end result of a whole hog capitalist free market.
So finding the former better than the latter, we mold capitalism into something slightly different that gives us what we do in fact want.
MS broke the law, and they're good laws that have kept the country running for over a century. Late 19th century abuses of corporate power were really something, and I don't think that anyone wants to go down that road again. (save the very very few that would directly benefit from it, and those who fantasize about being in that elite)
Basically, we want all of the good, and none of the bad, and since the system isn't carved into stone, it's possible, though it requires a lot of manual fine tuning.
Because then the government might move in, sieze the assets of MS, and various figures within it (e.g. Bill) and prohibit the import of internationally produced MS products into the US.
Basically you're proposing that MS flee to escape justice, and generally governments have held a dim view of that sort of thing.
But fortunately, there's a slew of eps coming up real soon now. I've got to say, I'm a big fan of Zim. Just wish it were on broadcast TV, since I'll be damned if I spring for cable or satellite. (I can count the different things I watch or would be interested in watching on one hand)
We're working with some highly unstable chemicals and- No! You've got the mixture all wrong! [BOOM]
No, it was a working Apple IIe, IIRC. I wasn't all that interested, since my Christmas gift to a friend of mine last year was a working IIgs that I had had the Woz personally sign. Shipping stuff cross-country wound up costing more than the machine itself!
(however, the Woz likes to read and answer his mail himself, and it eats up a huge amount of his time, so I can't really recommend bugging him with requests -- I probably wouldn't've had I known.)
Now if I can just get Steve to sign my NeXT Cube, I'll be all set.
Probably not, no. There's few cases that have tested this, and it's a mixed bag, but there were slightly more decisions against EULAs the last time I checked, than for. (also depends on the specifics of the EULA)
There's no implied license, and IIRC there were cases in which the copyright holders for software successfully sued users for installing and using it. (licenses were originally felt necessary as software was not copyrightable -- then it was very necessary as software was not especially useable after being copyrighted)
At any rate, 17 USC 117 is a statutory exemption whereby it is not a copyright infringement to make copies for the purposes of use, or to backup software if legally obtained. Additionally there is the novel 'space shifting' use from the Diamond case, but it hasn't been much tested AFAIK.
You're right though - the legal status of EULAs is at best highly dubious. Sadly stupid states like MD are doing stupid things like passing UCITA legislation.
I sincerely doubt that he was saying that anyone ought to be able to walk up to an artist or musician and demand something. You can't _make_ people produce.
What he was saying is that having already invested the time, labor and capital into a work, there's no natural right to expect to be compensated for it. This is true - either of us might create something that was a total bomb and never recoup our investment. We can't _make_ people buy stuff either.
But assuming that we do find a buyer for the first copy -- do we naturally have the ability to prevent them from copying it? To put it another way, is there a God-given right that cancels out the God-given right of people to speak freely, regardless of content?
Well, no, there's not. Copyright is an illusion. It is all the members of the public permitting their government (if it thinks it's wise) to infringe on their right of free speech under certain limitations. Doing so in this particular manner happens to benefit artists. BUT it is not done for the artists' benefit, and once the term expires, it is ultimately the public at large that reaps the rewards of our work, forevermore.
I think that copyright can be harnessed for good purposes, but that we artists must accept what we're given, since it isn't our place to decide. (save as ordinary citizens, same as non-artist citizens) I'll be happy with anything I get - it could be worse, and there are fringe benefits as well even to a very weak system.
Or imagine being a famous artist like Michaelangelo, or a famous writer like Shakespeare or a famous composer like Bach or... oh wait, none of them had copyright protections.
They made their money through their personal labor (e.g. Bach performing live is irreproducable) through pay for the first copy of their works (e.g. the David) and were on an even playing ground with everyone else, save for any talents they might have had, with selling reproductions.
Sure, the GPL wouldn't work without copyright. But then, how would MS function - people could copy the binaries, and there's little incentive to keep the source closed either. GPL is just making the best of a bad situation, not an actual goal.
