I think contextual menus are good because they're part of a philosophy that's important in the Mac UI: There's more than one way to do it.
Re: renaming files, you're typing when you do this generally, right? Select the icon you wish to rename. Hit the return key and you will immediately be able to rename the file. Hit return again and the file name becomes 'fixed' again. What's really funny though, is that while the Finder is intercepting returns as commands, any character whatsoever, other than the : (which is used for directories, just as / and \ are on other systems) can be entered. It's weird, but you can cut and paste a return into the name of an icon and the system will accept it.
Your's so right. Three cheers for Hewlett-Packard, the inventors of the darn thing! Hip Hip Hooray!
Personally, I enjoy my iPuck mouse. It's comfortable. I have big hands and it fits right under my palm. What do we need frickin' mouse wars for? Mouse, Monitor and Keyboard; use whatever floats your boat. These are the three chief i/o systems you'll use with your computer. They should chosen by each person for personal comfort. This is why I'm still using a six year old monitor and a nine year old keyboard with my iPuck.
Oh sure - I think we've found a common ground. There is still utility that oughtn't to be overlooked in wholesale information sharing (e.g. spreading information - if a procedure for Super CPR were to appear, I'd not worry overmuch about the potential loss of money for the developer if it meant saving lives right away) but there's less that is defensible. Even my great love of the freedom of speech doesn't make me wish to stand fast behind any idiot sharing ripped mp3s of Metallica with perfect strangers just because he can. (though that's not a sufficient reason to kill Napster, imho)
I know about the number of artists that wouldn't practice their art if not for the money beyond the first sale. (which has close to nothing to do with copyrights anyway) I haven't seen anything better than the overall idea of copyrights. My beef is with the system of copyrights that we've currently got. It could be better. It would be better for everyone if it were reformed. But we've got to address the problem of people who don't realize that reform is possible, and that copyrights must follow certain rules, regardless of misapplications of property law on that which is naturally unownable.
Heh. No, that's not quite what I meant. That single sentence you've quoted there is ALL that the Constitution has to say on the subject of copyrights.
But modern day copyright law is a huge beast. And if the specific copyright law (most of which is IIRC (IANAL) in 17 USC) somehow does not promote the progress of the science and useful arts; or secures for an unlimited time; or assigns to someone other than the author or inventor the rights to their respective writings and discoveries; then the copyright law is unconstitutional.
Mostly I'm concerned about the expansion of copyright circa 1976 when everything automatically became copyrightable, though your damages are limited for non-registered works. I'm also worried about the frequent lengthening of the term of copyright recently. And of course the Big Five music labels have been trying to ram through legislation that would retroactively reassign the copyrights of works created by artists to the labels, permanently. (as though they were works for hire, which they weren't) And much of the DMCA is pretty clearly unconstitutional - access restrictions for one thing.
So when I say that copyrights _now_ are likely unconstitutional, I mean that the laws regarding copyrights go farther than the Constitution allows. Copyrights which fall within the boundaries set by the Constitution are of course constitutional.
I like fruity iMacs. I generally like most of Apple's stuff, although it's impressive to see them recover from impending doom so... I dunno... accidently at times. NeXT had some good technology, but I don't think that Steve's involvement was all that good.
For interesting histories, I suggest "Steve Jobs and the NeXT Best Thing" by Stross and "Infinite Loop" by Malone. I haven't gotten to "Apple Confidential" by Lizmayer (sp?) yet, but I'm waiting on it from the library. Jef Raskin liked it though, so that's a point in it's favor.
Oh I'm not trying to represent myself as someone who's even met Steve. I haven't. But this doesn't preclude me from being able to develop an opinion of him from secondhand accounts; this isn't ideal, but it's hardly unknown.
From a number of sources though, the story I've heard about laser printers was this (corrections are welcome, but I'm writing this from memory so don't sue me if there are some errors):
In the early-mid 84 timeframe one or two employees at Apple (I'm thinking the main person here was Bruce Blumberg) worked with Canon and Adobe to get a working Laser printer. The PDL was Adobe's relatively unknown Postscript (it had been around for a couple years) and the hardware was, like many Apple printers to come, a rebranded Canon machine. Most of Apple management didn't care about laser printing though, and it was a struggle to keep it alive. This could have been worse though: at least Apple only needed to write software to get the Mac to talk to the printer - nearly everything else was coming from Canon and Adobe.
A few companies had been seeded with the prototype printers - Microsoft (which managed to scare Aldus away from the field of word processing), Lotus (which was working on Jazz, a dismal failure) and Aldus which had something interesting called PageBuilder by around maybe September -November '84.
In early '85 the Macintosh Office was announced - during the '85 superbowl - which was basically several Macs networked to a ~$7000 LaserWriter. It was a gigantic flop (partially b/c it was so overpriced, but also b/c of the lack of a server), until later in the year (June? July?) when Aldus put out their renamed PageMaker software. The Lemmings ad appeared to put Apple off of Superbowl ads for some time though;)
Steve had been exiled over the Labor Day weekend at any rate, and no longer had any power at Apple due to the actions of Sculley and the rest of the board. He left in September. IIRC the last thing he had been working on prior to that was Apple II-related stuff. Or a laptop of some sort. It's kind of fuzzy.
Most of the scarce amount of information regarding the development of the LaserWriter in tandem with Canon, Adobe and Aldus though indicates that Apple management was never particularly sold on the idea. The lull in Mac R&D at Apple between the 128k and the Plus provided the opportunity for a new product - any new product - to be pushed onto the marketplace.
I'm interested in this sort of thing though, because I've been doing DTP work since 1990 (PageMaker 4.2 on a school 386 with an amber monochrome monitor - but I later got a IIvx (d'oh!) with PM5 barely scraping along if I turned off most of my inits and cdevs. and fonts. and didn't do anything else;)
Anyway, my favorite stories about Steve are: Brickout, refusing to support his girlfriend or daughter, Park Different, and the one about the NeXT assembly line. I don't think he's a great guy or businessman. I'd rather have the Woz for the former, and Bill (shudder) for the latter. I'm still a big Mac person though, FWIW.
Huh? Steve normally fails to get it. He was opposed to 3.5" floppies (the engineers pushed them through, impressively enough); more than 64KB of RAM in the original Mac; networks; laser printers; well-documented, accessable hardware; Hypercard (as noted); IIRC color; and there are probably a fair number of other things I'm forgetting as well.
Well, one of the issues that I keep close to mind is that of derivative works. It's not the only one, but it has a lot to do with your particular argument here re: implementation and ideas.
Let us propose that Alice writes a novel. The novel isn't awfully good, but it has a number of unique and memorable characters. The storyline in Alice's novel isn't all that impressive, but it's interesting to a fair number of people.
Bob is one of these interested readers of Alice's work. He's so compelled by Alice's novel in fact, that he writes - without any authorization, completely on his own - a sequel. One that is closely tied to Alice's original piece of literature. The sequel expands on the characters and takes the storyline in a completely different direction. But Bob's story cannot stand alone. It relies completely on Alice's novel to set the stage, and is barely even comprehensible to people who haven't read Alice's book first.
Bob has created a very worthy piece of literature, we'd all agree. But it is still at it's heart a derivative work, based on Alice's lackluster (but inspirational) original. Bob's sequel depends too closely on Alice; it honestly can't be changed without losing anything that makes it worthwhile.
Under the present system of copyright law, Alice has about a 99.44% chance of winning in a court case against Bob. She's clearly protected, not because her ideas are in any way better, but because they are more original.
