Or maybe only geeks want to listen to the music of their choice and not carry around a Batman's utility belt full of gadgets?
You've got that all wrong. Only geeks want to carry around a Batman's utility belt full of gadgets.
If you don't lust after Batman's utility belt, you're not the geek you think you are. At minimum, your belt should have cell phone and an iPod. Maybe a smallish GPS device? And of course, a grappling hook...
Sure, my wife would make fun of me. But if I came across a utility belt half as cool and half as full of useful gadgets as Batman's, I'd wear it almost every day...
Practical, sane, non-gadget-crazy individuals like yourself don't want to carry more electronic devices than can comfortably fit in a pants pocket. Because they're afraid they'll look too geeky...
I'm a little more interested in the animatronic, full-scale Robby the Robot ( from Forbidden Planet ).
LICENSED WORKING REPLICA OF ROBBY THE ROBOT FROM FORBIDDEN PLANET. (MGM, 1956) This original 1:1 stu-
dio-licensed replica was made by Fred Barton Productions, and is a special collector's edition numbered 26/100. The robot
is powered by standard 120VAC current, and when activated the Robot illuminates, talks and moves just like its namesake
star of the 1956 film! Standing just over seven feet tall, this impressive animated statue is retooled from the original robot
costume, and is made of sturdy fiberglass. "Robby" also boasts a showroom finish, DC Servo motorization, remote control
and highly detailed hand-machined appointments. Marvin Miller provides the voice for "Robby" from the original motion
picture soundtrack in a 24-minute show presentation in 16-bit audio. The robot's soundtrack can also be presented through
a home theatre system for a true cinematic experience. In addition to the signed COA, the manufacturer is extending a 90-
day warranty to the winning bidder after registration with the company. $15,000 - $18,000
I'm not sure how easy it would be to repeat Wil's success with Mac software development, but he gives some good advice if you're thinking you'd like to live in a box, down by the river. Because if you quit your job to make and sell your own software, you might not be able to afford a van, get it?
Seriously, though, it's a pretty inspirational story, and the "form an LLC" and "you will get sued" points sound like really, really good advice, and the analysis of the over-saturation of the Windows market seems pretty insightful as well.
I'm always amused by the companies and individuals who seem to think of the OS X market as "too small". How many millions of OS X users are there ??? If I make $10 each off of 5% of them I'll have how much money ?? Hmmm...
My point was that it should never have been an issue in the first place. We have checks and balances, and when they are allowed to, they work. There are, however, clearly people in our government and our populace who favor control over freedom. They are not to be trusted with to protect our freedom, they are to be watched closely. That was my point.
You didn't name a country that would be better, instead you brought some entirely different arguments to the table.
Hey, I'm not going anywhere. On the other hand, it's not terribly difficult to name a better country if you're thinking about human rights. Canada. Sweden. Norway. France, even. Plenty of countries don't hold people in prison camps for years without hope of a real trial. Sadly, these days, we do that. It's simple enough to recongnize we shouldn't- it doesn't gain us anything.
As for the straw men... go ahead, knock them down. Help me make sure I'm wrong about our chances of an anti-flag-burning amendment.
Unless you're defining 'free' in a very particular manner, you're joking, right?
Be real for a moment. We believe in _our_ economic freedom, and the freedom to promote _our_ message.
If we believed in true free speech, there wouldn't be talk of an anti-flag-burning amendment, anti-Bush protesters would be allowed closer than 2 miles to his speech sites, and you wouldn't find stories like this one.
It's all very good and well to love your country. This is the best one there is. However, it's good and practical to be realistic about your own government- it is, after all, run by politicians and people who seek positions of power. They are not to be trusted any more than those in the U.N. The U.S. government only works as well as it does because of mandated transparency and checks and balances- all of which have been seriously eroded over the past 12 years, and are about to get worse... ignoring the scandals and lies coming out of your own leadership isn't healthy. Pointing a finger at money some other country's leadership might have made off the Iraq oil-for-food program looks pretty stupid if you're ignoring Haliburton's role in Iraq currently and it's connections to the current administration. Think about how it looks, even if you yourself find no impropriety.
I mean, really, you're trolling, right? You want us to think the U.S. has no influence over the U.N. ? That there are no human rights abuses by the U.S., anywhere ? That our politicians aren't cronies buying and selling influence ? What else do you want us to believe ?