More or less. But hey - I'm an artist, and I make my living from my work, and I think the same thing about myself.
You're looking for compensation, are you not? You're denying the benefits of being able to further disseminate and alter your work to the public, are you not? You're just not a very fat cat. (and neither am I)
But I do try to keep it to a minimum, and I think that the copyright bargain (where the public permits us to demand things like credit and compensation from them as a reward, provided that it's only temporary) is weighted too far to the end of artists right now, and needs to swing back.
Well, in fact there is the comparatively rarely exercised latches doctrine. Roughly the idea is that if a patent holder encourages others to freely make use of the patent by making it appear as though it will not be enforced, waiting for them to expend lots of resources in doing so, and then blackmailing them with the patent, the patent can be invalidated with regards to the users. The courts do require that patents not be abused so as to function against their purpose.
Positively enticing use would probably qualify; I'm mostly curious about negatively silently permitting use.
Nice to see a mention of the "Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines."
I'd add Tufte's "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information," "Envisioning Information," and "Visual Explanations." Also Laurel's "The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design," Tognazzini's "Tog on Interface" and "Tog on Software Design" and Raskin's "The Humane Interface."
Programming is great - but these are books you'll want if you want people to want to use your program, and to enjoy doing so. Most of the world's not propeller heads, and even said heads can see their lives improve with good UI. (do you still punch cards and program with switches?)
I'd also add Flack and Wiese's "The Story About Ping" for a nice high-level explanation of ping(8).
If you like, take the content and repost it somewhere where you think it'll do good. Didn't you see my.sig? I didn't just put that in there for fun, I earnestly mean it.
Slashdot Mirror
It is difficult to discuss foreign patent systems unless you're quite familiar with them. I
hesitate to do so.
However, let's say, hypothetically, that it was the US that decided to do this, instead of
Brazil. In that case, they'd be perfectly justified in that action. It would decidedly not,
repeat NOT, be stealing. The patent holder was GRANTED that patent by the US because it was
felt that doing so would have a public benefit. But ultimately, if there is a greater public
benefit to be had in not granting, revoking, ignoring, etc. a patent, then THAT is the
appropriate course of action.
Yes, there is a danger that this sort of thing could remove incentives for the research to
be done. That has to be weighed when making the decision: would the greatest public benefit
come about by this course of action, even in the long run? Again though, the interests of
the patent holder itself are not particularly important. No one can say with certainty what
the result will be. The argument that patents are necessary is belied by the limited term of
a patent; all patent holders lose the exclusivity of the rights to their invention, it's
just a matter of time. Why? Because it is beneficial to the public that this be the case.
It's highly unlikely that an everlasting patent (and the corresponding powerful, long-lived
and dangerous monopolies that would arise) would really spur the inventor on. Or at least,
that's the decision that's been made, and has been stuck with for centuries.
Don't go around thinking that this is a bad thing. If Brazil fulfills its duty to its
people, that's the most that can be hoped for. This type of decision does not prevent
innovation, at worst (and its unknown if this will be the case) it merely slows it.
You also make the mistake of believing that there is such a thing as "Intellectual
Property." There is not. Any examination of the nature of property and the nature of
information such as ideas will reveal the truth. Brazil cannot steal what is unstealable.
And if they choose not to grant any rights to the inventor, there is no external authority
from which the inventor might gain those rights. They do not come about as a consequence of
his labors, they are a grant made by the government, at the direction of its citizens, and
for some particular public aim.
This doesn't really mean that GUI's are inferior to CLI's - merely that UI in general is still not particularly advanced. Sadly, I can't make one due to a lack of skill and resources, but for a while I've advocated combining both user interfaces together.
