Don't move to New Zealand. We Aussies need all the room and sheep we can get over there for our retirement.
Re:Combat it or deny responsibility you mean...
on
Gone Phishing?
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· Score: 1
Most people have accounts with multiple banks and can't remember which ones send emails and which ones don't. Also the banks (and other companies with online transactions such as Best Buy) confuse the hell out of me by sending their 'newsletter' emails from wierd domains and/or include links with suspicious URLs or domains. I don't trust _any_ email I receive from anything remotely resembling a bank...
People going crazy about the death of free software in Australia is ridiculous. Patents are a huge stimulus to innovation, as shown by study after study. Only those that have never spent their own sweat and tears developing something truly original will begrudge the right of those that do to DETERMINE what can be done with that invention. The inventor is not forced to charge huge royalties for an invention, but they can if they want. If they charge too much they create an incentive for someone to invent their way around them and then do whatever THEY want with the fruits of their labors. Patents are one of the most brilliant inventions in the history of lawmaking. They are a balanced contract between society and the inventor. In return for teaching everyone else how to do something you get to exploit it for 20 years. No one company or individual owns a whole field: there are always lots of people developing and inventing. When there is a healthy development community, there should be patents in place to determine who gets paid for what. Inventions that improve the quality of human life or make some computing process simpler or faster do not grow on trees. Most people who criticise software patents have never read one! Go to uspto.gov and find the most incredible reference library of human knowledge that has ever existed. Knowledge and creativity on every technological subject is there for everyone to read and learn from. Find out what has gone before and add to it! Don't stand there saying, "I wished I'd thought of that!" or "good idea, thanks, I'll use that myself," or "thanks for spending half your life and millions of dollars inventing that, you've saved me a lot of effort." Face it we live in a world whose unit of exchange is money and while it is somewhat of a blunt instrument when it comes to exchanging knowledge, the patent system sharpens it a lot. The alternative is to return to an era where people hoarded knowledge in "guilds" like in the middle ages where secret formulas and mystical spells ruled the day. People would not share information. The patent system is great, but the application of it needs constant scrutiny (like any area of law). The USPTO simply grant too many patents on things that often overlap with prior art (previous inventions whether patented or not.) This is the real problem with software patents -- some clever programmer should invent (and patent) efficient ways of comparing software and determining the algorithmic content of the software to determine whose inventions are being used and if none are then a patent should be filed. The algorithm whould be patented in a universal form so that future searches could be made more easily and more to the point, future programming tasks made much simpler -- simply dip into the library to find out the solution.
--GnomeProj.
No, it's correct, Australia never had a US-Style "fair use" provision in the Copyright act. I know, because I sought specific legal advice on this when I was going to use a short movie clip at a tradeshow as a demo. The lawyers went berserk. THERE IS NO FAIR USE IN AUSTRALIA, they shouted at me!
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Don't move to New Zealand. We Aussies need all the room and sheep we can get over there for our retirement.
Most people have accounts with multiple banks and can't remember which ones send emails and which ones don't. Also the banks (and other companies with online transactions such as Best Buy) confuse the hell out of me by sending their 'newsletter' emails from wierd domains and/or include links with suspicious URLs or domains. I don't trust _any_ email I receive from anything remotely resembling a bank...
I won't read Wired because of their tobacco advertising, and James Cameron.
People going crazy about the death of free software in Australia is ridiculous. Patents are a huge stimulus to innovation, as shown by study after study. Only those that have never spent their own sweat and tears developing something truly original will begrudge the right of those that do to DETERMINE what can be done with that invention. The inventor is not forced to charge huge royalties for an invention, but they can if they want. If they charge too much they create an incentive for someone to invent their way around them and then do whatever THEY want with the fruits of their labors. Patents are one of the most brilliant inventions in the history of lawmaking. They are a balanced contract between society and the inventor. In return for teaching everyone else how to do something you get to exploit it for 20 years. No one company or individual owns a whole field: there are always lots of people developing and inventing. When there is a healthy development community, there should be patents in place to determine who gets paid for what. Inventions that improve the quality of human life or make some computing process simpler or faster do not grow on trees. Most people who criticise software patents have never read one! Go to uspto.gov and find the most incredible reference library of human knowledge that has ever existed. Knowledge and creativity on every technological subject is there for everyone to read and learn from. Find out what has gone before and add to it! Don't stand there saying, "I wished I'd thought of that!" or "good idea, thanks, I'll use that myself," or "thanks for spending half your life and millions of dollars inventing that, you've saved me a lot of effort." Face it we live in a world whose unit of exchange is money and while it is somewhat of a blunt instrument when it comes to exchanging knowledge, the patent system sharpens it a lot. The alternative is to return to an era where people hoarded knowledge in "guilds" like in the middle ages where secret formulas and mystical spells ruled the day. People would not share information. The patent system is great, but the application of it needs constant scrutiny (like any area of law). The USPTO simply grant too many patents on things that often overlap with prior art (previous inventions whether patented or not.) This is the real problem with software patents -- some clever programmer should invent (and patent) efficient ways of comparing software and determining the algorithmic content of the software to determine whose inventions are being used and if none are then a patent should be filed. The algorithm whould be patented in a universal form so that future searches could be made more easily and more to the point, future programming tasks made much simpler -- simply dip into the library to find out the solution. --GnomeProj.
No, it's correct, Australia never had a US-Style "fair use" provision in the Copyright act. I know, because I sought specific legal advice on this when I was going to use a short movie clip at a tradeshow as a demo. The lawyers went berserk. THERE IS NO FAIR USE IN AUSTRALIA, they shouted at me!
The BBC is doing exactly this : see Dyke to open up BBC archive