Everything else reminds me of a Dilbert strip, too, but back to my point :
That reminds me of a Dilbert strip in which someone ( I think it's Alice ) is ranting about the poor spelling, punctuation and lack of general business-letter formality in an email from an engineer.
Dilbert gives her a blank look, and asks "Did you not understand what he was saying? Did his lack of punctuation and capitalization cause his message to be confusing?" or something like that. There may have been something in there about the time wasted by ranting about the engineer's email, but my memory isn't so clear on that point.
A lot of this depends on context. In a quick little email telling a coworker what I'm up to, I'm going to keep it quick and may not even spellcheck. Really, that's OK. An email to a coworker is not normally an important business document.
In a cover letter or report or client communication, it's a much different matter. Such documents should typically be peer-reviewed and carefully constructed, and I would typically not leave the entire job up to someone specialized in computer programming.
Which form of communication is Strom talking about, and why are you having a computer programmer write a report ? I don't ask editors to write computer programs, do you? Yes, everyone should be well-rounded and have good communication skills. I should also be able to read the prescription hand-written by my doctor. However, the reality is that my doctor's handwriting is even worse than my own. He's still a good doctor.
Some programmers have excellent writing skills. Some do not. Hire the right one for the job, or recognize the weakness of the one you have and send them to a class or give them a writing coach. It's likely they are just not trying, because proper punctuation doesn't seem as important as their mad programming skills. In many situations, they may actually be correct in that assumption.
That's the lesson here. From what I read this morning the busts are related to an 'infiltration' job by FBI agents who offered up "large amounts" of server space. How large? According to the article I linked there, they collected over 27 TB of pirated movies and software. Of course, most of that has to be movies, but still... that's a staggering amount of data.
One really does have to wonder if this will do anything to slow distribution of pirated works, though. Actually, no, you don't... it hasn't changed much in the past, and it's not likely to change much now... except for these guys facing chages, that is. It definitely changes things for them.
My wife has seriously threatened to lock me out of the house if I bring in one more piece of computer equipment.
I just like that there's someone out there so much worse ( or better, depending on your point of view ) than I am. Your computer collection, especially the AS/400, makes my single PC, laptop, NeXT hardware and original 6100 PowerMac look like *nothing*, forget about the gaming consoles. My wife just doesn't understand why I need these machines in addition to our daily-use computer, which is an iMac these days.
Sadly, I don't really find a compelling argument, since I seldom find time to boot them, and I did actually get rid of a couple of other machines ( a Mac Plus and G3 PowerMac ) recently.
I'm sure it wouldn't be a big deal if we didn't live in such a small place. Damn housing prices, yea, that's what's to blame...
I still pull my dreamcast out from time to time.
I own all 3 of the current generation of consoles... I'll buy the 360 when it comes out. I'm sure I'll be picking up the PS3 as well. Revolution might have to wait longer... the Fairchild Channel F I've got sitting on my shelf.
Dude, could you take a picture of all those machines, post it on the web and let me know where to find it ?
I'd like to be able to show it to my wife the next time she gives me a hard time about *my* electronics collection... although, I think I have as many computers as you have consoles, so maybe I'm not any better, now that I think of it. Drat.
Ok, a Sony marketing spokesdroid puts UMD sales at 'between' 200,000 and 500,000.
It's hard to believe they don't have more reliable data, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt. What the heck. I have nothing against Sony ( except a distaste for proprietary memory card formats and MagicGate, admittedly ).
500,000 still seems like a small number when you consider that's the same number of PSPs that sold in the US during the first two days after it's launch. Especially when you consider there's no way 500k UMDs have actually sold...
What I'm really curious about is the previous statement that "25 movies" would be available on UMD for the European release. It seems like an odd statement because there are 113 UMD movies listed on Amazon right now. Why wouldn't the same 113 titles be ready for europe? Is the market not there ? Odd...
t is out of the scope of the language to be responsible for how it will be implemented in a browser when a browser is not the only application it is able to be implemented in.
Oh, come on. That's a cop-out, and you know it. Or at least you should.
Even if it's not a cop-out, how about this : it's a language designed to be used in a networked environment. Is it not? Ok. It is. So it should have *some* sort of security model. The simple fact is that it has *none*.
When Java was designed, how it would be secured in a networked environment was given some serious thought. Say what you want about Java, and it may have had it's own security issues in the past, but at least it *has* a security model. When ECMAScript/LiveScript/JavaScript whatever you want to call it developed, it... well, initially, it didn't have half the abilities it now has ( raising windows? Not even. ) and it *never* had the thought put into it required to handle security problems seriously. It's not like this is the first security-related issue to surface relating to JavaScript. It's a constant source of such issues.
