The problem is that corporations are pushing for the IP protections to last long beyond when the IP was created. I can see patents lasting for 19 years, but should they be extended to last 95 years like copyright (for businesses.)
I never said that there aren't abuses, but the solution isn't to abolish all IP. I also never said I'm in favor of such long terms. Please read and abide by my sig.
... primarily the assumption that you still own software you have sold to a customer. You have very little moral right to that software; that software now belongs to the customer, and it's the customers moral right to copy and sell on what he owns.
I don't know where you're getting this. I never said anything about owning the software after it's been sold. Of course the customer can resell it, but he can't legally keep a copy for himself after he transfers ownership to somebody else.
Innovation is, in fact, massively hampered by copyright and patents.
You don't understand what innovation is. If you use something that already exists, you haven't innovated anything: you've just used something that already exists invented by somebody else. Copyrights and patents force you do come up with something new: they force innovation. The founding fathers got copyright and patent protections right.
Additionally; software isn't a car. Cars cannot be easily copied.
So if they could, you'd advocate the freedom to copy them?
One of the most convenient is that all my mail is very quickly accessible from any machine connected to the internet, without any setup of an IMAP client necessary.
If I'm out somewhere and I want to check e-mail, I have my pre-configured laptop with me. All I need is to find a WiFi hotspot. Here in San Francisco, they're all over the place. If I'm out somewhere and I don't have my laptop with me, well then I'm doing something interesting or fun and have no burning desire to stop what I'm doing to check e-mail anyway.
I can apply multiple labels to a single email, whereas with traditional email clients, I can merely file emails in a single mailbox, or I can make a copy in another mailbox.
Apple's Mail client has had "Smart Mailboxes" for years now. Any message that matches the criteria you choose appears in the Smart Mailbox. A single message can appear in any number of Smart Mailboxes so long as it matches their criteria.
IMHO, the people who don't "get" Gmail, don't "get" the way labels work.
I "get" labels just fine. IMHO, people who think labels are a GMail innovation haven't used Mail.
Then most innovation would come to a grinding halt. There would be no incentive to start a company because no new company could make money and survive.
I would add that it is not the laws' job to make your business model work.
By that reasoning, it's then it's OK for a large publisher simply to take an author's work and publish it without any compensation. Also, in another field, all non-government-sponsored drug research would cease without IP protections. Basically, huge sectors of the economy would stop and collapse.
However, you should not be prevented from adding any kind of DRM to control the use of the product, so long as others are allowed by law to attempt to break it.
That's like saying I'm free to add as many anti-theft devices to my car as long as anybody is free to try to steal it.
This is taken from the point of view that... the buyer should be restricted by the law from doing what they want with their personal property for the period it is in their possession.
Who's talking about that? I specifically said, "... download our product without paying..." Until you pay, it's not your product to do with as you please.
You said you own your own domain that you use for your email account. Did you know that you can now forward all your email to Gmail, enjoy the benefits of a superb spam filter, and then use either Gmail's excellent web interface or an IMAP client?
I already have a "superb spam filter." If were to use the same IMAP client I use now, well then there's no noticeable difference, so why bother?
Did you know that you can now use Google to have your default return address be your custom domain name, so nobody even knows your using GMail?
You say that like it's an innovation. My return address has been my own domain name for well over a decade.
The article summary specifically says, "... to begin showing your private data to all your GMail contacts." So if you use GMail and you have contacts (highly likely), then, according to the summary, all your private data are now visible to everybody on your GMail contact list.
It's entirely possible that the Slashdot summary is wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.
AJAX makes gmail easily one of the best user interfaces as far as webmail goes.
So it's got a slick UI. BFD. But even you qualified your own statement. I have an equally nice UI using the same IMAP client I've been using since before GMail existed. I don't "get" why anyone would give up desktop clients for webmail.
Solid spam filtering.
My IMAP client aslo has solid spam filtering.
The webmail interface is entirely searchable using Google's fast and easy search engine technology.
My IMAP client, while it may not offer Google's exact flavor of search technology, does a perfectly fine job of searching my mail. (Indexing and searching text isn't rocket science.)
In short, it's everything free e-mail providers like Yahoo and Hotmail promised, but never delivered on.
Well, OK: if you were using webmail before GMail, I can see why you'd switch to GMail. But to me, that still begs the question of: why were you using webmail in the first place?
Large corporations will take whatever they want from you and your small company. They have more money and more lawyers. You will lose. You can't beat them at their game.
What universe are you living in? If a big company wants the IP of a small company, it buys the small company because it's cheaper, garners no negative press, plus they hire the talent that created the IP in the first place so now they work for them.
There are dozens of such examples of small companies bought by large companies: PayPal, Picassa, Macromedia, YouTube,... the list goes on.
One week ago Google Reader's team decided to begin showing your private data to all your GMail contacts.
I never "got" why people fell all over themselves about GMail and getting a GMail account. I've kept my own domain and use it for e-mail. Should my mail provider do something I don't like, I'd move my mail to another provider and update my MX record. (FYI: my mail provider, registrar, and ISP are 3 different companies.)
I work for a very small start-up. Are you saying that (a) big corporations are within their rights to take our ideas and (b) you to download our product without paying thus driving us out of business?
IP isn't strictly for the big corporations. Just because you may not like some corporations' tactics doesn't mean you should eliminate (or "not believe in") IP.
