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User: gilgongo

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  1. Re:Wrong question - contract trumps copyright on Ask Slashdot: Which License For School Products? · · Score: 1

    OK. So apart from the very narrow exception of Fair Use (which doesn't properly exist outside the US very much), and maybe Moral Rights in places like France, contract trumps copyright.

    In fact, can you name any significant victory of Fair Use over contract recently? The Estate of James Brown is pretty flush last I checked...

  2. Re:That's my big issue with them on Ask Slashdot: How Do You View the Wall Street Protests? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What are your problems?

    Banking should be a service to industry that facilitates socially useful capital and equity, not be an industry in its own right. The social good derived from (say) derivatives shorting is vanishingly close to zero.

    1) What shall we do about them?

    (I think this has been articulated rather clearly by the movement to anyone wishing to ask). Re-introduce the Glass-Steagall Act, impose a transaction tax (eg 0.01%) on every trade of any kind performed on the stock markets, and re-balance shareholders' interests against equity build using suitable regulatory legislation.

    So - what say you?

  3. Wrong question - contract trumps copyright on Ask Slashdot: Which License For School Products? · · Score: 2

    If students sign a contract with the school to say that both parties assign full rights to one another in works that they create, then it doesn't matter what copyright law says. Contract trumps copyright. That's how the music industry works, for one thing.

  4. Re:Immoral Dilemma on PETA To Launch Pornography Website · · Score: 1

    Would you be okay with your mother, wife, or daughter performing in a porn flick?

    Wow. Are you sure you don't want to join the Taliban? The female members of your immediate family are not your property. You may not want them to appear in a porn flick, but if they want to then the should be free to do so.

  5. Re:Who cares? on Critic Pans Apple's New Campus As a Retrograde Cocoon · · Score: 1

    Unless he's a psychologist and technology expert, and also has something to back up this crazy notion, it might as well be a Feng-shui guy arrogantly chiming in on the layout of a motherboard.

    In that case, it would be interesting to hear what you think the practice of modern architecture is.

  6. Re:Backup and fill-in on The Coming Energy Turnaround In Germany · · Score: 1

    And after just a few short years, there's a tremendous loss in efficiency as the mirrors used to collect all that sunlight become dirty and pitted.

    I know this is /., but FFS. Citation please.

  7. Re:Nothing to surprising on Marx May Have Had a Point · · Score: 1

    What exactly is your point?

  8. Re:But what if you don't know what to look for? on Microsoft 'Ribbonizes' Windows 8 File Manager · · Score: 1

    Then again, a Ribbon on Explorer might not be bad, because it really only does 50 things.

    Actually, Explorer has 200 commands (one of them is something called "rotate" apparently), according to the Microsoft blog post. But who's counting.

  9. Re:You don't understand copyright on The Copyright Nightmare of 'I Have a Dream' · · Score: 1

    Perhaps the copyright owners want to make sure that it isn't abused. There are a lot of people out there who would love to twist Dr. King's words to their own advantage.

    Fair use means that if I wanted to write something like "In saying 'I have a dream...' Martin Luther King was referring to radical Islam" or some such idiocy, then I would be perfectly able to quote passages to make my point.

    Copyright in this case is about money. Not about abuse.

  10. Re:For those confused on Firefox 8 20% Faster Than Firefox 5 · · Score: 1

    I don't care what the "reasoning" is - this is just ridiculous versioning. At this rate in 2020, we'll be using Firefox 153. It will be confusing for the users

    Why? I'm using Chrome version "12.0.742.112 (90304)" and don't give a crap as long as it keeps working (and is updated without me having to do much).

  11. Video chat? What kind of idea is that? on Facebook Announces Video Calling With Skype · · Score: 1

    People have been trying to make video chat popular for YEARS. Every single major comms player since about 1980 has tried to make it into something more than a niche for pervs and loons, and failed - miserably.

    The latest flogging of the dead horse of video for interpersonal comms was Apple with Facetime. Flop.* Or at least, everyone I know has iPhone 4s and iPad 2's - they all used Facetime once, and concluded as bazillions of people have concluded down the years, that it was awkward, distracting and just downright useless.

    Think about it: you do not open a comms channel in whatever medium and think "You know, I just WISH I could see their faces."

    Let's see if FB can make it work. I give it 10,000:1 on past history.

    * Cue people making up technical reasons why it was a flop. But they are wrong. The reasons are human. Non-technical. You don't want to talk up somebody's nose, or see them looking away from you, or get fixated on trying to work out if you are on the toilet on not.

  12. If I worked for Microsoft on Microsoft's Hottest New Profit Center: Android · · Score: 0

    I'd be pretty depressed. I mean, have they done *anything* they can be proud of in the last 20 years? XBox maybe.

  13. Re:Really bad idea. on Roundabout Revolution Sweeping US · · Score: 1

    Plus, some places make a rotary out of a 5-way intersection which can be incredibly confusing.

    I've been driving the UK for about 20 years, most of which has been urban driving. In the UK we have lots and lots of these roundabout things. Some small (perhaps 20 feet wide) in cities and towns, some very big. They are all trivially easy to navigate, and make driving far less stressful than stopping and starting at traffic lights the whole time. You just give way to those already on the roundabout (if you are approaching it) and watch the danger on your right when you are at one (or on the left if you are in the States). I have never seen a significant roundabout accident in the UK, mainly because it's pretty much impossible to go into one at any speed unless you have a clear deathwish or a hunger to see how your suspension handles the rather large bit in the middle.

