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Comment Re:public domian recodings will flood in any case (Score 1) 87

I'm not confusing them, but I think you are! I'm talking specifically about the copyright in a sound recording as defined in the UK:

https://www.gov.uk/government/...

The copyright length of the recording in the UK is now 70 years after release. However, a 50 year limit still applies to recordings that have never been officially released. This sometimes forces record companies to put things out just to extend the copyright for another 20 years:

https://www.theguardian.com/mu...

Comment Re:It's official (Score 2) 111

To be fair, Nottingham also wrote the draft that's now reserving the error code.

He recognized there was popular support for the error code, and revised his position to remove the error code only if every other three-digit error code starting with 4 is taken.

Yes, a classy response to the issue, unlike the humourless maintainer who removed the ddate (Discordian Date) tool from util-linux: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/sh...

Comment Re:public domian recodings will flood in any case (Score 3, Interesting) 87

as copyright periods run out, in next few decades, recordings of music from earlier part of 20th century (and increasingly great quality) will flood the audience.
even more than new libre recordings, i think there should be a project to catalog and publish such music to public.

Quite a few bargain-price European labels are doing a good job of releasing out-of copyright historical recordings. Here in the UK, we were up to 1963 before copyright was extended from 50 years to 70, but not retroactively, so the 1947-63 period is still public domain. This covers most of the classic mono era and takes us intro the period when stereo was becoming mainstream. Glenn Gould's excellent (mono) Goldberg Variations from 1955, and probably his incomplete Art of Fugue on the organ recorded in 1962, should be out of copyright. It would be nice to see a central resource for making these recordings freely available, though there's apparently some legal ambiguity about whether you can re-distribute somebody else's digital re-master or have to rip from a contemporary disc (which is a challenging task from crackly 78s, where overenthusiastic noise reduction can kill the atmosphere). On the other hand, modern artists who want to make a living releasing Free recordings should be supported and encouraged.

Comment Re:the last of the classic masters (Score 1) 180

It's a decent book, and the storyline keeps moving, but I'm trying to find what would make it both a Hugo and Nebula award winner.

For me, it's a beautifully written novel with a classic 'what if?' premise that, like most of the best SF, takes a sideways look at contemporary issues, set in a vivid and compelling world. But not everyone has the same taste. Looking at the list of joint Hugo/Nebula winners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... I see plenty of favourites like Dune, Rendezvous with Rama, The Forever War, American Gods and The Windup Girl, not to mention Le Guin's The Dispossessed. But I'm baffled by the inclusion of Ender's Game. A lot of people love it, but this guy pretty much sums up my reaction to it (including his more positive view of the last chapter): http://www.businessinsider.com...

Comment Re: In other news... (Score 1) 384

Western leaders know full well that bringing in masses of poorly-vetted Muslim refugees is dangerous and will lead to conflict. That's the goal. Just look at TFA. Crisis => invasions of privacy. They set up the conditions for the crisis and step in to "save the day" with new losses to individual liberty and privacy.

If this were in a medical context, we'd be discussing Munchausen syndrome by proxy with Western citizens the victims and their governments their abusers.

No, Strat, we'd be discussing paranoia and why people believe in ludicrous conspiracy theories: https://xkcd.com/258/

Comment Not faster for me (Score 1) 60

I use Opera on my Android phone. Apart from having its own (optional) 'acceleration' using Opera's own servers, it's one of the few mainstream browsers on Android that does text reflow (word wrapping) when I zoom in to enlarge the text (most other browsers use WebKit, which no longer supports this). But following a link from a Google search, I get the AMP version of the page, which totally breaks text reflow. I need a couple more taps to get the original version of the page from Google's link bar, which takes much longer than if I'd been served the real page in the first place.

Comment Simple solution? (Score 4, Insightful) 174

How about this: respect the version of robots.txt that was on the site AT THE TIME OF ARCHIVING. Do not apply subsequent versions of robots.txt to old snapshots retroactively (as when a domain changes ownership), but allow the owner to request deletion when an appropriate robots.txt was omitted by mistake.

Comment Re:Why isn't Amazon more pro-active here? (Score 1) 37

My guess is they have some model that says being "proactive" reduces scams by $x but has a side effect of reduced $y legitimate sales, too, along with the risk of some big negative publicity when a legitimate seller has his account cancelled or something.

Depressingly that may be true. Perhaps there's no simple way of reporting an obviously hacked account, because that would be admitting they exist, which could put off purchasers. But I think Amazon should be putting more resources into this behind the scenes. I've reported very blatant hijacked scam accounts in the past, and although they've eventually been blocked, the response has been downright sluggish. Surely an invitation to contact the 'seller' outside Amazon is a direct violation of their terms and conditions? No legitimate seller should be doing this. Perhaps high profile news stories like this will give Amazon a bit of encouragement to tighten things up...

Comment Why isn't Amazon more pro-active here? (Score 1) 37

Experienced customers can spot most of the scams easily. A small trader who has good feedback for selling a couple of lawn chairs a week suddenly has a vast portfolio of 4k TVs, top of the range dSLRs and high-end laptops, all at half price. A naive customer doesn't look beyond the overall feedback score, or see anything odd in the line in the description that asks them to contact the seller before purchasing, or in the official looking email they get back that links to an 'Amazon' purchase page that helpfully relieves them of their cash. But Amazon isn't naive, and has vast resources they could be using to clamp down on this sort of scam. Why not have an easy way of reporting obviously hacked accounts, rather having to dig through their help system looking for something vaguely appropriate? Why not keep a close watch on the lowest prices of popular items that are repeatedly used as bait? I used to see pretty regular price alerts on a camera lens in my saved item list that invariably turned out to be scams. Why not search item descriptions for email addresses (or obvious address obfuscations) inviting purchasers to contact the seller outside Amazon? Scammers often re-use the same text, and even the same email addresses, for the next hacked account. Why doesn't anyone check when a long-standing seller's established shopfront changes drastically overnight? Basic analytics ought to ring alarm bells here.

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