The Library's collections remain in the library. If you wanted to go there, manually duplicate millions of lines of decades-old code, and then redistribute it, that'd be your only option.

At least that provides some option. And if someone did that for code that entered the public domain, they would be free to disseminate it to anyone who wished to host it online.

A return to registration requirements (prohibited under the 1886 Berne Convention) would not solve the issue you seem to have a problem with, which is the refusal of copyright holders to make articles generally available to the public during the copyright term.

It doesn't have to be during the term of the copyright. But after the copyright expires and the work is supposed to enter the public domain, it would be nice to know that there will be a copy available somewhere. Part of the social contract in offering patents and copyrights to creators is that the public will be free to copy those works and the knowledge and culture will persist. Thanks to neverending extensions of copyright terms, it will likely be incredibly hard to get a copy of a work by the time it enters public domain.

but if it's something you can read, then it's something copyrighted

I thought that there were exemptions to things that can be copyrighted such as recipes. Is that true?

You're already talking to one.

And I appreciate your input and the possibility to learn about an important facet of modern society. While I have your attention, can you confirm that source code is in fact covered under trade secret AND copyright law or only one of those? Thanks.

That sounds reasonable enough. However, in your example where the employee leaves a printout on a printer in a cafe, copyright law would forbid you from making or disseminating copies of that work while I don't believe trade secret would prevent you from doing whatever you wanted with it.

So in this case, a copy of the Windows source taken from a cafe printer would be useless (in the U.S.) while the recipe to Coca-Cola on a cafe printer could be a goldmine. Again, I'm not an IP lawyer - these are simply suppositions based on my slight-better-than-average knowledge of IP law.

General public release has NEVER been a requirement for copyright.

You are correct, but for a long time it was required that you register the copyrighted work with the government. When the copyright expired on that work, the government could then release that work since it would fall under public domain.

Copyright to software code works no differently. If you want to keep it secret, then you rely on trade secret and contractual nondisclosure requirements. If it leaks beyond that, then you have (and HAVE ALWAYS HAD) the right to prohibit further reproduction.

I have always heard different. What has been told to me is that once the trade secret has been revealed, the cat is out of the bag and your legal options are extremely limited (beyond suing the shit out of the party that leaked the secret). This would be the perfect time for an IP lawyer to jump in and set us straight.

And since Windows 8 is available to the public - I fail to see how your claim that the system is broken has any merit.

The compiled binaries are released to the public and they are covered under copyright law. The source code used to build those compiled binaries is also covered under copyright law (yet the source isn't usually released) AND it is simultaneously covered by trade secret.

Copyright has never required the creator to release the work products used in the creation, only the final work

But in this case, the copyright violation is on the work products used in the creation (the source code). Microsoft claims copyright on the Windows source and on the Windows binaries.

Further, that internal work products (like interim builds and unfinished releases) can be treated as confidential and trade secrets is a well established principle.

I'm not debating that they're considered trade secrets, my point is that they are covered under trade secret AND copyright at the same time which is highly unusual - I am not aware of any other work that gets both of those protections simultaneously. Throw in patents on top of it and you get a triple decker of IP madness.

Your belief that the system is broken is based on a fundamental cluelessness about how the system works.

Ah, Slashdot! Where everyone knows more than everyone else!

Copyrighted works need never be released to the public.

You're only proving my point. Copyright works currently do NOT need to be released despite the fact that the original intention of copyright law was to make sure the work WAS released.

You are confusing patent law and copyright law.

No I am not. Patents and copyright were BOTH set up for the purpose of encouraging people to release their work.

The intention of copyright law is that you write things.

No, the intention of copyright law is to encourage people to make their works available to the public by motivating the creator with the power of monetization. It's the ARTS in the constitutional clause "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".

There is nothing wrong with writing things and keeping them secret.

Of course not. But if you want a monopoly on a body of work, you are supposed to actually release that work, not sit on it.

On Slashdot, we often talk about how ridiculous it is that software is covered by copyright AND patents, but no one addresses the fact that source code is also covered under trade secret law. This is a conflict of interest and shows how screwed up our intellectual property system is. The intent of copyright is that you get protection in return for making your works public. But in the case of source code, companies get all of the protections of copyright law on that code without being required to ever actually release the code to the public. That is made evident by this exact case.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting that every software development company should be forced to release its code, but I do think they should have to choose between receiving copyright protection by releasing the code or receive no copyright protection and keep the code guarded by trade secret. I can't think of any other industry that gets protection from both copyright and trade secret and I haven't heard anyone suggest why software should be made an exception.