This is not a wholly made up example. One of my little hobbies is that I am an avid reader of fanfiction. Like anything else, Sturgeon's Law applies, but there are some truly good gems out there. But in order for people to enjoy them, they must already be familiar with the foundation laid by an actual copyright holder. While this isn't my particular area of interest, let's consider something everyone knows: Star Wars.
I don't think that anyone really loved The Phantom Menace as much as, say, A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back. But do you have illusions that if some guy, slaving over a word processor in his basement for six months single-handedly wrote a Star Wars script that was a zillion times better, would stand a chance in hell of NOT being sued into oblivion if he released it commercially?
Trust me, Lucasfilm would shut him down in moments because he's infringing on their copyright. A creation isn't an entire story; it can be even a very small but essential kernel of a story. (Although it can be a lot more. I still maintain that the first Mission: Impossible movie would have been better if Tom Cruise really had been a traitor - a five page change to a 100+ page script)
Aside from your mistakes about artists being able to support themselves entirely from their art (boy I wish - outside of commercial/work for hire art, where the artist never has the copyright at all this is exceedingly rare) it becomes basically a matter of opinion as to the benefits of copyright.
I think, and I've said many times on/. that copyrights are ok in general, but that they're in need of significant reform. If it inspires more advancement of the arts and sciences (which doesn't necessarily mean creativity; refinement is also good, MS can tell you that) then wouldn't it be best for copyrights to be (unconstitutionally) permanent? That way the heirs of the creator of musical notation could still make money from the people who used it. Jimi Hendrix would have owed a fair amount of cash to the Key family. On the other hand, if there were no copyrights whatsoever, artists could create works without having to pay for their inevitable infringements. The only downside would be that there would be no income beyond the first sale of any given piece. (though if you're popular, you'll get a lot of commissions; if you're not, you'll be poor. This is basically how it works now anyway)
The answer probably lies somewhere inbetween, barring a revelation as to a different and better system. But given how short the human lifespan is, and that the constant loss of copyrights after a short period is also an incentive (e.g. if you don't collect royalties for more than 10 years, you'd better be prepared to write bestsellers and make money all in one go, or write prolifically like Stephen King and make it up on volume) I would lean towards copyrights of 10-20 years tops.
Patents are more expansive but don't last as long. This is not a wholly unreasonable balance. But copyrights are swiftly becoming more and more expansive as well as lasting longer and longer.
Scientific discovery and works of art (which is generally interpreted - and this is ok by me - to include literature, film, sculpture, etc.) are both covered by the same ground rules. Trademarks aren't - I believe they're in existance because of the Commerce clause at a national level, but they're not all that germane here, I think.
Scientific discoveries are typically protected by patents. And trust me, there are no small number of people out there who want to copy patented discoveries. You're dead wrong if you say that no one wants to copy science.
Anyway - you're off base on a few things. First of all, it is illegal to reproduce a work which is still protected by a valid copyright (assuming that the reproduction is, for instance, in order to sell copies - other purposes are likely quite legal) even if done so from memory.
Otherwise there would be no small number of people with good or even perfect memories employed to go into bookstores, read the latest bestseller, and run back to a publishing company to type from memory.
Now of course, I have never said that you have no right to make money from your hard work and toil. I'm all for it. I hope you do very well. But once that work has been distributed, as it somehow must be in order for you to actually make any money off of it, you've lost that right. Presently, there is a rather expansive artificial right which helps to replace it, but the justifications are all different, and I don't think that anyone knowledgeable on the subject defends it as an innate right.
Now you do have some special abilities because of your authorship; that ability is that you can create this work. How on earth do you propose that you automatically - without laws to supply this right - get everlasting powers over it? If that were so, why would we need copyright laws?
Would creators still create without those laws? I think so in a lot of cases. This has been the example for thousands and thousands of years. I will grant that they might not create as much, and that there might be fewer people creating works. But I have been trying to say that copyright law is not necessarily the best way, it's not at all natural (free speech is natural - copyrights are in direct opposition to free speech) and that it's a great mistake to assume that it is the best way, or that it is natural. I would rather see significant changes made to copyright law to make it serve the people again, than for it not to. And copyrights, as spelled out in the US Constitution, must advance the useful arts and sciences. There's no mention there of paying authors. The goal is human betterment. The *tool* employed is your vaunted greediness. But it's just a tool, and clearly not a goal in itself.
But I'm not griping because I want and am not getting anything. I'm an artist, and I routinely create works of art - generally work for hire, and also many things just for fun. So not only does copyright law have a lot to do with me, I think that it is important for me to understand copyright law, to understand the basic fundementals that copyright law is founded upon, and to take all of it with some grains of salt; humans are fallible. I don't presume to know that copyright is the best way, but I'm willing to chance it that there's something better, even if I'll never know what. I try to keep this in mind.
Your 2nd to last paragraph is kind of startling to me though. Is your code your own creation? I say it's not. I say you're full of beans. Did you wake up one morning with the knowledge of how to write code newly shining in your head? No, you learned it somewhere. You pretty certainly use other people's code (e.g. standard headers and libraries) and techniques and algorithims developed by others. The language you use, and the compilers, and the processor were all certainly developed by other people unless you're awfully prolific. If Ritchie solely created the use of/* */ to denote the beginnings and ends of comments, what possible right do *you* have to use them, by your argument? Can't Ritchie knock on your door and tell you to quit doing that?
No one stands alone. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. If people did somehow acquire permanent rights to their creations it would be far worse than if people had rights only until they revealed their work. If you say otherwise then it is you who is acting unreasonably. Why should the protection of your code for your benefit be any different than the protection of the letters of the alphabet for the fellow who invented them so long ago? You insist that your works be protected, but that the works of the people who you rely on constantly not be - both times for your benefit.
I'm no communist. I think that it's a nice enough idea, but I know I could never be a communist, and I can tell the difference between someone who is a communist and someone who claims to be. The Soviets had a brutal dictatorship, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Stalin was, in many ways, worse than Hitler, and that's not at all easy to do.
But capitalism is not perfect either. I will easily say that capitalism more closely aligns with how humans generally prefer to behave. But there are problems with it, there's no doubt. Capitalism has it's own cancer: monopolies. It frequently causes great harm to people in the sake of profits. I would much prefer that no harm, or as little harm be done, even if it should hurt your money. Money's a tool of people, just like copyrights. It's not a worthy goal in itself.
In closing, here's a great gem from your post:...any system which tries to control them [human beings] or limit their rights will inevidably fail.
So what is copyright, but a limit on my natural right, granted by God, to free speech? Clearly it is such an infringement, and I take heart in your statement that the system of copyrights will someday fail.
No - he copied. He didn't take. If he had taken something from you, you would have to be deprived of it. This is an old concept rooted in property law. Information - in this instance software - is not property.
Consider: You have a chicken. He takes the chicken. Does he owe you money? Not really. He owes you a chicken. Should he only have chicken bones, guts and feathers handy, you'll have to decide what else a chicken is worth.
Information though, isn't the same. Largely because it not only _can_ be copied so trivially, but because it _must_ be copied in order to be used. You don't read source code by having a wire go from the computer to your head do you? A copy exists on your hard disk. Another in RAM. Perhaps significant parts of a copy in the processor, and additional memories. (e.g. cache, VRAM) Finally a partial copy (unless it's of Hello World length) appears on the monitor. You look at this copy and another copy (or a few - depends on the specifics of how the brain works) end up in your mind. Already, for a simple process like reading and thinking about some source code, you've had to make a multitude of copies. Information is kind of like sound - it needs a medium. But the medium isn't the stuff carried on it.