    I also fail to see how the number of tributary roads make them any more confusing. I've been on roundabouts with about 10 roads coming in to them. You just keep driving until you see the sign you want, you then look in your MIRROR, you SIGNAL, and then MANOEUVRE off the roundabout while looking about. If you don't see the sign, you just keep driving and go around again (while your partners reads the map). So you can take you time to make up your mind, unlike on a large crossing.

    Of course, if you are going too fast, or just don't know how to drive, you will have problems. But then, you deserve everything you get in that case.

     

  14. Re:Fault McCandless, not GE on Calling Out GE's Misleading Data Visualizations · · Score: 1

    When I first encountered McCandless's site a few years ago, I really loved it

    Can you explain why? I would have thought that anyone who has ever considered data and the visualization of it would see his site and pretty much instantly realise it was pile of useless drek.

  15. Re:Hearing negative feedback over the toolbar on Google's New Design · · Score: 1

    I feel this is done on purpose to direct attention to it.

    I wish they'd make up their minds. It wasn't a year ago they were hiding it completely by default until you moved your mouse. Not even Larry Page himself knew what THAT was all about.

  16. Let's hope they don't just copy MSO on History of Software Forks Favors LibreOffice · · Score: 2

    The history of OpenOffice has been utterly depressing in so far as they've just aped Microsoft Office. Maybe that had to happen if OO was to gain any of MSO's user base, but I hope that LO will break out of the cloud of crap that is MSO.

    For example, there is no reason whatsoever to default to throwing away your work. The convention of opening up a new document and THEN having to save it is utterly ridiculous! In fact, there is no reason to have a "save" command at all. All user input should be sacred, and every keypress should be saved. Another example is the crazy arrangement of menu items (made worse by the "ribbon bar" in MSO) that attempts to cram every command into a menu structure. A word processor is for most people a tool of reasonably frequent use, yet even after many years of using MSO, I still can't remember where the word-count is, because I use it hardly ever. I also constantly forget how to bring up the styles library or insert a picture. Instead of a labyrinthine menu, why not have a search (with command completion), and leave the menu for those who want to browse?

    This comment is way OT though, so I'll stop.

  17. Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot on RIM Struggles Continue · · Score: 1

    Early leaders in their respective fields, but then got lazy because they didn't think their customers would go anywhere.

    Hey - I've got a five-digit ID, and I distinctly recall almost EXACTLY the same comment when I joined, only that time it was Slashdot being like Apple! Back then, Amelio was leaving, and things were looking grim for the Mac.

    Not saying that RIM will go that way (oooooh no), but I just thought it was pretty funny.

  18. Re:Website fucks up design, ignores users, news at on Netflix's New Web Interface Gets Thumbs Down From Users · · Score: 1

    No. The difference here is that Netflix has been held up almost as high as Apple by the "user experience design" community as being a web site that "does the right thing" in design for its customers:

    http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=%22user+experience%22+netflix&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gl=uk

    specifically, the echo chamber:

    http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/netflix_nails_it.php

    http://www.uie.com/articles/kane_interview/

    Bill Scott, their former head of UX is a high-profile UX consultant and speaker who often uses Netflix as an example of good design for profit.

    Compare this to /. where everyone knows they are crap, and therefore doesn't mind.

  19. Re:Rights? on NSA Trial Evidence 'Riddled With Boxes and Arrows' · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When they reach the point that every family "on the dole" has multiple surveillance cameras throughout their homes, then we will have reached 1984.

    Orwell's portrayal of cameras in homes was simply one of many, many totalitarian ideas he wove into the story. A large number of them exist today (the most obvious examples being pacification of the "proles" by means of 24-hour media, and constant war with vague enemies about vague things). To say that we won't have his version of society until we have that one thing is pretty odd. That's like saying we won't have Christmas until somebody gets drunk.

  20. When will there be too many "i"s? on Apple Announces iCloud and iWork For iOS · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm a huge Apple fan, but even I think this stuff with the "i" branding is just stupid and faintly embarrassing. Every Apple product has a fraeking "i" before it's otherwise utterly unimaginative name? "iCloud" - FFS.

  21. Send in the Swedes on Amazon Gags On Gaga · · Score: 1
  22. Re:Where is this going to end on Tweeter To Be Prosecuted, Twitter Now Censoring? · · Score: 1

    So, try it out, Brits. Instead of posting, "John is a poof", try, "In my opinion, John is a poof."

    The same goes for "allegedly" - allegedly.

  23. Fail2ban? on Ask Slashdot: FTP Server Honeypots? · · Score: 2

    I've used Fail2ban in the past:

    http://www.fail2ban.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

  24. GUI and CLUI: Two Great Tastes ... on Imagining the CLI For the Modern Machine · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've often wanted to have a CLUI that works with my GUI. Imagine I'm in Photoshop, mousing or tablet-ing away, and I have a layer on my canvass. Rather than trying to remember where in the menu structure a bunch of commands are in order to manipulate that layer, I just bring up my CLUI and type something like "resize 50%, flip, gamma -20" Or how about in Word: "Find foo replace bar, insert header from page 2-", and so on?

    Why are we forced to find commands in mouse-driven menu bars (of worse, "ribbons" and whatnot) when they could be available any time in the app you are using?

  25. Re:Gnome 3 isn't much better. on Ubuntu Unity: The Great Divider · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure who decided that we needed Cell Phone UI's on our desktops, but I'd like to slap the person(s).

    I believe the recipient of your slappage would be Christian Giordano:

    http://design.canonical.com/2011/03/introducing-overlay-scrollbars-in-unity/

    At least, this quote would seem to be culprit:

    "Other platforms optimized for touch input like Android and iOS are already using a light-weight solution visible only while dragging the content."

    So that's your question answered I think.