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From: Chris Ridd on 27 Apr 2010 08:10 On 2010-04-27 12:18:22 +0100, Sak Wathanasin said: > On 25 Apr, 11:30, Chris Ridd <chrisr...(a)mac.com> wrote: > >> There's some brilliant stuff in the latest Photoshop - they clearly >> have some very talented developers. Unfortunately they appear to put >> all the trainees on the installers and updaters. > > Yeah, well installer and updaters aren't the most exciting of > projects, so if it's like anywhere else I've ever worked in, the > senior developers will pull rank and refuse to do it. I suppose they're the computing equivalent of left-handed screwdrivers and stripy paint. -- Chris
From: Rowland McDonnell on 27 Apr 2010 11:53 Richard Tobin <richard(a)cogsci.ed.ac.uk> wrote: > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > >> The gross injustice is the ownership of ideas. > > >[comments largely about copyright] > > Copyright isn't the ownership of ideas; it covers expression rather > than the ideas themselves, though sometimes it is extended too far in > that direction. I'm not sure what you mean by that. Surely patents do that, too? There's no law against having anything inside your head - the ideas, be they an arrangement of words or pigment or of engineering parts - but in the case of copyright you're restricted on reproducing the ideas, exactly as is the case with patents. I don't see any fundamental difference in being banned from copying a particular arrangement of words on paper and being banned from copying a particular arrangement of (say) transistors in an IC. Okay, in the case of a patent, you're banning something much wider than just one particular arrangement of parts (assuming you have a competent patent lawyer), but the principle's sound. So I think. > It's patents that are the real problem. You can have an idea and > not be allowed to use it because someone else had it first, or rather > patented it first. I recall an interesting thing in that line - Saxon Racing, a small British motorcycle racing team, received a snotty letter from BMW's lawyers demanding that they stop using BMW's patented front non-tele front suspension geometry. Saxon Racing responded with a magazine article - which I recalled reading at the time it was originally published - with close-up photos proving that BMW's patent was invalid since Saxon Racing had done it first. > It would be nice if people who had good ideas were always rewarded. The people who have the good ideas usually have them exploited by someone else, which is unjust. And I don't see any reason to put up with that sort of inequity - all sorts of injustices have been removed from societies due to people complaining loudly about them. Some get put back - for example, New Labour gave us new suss laws, which Mrs T's lot scrapped because they'd noticed that such laws cause resentment of the police and social disorder (i.e., set fire to Brixton, Toxteth, etc.). Who'd've thought that Maggie's lot would look like a beacon of social justice next to Bliar's disgraceful crew, eh? (and has anyone figured out if it's possible to kill Mandy? Perhaps Michael Howard could be hired as the hitman? - assuming that the older vampire is always the stronger one, it should work out.) > (It would also be nice if people who were kind to animals and helped > old ladies across the road were always rewarded.) But does the gain > outweigh the cost? I don't see that it does - not even to the firms running the rip-offs in question. > The patent system more often rewards large > corporations and inhibits creative individuals. The entire modern `intellectual property' system does so - copyright and patents now stifle creativity and assist big business in exploiting creativity at the expense of the creators. A big part of the problem was extending the scope of copyright in particular far beyond what makes any sense for the purposes of encouraging the creators: things now stay in copyright for far too many decades past the creator's death, permitting big business to continue to monopolise ancient ideas, and so reducing the demand for new ideas. The good news is that what with the internet, it's getting more practical to make a living from creative work without having to let yourself be raped by big business. The big firms will either adapt, or die. The death will be messy if they try to fight the inevitable, and that could be problematic. Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Rowland McDonnell on 27 Apr 2010 11:53 R <me32(a)privacy.net> wrote: > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > > It was why he wrote TeX - so he could typeset his books without the > > typesetters making a horrible mess of them (as they had been doing - he > > was driven to write TeX due to frustration with poor quality work done > > by others). TeX's just a side-show for Knuth - last major update in > > 1983[1], last bug fix I heard of was the obY2K fix (very minor, not > > needed to permit TeX to function, just a messed up data log issue). > > Yes. I used to have Concrete Mathematics (one of the co-authors > of which was Knuth) and the remarkable typsetting was evident in > that. It was, I might add, a wonderful book, very idiosyncratic in its > approach. Knuth is. What other sort of person would decide, in a fit of irritation at the typesetters, to write his own mathemtical typesetting computer program /and/ the fount support to go with it? And then gets a pipe organ fitted to his house? (Knuth originally thought he'd be able to knock off the TeX project during the summer break in 1978 IIRC, when all the students were aware. It took until 1983, and the use of several of those students...) > The paper was designed to last at least 200 years, IIRC > (I rarely do!). 100 year archiving paper is a pretty standard office product, you know. Books made of stitched (not glued) acid-free paper stored well on decent shelving somewhere cool dry and dark /normally/ last for centuries. Vellum's even better. But you can't beat clay tablets for longevity. dvitoclay has been proposed for long-term archiving purposes. (a TeX joke, that one - but it's true, my claim. Admittedly it wasn't a very serious proposal, and only made in response to my observation that if you want a really good archiving storage solution, you should think about the only storage solution <cough> that's been proven to last beyond the total collapse of civilization and several thousand years burial in sand) > The book was typset with TeX with experimental fonts > (e.g. AMS Euler). You can stil use that if you like - modern PS versions exist. >And, if you found an error in the book, the authors > would pay you for bringing it to their attention! The same applies to TeX, btw. > The reward is still > available: > > http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/gkp.html > > An error found will earn you 0x$1.00 (= $2.56) Oh! Is that all? ISTR the TeX bug-bounty is quite big now. Most of the cheques Knuth's sent out for finding TeX bugs haven't been cashed, so it's been rather cheap for him over the years: the cheques tend to get mounted in frames and hung on the wall. `Look how clever I am, I found a bug in Donald Knuth's code.' Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Dorian Gray on 27 Apr 2010 12:11 In article <1jhly6i.h19ufyelv5hcN%peterd.news(a)gmail.invalid>, peterd.news(a)gmail.invalid (Pd) wrote: > Dorian Gray <D.Gray(a)picture.invalid> wrote: > > > In article <4bd5e67c$0$2525$da0feed9(a)news.zen.co.uk>, > > "Graham J" <graham(a)invalid> wrote: > > > > > "Bruce Horrocks" <07.013(a)scorecrow.com> wrote in message > > > news:83m24uF48uU1(a)mid.individual.net... > > > > > > > > A friend of mine, years ago when leaving university, refused to work for > > > > British Aerospace (as they were then) and went for some firm whose name > > > > I've since forgotten. After a while his employers were bought out by > > > > someone larger, and then again, and then again until, eventually, after > > > > having worked for six different companies without ever moving desk, they > > > > were eventually bought out by BAe. At which point he resigned. :-) > > > > > > There was a similar story in the late 60's about a chap who was really > > > skilled at designing capacitors, and who worked for a small company. > > > Phillips offered him a spectacular contract, but he declined. In the end > > > Phillips bought the small company - so he resigned! > > > > These days, to avoid this kind of thing happening, an acquiring company > > in such a situation will always make it a condition of the sale that the > > technical team of the company being acquired remain intact for n years, > > where n is often 2. > > You can't stop someone resigning though. But then the acquiring company gets all their money back. It is up to the owners of the acquired company to make sure their people don't resign. They do this by bribing them with an eye-wateringly large wad of cash (taken from the eye-wateringly large wad of cash that they themselves just received) which the employees in question have to give back if they leave within n years. Invariably with such a deal the acquired company remains intact, and keeps its own culture and most of its autonomy, and keeps doing the same things - just with more resources. Why would the person want to leave, even if they hadn't just been given a huge gift for the promise of not doing so? Also, there is the guilt factor, that they would be wrecking the whole deal for the founders (who they like) and all of their cool colleagues, if they left. It is a strong disincentive to leaving.
From: D.M. Procida on 27 Apr 2010 12:31
Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > Knuth is. What other sort of person would decide, in a fit of > irritation at the typesetters, to write his own mathemtical typesetting > computer program /and/ the fount support to go with it? And then gets a > pipe organ fitted to his house? He fitted a pipe organ to his house because he was irritated with typesetters? It's certainly better than seething with useless frustration. Daniele |