Now - your argument is basically 'If I weren't getting paid, I wouldn't do it.' Personally, I think that's kind of unfortunate. But we'll ignore that. Are you under the impression that a system of copyrights the only method by which you would get paid? If so, you're wrong. The answer is no.
There is proof in history; until a couple of hundred years ago, the notion of copyrights didn't even exist. Yet there were still people writing, and composing, and singing, etc. And they still got paid. Not for their works as a 'product' but as their works bundled along with the more important service. You paid Michaelangelo to make a nice sculpture of yourself, and the wife and the kids and even the wife's damn dog. When it was done, any idiot could copy it. For 16th century sno-globes perhaps. Shakespeare writes a play and by the end of the week there's already a company on tour performing it without paying Will a red cent.
There are similar proposals to this today (regarding paying authors - not ressurecting Shakespeare;): I rather like the Street Performer Protocol. An author creates a work, sets a price for it, gives it to a trusted escrow holder and sits back. If the fans pay enough for it, they get it. If not, perhaps the author had better reconsider how popular he really is. (Which pretty accurately maps to the current model; Metallica can somehow sell a bajillion copies of their latest CD overnight. No name bands can't give CDs away, despite copyrights, record companies and all the rest.) Once it's made available, the work is in the public domain, where it belongs. Everyone can use it how they like.
And I'm sure that there are other proposals out there. But don't assume that not paying for each and every copy made, or for different uses of copies by different users throughout perpetuity is the Only Possible Way. It's not. It's not even very likely the best way. Just how we do things right now. There is very likely room for improvement; the current dissatisfaction implies this quite a lot.
If someone creates a piece of information, they have every right to control how it is used.
How? Play a piece of music to me and I remember it. I can adapt it for new uses; hum or whistle, and maybe even reproduce it faithfully. How do you propose the creator of that music (or of any other piece of information) control it?
In fact, there is no way to control how people use the information you've called up into being once it's been shown, even once, to an audience of any size. Blame God if you like, but that's how people work. Whether or not we then impose a wholly artificial notion of rights onto the subject is secondary. Even as it stands the fundemental rule of copyright law (in the US - you'll find it in Article I) is that the creators of works only have those rights as far as it's good for society, not the creators. And better yet, what's good for society is for the creators to have as few rights as possible, for as short a time as possible.
In fact, since the goal is not to help creators one whit, or restrict how anyone in the world can use information, if it were found to promote the arts and sciences more by abolishing copyrights altogether - that would be only course of action that Congress could take.
So while I greatly respect the pople that create new works, and in fact, _am_ one of those very people, I realize that works are most valuable when everyone can use them. As well as that once you get an audience (and there's very little information that's useful without an audience for it) you've lost your control. You want them to think about your work? Well, you can't take that back.
If this isn't enough, think about this: Who doesn't stand on the shoulders of giants? Where would we be if no one could create works which relied on past works. Science would be forever reinventing the wheel in a literal sense. No author could write a great novel that either opposed another writer's opus or reaffirmed it. Hell, man - we'd be restricted in the words we could use. Restrict information and it's not helpful, it's harmful. Nothing new happens, nothing is done, no progress is made. Let it flow and it's capable of doing great good and inspiring the creation of more of itself.
On copyrights now: I think that they're unconstitutional. The idea _could_ work, perhaps it has worked. But I sincerely doubt that it's working now, and it goes against the spirit of the law of the land. Reform is necessary. No good can come of expanding copyright further, or letting the status quo persist.
My two fun experiences (both in the span of 3 months) with US Worst have been:
1)Getting a phone hookup upon moving in. Rather than do something totally off the wall like give me an unassigned number, they gave me my next-door neighbor's. Only took a week for the two of us, working the problem from both sides to get it cleared up.
2)Asking for their Terms of Service for their DSL. And being told that I wasn't allowed to have them.
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IIRC it's perfectly ok to pronounce giga with the first g being either hard (g) or soft (j).
It's not *just* that it can be copied indefinately. It's that it can't be transfered, only copied. Some copies (like the copy of some piece of information inside the medium of a book) can be transferred, but in order to use it you must create your own copy. This is why it's not ownership; if I copied your car exactly, how can you own the new car? Just because it's a duplicate of a car you already have?
Information is perfectly capable of residing in the mind, and it's a mistake to treat it otherwise.
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As for axes - Alice does indeed have a natural right to kill Bob. Bob has _no_ natural right not to be killed. Consider this an unfixable bug. But after a long period of thought, most human beings come to the conclusion that it's worth sacrificing your right to kill people indiscriminately if other people will also give up that right. Thus, people can then enjoy all of their other rights (for a longer span of time too) and only suffer the burden of losing the right to kill people for no reason at all.
A right is something you get automatically by virtue of being a human. They can be infringed upon, and usually are, but a right is whatever you _could_ do if no one could prevent you. Most of the rights that involve infringing on other people's rights are the ones that it is generally agreed upon are okay to give up, expecting that everyone else will do likewise. There are a LOT of rights, but many are not exercised as a matter of course, and it's a good thing too.
And no, laws aren't introduced to let Alice speak her mind. They're introduced to do just as you say. But laws mustn't go too far - there is a delicate balance between total liberty and an orderly, stable society. Our society might be significantly more stable if there were no freedom of speech, but I wouldn't want to live here were that the case. Generally, I prefer to err on the side of greater freedom, even if this may be somewhat dangerous. No one ever said that it was easy being free.
Well, as it works out, when it comes to tangible property two people can't independently of each other own the same thing. If I own a bottle of liquor, you don't have the ability to use it except as I permit. And vice versa.
Information is the same in that respect. We can't both share _precisely_ the same piece of information. But unlike tangible stuff, information can be and is trivially copied all the time. When you read a book, you do not move the information from the book into your mind. A copy of the information carried in the book is made in your mind; the book still has all the information it ever did. Tell me what the book said, and now I get a copy as well.
This is the sort of thing I'm talking about with how the universe - which as far as this debate is concerned is basically just us Earthlings (property law on Planet Claire is irrelevant) - works.
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As for the traditional requirements for ownership go (these are legal requirements AFAIK - I didn't invent them myself) you're missing the point.
Let's say that Alice lawfully owns a car. It is illegal to hit people with it. This doesn't mean that Alice does not own the car. It doesn't mean that Alice doesn't have the ability to hit people with it. It means that it is illegal to hit people with it. Alice's ownership of the car is never in question.
Remember, I didn't say that you could only use or enjoy or restrict or dispose of things lawfully in order to own something. As a practical matter, you may be compelled to forfeit your property when using it in an illegal manner.
Obviously this doesn't mean that you never owned it to begin with, but that as either a punishment or a corrective measure Alice's future ability to exercise rights over some piece of property have been taken away. Acquiring property in a manner that violates the previous owner's property rights is also illegal, and as a matter of course, includes the return of the illegally _acquired_ property.
So Alice owns all kinds of stuff. And there's nothing preventing her from doing whatever she wants with it. But there may be repercussions from some uses that effect her continued ability to freely exercise her rights.
That's what I'm saying here, and to my understanding that's basically what the law says. IANAL, and I'm sure that there are many fine points involved but I don't think that it flips the entire thing over.