I said that because most companies use hiring agencies to gather candidates for interviews and it has been my experience that the first question these hiring agencies ask is what you are looking to be paid. The second question is how firm are you on that price. The reason for this is that the employer gives the hiring agency a very specific salary range they are willing to pay and the hiring agencies want to get the best possible candidates without wasting the employer's time with candidates out of their price range. Therefore, whether you like it or not, the conversation usually starts with price and then moves over to discussing experience.

I didn't recognize it as an Ask Slashdot question because the question was incredibly broad, barely gave any detail, and did not ask for specific advice about a technical issue. But it'll generate page clicks (it got ours).

I personally believe that the experience older programmers provide over younger counterparts makes them a desirable hiring option. The catch is that the price has to be right. Some of the older developers demand two to three times the salary of younger programmers. When you do that, you have to ask yourself if you deliver quantity and/or quality two to three times greater than those younger programmers. If you honestly believe you do, then your next task is to prove that to prospective employers, but it's going to be a tough sell. It can take close to a year for someone to realize that they hired a fraud, so you're a more expensive gamble to that employer than a younger employee.

There are certainly older programmers who can produce much better software at faster rates than their younger counterparts, but it is difficult to prove and requires the employer to take a greater risk in hiring you.

Finally, is it me or was there no article at all? Seriously, Slashdot - WTF?

Everyone in the article keeps saying that Jackson is "shining a spotlight" on the problem. Is he really? He pointed out the lack of blacks and latinos in the tech industry and did fuck-all to state what he believes to be the problem and what we can do to resolve it. If he had come out with figures that showed that there were tons of unemployed or underployed blacks and latinos in the tech industry and that the underlying problem is due to discrimination, then that would give us something to work with. But that doesn't seem to be the case at all. What does he expect these companies to do? Hire underqualified people just to get the numbers to match?

This sounds like what my dad was telling me the other day. He used to work for the federal government and they had very detailed lists of minorities in each department. Every department was often under stress to get their numbers to match percentage of populations. But what population do you go by? National? Regional? Many of these departments were more focused on meeting these quotas than hiring the most qualified candidates, so overall these systems are counterproductive.

And if we're so focused on quotas of fairness, should we put a quota that only 13.9% of NFL players should be black? The fact is that Mr. Jackson did a lot of good when qualified black people couldn't find work due directly to discrimination. And while discrimination may not be completely gone, it is a lot better than it used to be and not every case of underrepresentation today is due to discrimination. So keep fighting the good fight against discrimination, but if you're going to complain about underrepresentation and completely fail to show that it is a result of discrimination rather than a lack of interest or qualification, then you can kindly STFU.

So your argument is that the article is wrong since it doesn't come to the conclusion you've already made up in your mind without ever using the other product in the comparison. That may be great for you, but for someone starting out and wondering which IDE would suit their needs better, the article may very well make sense.

In a perfect world, this entire industry shouldn't exist.

In a perfect world, nothing would exist.

(Am I the only person who on seeing this thought "Hrm, a potentially cheaper than all the others VR headset, how will I be able to hack this for PC use etc.?")

You think Sony is going to release a product that is cheaper than the competition? Good luck with that.

Also, those whining that the PS4 doesn't have enough horsepower to run it are clearly dumber than pond scum, the PS3 had enough horsepower to do it. You may need a little less detail, explosions/reflections etc. might be a tad less realistic but does it matter? Do you sit there pausing the game and criticising the graphics or actually play the damn thing, good lord.

In order to run at 1080p (which is a minimum requirement given the close proximity of the image to your eye) and 60 frames per second (30 fps for each eye) with two different stereoscopic images, the PS3 would be drastically underpowered. The PS4 is closer to having the necessary power, but I think you are missing something: in order to scale down the graphics enough to render the stereoscopic images at the required res and fps, the visual details would need to be turned way down. That may be acceptable if you commited the game for VR only, but if you want to make your game work without VR, your graphical detail would not be sufficient to be competitive with other non-VR games. At that point, you would need to optimize the game for two different platforms (VR and non-VR) on the same console. The game engine could automatically detect the display type and run the appropriate optimization profile, but the point is that the game developers would need to put in twice the effort on optimization.

Ultimately, if you're going to do VR, you have to do it right. We already went through one generation of crappy VR in the 90's and it failed miserably. I think we're on the verge of all of the technologies finally being affordable and portable enough to make a comfortable display, but it requires a smooth integration of many different technologies if it's going to create a realistic experience.

While I admit that I did not read the full article, the title of the article specifically says it was a trojan. If the body of the article declares that the attack vector is unknown, then they should not have used the word trojan anywhere, let alone the headline.