How about getting paid for your time amongst many others?
So we should be rewarded in fewer ways? We should only be rewarded if our IP can be protected due to the fact that it can't be copied (e.g. in writing business applications)?
Just as some obvious starts reducing the time period (as the PP proposes), reducing the scope (e.g. fair use much wider, separating so-called moral rights, de-criminialize etc.), reducing the hiding/secrecy (e.g. Hollywood acounting - far too easy to hide massive scams with "IP" so have much stricter transparency rules with any money associated with IP), taxing DRM (artificial scarcity and market manipulation should be paid for) and reducing the penalties (copying is not stealing no matter how much you wish it was). There are many possibilities.
All things which dilute protection of IP, and will make it harder to reward content creators. That's an improvement only for certain people, and only in the short-term. No thanks.
I would have thought they'd already be doing this with credit card details since forever anyway, and getting much more informative data to mine as a result.
Well suggest how to improve copyright, rather than tear down the only thing that rewards us for our work, and I'll "expand my horizons". Right now I don't see any of that.
I'm a creator, and I'm in favor of copyright. That is both for open source projects, where the copyright keeps my work from being stolen, and for proprietary projects, where the copyright keeps my work from being stolen.
I guess we'll let democracy decide.:) Let's just say my IP protections don't feel very threatened by this group of crackpots.
Don't worry, no sane Australian will be voting for them.. As an Australian software developer I assure you I'm all for sensible, realistic IP protection. (But no more than is necessary to reward innovation / creativity.)
Not usually, they typically pay someone to do a certain job by whatever means within the law when contracting.
It would probably go against their IT policy though to allow someone else access to your account, and if he signed any NDAs or other IP agreements without getting the Chinese subcontractor to sign (which would still be pretty questionable) then he'll be in trouble.
He was saying that computer science isn't really about computers. I think that is nonsense.
If you want to discuss whether the statement "computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes" is strictly logically correct in some way.. I couldn't care less.
There is a lot of overlap between what's in a computer science course and what's in a software engineering course. The fact that there is such an overlap should point us to the fact that computer science isn't this weird abstract offshoot of mathematics that isn't really related to actual computers, but that it is very practical information which gives you a firm grounding in how computers function.
Computer science to computers is more like human biology to surgery, than telescopes to astronomy. You can be an expert telescope maker / maintainer, and use a telescope, without knowing a thing about astronomy. You cannot be an expert computer maker / maintainer / programmer without knowing computer science.
Why not hire someone to fill the place within the organization? I interact with a lot of people on a day to day basis who are very smart and knowledgeable within their fields, but when it comes to automating some mundane task or sharing information in a structured way it's outside of their area of expertise.
There are three possible approaches in that scenario:
They learn how to script / code themselves (most of them won't have the time/stamina, and even if they did they wouldn't be able to share the results so you get duplicated effort)
They hire an external company to write the software for them (but the overhead of dealing with another company that doesn't know your business and needs formal requirements can be huge, and you can still get the duplicated effort / lack of sharing)
You have an in-house team (3 people for 1500+ employees does the job for us), that manages custom software for specific purposes. They can direct people's requirements to either being 3rd party, having too high cost / reward, or requiring in-house software. With access to all the existing databases, with intimate knowledge of the business, with ties to various departments within the business, they have not only the skills but also the business knowledge, the access, and the relationships, to ensure that necessary software can be developed quickly, efficiently, and then propagated to any other staff / projects which need the same thing.
You can't have an in-house team that tries to reinvent the wheel and write software where it's unnecessary, that's pure waste, but for a large organization having a small team that can take care of things that really do need to be done in-house can give a big competitive advantage.
Yeah, and I need to know the number of joules needed for this processor to compute SHA-256->WHIRLPOOL rainbow tables per chain, for a chain length of 1000. Why do they give such generalized figures anyway?
Yeah.. wanting something better citing specific examples, what a nerve. If you ask me people should quit bitching and move on from this whole "improvement" nonsense.
I like the new UI; one of the big complaints about it is that it's just a start menu that you need to get through to see the standard desktop. That'll change as more apps start to use the new UI, like VLC. I think it's great that an established OSS project is going for cutting edge new platforms under its own steam instead of sitting around and waiting for a new enthusiast to do it (and probably get a bashing from the main dev group for doing so).
For media consumption devices yes; they mean a marketplace in which theft is harder, so software is cheaper and there's more experimentation with DLC, and it makes malware much harder to propogate, no devices which can't afford background processes or anti-virus.
For media creation devices it's a nice option to have at least.
Also I've written apps for my Windows Phone; they're easy to write, and they're pretty specific to things I want (graphing my phone data usage, implementing my password system). They didn't get accepted into the marketplace because I didn't meet a couple of requirements (e.g. pressing Back doesn't take you out of the app from the welcome screen; a reasonable complaint), and since I'm not desperate to get onto the marketplace I haven't yet bothered to fix them up.
I can run my software, the marketplace loses out on some relatively unpolished/personal software, I don't get any unpolished/personal software on the marketplace; it's a tradeoff I can live with.
To be honest more often than not poor code will just be about getting something out there with the minimum work, rather than because of deadlines. The code is usually boring, and/or it's already poor, so few will come along and sort it out to make things easier down the line (especially when even the best rewrites are usually more risky than a minor hack to a hacked up system, in the short term).