As for land, yeah, you own everything in an ever shrinking wedge down until the center of the earth, IIRC. The ownership of air and space is a newer issue however. And because sometimes property rights may conflict with each other but the means of resolution are generally not brand new here. (e.g. if I own property which is completely encompassed by your property, you are required to grant me access. This infringes on your right to exclude me from your property, but if you could exercise that I would be unable to exert ANY right over my own property. The encompassor imposes the greater burden on the other party; it's less of a burden for him to relent)
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Natural rights exist. I'm not talking about mother nature (trees and rocks? please) but the state that people exist in when there are no laws other than physical ones like gravity. But you have to remember that the existance of a right doesn't necessarily preclude other people from infringing on it. The best strategy so far imho appears to be to restrict the exercise of your rights just enough to preserve as many others intact as possible. It's more an art than a science though.
But let's consider your thesis. If there are no natural rights, then Alice, who is alone in the woods is incapable of saying whatever she wants? This is clearly untrue. Thus freedom of speech is a natural right. Unfortunately it does not carry with it a defense against those who would infringe on that right - Bob threatening Alice with bodily harm if she speaks her mind. And that is where laws are introduced.
But copyrights are fundementally opposed to the natural freedom of speech. If Alice gives a speech, there's nothing in the absence of law or threats from others that prevents Bob from repeating it word for word.
Copyrights were developed which prevent Bob from doing so without incurring the possibility of punishment. But the clearly stated objective of copyrights (in the US anyway) is to encourage Alice to give many speeches that Bob wishes to repeat. This is frequently overlooked.
Copyrights are an incentive for Alice. They are limited in a number of important ways because it's more important for Bob to be able to repeat Alice's speeches than for Alice to have absolute control. Unfortunately our carefully developed and rather fair system of copyrights which has evolved over the past ~200 years has been unconstitutionally corrupted by moneyed interests.
Anyway - the intrinsic requirement that information be copied, rather than transferred is what makes it impossible to own it.
*If I compose a poem in my mind, I can enjoy it. I can satisfy the first requirement.
*If I want to let someone listen to the poem, I can do that and fulfill half of the second requirement. But I can't compell them to give it back or to forget it or stop thinking about it in some manner which I dislike. I can't fully exercise the second requirement.
*I still can't dispose of it (i.e. willfully forget it) and can't own it. This is a limitation of how humans work. But I can't fulfill the third requirement either.
_This_ is how I can't own information. And this is why copyright law doesn't claim to confer ownership of information. If it did, we'd call it something else. Copyright rather clearly indicates that it is an exclusive right to copy.
A more accurate definition would be: An exclusive (but not sometimes, or under some circumstances. and only for a limited time anyway) right to copy.
I haven't said that copyright is necessarily bad. I think that it can serve a purpose, but presently is in need of significant reform. But it's not ownership, and it's really important that people understand that. I hope that I've managed to convince you. It's NOT just a matter of terms.
This is basically correct - property is a set of rights. However, these rights are pretty self evident because of the nature of the universe. Information is a whole different kettle of fish.
For something to be owned it must satisfy three requirements: 1) The owner must be able to use and enjoy it in any way 2) The owner must be able to regulate how, when and if others use it 3) The owner must be able to dispose of it in any way
There is no such thing as Intellectual Property - in fact the very idea is to me, offensive. Any information can only satisfy the first requirement. This means it's not property.
Copyrights and patents are property, although the copyrighted or patented materials themselves are not and never can be. So Sony can't claim theft (which requires that they lose the stolen thing - impossible when it comes to information) and they can't claim property loss.
They *can* claim that their copyrights and patents have been infringed upon, but it's not the same thing as theft or property at all. Note also that copyrights and patents aren't natural rights, and that no one in the world is entitled to them, or even that they're necessarily a good idea. The world got along pretty well for thousands of years without any notion of copyright or patents. The current trend is actually an abberation. It might be a good one, but it's unusual to say the least.
I imagine that it has to do with how well the oxygen circulates through the stuff. You could choke if none actually got to your bloodstream, even if much of the flourinert in your lungs was oxygenated. Breathing will push the fluorinert around some. Otherwise you might need pumps with tubes down your throat to get it to work.
Also like any liquid you breath, it strips off the protective mucous coating your lungs; once you start breathing air again you're *very* prone to get pnuemonia.
IIRC they've been experimenting with oxygenated liquid breathing since the 60's. In the movie, btw, while no humans actually breathed it for real (it was pink water - Ed Harris just acts like he's breathing it) they did put the rat in matching pink-tinted flourinert.
Then they had to film several different rats to get enough footage because they all got the shit scared out of them (literally) whenever they were dunked in the stuff;)
Fluorinert is really neat. It's used with computers because it doesn't conduct electricity, doesn't damage the components and (these days) isn't particularly toxic. There are rumors of bored operators drinking shots of it on dares.
I think that Cray had 3m develop this stuff from scratch back in the day when they sold 9 out of 10 machines to the government.
They use basically the same stuff in medical situations (to keep your blood pressure up if no blood's on hand) and it can be oxygenated and breathed - as in The Abyss. What they didn't mention in the movie though was that it's so dense, you're not really going to be doing a hell of a lot while you breath it. Breathing it is hard work, it's so thick.
Unfortunately it runs about $500 a gallon. These guys blew a grand just on their Fluorinert. Stirring fans might help a little, but it does gel up a lot between IIRC -50 to -100 C. Perhaps they'll just immerse the whole board into liquid Helium next time;)
(Of course, I remember hearing about one guy once who cooled his system with some kind of motor oil)
Yo. I'm a graphic arts type. (ambitious yes, I won't presume to call myself talented;) Generally as long as people give me reasonable credit, I don't care if people copy works I hold the copyright to and redistribute and modify it as they like. Just ask. Better though to create new stuff for the project in question though.
(I have turned people down before, generally b/c I was working on a better version myself, and I'd rather that they muck about with the better one than the crappy one)
I think that you'll find that many artists are receptive to the idea; we already study each other's works intensely all the time. Something like OS isn't much of a departure.
OTOH, expect to still have to pay for something the first time - artists just don't usually pull down the big programmer bucks;)
No - like I said,it's not Bobbs-Merrill. There is an additional case IIRC in which sale was disguised as licensing, much as it was in ProCD. Clickwrap (as opposed to ProCD's shrinkwrap) at least requires affirmative action on the part of the owner to accept the terms of the license. I'm not arguing that clickwrap is unacceptable (though it needs to be a complete and viable contract, obviously) but that shrinkwrap is. I'll ask some people for the case I'm thinking of.
As it happens, Kevin Mitnick is involved in just this situation. He's free, he wants property siezed as evidence back, but the government refuses to do so unless he divulges his passphrases et al. Obviously, he's not sufficiently trusting of the government to do so and is claiming that he doesn't have to b/c of the 5th amendment.
I agree with him, insofar as the key or the whereabouts of the key are in his head. If they're elsewhere (and not protected by privilege) then they're not protected by the 5th.
Since it's hard to memorize really long good keys, the best strategy would be to have the key be written down somewhere innocuous. For instance all the last letters of words on pages 15-67 of "Alice in Wonderland", rot13'ed and backwards. No one would ever guess it (unless you did something stupid) and it would be fairly easy to get ahold of when needed.
Well - my opinions on that case aside, it's about the only *software* case I've been able to find that involved what we call shrinkwrap licenses and shrinkwrap licenses alone. Nearly everything else involves some other action that engaged a contract instead of consisting of a sale. And there was not a firm trend in either direction by all the deciding courts. It's about a 50-50 split, and the Supremes haven't heard any such software cases yet.
There _is_ a good Supreme Court ruling on something similar. IIRC it's wrt books. (but isn't the case in the early 1900's regarding minimum resale price for books. That case did not involve contracts/licenses) Unfortunately I'll be damned if I can remember the specifics of the case I'm thinking of here. Can anyone with more time to research it help me out?
