January 25, 2012
On 24/01/2012 00:13, Walter Bright wrote:
<snip>
> Copyrights expire after 20 years. Renewable for another 20 years for a fee of $1000/year
> per registered copyright.

So your idea is to make it harder for people to keep their works copyrighted?

Under your plan, what will happen to copyrighted works that have existed for years?  Will they expire right away if they're 20 or more years old, or remain under copyright for 20 years from now?

And will existing rules (literature expires 70 years after the author's death, music recordings expire 50 years after creation, etc.) still apply in addition to this?

Stewart.
January 25, 2012
"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:op.v8l5cqtfeav7ka@localhost.localdomain...
>
> I just stayed in a hotel this past weekend, where the bedside lamp had those same O and | symbols.  When I wanted to turn the light on or off, do you really think I spent a single microsecond contemplating or interpreting what those symbols mean?  Fuck no!  I just flipped the switch!  If the switches had no symbols I would get the same result.  The symbols added 0 benefit to the switch.
>

Yea. I misunderstood. Naturally, the symbols don't hinder usage. It's just that they just don't add much (at least when it's something where it's obvious whether it's off or on). Another good example to back up what you're saying is how typical household lightswitches never have a prinited indication - even on setups where multiple switches control the same light (and therefore it's not a simple "up vs down"). And that works out fine.

>
> I find a large lack of common sense in most designs today.

I feel the same way :)

> You may hate  to hear it, but the company that usually gets this right is Apple :)  My  palm phone had an LED that flashed telling me "hey I have a signal  still!"  My iPhone which is on and working gives me no indication until I  try to use it that it is still on and connected.  Which is exactly the  time I need to know.  Who fucking cares if it lost a signal while sitting  on the table not being used?
>

There are certain *elements* of some apple designs that I think are good (although I think saying apple "usually" gets it right is WAAAAY off the mark). For example, like I said somewhere else recently, the swiping would have been a great idea to aid novices if it had been an optional *addition* to an interface that was actually practical.

It's not that I think *all* elements of *all* their designs are bad: I just think they have an outright addiction to taking minimalism and "treat the user like an idiot" waaaay too far. They treat those things like Java treats OO, and to similarly disasterous results. (At least, that's the problem I have with apple's *designs*. As far as the way they run their business, I think they're evil to the point of making MS look like the EFF.)

But then sometimes Apple's design people are just *completely* off their fucking rockers: Turn off an iPod? Hold "up" for five seconds! Jesus shit, that came from *apple*?!? The alleged king of good "intuitive" design? Just how much acid *had* Jobs been dropping?

>> I want *less* lights. Much, much *much* less. Not more.
>
> But you have to admit, it is universal that when a light is on, you know something is "on."  It's hard to misinterpret (except for those cursed off lights).
>

Yea. A little too universal though, unfortunately... :/


January 25, 2012
"Stewart Gordon" <smjg_1998@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:jfnoph$p5c$1@digitalmars.com...
> On 24/01/2012 00:13, Walter Bright wrote:
> <snip>
>> Copyrights expire after 20 years. Renewable for another 20 years for a
>> fee of $1000/year
>> per registered copyright.
>

I can't answer for Walter. But, for me:

> So your idea is to make it harder for people to keep their works copyrighted?
>

God yes.

> Under your plan, what will happen to copyrighted works that have existed for years?  Will they expire right away if they're 20 or more years old,

Hopefully.

> or remain under copyright for 20 years from now?
>
> And will existing rules (literature expires 70 years after the author's death, music recordings expire 50 years after creation, etc.) still apply in addition to this?
>

All of those copyright extension acts, such as Sunny Bozo's, should be retroactively nullified.


January 25, 2012
On 1/24/2012 6:18 PM, Stewart Gordon wrote:
> On 24/01/2012 00:13, Walter Bright wrote:
> <snip>
>> Copyrights expire after 20 years. Renewable for another 20 years for a fee of
>> $1000/year
>> per registered copyright.
>
> So your idea is to make it harder for people to keep their works copyrighted?

After 20 years, yes. And I speak as someone who makes a living selling copyrighted material.


> Under your plan, what will happen to copyrighted works that have existed for
> years? Will they expire right away if they're 20 or more years old, or remain
> under copyright for 20 years from now?

They'd follow the same rules. If they're more than 20 years old, but less than 40, the owner can pay $1000/yr to continue the copyright. Older than 40 years, then public domain.


> And will existing rules (literature expires 70 years after the author's death,
> music recordings expire 50 years after creation, etc.) still apply in addition
> to this?