Perhaps the language and it's abilities just need to be restricted? If you don't want some sort of definition of what acceptable inputs/outputs/conditions exist under which certain JavaScript functions can take place, would you want to remove the abilities completely? Or do you want developers to break any sort of standardization that has developed in the language, and have every single browser to implement the language differently ? Oh, wait, that already happens...
In any event, burying your head in the sand over JavaScript's security issues, placing blame on browser vendors, and touting your Asterix plug-in aren't going to help fix JavaScript's serious and ongoing security shortcomings.
Again, I'm not saying it's not useful. But it is not secure, and should be avoided in applications where security is important, unless you want to be spoofed by a similar attack as to what's described here... or a different one that is introduced or uncovered in the future...
It may be possible for JavaScript to help evil-doers but it's up to the implementer of the Application using the engine to avoid that, not the language or its core developers.
No, fix JavaScript's security model.
What's that, it doesn't have one ? Why don't you see that as a problem ?
I'm sorry, JavaScript does have it's benefits and uses, but don't pretend it's not a huge, gaping security hole waiting to be exploited. It is, and always has been.
It's all very fine and well to say "let the browser implement security for JavaScript", but how exactly do you do that? How do you do that *and* support all of the features ?
Defend JavaScript for being useful ( it's cheaper than Java applets or having the server do the work, perhaps ). But don't defend it's lack of security by placing the onus on the browser developers. Their job is hard enough without preventing a scripting language which you love because it can do everything from, well... doing everything. If some browser prevented JavaScript dialogs, would you complain when you can't use that feature? Somehow I think you might.
Re:Does this seem like a big failure to anyone els
on
UMD Sales Top 100K
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· Score: 1
I said as much in a post I suppose I should have placed in this thread...
But what really struct me was the title of TFA. 25 Movies is all that they expect to have on the format for the EU launch ?!? That's pathetic. Sony controls a lot of movies, and the fact that they don't have them on UMD speaks volumes.
"Maybe 25 movies" ?!? The title says it all...
on
UMD Sales Top 100K
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· Score: 1
Seriously, they don't expect to have more than 25 titles available when it releases in Europe? How many are available now?
How is this not a failure? Why wouldn't Sony, which has a large number of movies under it's control, release more titles on UMD... unless, of course, they understand that the market for them just isn't there ?
Actually, aren't there supposed to be something like a couple million PSPs out there now? If they've sold 100,000 UMDs... I guess that's not a lot, then, is it ?
I don't think this will prevent many ports of Windows to OS X, and here's why : companies which would target multiple operating systems will do so anyway. Companies who won't still won't.
If you want to provide an application which is seamlessly integrated with the user's OS experience, you probably already do. If you want your product's ability to run on a platform to be dependent on a third-party piece of software, this doesn't change things for you.
Virtual PC already exists. This just provides competition for it ( though only on Intel-based Macs, I guess ). Is there more here than that ? Why would this prevent ports more than Virtual PC on Intel, which it's probably pretty safe to assume will eventually appear ?
Companies which don't port to OS X are making the bet that someone can't or won't come along and poach their potential customers with a similar, OS X-native application. It may be a reasonable bet, but it's still a bet...
BlueGene/L max linpack: 136800
Earth Simulator ( #3 on the list ) : 51870
The #1 linpack score is well over twice the #3 linpack score ?!?
That fact combined with the large number of IBM-based systems on the to 100 list really makes it look like IBM is dominating this sector of the market.
You know what data is always missing from this list that we'd all like to see ? The cost of the systems. Although, I suppose if you're looking at building the most powerful computer system on the planet, cost might not be your first consideration...
Even if they can't pull of the "universal binary" thing, I wouldn't expect it to be especially difficult to compile a separate version of NeoOffice for the MacIntel boxes.
There's this "lipo" command you can use to modify universal binaries ( I *still* want to call them 'fat', for obvious reasons ). Even if you compile the binaries separately, you can use 'lipo' to combine the two ( possibly completely different ) binaries into one executable file.