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I think contextual menus are good because they're part of a philosophy that's important in the Mac UI: There's more than one way to do it.
Re: renaming files, you're typing when you do this generally, right? Select the icon you wish to rename. Hit the return key and you will immediately be able to rename the file. Hit return again and the file name becomes 'fixed' again. What's really funny though, is that while the Finder is intercepting returns as commands, any character whatsoever, other than the : (which is used for directories, just as / and \ are on other systems) can be entered. It's weird, but you can cut and paste a return into the name of an icon and the system will accept it.
Your's so right. Three cheers for Hewlett-Packard, the inventors of the darn thing! Hip Hip Hooray!
Personally, I enjoy my iPuck mouse. It's comfortable. I have big hands and it fits right under my palm. What do we need frickin' mouse wars for? Mouse, Monitor and Keyboard; use whatever floats your boat. These are the three chief i/o systems you'll use with your computer. They should chosen by each person for personal comfort. This is why I'm still using a six year old monitor and a nine year old keyboard with my iPuck.
Oh sure - I think we've found a common ground. There is still utility that oughtn't to be overlooked in wholesale information sharing (e.g. spreading information - if a procedure for Super CPR were to appear, I'd not worry overmuch about the potential loss of money for the developer if it meant saving lives right away) but there's less that is defensible. Even my great love of the freedom of speech doesn't make me wish to stand fast behind any idiot sharing ripped mp3s of Metallica with perfect strangers just because he can. (though that's not a sufficient reason to kill Napster, imho)
I know about the number of artists that wouldn't practice their art if not for the money beyond the first sale. (which has close to nothing to do with copyrights anyway) I haven't seen anything better than the overall idea of copyrights. My beef is with the system of copyrights that we've currently got. It could be better. It would be better for everyone if it were reformed. But we've got to address the problem of people who don't realize that reform is possible, and that copyrights must follow certain rules, regardless of misapplications of property law on that which is naturally unownable.
Heh. No, that's not quite what I meant. That single sentence you've quoted there is ALL that the Constitution has to say on the subject of copyrights.
But modern day copyright law is a huge beast. And if the specific copyright law (most of which is IIRC (IANAL) in 17 USC) somehow does not promote the progress of the science and useful arts; or secures for an unlimited time; or assigns to someone other than the author or inventor the rights to their respective writings and discoveries; then the copyright law is unconstitutional.
Mostly I'm concerned about the expansion of copyright circa 1976 when everything automatically became copyrightable, though your damages are limited for non-registered works. I'm also worried about the frequent lengthening of the term of copyright recently. And of course the Big Five music labels have been trying to ram through legislation that would retroactively reassign the copyrights of works created by artists to the labels, permanently. (as though they were works for hire, which they weren't) And much of the DMCA is pretty clearly unconstitutional - access restrictions for one thing.
So when I say that copyrights _now_ are likely unconstitutional, I mean that the laws regarding copyrights go farther than the Constitution allows. Copyrights which fall within the boundaries set by the Constitution are of course constitutional.
I like fruity iMacs. I generally like most of Apple's stuff, although it's impressive to see them recover from impending doom so... I dunno... accidently at times. NeXT had some good technology, but I don't think that Steve's involvement was all that good.
For interesting histories, I suggest "Steve Jobs and the NeXT Best Thing" by Stross and "Infinite Loop" by Malone. I haven't gotten to "Apple Confidential" by Lizmayer (sp?) yet, but I'm waiting on it from the library. Jef Raskin liked it though, so that's a point in it's favor.
Oh I'm not trying to represent myself as someone who's even met Steve. I haven't. But this doesn't preclude me from being able to develop an opinion of him from secondhand accounts; this isn't ideal, but it's hardly unknown.
;)
;)
From a number of sources though, the story I've heard about laser printers was this (corrections are welcome, but I'm writing this from memory so don't sue me if there are some errors):
In the early-mid 84 timeframe one or two employees at Apple (I'm thinking the main person here was Bruce Blumberg) worked with Canon and Adobe to get a working Laser printer. The PDL was Adobe's relatively unknown Postscript (it had been around for a couple years) and the hardware was, like many Apple printers to come, a rebranded Canon machine. Most of Apple management didn't care about laser printing though, and it was a struggle to keep it alive. This could have been worse though: at least Apple only needed to write software to get the Mac to talk to the printer - nearly everything else was coming from Canon and Adobe.
A few companies had been seeded with the prototype printers - Microsoft (which managed to scare Aldus away from the field of word processing), Lotus (which was working on Jazz, a dismal failure) and Aldus which had something interesting called PageBuilder by around maybe September -November '84.
In early '85 the Macintosh Office was announced - during the '85 superbowl - which was basically several Macs networked to a ~$7000 LaserWriter. It was a gigantic flop (partially b/c it was so overpriced, but also b/c of the lack of a server), until later in the year (June? July?) when Aldus put out their renamed PageMaker software. The Lemmings ad appeared to put Apple off of Superbowl ads for some time though
Steve had been exiled over the Labor Day weekend at any rate, and no longer had any power at Apple due to the actions of Sculley and the rest of the board. He left in September. IIRC the last thing he had been working on prior to that was Apple II-related stuff. Or a laptop of some sort. It's kind of fuzzy.
Most of the scarce amount of information regarding the development of the LaserWriter in tandem with Canon, Adobe and Aldus though indicates that Apple management was never particularly sold on the idea. The lull in Mac R&D at Apple between the 128k and the Plus provided the opportunity for a new product - any new product - to be pushed onto the marketplace.
I'm interested in this sort of thing though, because I've been doing DTP work since 1990 (PageMaker 4.2 on a school 386 with an amber monochrome monitor - but I later got a IIvx (d'oh!) with PM5 barely scraping along if I turned off most of my inits and cdevs. and fonts. and didn't do anything else
Anyway, my favorite stories about Steve are: Brickout, refusing to support his girlfriend or daughter, Park Different, and the one about the NeXT assembly line. I don't think he's a great guy or businessman. I'd rather have the Woz for the former, and Bill (shudder) for the latter. I'm still a big Mac person though, FWIW.
Huh? Steve normally fails to get it. He was opposed to 3.5" floppies (the engineers pushed them through, impressively enough); more than 64KB of RAM in the original Mac; networks; laser printers; well-documented, accessable hardware; Hypercard (as noted); IIRC color; and there are probably a fair number of other things I'm forgetting as well.
He's a nutcase, he's just really persuasive.
Well, one of the issues that I keep close to mind is that of derivative works. It's not the only one, but it has a lot to do with your particular argument here re: implementation and ideas.
/. that copyrights are ok in general, but that they're in need of significant reform. If it inspires more advancement of the arts and sciences (which doesn't necessarily mean creativity; refinement is also good, MS can tell you that) then wouldn't it be best for copyrights to be (unconstitutionally) permanent? That way the heirs of the creator of musical notation could still make money from the people who used it. Jimi Hendrix would have owed a fair amount of cash to the Key family. On the other hand, if there were no copyrights whatsoever, artists could create works without having to pay for their inevitable infringements. The only downside would be that there would be no income beyond the first sale of any given piece. (though if you're popular, you'll get a lot of commissions; if you're not, you'll be poor. This is basically how it works now anyway)
Let us propose that Alice writes a novel. The novel isn't awfully good, but it has a number of unique and memorable characters. The storyline in Alice's novel isn't all that impressive, but it's interesting to a fair number of people.
