Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment 10 Years for Copyrights, Patents, and Trademarks (Score 1) 309

Not that I expect it to ever happen, I'd like to see two things:

1) I would love to see 10 years -- 10 years for copyrights, patents, and to a certain degree, trademarks. Yes, even trademarks. A business name (like Microsoft) or a person's name (like an J.K. Rowling) should distinguish between "the real" deal and "a knockoff". (A business name trademark would be permanent.) My argument is this: if someone wants to make a better Mickey Mouse, then why not? If I can create a Mickey Mouse that makes me money, why shouldn't I? It's not like anyone will confuse my Mickey Mouse with Disney's. If a parents wants to show a wholesome movie (instead of an explicit one) to their kids, they can look for the Disney brand. Another example: If I want to make a Star Wars movie, why shouldn't I? So long as I don't say or imply that my works are from Lucas Arts or Disney, I don't see a problem with that? There's nothing stopping Disney / Lucas Arts from making their movies. They can out market me anyway... as long as they give society what they want. (This is what copyrights, patents, and trademarks are pretty much about: giving society what they want.)

2) If you have something to copyright, patent, or trademark, then you must set a price and everyone gets the same deal. If I invent a widget and patent it, I cannot stop my competitors from using it... as long they pay me the price that everyone else is paying. No favoritism. If I write code and copyright it (through $government copyright system), then everyone can use my code after paying me a certain price. My allies can work closely with me on improvements before I copyright it, so we may have an advantage over the next iteration of my product, but after all is said and done, everyone will be able to use it. No hording. No holding back on technology because you want to sit on a patent and hurt everyone else.

After the 10 years expires, it's a free for all. You're free to copy and use it for personal and business use. This applies to movies, books, drug creation (in the pharmaceutical industries), car design, electronics, furniture, space ships, and pretty much anything else you can think of.

Are there problems with my ideas? Yes. Do I have all the answers to make this work perfectly? No. I'd like to see others flush it out, but overall, I think society would gain a tremendous boost of creativity, technological advancement, and companies would still make lots of money in those 10 years. It would also open up a lot of opportunities for the little guy and that's where the best creativity usually comes from.

Comment Ergonomic, Keyboard, Precision Problems (Score 1) 198

Workstation with large monitor: Touch is horrible. I don't want to move my 30" monitor any closer to me, and I don't want to reach way out to it.

Lay the monitor almost flat on the table. It would feel like drawing with pencil and paper. Upright is fine if it's mounted on the wall, and you're standing in front of it, like they they show in the movies

I need a keyboard to do my (professional) programming and (hobby) story writing. Laying the monitor flat directly in front of me as if I was going to draw on it isn't acceptable. I need my keyboard. That means I have to move the monitor some where else other than where it is easy to look at which means I'm going to get a crick in my neck if I hold my head like that for 8+ hours a day. (Ergonomically speaking, I learned a long time ago that I should keep my head resting on my spine by "looking straight ahead" when staring at a the monitor for long periods of time. If I tilt my head even a little bit and hold it there all day, my muscles work a lot. That means it gets very painful.)

I also need the mouse for precision pointing. I still work in the world of desktops / laptops and there's a lot of information that can't be programmed in a GUI without a mouse. When you're trying to squeeze a little more information on the screen, sometimes a few pixels make a big difference. Gesturing just a couple of pixels with a finger is difficult since you can't see what you're doing.

Also, on a side note, all of the monitors I've used in my life (translated as things that are larger and heavier than a tablet size device), typically aren't very flat on the back side because of the plugs, transformers, and stand. I haven't shopped for monitors in a while... is it now possible to get a 30" monitor that is only a few millimeters thick and lay it down?

Security

Who Would Want To Be Obama's Cybersecurity Czar? 131

dasButcher writes "President Obama is expected to name a new cybersecurity czar sometime soon. This person will be charged with defending the digital boards from attack by hostile nation-states and terrorist organizations. But the question Larry Walsh asks is: Who really wants the job? The previous three people who held the post barely made a dent in solving the security problems. Government bureaucracy and private sector resistance make it nearly impossible to find any measure of meaningful success in this job, he writes." Reader eatcajun contributes a related link to the long-awaited US cyberspace policy review.

Slashdot Top Deals

My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells down by the seashore.

Working...