And you make an excellent point. The OpenOffice stuff should just recompile under GCC4 and be done. If they have endian issues, there's a problem already. The difficulty of 'porting' an application from PPC to x86 is way overblown. It's not like we're writing in assembly here, folks! Well, ok, not most of us... but if you're writing assembly, you have your own issues;-)
Now I'm *really* wondering why you can still buy copies of WO 5.2. Maybe some people just don't want OS X but do want WO? That'd be weird. I can see not wanting to deploy the server on OS X, but not wanting a Mac... I guess... it does happen...
We had an exellent photographer, very professional, and they didn't have any such nonsense in their contract.
The only stipulation regarding to copyright was that they could use prints in their own promotional materials. That seemed reasonable to us, and they even mentioned a willingness drop that request if we really wanted. There may have been something in there about not copying proof photos. Not sure about that.
A couple of years later, they offered us the negatives at a reduced price ( or they'd dispose of them, 'clearing out storage space' ), a price cheap enough that we picked up the negatives.
This story is more about the chilling effect of over-reaching copyrights in the age of digital reproduction technology, though. The old rules are broken, and should be changed. Control of your content is very, very important, and you have to assume that once it's seen the light of day, it's likely to be reproduced. Price accordingly, or mark and track your licensed property more closely, or give it up already. Suing a publisher because they reproduced your manuscript due to a customer claiming ownership? I'd think you should be suing the customer, shouldn't you?
It's a complex issue, no doubt, but whatever you think, it's clear the current solution is not a solution.
Slashdot Mirror
It looks like I won't be able to pick up GTA:SA for quite a while longer, now. This ought to send it flying off the shelves *again*...
You've got that all wrong. Only geeks want to carry around a Batman's utility belt full of gadgets.
If you don't lust after Batman's utility belt, you're not the geek you think you are. At minimum, your belt should have cell phone and an iPod. Maybe a smallish GPS device? And of course, a grappling hook...
Sure, my wife would make fun of me. But if I came across a utility belt half as cool and half as full of useful gadgets as Batman's, I'd wear it almost every day...
Practical, sane, non-gadget-crazy individuals like yourself don't want to carry more electronic devices than can comfortably fit in a pants pocket. Because they're afraid they'll look too geeky...
Seriously, though, it's a pretty inspirational story, and the "form an LLC" and "you will get sued" points sound like really, really good advice, and the analysis of the over-saturation of the Windows market seems pretty insightful as well.
I'm always amused by the companies and individuals who seem to think of the OS X market as "too small". How many millions of OS X users are there ??? If I make $10 each off of 5% of them I'll have how much money ?? Hmmm...
besides not being able to see the ride, you miss the hilarity of the
"Work for The Man, or for yourself
You gots to decide"
slide.
I laughed my ass off. That was the best.
My point was that it should never have been an issue in the first place. We have checks and balances, and when they are allowed to, they work. There are, however, clearly people in our government and our populace who favor control over freedom. They are not to be trusted with to protect our freedom, they are to be watched closely. That was my point.
Hey, I'm not going anywhere. On the other hand, it's not terribly difficult to name a better country if you're thinking about human rights. Canada. Sweden. Norway. France, even. Plenty of countries don't hold people in prison camps for years without hope of a real trial. Sadly, these days, we do that. It's simple enough to recongnize we shouldn't- it doesn't gain us anything.
As for the straw men... go ahead, knock them down. Help me make sure I'm wrong about our chances of an anti-flag-burning amendment.
Unless you're defining 'free' in a very particular manner, you're joking, right?
Be real for a moment. We believe in _our_ economic freedom, and the freedom to promote _our_ message.
If we believed in true free speech, there wouldn't be talk of an anti-flag-burning amendment, anti-Bush protesters would be allowed closer than 2 miles to his speech sites, and you wouldn't find stories like this one.
It's all very good and well to love your country. This is the best one there is. However, it's good and practical to be realistic about your own government- it is, after all, run by politicians and people who seek positions of power. They are not to be trusted any more than those in the U.N. The U.S. government only works as well as it does because of mandated transparency and checks and balances- all of which have been seriously eroded over the past 12 years, and are about to get worse... ignoring the scandals and lies coming out of your own leadership isn't healthy. Pointing a finger at money some other country's leadership might have made off the Iraq oil-for-food program looks pretty stupid if you're ignoring Haliburton's role in Iraq currently and it's connections to the current administration. Think about how it looks, even if you yourself find no impropriety.
I mean, really, you're trolling, right? You want us to think the U.S. has no influence over the U.N. ? That there are no human rights abuses by the U.S., anywhere ? That our politicians aren't cronies buying and selling influence ? What else do you want us to believe ?
