Memorizing a book is not infringing. Reciting to a large group of people -- by any means, whether from memory or not -- would be, if the book is copyrighted.

I remember this being a big area of interest about 15 years ago, but there doesn't seem to have been much about it lately. So long as it's done in real time and just for the reader, and not an audience, I would be inclined to say that it's not infringing the reproduction right, derivative right, or most significantly, the public performance right.

You've never had to buy a license to read a book. Perhaps if you're doing other things in association with your book reading, you might need a license for that but not for just reading.

We've yet to invent a general-purpose AI. These things aren't reading books the way we do. My understanding is that they're basically compiling statistical models, and figuring out how each word or part of word relates to others. Kind of a more complicated version of playing the autocomplete game on your phone, where you input one word in a text chat and then just choose whatever the next suggested word is. The sentences you get make sense for a little while, but become run-ons and start to loop.

Analyzing a work isn't a copyright infringement. Predicate work needed to reach the point of conducting an analysis might, though. And the output of the software might as well.

That and also not wanting machines to be able to write things that sound like something she might write. Licensing isn't all that relevant, as in many cases a license would simply not be granted.

Like I said, if a disk needs to be ejected at boot, you hold down the mouse button during boot and it should be ejected by the drive. This is even mentioned in the 128k's manual. The paperclip thing is only if nothing else works.

If the machine is already up, ejecting the disk normally should work fine as long as it isn't in use. If it is, you can close out whatever's using it or if it's already the boot disk, well, too late given that your issue was not wanting it to boot off that disk.

And yes, there were two originally hidden, but later sometimes subtle but immediately available "programmer's keys" for reset and interrupt. Given the flaky OS of the day, though, dropping into MACSbug was usually pretty pointless.

On older machines, you needed to order a small plastic clip that fit on the side and would poke the buttons hidden behind some of the vents. Eventually they were provided as small buttons on the case. Or you could just use the right sort of many-button keyboard shortcut.

The Xerox Alto was the internally used research project. The Xerox Star was marketed commercially but had way too steep a price to assemble a useful system -- since it basically required a small LAN of multiple machines and a laser printer -- for hardly anyone to buy.

Yeah, but it also was designed around 128kB of RAM (itself an increase over the original plan to go with 64kB as I recall) so it's not like it could have run multiple apps if they wanted it to.

They were just trying to build one computer back then -- not a platform that would be in use in the future.

In fairness there was no consistency then as to what other buttons did, if anything, and it was confusing to people who already had to be taught what a mouse even was and how to use it. Also, Apple's mice ship for some years now have multiple 'buttons' (technically trackpad areas -- the mice have no physical buttons at all), and the platform has supported contextual menus since the late 90s.

Also, this isn't really a Steve thing. The NeXT machines all had two button mice.

Totally untrue. The original Mac had a power switch on the back left side. A big rocker switch near the compartment for changing the clock battery.

Power switches on the keyboard didn't appear until ADB came along for peripherals, which on the Mac was '87. Annoyingly not all of the machines could be powered on from the keyboard even as late as the mid-90s. And none of them would just shut down from the keyboard -- there was always a dialog box that could be canceled. The button was more related to the Apple II keyboard mounted reset switch.

Auto-inject was even sweeter. I never heard of auto eject failing in except in truly ancient drives (20-30 years old) that need to be lubricated and fixed up anyway. And if the machine crashed the disk would either eject on reboot, could be forced by holding the mouse button down during boot, or in the absolute worst case, ejected using a straightened paperclip in a subtle but conspicuous hole even with power off.

I don't think that was a Steve thing either -- hell, it took some effort just to get him to agree to the Sony 3.5" disk, which was a new thing and no standard at the time. Auto eject isn't a bad idea though, especially on removable media, so long as it can be overridden.

I have never had a problem with self-checkout. I have been to plenty of different stores. I have suspicions about the motives of the anti-self-checkout people. They remind me of the people justifying Oregon laws that require that some guy is paid to pump your gas for you. If you want to not self-checkout, or for me, when I have too many things, there is always the checker available.

Plot twist: Human beings are in the clutches of self-winding watches, everywhere.

Authors are not inherently entitled to copyrights. They can carry any number of conditions, and in the past, have done. There's even still a few on the books.

There's no reason Congress cannot decide to say that if a work is allowed to go out of print for, say, a year, with some definition as to what constitutes being in print (so that authors don't just have to whip up a single copy) and what sorts of works the statute would apply to, then it enters the public domain. This would tend to encourage authors to keep works in print at all costs until it's no longer economical to do so, at which point they'd enter the public domain.

On a related note, you may wish to look at 17 USC 303(a), which encouraged authors to publish certain works before a deadline in order to lock in a certain duration of protection. The EU did something similar resulting in certain rare sound recordings getting very limited pressings in order to meet the minimum threshold.

Yes! We know this for a fact because: 1) Authorial copyright as we know now it did not exist anywhere until England in 1710, and did not become widespread until well into the 19th century. And 2) Even then, there were many limits, and it was not uncommon for a given author to not get copyright protection due to some failing on their part (such as publication without notice or registration, in the US).

Yet many works were published, many of which are among the finest works humanity has ever created.

Protecting authors is a means to an end, but it is not the goal of copyright. Basically, the goal of copyright is to promote the progress of science (i.e. knowledge). This is accomplished by A) encouraging authors to create and publish works that they otherwise would not have created and published. This is also accomplished by B) having the works be in the public domain so that they can be freely disseminated as widely as possible, used to the fullest possible extent, and serve as the basis for derivative creative works, which are treated with equal respect by copyright policy.

The mechanism we use to encourage authors for prong A is to give them a monopoly concerning a work. This is directly at odds with prong B. To address this, the monopoly is limited in time and scope -- not all uses of a work fall within copyright and it won't last forever. Nevertheless the system is largely controlled by the various publishing interests (movie studios, book publishers, record labels) with little concern for the public interest which should control. But if in actual practice the public interest was actually looked after, there would surely be other conditions that would limit copyrights so that authors got the minimum copyright necessary -- in duration and in the scope of rights protected -- that got them to create and publish their work, since, after all, giving them any more than that would be wasteful.

Depends on how inventive it is, I suppose.

The part of the copyright and patent clause that concerns copyrights and creative works is the promotion of science, which in the late 18th century when it was written, basically just meant 'knowledge.' The useful arts falls under patents and inventions, and means something like applied technology. There are still traces of this in English -- Patents deal with state of the art technology but the invention must be disclosed in a way understandable to a person having ordinary skill in the art, and must not be anticipated by previous examples, i.e. prior art.

"Stop trying to make [web 3.0] happen.
It's not going to happen."

I do not get it.

I love that there are so many games. I love games from AAA to A to B to C, there are even some D grade games that I love. The attitude is: yes it is trash, but it is MY trash.

What is the problem that the author has? He cannot play EVERY single game?

Just wait until he discovers how many books people are writing.

Owning an original piece of art doesn't mean you have the copyright. The most the guy with the cels could do would be to publicly display them. This is the same sort of foolish behavior that the dopes that bought that Dune book the other year engaged in.

Yup. Godzilla was absolutely amazing.