No.
January 25, 2012
On Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:46:05 -0500, Nick Sabalausky <a@a.a> wrote:

> "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:op.v8l5cqtfeav7ka@localhost.localdomain...
>>
>> You may hate  to hear it, but the company that usually gets this right is
>> Apple :)  My  palm phone had an LED that flashed telling me "hey I have a
>> signal  still!"  My iPhone which is on and working gives me no indication
>> until I  try to use it that it is still on and connected.  Which is
>> exactly the  time I need to know.  Who fucking cares if it lost a signal
>> while sitting  on the table not being used?
>>
>
> There are certain *elements* of some apple designs that I think are good
> (although I think saying apple "usually" gets it right is WAAAAY off the
> mark). For example, like I said somewhere else recently, the swiping would
> have been a great idea to aid novices if it had been an optional *addition*
> to an interface that was actually practical.

I read that post.  I don't think you used it enough.  The swiping *is not* the only interface to the photos.  You can scroll rapidly through a list of "albums" (using swiping, but it has a "throw and catch" feel to it, unlike swiping individual photos), or the thumbnails of an album (or all photos), and while in the single-photo view, tapping once on the screen brings up left and right buttons so you can quickly advance or go back through photos (including holding down the button to have it go through extremely fast).  I think there are plenty of practical ways to look at photos, you just didn't see them all.  (BTW, tapping the screen to bring up "more interface" is a very common iOS idiom)

On the iPad, it the albums view has a gimmicky feature where you can "explode" the album to quickly see the thumbnails for it with a pinch-zoom move.

The only issue I have with it is that iTunes' interface is completely useless when it comes to selecting photos to load.  On my PC, I have all my photos organized into folders named after the date they were taken.  So in iTunes, in order to let's say, load photos from the last 2 years on my iPad, I have to go through and check every *single* folder that I want to copy.  And better yet, there's no way to select a *range* of folders.  I don't know how it is on mac, maybe it has better integration with iPhoto.  But it's utterly useless on the PC unless your entire photo catalog fits on your device (not the case for me).

For that reason, I haven't done much with the photo app on my iPad.

FWIW, I have not always been an apple fan.  My first real apple product was my iPhone, purchased in 2010.  Now I have a macbook, and I have to say I'm very impressed with it (it does have a quad-core i7, so that may be a good reason).  So maybe it's just post-iPhone apple I'm more impressed with :)

>
> It's not that I think *all* elements of *all* their designs are bad: I just
> think they have an outright addiction to taking minimalism and "treat the
> user like an idiot" waaaay too far. They treat those things like Java treats
> OO, and to similarly disasterous results. (At least, that's the problem I
> have with apple's *designs*. As far as the way they run their business, I
> think they're evil to the point of making MS look like the EFF.)

I'm not so much impressed by the minimalistic interface as I am to the attention to details.  For example, on my iPhone, it comes with a set of headphones with a remote + mic inline on the earbuds.  This has a 4-contact plug.  A standard headphone jack has 3 contacts.  What impressed me about iPhone is that it remembers the volume level I set when it's plugged into a 3 contact jack (which I use at work w/ speakers) vs. a 4 contact jack (which I use exclusively with my headphones).  That's also separate from the volume level of the phone when not plugged into anything.

Things like that are not "main features", but they are why apple stuff just seems to "work" without you noticing how helpful it's being.

And yeah, there are some details that I wish weren't minimalized (editing remembered wifi settings would be nice).

> But then sometimes Apple's design people are just *completely* off their
> fucking rockers: Turn off an iPod? Hold "up" for five seconds! Jesus shit,
> that came from *apple*?!? The alleged king of good "intuitive" design? Just
> how much acid *had* Jobs been dropping?

Yeah, I think it's generally considered bad form to give one button multiple uses.  A symbolic label would have helped here :)

-Steve
January 25, 2012
On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:08:40 +1100, Steven Schveighoffer <schveiguy@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Me too :)  We have a TV in the bedroom where the light was so bright, my wife couldn't sleep.  So I taped over it.
>
> My new TV has a much dimmer light, but it's still there.  You can configure the light to turn off when it's on, but you can't configure it to be off all the time.  Again, I think genius politicians who know much better than me how to keep my family safe have decided this for me...

Turn it off at the wall switch. You save some energy costs and get a tiny bit more exercise too.

-- 
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia
January 25, 2012
"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:op.v8melay5eav7ka@localhost.localdomain...
>
> I read that post.  I don't think you used it enough.  The swiping *is not* the only interface to the photos.  You can scroll rapidly through a list of "albums" (using swiping, but it has a "throw and catch" feel to it, unlike swiping individual photos),

Yea, I didn't like the "throw and catch" feel. Too timing-sensitive.

> or the thumbnails of an album (or all  photos), and while in the single-photo view, tapping once on the screen  brings up left and right buttons so you can quickly advance or go back  through photos (including holding down the button to have it go through  extremely fast).