For example: Think of the GUI as being very akin to gesture in a pre-verbal society. People can't talk to one another, but they can point at objects, and make either make one of a very, very small number of commonly recognized gestures to indicate some action to be taken on it, or point to some object that represents such an action. (which is a simple noun-verb construction, really) CLI's appear to be more powerful, but this is not entirely true. Although it is akin to verbal communication, in which abstract concepts can be related pretty succinctly, there is a certain amount of complexity that is difficult to remove, without incurring a cost due to human factors. (e.g. it is faster to use the mouse for many commands, particularly rarely used ones, because you can select it from a list faster than you can remember how to invoke it from the CLI with appropriate syntax, or the shortcut for it)
I propose having a gui with a one or two line text parser stashed somewhere. (whether there would be a universal one, or multiple ones, based on focus, I can't say without there being some actual work done). We could then avail ourselves of: 1) Ordinary GUI usage, where the CLI is ignored; 2) Ordinary CLI usage, where the GUI is ignored; 3) A partial combination of the two, where text commands can have much more feature rich visual output (e.g. looking at a graph instead of combing through top) or hopefully 4) where both types of commands are used interchangably in total cooperation.
An example of this might be that I want to do some operations on files that I have on my computer. I use the mouse to navigate through a folder structure with plain English names that could be difficult to express in a CLI, depending on its syntax. There are loads of files of all sorts in it, and I only want the files with certain file names. Unfortunately, the names aren't in any spacial organization. So I type in a regular expression to select them in the CLI, and they become selected, with appropriate visual feedback. I can then drag them, with the mouse to a different directory, as convenient. What's important is that I do NOT have to switch modes between a GUI and CLI, at least as explicitly as one has to do so today. (with a seperate shell window that does not follow the focus of the GUI, AFAIK) There are simply two parallel methods of controlling the computer, which I may use at will, with a minimum of additional effort.
I imagine that it would require a little reworking of GUIs, and an entirely new shell, so as to have a syntax that matched up very well. (e.g. if there is a visual 'desktop' as the root of the GUI, the root of the fs and CLI would be the same. Given that fs's are already abstract from the reality of disk sectors, and directories are a purely human organizational system, further abstraction is entirely possible and not a bad thing) The CLI would also need to be able to respond well to GUI commands... that sort of thing. I think it's all possible, I just wish someone would work on it, as I can't. (but would probably like a good one)
Sure you can. You can do a capture through a TV card. DivX is crappy enough - particularly at small sizes - that no one's gonna notice the difference.
And furthermore, trading pirated video over the Internet is small, small potatoes. The big pirates ignore CSS. It's generally not a big thing to them. Maybe they change the region codes at most. But they own the big industrial presses in Asia that make legitimate discs as well, just making some extras for themselves. Totally indistinguishable from the ordinary ones, they are.
There's loads of ways to pirate DVDs without DeCSS, and it's by no means necessary. You should probably look into it more.
Well part of it is that we can't just honor treaties. If treaties carried the full weight of law, it would mean that the President and a majority of the Senate could short-circuit the House.
Treaties need to be enabled after being agreed to by the ordinary legislative process. But there's no guarantee that they will be, or that they won't be unchanged, or that such laws could be constitutional.
Hm - major studios, or just where the largest number of movies are coming out of? I believe Hong Kong is #2... Hollywood's sort of a distant third.
The layout is not protected under the copyright of the text itself. Go ahead - print up Stephen King's latest with a different font and paper size, and not get sued.
Besides, my late grandfather had a photographic memory, and could recite the contents of books with nary a flaw, and liked to show off by telling people to refer to particular paragraphs on certain pages, etc.
Heck, even a close paraphrase is still a derivative work, and would qualify as an infringement.
Well, the media shifting doctrine in... which is it again? The 7th circuit? Would permit one to do so, would it not? (it's not circumventing CSS at that point, as it has already been decrypted legally)
There is not a fully stocked and operational courtroom inside your Replay. Messages coming out of it don't necessarily reflect the realities of the situation. It can say that the sky is zebra-striped too, and it holds just as little weight.