That reminds me of a Dilbert strip in which someone ( I think it's Alice ) is ranting about the poor spelling, punctuation and lack of general business-letter formality in an email from an engineer.
Dilbert gives her a blank look, and asks "Did you not understand what he was saying? Did his lack of punctuation and capitalization cause his message to be confusing?" or something like that. There may have been something in there about the time wasted by ranting about the engineer's email, but my memory isn't so clear on that point.
A lot of this depends on context. In a quick little email telling a coworker what I'm up to, I'm going to keep it quick and may not even spellcheck. Really, that's OK. An email to a coworker is not normally an important business document.
In a cover letter or report or client communication, it's a much different matter. Such documents should typically be peer-reviewed and carefully constructed, and I would typically not leave the entire job up to someone specialized in computer programming.
Which form of communication is Strom talking about, and why are you having a computer programmer write a report ? I don't ask editors to write computer programs, do you? Yes, everyone should be well-rounded and have good communication skills. I should also be able to read the prescription hand-written by my doctor. However, the reality is that my doctor's handwriting is even worse than my own. He's still a good doctor.
Some programmers have excellent writing skills. Some do not. Hire the right one for the job, or recognize the weakness of the one you have and send them to a class or give them a writing coach. It's likely they are just not trying, because proper punctuation doesn't seem as important as their mad programming skills. In many situations, they may actually be correct in that assumption.
One really does have to wonder if this will do anything to slow distribution of pirated works, though. Actually, no, you don't... it hasn't changed much in the past, and it's not likely to change much now... except for these guys facing chages, that is. It definitely changes things for them.
I just like that there's someone out there so much worse ( or better, depending on your point of view ) than I am. Your computer collection, especially the AS/400, makes my single PC, laptop, NeXT hardware and original 6100 PowerMac look like *nothing*, forget about the gaming consoles. My wife just doesn't understand why I need these machines in addition to our daily-use computer, which is an iMac these days.
Sadly, I don't really find a compelling argument, since I seldom find time to boot them, and I did actually get rid of a couple of other machines ( a Mac Plus and G3 PowerMac ) recently.
I'm sure it wouldn't be a big deal if we didn't live in such a small place. Damn housing prices, yea, that's what's to blame...
Dude, could you take a picture of all those machines, post it on the web and let me know where to find it ?
I'd like to be able to show it to my wife the next time she gives me a hard time about *my* electronics collection... although, I think I have as many computers as you have consoles, so maybe I'm not any better, now that I think of it. Drat.
It was so natural... I tip my hat to you, though, I wouldn't have thought to translate it to Undead Canine.
Zombie Dogs is pretty good, though. I expect to see a band of that name any day now.
Funny, I always thought Sun resold the Tadpole laptops. Does this mean they're reselling them now, or are these not Tadpoles?
welcome our new zombie dog overlords. Sorry, someone had to do it...
It's hard to believe they don't have more reliable data, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt. What the heck. I have nothing against Sony ( except a distaste for proprietary memory card formats and MagicGate, admittedly ).
500,000 still seems like a small number when you consider that's the same number of PSPs that sold in the US during the first two days after it's launch. Especially when you consider there's no way 500k UMDs have actually sold...
What I'm really curious about is the previous statement that "25 movies" would be available on UMD for the European release. It seems like an odd statement because there are 113 UMD movies listed on Amazon right now. Why wouldn't the same 113 titles be ready for europe? Is the market not there ? Odd...
Oh, come on. That's a cop-out, and you know it. Or at least you should.
Even if it's not a cop-out, how about this : it's a language designed to be used in a networked environment. Is it not? Ok. It is. So it should have *some* sort of security model. The simple fact is that it has *none*.
When Java was designed, how it would be secured in a networked environment was given some serious thought. Say what you want about Java, and it may have had it's own security issues in the past, but at least it *has* a security model. When ECMAScript/LiveScript/JavaScript whatever you want to call it developed, it... well, initially, it didn't have half the abilities it now has ( raising windows? Not even. ) and it *never* had the thought put into it required to handle security problems seriously. It's not like this is the first security-related issue to surface relating to JavaScript. It's a constant source of such issues.
Perhaps the language and it's abilities just need to be restricted? If you don't want some sort of definition of what acceptable inputs/outputs/conditions exist under which certain JavaScript functions can take place, would you want to remove the abilities completely? Or do you want developers to break any sort of standardization that has developed in the language, and have every single browser to implement the language differently ? Oh, wait, that already happens...