Bob is one of these interested readers of Alice's work. He's so compelled by Alice's novel in fact, that he writes - without any authorization, completely on his own - a sequel. One that is closely tied to Alice's original piece of literature. The sequel expands on the characters and takes the storyline in a completely different direction. But Bob's story cannot stand alone. It relies completely on Alice's novel to set the stage, and is barely even comprehensible to people who haven't read Alice's book first.
Bob has created a very worthy piece of literature, we'd all agree. But it is still at it's heart a derivative work, based on Alice's lackluster (but inspirational) original. Bob's sequel depends too closely on Alice; it honestly can't be changed without losing anything that makes it worthwhile.
Under the present system of copyright law, Alice has about a 99.44% chance of winning in a court case against Bob. She's clearly protected, not because her ideas are in any way better, but because they are more original.
This is not a wholly made up example. One of my little hobbies is that I am an avid reader of fanfiction. Like anything else, Sturgeon's Law applies, but there are some truly good gems out there. But in order for people to enjoy them, they must already be familiar with the foundation laid by an actual copyright holder. While this isn't my particular area of interest, let's consider something everyone knows: Star Wars.
I don't think that anyone really loved The Phantom Menace as much as, say, A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back. But do you have illusions that if some guy, slaving over a word processor in his basement for six months single-handedly wrote a Star Wars script that was a zillion times better, would stand a chance in hell of NOT being sued into oblivion if he released it commercially?
Trust me, Lucasfilm would shut him down in moments because he's infringing on their copyright. A creation isn't an entire story; it can be even a very small but essential kernel of a story. (Although it can be a lot more. I still maintain that the first Mission: Impossible movie would have been better if Tom Cruise really had been a traitor - a five page change to a 100+ page script)
Aside from your mistakes about artists being able to support themselves entirely from their art (boy I wish - outside of commercial/work for hire art, where the artist never has the copyright at all this is exceedingly rare) it becomes basically a matter of opinion as to the benefits of copyright.
I think, and I've said many times on
The answer probably lies somewhere inbetween, barring a revelation as to a different and better system. But given how short the human lifespan is, and that the constant loss of copyrights after a short period is also an incentive (e.g. if you don't collect royalties for more than 10 years, you'd better be prepared to write bestsellers and make money all in one go, or write prolifically like Stephen King and make it up on volume) I would lean towards copyrights of 10-20 years tops.
Patents are more expansive but don't last as long. This is not a wholly unreasonable balance. But copyrights are swiftly becoming more and more expansive as well as lasting longer and longer.
Scientific discoveries are typically protected by patents. And trust me, there are no small number of people out there who want to copy patented discoveries. You're dead wrong if you say that no one wants to copy science.
Anyway - you're off base on a few things. First of all, it is illegal to reproduce a work which is still protected by a valid copyright (assuming that the reproduction is, for instance, in order to sell copies - other purposes are likely quite legal) even if done so from memory.
Otherwise there would be no small number of people with good or even perfect memories employed to go into bookstores, read the latest bestseller, and run back to a publishing company to type from memory.
Now of course, I have never said that you have no right to make money from your hard work and toil. I'm all for it. I hope you do very well. But once that work has been distributed, as it somehow must be in order for you to actually make any money off of it, you've lost that right. Presently, there is a rather expansive artificial right which helps to replace it, but the justifications are all different, and I don't think that anyone knowledgeable on the subject defends it as an innate right.
Now you do have some special abilities because of your authorship; that ability is that you can create this work. How on earth do you propose that you automatically - without laws to supply this right - get everlasting powers over it? If that were so, why would we need copyright laws?
Would creators still create without those laws? I think so in a lot of cases. This has been the example for thousands and thousands of years. I will grant that they might not create as much, and that there might be fewer people creating works. But I have been trying to say that copyright law is not necessarily the best way, it's not at all natural (free speech is natural - copyrights are in direct opposition to free speech) and that it's a great mistake to assume that it is the best way, or that it is natural. I would rather see significant changes made to copyright law to make it serve the people again, than for it not to. And copyrights, as spelled out in the US Constitution, must advance the useful arts and sciences. There's no mention there of paying authors. The goal is human betterment. The *tool* employed is your vaunted greediness. But it's just a tool, and clearly not a goal in itself.
But I'm not griping because I want and am not getting anything. I'm an artist, and I routinely create works of art - generally work for hire, and also many things just for fun. So not only does copyright law have a lot to do with me, I think that it is important for me to understand copyright law, to understand the basic fundementals that copyright law is founded upon, and to take all of it with some grains of salt; humans are fallible. I don't presume to know that copyright is the best way, but I'm willing to chance it that there's something better, even if I'll never know what. I try to keep this in mind.
Your 2nd to last paragraph is kind of startling to me though. Is your code your own creation? I say it's not. I say you're full of beans. Did you wake up one morning with the knowledge of how to write code newly shining in your head? No, you learned it somewhere. You pretty certainly use other people's code (e.g. standard headers and libraries) and techniques and algorithims developed by others. The language you use, and the compilers, and the processor were all certainly developed by other people unless you're awfully prolific. If Ritchie solely created the use of
No one stands alone. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. If people did somehow acquire permanent rights to their creations it would be far worse than if people had rights only until they revealed their work. If you say otherwise then it is you who is acting unreasonably. Why should the protection of your code for your benefit be any different than the protection of the letters of the alphabet for the fellow who invented them so long ago? You insist that your works be protected, but that the works of the people who you rely on constantly not be - both times for your benefit.
I'm no communist. I think that it's a nice enough idea, but I know I could never be a communist, and I can tell the difference between someone who is a communist and someone who claims to be. The Soviets had a brutal dictatorship, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Stalin was, in many ways, worse than Hitler, and that's not at all easy to do.
But capitalism is not perfect either. I will easily say that capitalism more closely aligns with how humans generally prefer to behave. But there are problems with it, there's no doubt. Capitalism has it's own cancer: monopolies. It frequently causes great harm to people in the sake of profits. I would much prefer that no harm, or as little harm be done, even if it should hurt your money. Money's a tool of people, just like copyrights. It's not a worthy goal in itself.
In closing, here's a great gem from your post:
So what is copyright, but a limit on my natural right, granted by God, to free speech? Clearly it is such an infringement, and I take heart in your statement that the system of copyrights will someday fail.
No - he copied. He didn't take. If he had taken something from you, you would have to be deprived of it. This is an old concept rooted in property law. Information - in this instance software - is not property.
;): I rather like the Street Performer Protocol. An author creates a work, sets a price for it, gives it to a trusted escrow holder and sits back. If the fans pay enough for it, they get it. If not, perhaps the author had better reconsider how popular he really is. (Which pretty accurately maps to the current model; Metallica can somehow sell a bajillion copies of their latest CD overnight. No name bands can't give CDs away, despite copyrights, record companies and all the rest.) Once it's made available, the work is in the public domain, where it belongs. Everyone can use it how they like.
Consider: You have a chicken. He takes the chicken. Does he owe you money? Not really. He owes you a chicken. Should he only have chicken bones, guts and feathers handy, you'll have to decide what else a chicken is worth.
Information though, isn't the same. Largely because it not only _can_ be copied so trivially, but because it _must_ be copied in order to be used. You don't read source code by having a wire go from the computer to your head do you? A copy exists on your hard disk. Another in RAM. Perhaps significant parts of a copy in the processor, and additional memories. (e.g. cache, VRAM) Finally a partial copy (unless it's of Hello World length) appears on the monitor. You look at this copy and another copy (or a few - depends on the specifics of how the brain works) end up in your mind. Already, for a simple process like reading and thinking about some source code, you've had to make a multitude of copies. Information is kind of like sound - it needs a medium. But the medium isn't the stuff carried on it.