Shit, now that you mention it, I do seem to have a vague memory of breifly noticing that and then completely forgetting...My official excuse is "It's been awhile" ;)


> The only issue I have with it is that iTunes' interface is completely useless when it comes to selecting photos to load.  On my PC, I have all my photos organized into folders named after the date they were taken.  So in iTunes, in order to let's say, load photos from the last 2 years on my iPad, I have to go through and check every *single* folder that I want to copy.  And better yet, there's no way to select a *range* of folders.  I don't know how it is on mac, maybe it has better integration with iPhoto. But it's utterly useless on the PC unless your entire photo catalog fits on your device (not the case for me).
>

That bring up one of the things I hate about Apple's (and everyone's really) mobile devices: There's no reason the data shouldn't be accessible like any other USB drive. But everyone would rather try to force lock-in.


> FWIW, I have not always been an apple fan.  My first real apple product was my iPhone, purchased in 2010.  Now I have a macbook, and I have to say I'm very impressed with it (it does have a quad-core i7, so that may be a good reason).  So maybe it's just post-iPhone apple I'm more impressed with :)
>

Heh, I haven't always been an Apple hater. My very first computer was an Apple IIc, and I still think the world of it. I guess I'm just more a Woz fan than a Jobs one. Then I got a 486 and forgot about Apple (just like most of the world did) until OSX came along.

I was very intrigued by OSX at the time and got an eMac (10.1) to play around with. It was fully my intention to switch to it as my primary system, and that's how I used it for about a year or so. Aside from the Dock being a sub-par version of the Taskbar, I was genuinely impressed with it at first. But then I slowly started having problems with it: Technical problems, irritating restrictions, some things that I just couldn't get used to even though I had been convinced I would get used to, etc. But Windows has never been perfect either, so I was still more or less happy with it and intended to stick with it.

Then 10.2 came out and everyone I talked to raved that it "fixes all of 10.1's problems!" So I got it. And learned that people are filthy liars ;) It barely fixed a damn thing. A small handful of partial-fixes here and there, but that was it. The problems kept up and somewhere in the second year I found myself using it less and less (just to get things done), and using my "secondary" XP system more and more. And then OSX's issues and Apple's arrogance just started to annoy me more and more, and my eMac basically died (and would have been quickly abandoned by Apple even if it hadn't died), and that was the end of me and Apple. By the time 10.3 came out, and people made the same claims about it that they had made about 10.2...Well, "fool me twice"...

Then Apple went on to make a bunch of other stuff that I would keep an open mind about at first, but then made me scratch my head and think "How the hell do people like this?". Now I just simply trust Apple to be totally nuts in whatever they pull out of their ass^H^H^Hhat.

>>
>> It's not that I think *all* elements of *all* their designs are bad: I
>> just
>> think they have an outright addiction to taking minimalism and "treat the
>> user like an idiot" waaaay too far. They treat those things like Java
>> treats
>> OO, and to similarly disasterous results. (At least, that's the problem I
>> have with apple's *designs*. As far as the way they run their business, I
>> think they're evil to the point of making MS look like the EFF.)
>
> I'm not so much impressed by the minimalistic interface as I am to the attention to details.  For example, on my iPhone, it comes with a set of headphones with a remote + mic inline on the earbuds.  This has a 4-contact plug.  A standard headphone jack has 3 contacts.  What impressed me about iPhone is that it remembers the volume level I set when it's plugged into a 3 contact jack (which I use at work w/ speakers) vs. a 4 contact jack (which I use exclusively with my headphones).  That's also separate from the volume level of the phone when not plugged into anything.
>
> Things like that are not "main features", but they are why apple stuff just seems to "work" without you noticing how helpful it's being.
>

I think part of my experience was that, yea, there's often some details that are nice here or there, but they always seem to screw up on fundamentals.

>
> Yeah, I think it's generally considered bad form to give one button multiple uses.

"Modal interface". Yea, that's the problem with interface minimization: It tends to increase modality which is often worse.

For example: I'll take a good side-mounted potentiometer knob for my volume control over the iPod-Classic/Zune (or worse - iPad/iPod-Touch) volume mechanism anyday: It's always *right there*, it always works, it always remembers what you set it at, you never even need to look at it, and when you're not looking at it's *still* it's far more accurate and precise. "It just works."

> A symbolic label would have helped here :)
>

Heh :)


January 25, 2012
On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 03:43:15 -0500, Nick Sabalausky <a@a.a> wrote:

> "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:op.v8melay5eav7ka@localhost.localdomain...
>>
>> I read that post.  I don't think you used it enough.  The swiping *is not*
>> the only interface to the photos.  You can scroll rapidly through a list
>> of "albums" (using swiping, but it has a "throw and catch" feel to it,
>> unlike swiping individual photos),
>
> Yea, I didn't like the "throw and catch" feel. Too timing-sensitive.

