hxa7241

22 ms·

151.
by hxa7241 15y ago
> if you accept the premise that the author of a work is entitled to be remunerated for the production of said work That is not the premise, that is the matter in question. If it is simply assumed as the answer, nothing has been said. A
152.
by hxa7241 15y ago
First: a third party is not bound by the contract. And if the contract cannot validly or practically secure you income, you cannot very well be said to be losing anything. Second: the big question is: why should we make the form of such a c
153.
by hxa7241 15y ago
A basic roundup of ethical problems for IP: * Conflict with fundamental personal liberty: Mill's idea that we have unrestricted liberty except to the extent that it injures someone else, is fairly standard. But IP conflicts with that, yet I
154.
by hxa7241 15y ago
It might make more sense as opposed to other propositions: some might say software engineering is about helping build better software, or building it more efficiently, or having more control over the building. The idea of helping with clari
155.
by hxa7241 15y ago
People are disputing about whether the pixelisation work is transformative enough. Well, this is absolutely hilarious really -- I mean, hold on, what is the original work we are talking about here? Photography. You know, where you put som
156.
by hxa7241 15y ago
> with language and the ability to spread new ideas from one individual to another We got ahead because we developed the first mesh-net -- spoken language . . . free and unencumbered by artificial legal restrictions like copyright. The
157.
by hxa7241 15y ago
As Eckermann recorded Goethe saying, on Friday 1831-03-25: Goethe showed me an elegant green elbow-chair, which he had lately bought at an auction. "However," said he, "I shall use it but little, or not at all; for all kinds of commodiousne
158.
by hxa7241 15y ago
But we are not talking about harmful stuff are we? The whole question here is about making good stuff. If we have deemed it good to make, how can it then be bad to have more use of it? That seems a rather insurmountable puzzle, which an ove
159.
by hxa7241 15y ago
This is a seemingly persuasive argument, but it does not really work. It is an argument that makes us smaller than we are. It asks us to compare what we have with nothing at all. Of course it is easier to think of what we have -- it is righ
160.
by hxa7241 15y ago
The more strongly everyone is inclined to cooperate, the more advantage there is to individually defect and exploit. And the more people defecting, the more benefit there is to cooperation. At the very core of moral theory is this conflict
161.
by hxa7241 15y ago
> we will all be able to read programs when they can be written in English and not in code. Anyone thinking along those lines needs to read Dijkstra: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EW... (and maybe tack this
162.
by hxa7241 15y ago
It is not the superficial appearance, it is the way it is used. Mathematics specifies a particular, limited, well-defined set of actions and relations. It is that character of those 'game rules' that make it mathematical, compared to genera
163.
by hxa7241 15y ago
Saying programming is writing is like saying building something is 'speaking to materials'. When you look at software, what you see is not a language, it is a machine . A machine that is presented in humanly understandable and communicable
164.
by hxa7241 15y ago
Is the browser needed from a technical or usable perspective? I do not know, but it seems difficult to separate that from the economic-architectural aspect, which really seems important. The browser is 'needed', is valuable, because it is a
165.
by hxa7241 15y ago
Lack of types gives the illusion of more modularity. As was mentioned -- there are still dependencies. The only difference is that, without types, checking whether the parts fit together is deferred until later -- but it will still be don
166.
by hxa7241 15y ago
Why not simply let people decide for themselves what they want to do or redo? What is the sense in having one person tell everyone else what is best for them? How does imposing some artificial restriction add anything? If someone wants to
167.
by hxa7241 15y ago
> how will it improve the public good? The prices would drop. That is the (main) public gain -- the public gets things it wants for less. That is quite sufficient justification alone.
168.
by hxa7241 15y ago
> much influenced by lobbying today 'Much' seems even to be understating it. One can ask the question: were any of those increases ever backed with evidence -- actual economic evidence that this deliberate restriction was sound? I do no
169.
by hxa7241 15y ago
Is it access to the networks, or that the networks are a fixed size? To put it another way: one might say the reason people cannot get into university is they score too low on their grades -- so the solution is to get everyone the training
170.
by hxa7241 15y ago
This is significantly similar to part of a note I wrote a month or two ago, about 'Software as web' http://www.hxa.name/notes/note-hxa7241-20110314T2011Z.html Functions calling (linking) each other, and being built out of available pieces
171.
by hxa7241 15y ago
> If I can get millions of people to pay $5.99 for Kellogg's Corn Flakes versus $2.99 for generic corn flakes, that's a strong brand. Is the product actually better? If not, that sounds like a dysfunctional market. Brand seems adjacent
172.
by hxa7241 15y ago
> Mrs Gaga is not a public servant We are all public servants. To cooperate with each other we are, to that extent, serving each other. And we want to cooperate because when we do we gain . We can cooperate enormously by sharing in
173.
by hxa7241 15y ago
If you keep everything to yourself, you help one person, yourself. If you share code, you benefit, what, 10 people? 100?, 1000?, 1000000? And if they share too . . . well you can see how the maths of that goes. The share-ability of informat
174.
by hxa7241 15y ago
This whole 'entitlement' angle is just wrong thinking here. The fundamental is that technological advance has given us something good, that we did not have before, for free. The sensible question is, how can we best benefit from it. Are we
175.
by hxa7241 15y ago
That is the inherent contradiction of IP in a digital world. One one hand you are supposed to be paying for a scarcity: someone expending time and resources to produce something. On the other hand you are supposed to be paying by buying a c
176.
by hxa7241 15y ago
Instead of talking of 'carrying' code -- Dijkstra frowned on that kind of metaphorical thinking (sensibly so) -- it might be clearer to rephrase and summarise this in more straightforward terms. The problem here is that larger code is more
177.
by hxa7241 15y ago
I think there are two different things happening here, which are not quite pinpointed. We have to work for both, but they are different kinds of work. With physical things, you want them to keep doing the same thing, but they degrade themse
178.
by hxa7241 15y ago
OK. Then I suppose the question is: why should it be library not built-in? The main thing not addressed in the article is: what are the language implementation implications? What are the pros and cons there?
179.
by hxa7241 15y ago
A few people have asked, what is the point? since trees and associative access can just be implemented with lists. It is the same basic point as having 'let' or 'case' etc. (which can all just be implemented with 'lambda' and 'if' etc.) --
180.
by hxa7241 15y ago
In all this you are glossing over what ownership really means (whatever that might be), and how that particular meaning is justified. It is inadequate to simply proclaim it all as some axiom. You need to explain it rationally. Let us assume

More ›