The market doesn't fix lots of things. It's not magic, and the end results of following the dictates of the market are not guaranteed to take you to the same place that you'd get if you followed the ideals of a good and functional society.
That would be awful. There is nothing I can think of that's worse than a judge owing anyone anything. Having gotten their position, I can't imagine that they're so foolish as to believe they owe favors.
Well, there's a great deal of contention regarding the CA electrical utilities, and I don't live there so I haven't followed it closely. But electrical utilities have been regualted for a long time, and several of the very highly regulated ones in CA (e.g. in LA, which is a city-owned utility, IIRC) stayed up perfectly fine.
It was a mishmash of little regulation in some sectors, and excessive regulation in others that seems to be responsible, coupled with a few other factors, like a drought in the northwest, reducing the supply of electricity.
It's possible that deregulating more might have avoided it, and it's certain, given the lack of such failures for the many decades prior, that more regulation would have also avoided it. (similarly, the fairly well-regulated utilities all across the rest of the country, and world also tend to stay up pretty darn well)
As for those who are in favor of decreased regulation, I would like to know why. If you're not going to benefit directly from it (e.g. if you owned or worked for one of those giants) or you don't think that you could become one, what good does it do you?
Roughly I see you preferring the dream of having a big slice of pie, than the modern-day ideal of being able to work with a small slice, and work up. Monopolies do not respond to competition by competiting in turn, but by preventing such competition from ocurring in the first place. They are such a success of capitalism, that their weight prevents it from functioning for the reasons we like it.
ATT was a monopoly (though it had to accept regulation or be broken up long ago, and eventually was anyway) and kept people from developing third party telco hardware, phone book covers, etc. They laughed at the Internet when it was practically handed to them. They never really did anything with regards to cellphones, or faxes, both of which were old hat. (faxes were invented over a hundred years ago, IIRC)
I don't mind not overly regulating certain companies, but in exchange they have to be in a position where they need not be. MS is too powerful to be left alone. Either reduce its power and leave it alone, or let it remain powerful, but harnessed so as to avoid abuses.
Hasn't been a seven-member court for ages. You need five to get a majority - there are nine justices.
No, we're mostly capitalists, we mostly have a free market, but the goals of a decent society may not match 100% with the end result of a whole hog capitalist free market.
So finding the former better than the latter, we mold capitalism into something slightly different that gives us what we do in fact want.
MS broke the law, and they're good laws that have kept the country running for over a century. Late 19th century abuses of corporate power were really something, and I don't think that anyone wants to go down that road again. (save the very very few that would directly benefit from it, and those who fantasize about being in that elite)
Basically, we want all of the good, and none of the bad, and since the system isn't carved into stone, it's possible, though it requires a lot of manual fine tuning.
Because then the government might move in, sieze the assets of MS, and various figures within it (e.g. Bill) and prohibit the import of internationally produced MS products into the US.
Basically you're proposing that MS flee to escape justice, and generally governments have held a dim view of that sort of thing.
So would it be possible that these Wookies were independent contractors?
We're working with some highly unstable chemicals and- No! You've got the mixture all wrong! [BOOM]
The ice-cream truck was also neat.
Heck, I have one of those sitting around. If you're really interested lemme know, but you'd have to pay for the shipping - it weighs a ton.
(Although I love the feel, the AT layout doesn't do it for me -- I prefer the Apple Expanded II I've got rigged up with an adapter to my P3.)
No, it was a working Apple IIe, IIRC. I wasn't all that interested, since my Christmas gift to a friend of mine last year was a working IIgs that I had had the Woz personally sign. Shipping stuff cross-country wound up costing more than the machine itself!
(however, the Woz likes to read and answer his mail himself, and it eats up a huge amount of his time, so I can't really recommend bugging him with requests -- I probably wouldn't've had I known.)
Now if I can just get Steve to sign my NeXT Cube, I'll be all set.