Now - your argument is basically 'If I weren't getting paid, I wouldn't do it.' Personally, I think that's kind of unfortunate. But we'll ignore that. Are you under the impression that a system of copyrights the only method by which you would get paid? If so, you're wrong. The answer is no.
There is proof in history; until a couple of hundred years ago, the notion of copyrights didn't even exist. Yet there were still people writing, and composing, and singing, etc. And they still got paid. Not for their works as a 'product' but as their works bundled along with the more important service. You paid Michaelangelo to make a nice sculpture of yourself, and the wife and the kids and even the wife's damn dog. When it was done, any idiot could copy it. For 16th century sno-globes perhaps. Shakespeare writes a play and by the end of the week there's already a company on tour performing it without paying Will a red cent.
There are similar proposals to this today (regarding paying authors - not ressurecting Shakespeare
And I'm sure that there are other proposals out there. But don't assume that not paying for each and every copy made, or for different uses of copies by different users throughout perpetuity is the Only Possible Way. It's not. It's not even very likely the best way. Just how we do things right now. There is very likely room for improvement; the current dissatisfaction implies this quite a lot.
How? Play a piece of music to me and I remember it. I can adapt it for new uses; hum or whistle, and maybe even reproduce it faithfully. How do you propose the creator of that music (or of any other piece of information) control it?
In fact, there is no way to control how people use the information you've called up into being once it's been shown, even once, to an audience of any size. Blame God if you like, but that's how people work. Whether or not we then impose a wholly artificial notion of rights onto the subject is secondary. Even as it stands the fundemental rule of copyright law (in the US - you'll find it in Article I) is that the creators of works only have those rights as far as it's good for society, not the creators. And better yet, what's good for society is for the creators to have as few rights as possible, for as short a time as possible.
In fact, since the goal is not to help creators one whit, or restrict how anyone in the world can use information, if it were found to promote the arts and sciences more by abolishing copyrights altogether - that would be only course of action that Congress could take.
So while I greatly respect the pople that create new works, and in fact, _am_ one of those very people, I realize that works are most valuable when everyone can use them. As well as that once you get an audience (and there's very little information that's useful without an audience for it) you've lost your control. You want them to think about your work? Well, you can't take that back.
If this isn't enough, think about this: Who doesn't stand on the shoulders of giants? Where would we be if no one could create works which relied on past works. Science would be forever reinventing the wheel in a literal sense. No author could write a great novel that either opposed another writer's opus or reaffirmed it. Hell, man - we'd be restricted in the words we could use. Restrict information and it's not helpful, it's harmful. Nothing new happens, nothing is done, no progress is made. Let it flow and it's capable of doing great good and inspiring the creation of more of itself.
On copyrights now: I think that they're unconstitutional. The idea _could_ work, perhaps it has worked. But I sincerely doubt that it's working now, and it goes against the spirit of the law of the land. Reform is necessary. No good can come of expanding copyright further, or letting the status quo persist.
My two fun experiences (both in the span of 3 months) with US Worst have been:
1)Getting a phone hookup upon moving in. Rather than do something totally off the wall like give me an unassigned number, they gave me my next-door neighbor's. Only took a week for the two of us, working the problem from both sides to get it cleared up.
2)Asking for their Terms of Service for their DSL. And being told that I wasn't allowed to have them.
IIRC it's perfectly ok to pronounce giga with the first g being either hard (g) or soft (j).
It's not *just* that it can be copied indefinately. It's that it can't be transfered, only copied. Some copies (like the copy of some piece of information inside the medium of a book) can be transferred, but in order to use it you must create your own copy. This is why it's not ownership; if I copied your car exactly, how can you own the new car? Just because it's a duplicate of a car you already have?
Information is perfectly capable of residing in the mind, and it's a mistake to treat it otherwise.
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As for axes - Alice does indeed have a natural right to kill Bob. Bob has _no_ natural right not to be killed. Consider this an unfixable bug. But after a long period of thought, most human beings come to the conclusion that it's worth sacrificing your right to kill people indiscriminately if other people will also give up that right. Thus, people can then enjoy all of their other rights (for a longer span of time too) and only suffer the burden of losing the right to kill people for no reason at all.
A right is something you get automatically by virtue of being a human. They can be infringed upon, and usually are, but a right is whatever you _could_ do if no one could prevent you. Most of the rights that involve infringing on other people's rights are the ones that it is generally agreed upon are okay to give up, expecting that everyone else will do likewise. There are a LOT of rights, but many are not exercised as a matter of course, and it's a good thing too.
And no, laws aren't introduced to let Alice speak her mind. They're introduced to do just as you say. But laws mustn't go too far - there is a delicate balance between total liberty and an orderly, stable society. Our society might be significantly more stable if there were no freedom of speech, but I wouldn't want to live here were that the case. Generally, I prefer to err on the side of greater freedom, even if this may be somewhat dangerous. No one ever said that it was easy being free.
Probably. But gills are a lot better at getting oxygen out of liquids than lungs are.
Well, as it works out, when it comes to tangible property two people can't independently of each other own the same thing. If I own a bottle of liquor, you don't have the ability to use it except as I permit. And vice versa.
Information is the same in that respect. We can't both share _precisely_ the same piece of information. But unlike tangible stuff, information can be and is trivially copied all the time. When you read a book, you do not move the information from the book into your mind. A copy of the information carried in the book is made in your mind; the book still has all the information it ever did. Tell me what the book said, and now I get a copy as well.
This is the sort of thing I'm talking about with how the universe - which as far as this debate is concerned is basically just us Earthlings (property law on Planet Claire is irrelevant) - works.
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As for the traditional requirements for ownership go (these are legal requirements AFAIK - I didn't invent them myself) you're missing the point.
Let's say that Alice lawfully owns a car. It is illegal to hit people with it. This doesn't mean that Alice does not own the car. It doesn't mean that Alice doesn't have the ability to hit people with it. It means that it is illegal to hit people with it. Alice's ownership of the car is never in question.
Remember, I didn't say that you could only use or enjoy or restrict or dispose of things lawfully in order to own something. As a practical matter, you may be compelled to forfeit your property when using it in an illegal manner.
Obviously this doesn't mean that you never owned it to begin with, but that as either a punishment or a corrective measure Alice's future ability to exercise rights over some piece of property have been taken away. Acquiring property in a manner that violates the previous owner's property rights is also illegal, and as a matter of course, includes the return of the illegally _acquired_ property.
So Alice owns all kinds of stuff. And there's nothing preventing her from doing whatever she wants with it. But there may be repercussions from some uses that effect her continued ability to freely exercise her rights.
That's what I'm saying here, and to my understanding that's basically what the law says. IANAL, and I'm sure that there are many fine points involved but I don't think that it flips the entire thing over.
As for land, yeah, you own everything in an ever shrinking wedge down until the center of the earth, IIRC. The ownership of air and space is a newer issue however. And because sometimes property rights may conflict with each other but the means of resolution are generally not brand new here. (e.g. if I own property which is completely encompassed by your property, you are required to grant me access. This infringes on your right to exclude me from your property, but if you could exercise that I would be unable to exert ANY right over my own property. The encompassor imposes the greater burden on the other party; it's less of a burden for him to relent)
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Natural rights exist. I'm not talking about mother nature (trees and rocks? please) but the state that people exist in when there are no laws other than physical ones like gravity. But you have to remember that the existance of a right doesn't necessarily preclude other people from infringing on it. The best strategy so far imho appears to be to restrict the exercise of your rights just enough to preserve as many others intact as possible. It's more an art than a science though.