In any event, burying your head in the sand over JavaScript's security issues, placing blame on browser vendors, and touting your Asterix plug-in aren't going to help fix JavaScript's serious and ongoing security shortcomings.
Again, I'm not saying it's not useful. But it is not secure, and should be avoided in applications where security is important, unless you want to be spoofed by a similar attack as to what's described here... or a different one that is introduced or uncovered in the future...
No, fix JavaScript's security model.
What's that, it doesn't have one ? Why don't you see that as a problem ?
I'm sorry, JavaScript does have it's benefits and uses, but don't pretend it's not a huge, gaping security hole waiting to be exploited. It is, and always has been.
It's all very fine and well to say "let the browser implement security for JavaScript", but how exactly do you do that? How do you do that *and* support all of the features ?
Defend JavaScript for being useful ( it's cheaper than Java applets or having the server do the work, perhaps ). But don't defend it's lack of security by placing the onus on the browser developers. Their job is hard enough without preventing a scripting language which you love because it can do everything from, well... doing everything. If some browser prevented JavaScript dialogs, would you complain when you can't use that feature? Somehow I think you might.
But what really struct me was the title of TFA. 25 Movies is all that they expect to have on the format for the EU launch ?!? That's pathetic. Sony controls a lot of movies, and the fact that they don't have them on UMD speaks volumes.
How is this not a failure? Why wouldn't Sony, which has a large number of movies under it's control, release more titles on UMD... unless, of course, they understand that the market for them just isn't there ?
Actually, aren't there supposed to be something like a couple million PSPs out there now? If they've sold 100,000 UMDs... I guess that's not a lot, then, is it ?
If you want to provide an application which is seamlessly integrated with the user's OS experience, you probably already do. If you want your product's ability to run on a platform to be dependent on a third-party piece of software, this doesn't change things for you.
Virtual PC already exists. This just provides competition for it ( though only on Intel-based Macs, I guess ). Is there more here than that ? Why would this prevent ports more than Virtual PC on Intel, which it's probably pretty safe to assume will eventually appear ?
Companies which don't port to OS X are making the bet that someone can't or won't come along and poach their potential customers with a similar, OS X-native application. It may be a reasonable bet, but it's still a bet...
Earth Simulator ( #3 on the list ) : 51870
The #1 linpack score is well over twice the #3 linpack score ?!?
That fact combined with the large number of IBM-based systems on the to 100 list really makes it look like IBM is dominating this sector of the market.
You know what data is always missing from this list that we'd all like to see ? The cost of the systems. Although, I suppose if you're looking at building the most powerful computer system on the planet, cost might not be your first consideration...
There's this "lipo" command you can use to modify universal binaries ( I *still* want to call them 'fat', for obvious reasons ). Even if you compile the binaries separately, you can use 'lipo' to combine the two ( possibly completely different ) binaries into one executable file.
And you make an excellent point. The OpenOffice stuff should just recompile under GCC4 and be done. If they have endian issues, there's a problem already. The difficulty of 'porting' an application from PPC to x86 is way overblown. It's not like we're writing in assembly here, folks! Well, ok, not most of us... but if you're writing assembly, you have your own issues ;-)
Now I'm *really* wondering why you can still buy copies of WO 5.2. Maybe some people just don't want OS X but do want WO? That'd be weird. I can see not wanting to deploy the server on OS X, but not wanting a Mac... I guess... it does happen...
Still, the price just went down.
The only stipulation regarding to copyright was that they could use prints in their own promotional materials. That seemed reasonable to us, and they even mentioned a willingness drop that request if we really wanted. There may have been something in there about not copying proof photos. Not sure about that.
A couple of years later, they offered us the negatives at a reduced price ( or they'd dispose of them, 'clearing out storage space' ), a price cheap enough that we picked up the negatives.
This story is more about the chilling effect of over-reaching copyrights in the age of digital reproduction technology, though. The old rules are broken, and should be changed. Control of your content is very, very important, and you have to assume that once it's seen the light of day, it's likely to be reproduced. Price accordingly, or mark and track your licensed property more closely, or give it up already. Suing a publisher because they reproduced your manuscript due to a customer claiming ownership? I'd think you should be suing the customer, shouldn't you?
It's a complex issue, no doubt, but whatever you think, it's clear the current solution is not a solution.