Probably not, no. There's few cases that have tested this, and it's a mixed bag, but there were slightly more decisions against EULAs the last time I checked, than for. (also depends on the specifics of the EULA)
There's no implied license, and IIRC there were cases in which the copyright holders for software successfully sued users for installing and using it. (licenses were originally felt necessary as software was not copyrightable -- then it was very necessary as software was not especially useable after being copyrighted)
At any rate, 17 USC 117 is a statutory exemption whereby it is not a copyright infringement to make copies for the purposes of use, or to backup software if legally obtained. Additionally there is the novel 'space shifting' use from the Diamond case, but it hasn't been much tested AFAIK.
You're right though - the legal status of EULAs is at best highly dubious. Sadly stupid states like MD are doing stupid things like passing UCITA legislation.
I sincerely doubt that he was saying that anyone ought to be able to walk up to an artist or musician and demand something. You can't _make_ people produce.
What he was saying is that having already invested the time, labor and capital into a work, there's no natural right to expect to be compensated for it. This is true - either of us might create something that was a total bomb and never recoup our investment. We can't _make_ people buy stuff either.
But assuming that we do find a buyer for the first copy -- do we naturally have the ability to prevent them from copying it? To put it another way, is there a God-given right that cancels out the God-given right of people to speak freely, regardless of content?
Well, no, there's not. Copyright is an illusion. It is all the members of the public permitting their government (if it thinks it's wise) to infringe on their right of free speech under certain limitations. Doing so in this particular manner happens to benefit artists. BUT it is not done for the artists' benefit, and once the term expires, it is ultimately the public at large that reaps the rewards of our work, forevermore.
I think that copyright can be harnessed for good purposes, but that we artists must accept what we're given, since it isn't our place to decide. (save as ordinary citizens, same as non-artist citizens) I'll be happy with anything I get - it could be worse, and there are fringe benefits as well even to a very weak system.
Or imagine being a famous artist like Michaelangelo, or a famous writer like Shakespeare or a famous composer like Bach or... oh wait, none of them had copyright protections.
They made their money through their personal labor (e.g. Bach performing live is irreproducable) through pay for the first copy of their works (e.g. the David) and were on an even playing ground with everyone else, save for any talents they might have had, with selling reproductions.
Sure, the GPL wouldn't work without copyright. But then, how would MS function - people could copy the binaries, and there's little incentive to keep the source closed either. GPL is just making the best of a bad situation, not an actual goal.
More or less. But hey - I'm an artist, and I make my living from my work, and I think the same thing about myself.
You're looking for compensation, are you not? You're denying the benefits of being able to further disseminate and alter your work to the public, are you not? You're just not a very fat cat. (and neither am I)
But I do try to keep it to a minimum, and I think that the copyright bargain (where the public permits us to demand things like credit and compensation from them as a reward, provided that it's only temporary) is weighted too far to the end of artists right now, and needs to swing back.
Well, in fact there is the comparatively rarely exercised latches doctrine. Roughly the idea is that if a patent holder encourages others to freely make use of the patent by making it appear as though it will not be enforced, waiting for them to expend lots of resources in doing so, and then blackmailing them with the patent, the patent can be invalidated with regards to the users. The courts do require that patents not be abused so as to function against their purpose.
Positively enticing use would probably qualify; I'm mostly curious about negatively silently permitting use.
Nice to see a mention of the "Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines."
I'd add Tufte's "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information," "Envisioning Information," and "Visual Explanations." Also Laurel's "The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design," Tognazzini's "Tog on Interface" and "Tog on Software Design" and Raskin's "The Humane Interface."
Programming is great - but these are books you'll want if you want people to want to use your program, and to enjoy doing so. Most of the world's not propeller heads, and even said heads can see their lives improve with good UI. (do you still punch cards and program with switches?)
I'd also add Flack and Wiese's "The Story About Ping" for a nice high-level explanation of ping(8).
You noticed ;)
.sig? I didn't just put that in there for fun, I earnestly mean it.
If you like, take the content and repost it somewhere where you think it'll do good. Didn't you see my