OK. So apart from the very narrow exception of Fair Use (which doesn't properly exist outside the US very much), and maybe Moral Rights in places like France, contract trumps copyright.

In fact, can you name any significant victory of Fair Use over contract recently? The Estate of James Brown is pretty flush last I checked...

What are your problems?

Banking should be a service to industry that facilitates socially useful capital and equity, not be an industry in its own right. The social good derived from (say) derivatives shorting is vanishingly close to zero.

1) What shall we do about them?

(I think this has been articulated rather clearly by the movement to anyone wishing to ask). Re-introduce the Glass-Steagall Act, impose a transaction tax (eg 0.01%) on every trade of any kind performed on the stock markets, and re-balance shareholders' interests against equity build using suitable regulatory legislation.

So - what say you?

If students sign a contract with the school to say that both parties assign full rights to one another in works that they create, then it doesn't matter what copyright law says. Contract trumps copyright. That's how the music industry works, for one thing.

Would you be okay with your mother, wife, or daughter performing in a porn flick?

Wow. Are you sure you don't want to join the Taliban? The female members of your immediate family are not your property. You may not want them to appear in a porn flick, but if they want to then the should be free to do so.

In that case, it would be interesting to hear what you think the practice of modern architecture is.

And after just a few short years, there's a tremendous loss in efficiency as the mirrors used to collect all that sunlight become dirty and pitted.

I know this is /., but FFS. Citation please.

What exactly is your point?

Actually, Explorer has 200 commands (one of them is something called "rotate" apparently), according to the Microsoft blog post. But who's counting.

Fair use means that if I wanted to write something like "In saying 'I have a dream...' Martin Luther King was referring to radical Islam" or some such idiocy, then I would be perfectly able to quote passages to make my point.

Copyright in this case is about money. Not about abuse.

Why? I'm using Chrome version "12.0.742.112 (90304)" and don't give a crap as long as it keeps working (and is updated without me having to do much).

People have been trying to make video chat popular for YEARS. Every single major comms player since about 1980 has tried to make it into something more than a niche for pervs and loons, and failed - miserably.

The latest flogging of the dead horse of video for interpersonal comms was Apple with Facetime. Flop.* Or at least, everyone I know has iPhone 4s and iPad 2's - they all used Facetime once, and concluded as bazillions of people have concluded down the years, that it was awkward, distracting and just downright useless.

Think about it: you do not open a comms channel in whatever medium and think "You know, I just WISH I could see their faces."

Let's see if FB can make it work. I give it 10,000:1 on past history.

* Cue people making up technical reasons why it was a flop. But they are wrong. The reasons are human. Non-technical. You don't want to talk up somebody's nose, or see them looking away from you, or get fixated on trying to work out if you are on the toilet on not.

I'd be pretty depressed. I mean, have they done *anything* they can be proud of in the last 20 years? XBox maybe.

Plus, some places make a rotary out of a 5-way intersection which can be incredibly confusing.

I've been driving the UK for about 20 years, most of which has been urban driving. In the UK we have lots and lots of these roundabout things. Some small (perhaps 20 feet wide) in cities and towns, some very big. They are all trivially easy to navigate, and make driving far less stressful than stopping and starting at traffic lights the whole time. You just give way to those already on the roundabout (if you are approaching it) and watch the danger on your right when you are at one (or on the left if you are in the States). I have never seen a significant roundabout accident in the UK, mainly because it's pretty much impossible to go into one at any speed unless you have a clear deathwish or a hunger to see how your suspension handles the rather large bit in the middle.

I also fail to see how the number of tributary roads make them any more confusing. I've been on roundabouts with about 10 roads coming in to them. You just keep driving until you see the sign you want, you then look in your MIRROR, you SIGNAL, and then MANOEUVRE off the roundabout while looking about. If you don't see the sign, you just keep driving and go around again (while your partners reads the map). So you can take you time to make up your mind, unlike on a large crossing.

Of course, if you are going too fast, or just don't know how to drive, you will have problems. But then, you deserve everything you get in that case.

When I first encountered McCandless's site a few years ago, I really loved it

Can you explain why? I would have thought that anyone who has ever considered data and the visualization of it would see his site and pretty much instantly realise it was pile of useless drek.

I wish they'd make up their minds. It wasn't a year ago they were hiding it completely by default until you moved your mouse. Not even Larry Page himself knew what THAT was all about.