It's not about increasing the power of new bombs, it's about increasing their reliability / taking care of old bombs without needing to do nuclear tests.
Slashdot Mirror
How about getting paid for your time amongst many others?
So we should be rewarded in fewer ways? We should only be rewarded if our IP can be protected due to the fact that it can't be copied (e.g. in writing business applications)?
Just as some obvious starts reducing the time period (as the PP proposes), reducing the scope (e.g. fair use much wider, separating so-called moral rights, de-criminialize etc.), reducing the hiding/secrecy (e.g. Hollywood acounting - far too easy to hide massive scams with "IP" so have much stricter transparency rules with any money associated with IP), taxing DRM (artificial scarcity and market manipulation should be paid for) and reducing the penalties (copying is not stealing no matter how much you wish it was). There are many possibilities.
All things which dilute protection of IP, and will make it harder to reward content creators. That's an improvement only for certain people, and only in the short-term. No thanks.
I would have thought they'd already be doing this with credit card details since forever anyway, and getting much more informative data to mine as a result.
Well suggest how to improve copyright, rather than tear down the only thing that rewards us for our work, and I'll "expand my horizons". Right now I don't see any of that.
No, but I need more than 5.
You realize copyright protects OSS software? Check my homepage if you think to be in favor of IP I must be anti-OSS..
I'm a creator, and I'm in favor of copyright. That is both for open source projects, where the copyright keeps my work from being stolen, and for proprietary projects, where the copyright keeps my work from being stolen.
:) Let's just say my IP protections don't feel very threatened by this group of crackpots.
I guess we'll let democracy decide.
Don't worry, no sane Australian will be voting for them.. As an Australian software developer I assure you I'm all for sensible, realistic IP protection. (But no more than is necessary to reward innovation / creativity.)
That's my problem also, I found it weird reading an article from the BBC about why we hate horsemeat, as if that's what this is about..
Yeah I hate interactive websites..
Not usually, they typically pay someone to do a certain job by whatever means within the law when contracting.
It would probably go against their IT policy though to allow someone else access to your account, and if he signed any NDAs or other IP agreements without getting the Chinese subcontractor to sign (which would still be pretty questionable) then he'll be in trouble.
You are not arguing against what he said.
He was saying that computer science isn't really about computers. I think that is nonsense.
If you want to discuss whether the statement "computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes" is strictly logically correct in some way.. I couldn't care less.
There is a lot of overlap between what's in a computer science course and what's in a software engineering course. The fact that there is such an overlap should point us to the fact that computer science isn't this weird abstract offshoot of mathematics that isn't really related to actual computers, but that it is very practical information which gives you a firm grounding in how computers function.
I don't get it.
Everyone who comes by our department has "an IT background."
Smart people can (evidently) be wrong sometimes.
Computer science to computers is more like human biology to surgery, than telescopes to astronomy. You can be an expert telescope maker / maintainer, and use a telescope, without knowing a thing about astronomy. You cannot be an expert computer maker / maintainer / programmer without knowing computer science.
I find that you usually do get the ebook, at least with the majority of technical books I buy.
There are three possible approaches in that scenario:
You can't have an in-house team that tries to reinvent the wheel and write software where it's unnecessary, that's pure waste, but for a large organization having a small team that can take care of things that really do need to be done in-house can give a big competitive advantage.
Yeah, and I need to know the number of joules needed for this processor to compute SHA-256->WHIRLPOOL rainbow tables per chain, for a chain length of 1000. Why do they give such generalized figures anyway?
Isn't it more fair to distribute the tax according to use?
Yeah.. wanting something better citing specific examples, what a nerve. If you ask me people should quit bitching and move on from this whole "improvement" nonsense.
If you don't like it don't use it. (But you will, of course, eventually. And once you've accepted the change you'll like it. As always.)
I like the new UI; one of the big complaints about it is that it's just a start menu that you need to get through to see the standard desktop. That'll change as more apps start to use the new UI, like VLC. I think it's great that an established OSS project is going for cutting edge new platforms under its own steam instead of sitting around and waiting for a new enthusiast to do it (and probably get a bashing from the main dev group for doing so).
For media consumption devices yes; they mean a marketplace in which theft is harder, so software is cheaper and there's more experimentation with DLC, and it makes malware much harder to propogate, no devices which can't afford background processes or anti-virus.
For media creation devices it's a nice option to have at least.
Also I've written apps for my Windows Phone; they're easy to write, and they're pretty specific to things I want (graphing my phone data usage, implementing my password system). They didn't get accepted into the marketplace because I didn't meet a couple of requirements (e.g. pressing Back doesn't take you out of the app from the welcome screen; a reasonable complaint), and since I'm not desperate to get onto the marketplace I haven't yet bothered to fix them up.
I can run my software, the marketplace loses out on some relatively unpolished/personal software, I don't get any unpolished/personal software on the marketplace; it's a tradeoff I can live with.
To be honest more often than not poor code will just be about getting something out there with the minimum work, rather than because of deadlines. The code is usually boring, and/or it's already poor, so few will come along and sort it out to make things easier down the line (especially when even the best rewrites are usually more risky than a minor hack to a hacked up system, in the short term).
It's not about increasing the power of new bombs, it's about increasing their reliability / taking care of old bombs without needing to do nuclear tests.