But let's consider your thesis. If there are no natural rights, then Alice, who is alone in the woods is incapable of saying whatever she wants? This is clearly untrue. Thus freedom of speech is a natural right. Unfortunately it does not carry with it a defense against those who would infringe on that right - Bob threatening Alice with bodily harm if she speaks her mind. And that is where laws are introduced.
But copyrights are fundementally opposed to the natural freedom of speech. If Alice gives a speech, there's nothing in the absence of law or threats from others that prevents Bob from repeating it word for word.
Copyrights were developed which prevent Bob from doing so without incurring the possibility of punishment. But the clearly stated objective of copyrights (in the US anyway) is to encourage Alice to give many speeches that Bob wishes to repeat. This is frequently overlooked.
Copyrights are an incentive for Alice. They are limited in a number of important ways because it's more important for Bob to be able to repeat Alice's speeches than for Alice to have absolute control. Unfortunately our carefully developed and rather fair system of copyrights which has evolved over the past ~200 years has been unconstitutionally corrupted by moneyed interests.
Anyway - the intrinsic requirement that information be copied, rather than transferred is what makes it impossible to own it.
*If I compose a poem in my mind, I can enjoy it. I can satisfy the first requirement.
*If I want to let someone listen to the poem, I can do that and fulfill half of the second requirement. But I can't compell them to give it back or to forget it or stop thinking about it in some manner which I dislike. I can't fully exercise the second requirement.
*I still can't dispose of it (i.e. willfully forget it) and can't own it. This is a limitation of how humans work. But I can't fulfill the third requirement either.
_This_ is how I can't own information. And this is why copyright law doesn't claim to confer ownership of information. If it did, we'd call it something else. Copyright rather clearly indicates that it is an exclusive right to copy.
A more accurate definition would be: An exclusive (but not sometimes, or under some circumstances. and only for a limited time anyway) right to copy.
I haven't said that copyright is necessarily bad. I think that it can serve a purpose, but presently is in need of significant reform. But it's not ownership, and it's really important that people understand that. I hope that I've managed to convince you. It's NOT just a matter of terms.
This is basically correct - property is a set of rights. However, these rights are pretty self evident because of the nature of the universe. Information is a whole different kettle of fish.
For something to be owned it must satisfy three requirements:
1) The owner must be able to use and enjoy it in any way
2) The owner must be able to regulate how, when and if others use it
3) The owner must be able to dispose of it in any way
There is no such thing as Intellectual Property - in fact the very idea is to me, offensive. Any information can only satisfy the first requirement. This means it's not property.
Copyrights and patents are property, although the copyrighted or patented materials themselves are not and never can be. So Sony can't claim theft (which requires that they lose the stolen thing - impossible when it comes to information) and they can't claim property loss.
They *can* claim that their copyrights and patents have been infringed upon, but it's not the same thing as theft or property at all. Note also that copyrights and patents aren't natural rights, and that no one in the world is entitled to them, or even that they're necessarily a good idea. The world got along pretty well for thousands of years without any notion of copyright or patents. The current trend is actually an abberation. It might be a good one, but it's unusual to say the least.
That was Elijah McCoy - he invented a device that could lubricate engines (trains, ships, whatever) while they were still in motion.
I imagine that it has to do with how well the oxygen circulates through the stuff. You could choke if none actually got to your bloodstream, even if much of the flourinert in your lungs was oxygenated. Breathing will push the fluorinert around some. Otherwise you might need pumps with tubes down your throat to get it to work.
;)
Also like any liquid you breath, it strips off the protective mucous coating your lungs; once you start breathing air again you're *very* prone to get pnuemonia.
IIRC they've been experimenting with oxygenated liquid breathing since the 60's. In the movie, btw, while no humans actually breathed it for real (it was pink water - Ed Harris just acts like he's breathing it) they did put the rat in matching pink-tinted flourinert.
Then they had to film several different rats to get enough footage because they all got the shit scared out of them (literally) whenever they were dunked in the stuff
Fluorinert is really neat. It's used with computers because it doesn't conduct electricity, doesn't damage the components and (these days) isn't particularly toxic. There are rumors of bored operators drinking shots of it on dares.
;)
I think that Cray had 3m develop this stuff from scratch back in the day when they sold 9 out of 10 machines to the government.
They use basically the same stuff in medical situations (to keep your blood pressure up if no blood's on hand) and it can be oxygenated and breathed - as in The Abyss. What they didn't mention in the movie though was that it's so dense, you're not really going to be doing a hell of a lot while you breath it. Breathing it is hard work, it's so thick.
Unfortunately it runs about $500 a gallon. These guys blew a grand just on their Fluorinert. Stirring fans might help a little, but it does gel up a lot between IIRC -50 to -100 C. Perhaps they'll just immerse the whole board into liquid Helium next time
(Of course, I remember hearing about one guy once who cooled his system with some kind of motor oil)
And as it happens, Ethernet was developed following work done on Hawaii's wireless computer ALOHANet.
There probably is a certain upper limit of tolerable packet collision though. Anyone have numbers?
Yo. I'm a graphic arts type. (ambitious yes, I won't presume to call myself talented ;) Generally as long as people give me reasonable credit, I don't care if people copy works I hold the copyright to and redistribute and modify it as they like. Just ask. Better though to create new stuff for the project in question though.
;)
(I have turned people down before, generally b/c I was working on a better version myself, and I'd rather that they muck about with the better one than the crappy one)
I think that you'll find that many artists are receptive to the idea; we already study each other's works intensely all the time. Something like OS isn't much of a departure.
OTOH, expect to still have to pay for something the first time - artists just don't usually pull down the big programmer bucks
No - like I said ,it's not Bobbs-Merrill. There is an additional case IIRC in which sale was disguised as licensing, much as it was in ProCD. Clickwrap (as opposed to ProCD's shrinkwrap) at least requires affirmative action on the part of the owner to accept the terms of the license. I'm not arguing that clickwrap is unacceptable (though it needs to be a complete and viable contract, obviously) but that shrinkwrap is. I'll ask some people for the case I'm thinking of.
As it happens, Kevin Mitnick is involved in just this situation. He's free, he wants property siezed as evidence back, but the government refuses to do so unless he divulges his passphrases et al. Obviously, he's not sufficiently trusting of the government to do so and is claiming that he doesn't have to b/c of the 5th amendment.
I agree with him, insofar as the key or the whereabouts of the key are in his head. If they're elsewhere (and not protected by privilege) then they're not protected by the 5th.
Since it's hard to memorize really long good keys, the best strategy would be to have the key be written down somewhere innocuous. For instance all the last letters of words on pages 15-67 of "Alice in Wonderland", rot13'ed and backwards. No one would ever guess it (unless you did something stupid) and it would be fairly easy to get ahold of when needed.
Well - my opinions on that case aside, it's about the only *software* case I've been able to find that involved what we call shrinkwrap licenses and shrinkwrap licenses alone. Nearly everything else involves some other action that engaged a contract instead of consisting of a sale. And there was not a firm trend in either direction by all the deciding courts. It's about a 50-50 split, and the Supremes haven't heard any such software cases yet.
There _is_ a good Supreme Court ruling on something similar. IIRC it's wrt books. (but isn't the case in the early 1900's regarding minimum resale price for books. That case did not involve contracts/licenses) Unfortunately I'll be damned if I can remember the specifics of the case I'm thinking of here. Can anyone with more time to research it help me out?