It's an acquired skill.

>
>> or the thumbnails of an album (or all  photos), and while in the
>> single-photo view, tapping once on the screen  brings up left and right
>> buttons so you can quickly advance or go back  through photos (including
>> holding down the button to have it go through  extremely fast).
>
> Shit, now that you mention it, I do seem to have a vague memory of breifly
> noticing that and then completely forgetting...My official excuse is "It's
> been awhile" ;)

hehe :)

>> The only issue I have with it is that iTunes' interface is completely
>> useless when it comes to selecting photos to load.  On my PC, I have all
>> my photos organized into folders named after the date they were taken.  So
>> in iTunes, in order to let's say, load photos from the last 2 years on my
>> iPad, I have to go through and check every *single* folder that I want to
>> copy.  And better yet, there's no way to select a *range* of folders.  I
>> don't know how it is on mac, maybe it has better integration with iPhoto.
>> But it's utterly useless on the PC unless your entire photo catalog fits
>> on your device (not the case for me).
>>
>
> That bring up one of the things I hate about Apple's (and everyone's really)
> mobile devices: There's no reason the data shouldn't be accessible like any
> other USB drive. But everyone would rather try to force lock-in.

I can plug in my iPhone to my linux laptop, and see all the photos as a USB drive.  However, I don't think it's writable.

I think even Linux has the ability to play music from it.

>> FWIW, I have not always been an apple fan.  My first real apple product
>> was my iPhone, purchased in 2010.  Now I have a macbook, and I have to say
>> I'm very impressed with it (it does have a quad-core i7, so that may be a
>> good reason).  So maybe it's just post-iPhone apple I'm more impressed
>> with :)
>>
>
> Heh, I haven't always been an Apple hater. My very first computer was an
> Apple IIc, and I still think the world of it. I guess I'm just more a Woz
> fan than a Jobs one. Then I got a 486 and forgot about Apple (just like most
> of the world did) until OSX came along.
>
> I was very intrigued by OSX at the time and got an eMac (10.1) to play
> around with. It was fully my intention to switch to it as my primary system,
> and that's how I used it for about a year or so. Aside from the Dock being a
> sub-par version of the Taskbar, I was genuinely impressed with it at first.
> But then I slowly started having problems with it: Technical problems,
> irritating restrictions, some things that I just couldn't get used to even
> though I had been convinced I would get used to, etc. But Windows has never
> been perfect either, so I was still more or less happy with it and intended
> to stick with it.
>
> Then 10.2 came out and everyone I talked to raved that it "fixes all of
> 10.1's problems!" So I got it. And learned that people are filthy liars ;)
> It barely fixed a damn thing. A small handful of partial-fixes here and
> there, but that was it. The problems kept up and somewhere in the second
> year I found myself using it less and less (just to get things done), and
> using my "secondary" XP system more and more. And then OSX's issues and
> Apple's arrogance just started to annoy me more and more, and my eMac
> basically died (and would have been quickly abandoned by Apple even if it
> hadn't died), and that was the end of me and Apple. By the time 10.3 came
> out, and people made the same claims about it that they had made about
> 10.2...Well, "fool me twice"...

I hope I *don't* have that same experience...

I do like the idea that any time I can pop up a terminal and use my favorite unix commands :)  I know you can do that on Windows with cygwin or something similar, but the fact that it's built-in and expected is much nicer.  I haven't yet come across things that I miss.  The way apps stay "active" even when you close takes some getting used to.  But the thing fires up and shuts down in less than a minute.

I must rave about the trackpad on the macbook pro.  The interface is so damned good, I hate going back to my linux laptop (which I must do for work).

-Steve
January 25, 2012
"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:op.v8nbixzyeav7ka@localhost.localdomain...
>
> I must rave about the trackpad on the macbook pro.  The interface is so damned good, I hate going back to my linux laptop (which I must do for work).
>

A good trackpad?!? That seems difficult to believe. Whenever I use a laptop, I just grab/carry-around a trackball (or at least a mouse). I can barely use those touchpad things, and IBM's "clitmouse" is only a little bit better.


January 25, 2012
On 1/25/12 2:31 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Steven Schveighoffer"<schveiguy@yahoo.com>  wrote in message
> news:op.v8nbixzyeav7ka@localhost.localdomain...
>>
>> I must rave about the trackpad on the macbook pro.  The interface is so
>> damned good, I hate going back to my linux laptop (which I must do for
>> work).
>>
>
> A good trackpad?!? That seems difficult to believe. Whenever I use a laptop,
> I just grab/carry-around a trackball (or at least a mouse). I can barely use
> those touchpad things, and IBM's "clitmouse" is only a little bit better.

It's the first one I've ever used that I liked.  I like it so well, I even got an external "Magic Trackpad" for desktop use.