Eventually i think it will become another utility like water or sewer or trash pickup, paid for by yet another line item on your local taxes.
I hope not. Why should I pay for somebody else's internet access? I thankfully don't pay to give people free cable TV or free phone service. Water, sewer, police, and fire are essential city services, but the rest aren't and therefore shouldn't be paid for by the government (and therefore all taxpayers).
Unfortunately for me, San Francisco (where I live) just passed a proposition whereby the city is to set-up WiFi. I really don't understand why. For example, there are at least half a dozen coffee shops within walking distance of where I live and they all have WiFi. Some of those also have computers for customer use (for a nominal fee). WiFi access is all over the city already provided by the private sector.
Since Earthlink is pulling out, it's not clear how San Francisco will actually implement the WiFi they're now obligated to set-up. The only viable option I see is Google stepping in (Google already did Mountain View, CA).
Java's default UI is still ugly. Also, to do a Java app on the iPhone seamlessly (by which I mean it uses iPhone UI components, animation, etc.) would mean that you'd have to write native code + JNI to access the native Cocoa UI API. Apple used to have a nice Java/Cocoa bridge API for desktop OS X, but they're no longer updating it and its use is deprecated. Given that, I highly doubt they'd have a Java/iPhone bridge API. Hence, you'd have to write all the UI for your app in native code anyway. So why bother with Java at all on the iPhone?
"States rights" isn't some sort of coherent ideology.... Or, at least, they fail to remember that we tried operating as a loose confederation of states once before, and it sucked seven ways to Sunday.
I'm not saying I'm a "States Rights" person, but I've been thinking about this more lately. The basic principle of my thinking is that anything that doesn't affect the nation as a whole has no compelling reason to have a federal law regulating it. Just as a silly example (I currently am blanking on a better one): why should there be a federal law that says the first seats in a bus must be vacated for the elderly or disabled? I'm pretty sure that if there were no such federal law that each state would enact it's own. And, for example, yet there's no federal law prescribing a minimum drinking age. Which laws are federal seems rather haphazzard.
Actually, I have read that the earth may be pushed out to a farther orbit, so we wouldn't get 'swallowed' by an expanding sun.
Right, because the sun will blow off mass into space. A less-massive sun will have weaker gravity so everything in orbit will move farther out.
But it probably won't matter much because the sun as a red giant will be far hotter and far more luminous so the orbital distance increase won't be enough to compensate.
... let's hope it gets cheap and safe enough to make it a mandatory childhood shot!
I can just imagine that the religious right wing might fight againt making it mandatory for the same reason they fight against condoms. Their argument against condoms is that they promote extramarrital sex; therefore, an HIV vaccine would promote "gay sex" and drug use. The attitude of the religious right wing is that they view those who trangress their puritanical lifestyle as being against god's will and therefore deserve what they get.
People have a right to choose what to eat. It's up to them to afford it and the responsibility for their weight, their health and anything else of the person - that's theirs too.
This may sound elitist, but: the problem with this is that is assumes a well-informed population capable of making rational choices, actually taking the time to do so, and also resisting peer-pressure. However, given that there is an "obeisity epidimic," clearly this is not the case.
Do we just let these people be and continue to put an enormous burden on the already-overburdened health-care system? Or do we just admit that, for some things, we really do need a "nanny state" because the population has demonstrated that it can't take care of itself?
This only works if you live in the area. I ordered a case by mail once just to taste the difference. It tastes marginally "cleaner," but only marginally. (I should have had a friend give me a blind taste test.) However, even if it tasted much better, the cost of shipping cans full of liquid is prohibitive: it costs more than the soda itself (which is why there are regional bottling plants: ship only the dense syrup and add the soda water locally).
Slashdot Mirror
It's entirely possible that the Slashdot summary is wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.
There are dozens of such examples of small companies bought by large companies: PayPal, Picassa, Macromedia, YouTube, ... the list goes on.
IP isn't strictly for the big corporations. Just because you may not like some corporations' tactics doesn't mean you should eliminate (or "not believe in") IP.
Turkey for nerds. Stuffing that matters. :)
Unfortunately for me, San Francisco (where I live) just passed a proposition whereby the city is to set-up WiFi. I really don't understand why. For example, there are at least half a dozen coffee shops within walking distance of where I live and they all have WiFi. Some of those also have computers for customer use (for a nominal fee). WiFi access is all over the city already provided by the private sector.
Since Earthlink is pulling out, it's not clear how San Francisco will actually implement the WiFi they're now obligated to set-up. The only viable option I see is Google stepping in (Google already did Mountain View, CA).
Java's default UI is still ugly. Also, to do a Java app on the iPhone seamlessly (by which I mean it uses iPhone UI components, animation, etc.) would mean that you'd have to write native code + JNI to access the native Cocoa UI API. Apple used to have a nice Java/Cocoa bridge API for desktop OS X, but they're no longer updating it and its use is deprecated. Given that, I highly doubt they'd have a Java/iPhone bridge API. Hence, you'd have to write all the UI for your app in native code anyway. So why bother with Java at all on the iPhone?
Comments?
But it probably won't matter much because the sun as a red giant will be far hotter and far more luminous so the orbital distance increase won't be enough to compensate.
Do we just let these people be and continue to put an enormous burden on the already-overburdened health-care system? Or do we just admit that, for some things, we really do need a "nanny state" because the population has demonstrated that it can't take care of itself?
If I do say so myself, SWISH++ has pretty code.