I thought patents lasted longer. Or am I thinking of copyrights?
BarrieT
· 1 year ago
I think patents last up to 16 years from registration if renewed yearly, but copyright is created with the work and expires 50 years after the author's death. I am sure someone more clued-up will chip in with a squillion ifs and buts...
Bostonian_Queer_in_Dallas
· 1 year ago
Well somehow the Gershwin's nephews got another 75 years outta their uncles' work.
Asterix
· 1 year ago
Haven't you heard of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act? This bit of legislative legerdemain extends everything that was currently in force in 1992 to 95 years. Reportedly, Mary Bono wanted to make copyrights perpetual, but was told it would be unconstitutional. However, in a case brought by Lawrence Lessig, the Supreme Court found that there was nothing wrong with extending Copyright incrementally. For new works, it's life+70 years. In works for hire and anonymous works, it's 120 years from creation.
Originally, copyright duration was the same as patent protection--28 years.
You'll be dead before any of the Gershwin stuff makes it into the public domain. Heck, a student work George wrote when he was 17 will be under protection until about 2060--it was discovered in George's papers after his death.
Disney, the Gershwin Trust and Hal Leonard will keep lobbying to get copyright extended to perpetuity, you can bet on it.
Bostonian_Queer_in_Dallas
· 1 year ago
Oh well...more's the pity...everything is public domain now somewhere on the web.
Older_Wiser
· 1 year ago
Sorry, but the computer will never replace pen and paper. I went through the computer revolution, starting in 1968 when it was still all huge mainframes and everything was data entry and followed it through the mid-90s when I bought my first Mac for home use and got on the "worldwide web" for the first time (needless to say, it was NOT busy and I didn't even have "security"). I still keep pen and paper handy today. Unless you're a techie type, most ordinary people simply do not utilize the computer for much in their daily lives. Even with security today (and the lack of it in so many companies), I am loathe to even pay bills online or to give out personal information. There are simply too many opportunists out there, like the people who stole one guy's picture, for chrissakes, using it to lure vulnerable women into opening up their bank accounts for some scheme; they thought this handsome guy was was the real deal.
And what happens when oils from one's fingers destroy the touch screen? I see profits.
Bostonian_Queer_in_Dallas
· 1 year ago
Older and Wiser you and I normally agree on everything...but this time you are off track. I teach IT and digital media to kids, K to 8th, and I can tell you that paper and pen are already gone, for all intents and purposes. Last week was grandparents' day and they were very upset while watching their 9 year olds integrate webmaking with PhotoShop with Word with MovieMaker with YouTube with etc etc. I began explaining to the older folks that even typing is now going the way of the typewriter. Speech recognition is getting nearly perfect. One kid had just downloaded the Google software for his iPhone which allows him to text message by speaking into the phone. Some of my kids are actually doing their homework on their smartphones. We are heading towards a carbon free campus by using Google docs, online databases, and online storage. Is it all for the better? VERY debatable....but it is HERE...it is now...this is the future. Yes, the Unibomber tried to stop this progress (if you want to label it that) but it is now, with kids, the way of communicating. An older teacher last week was bitching about their penmanship. And I told her that it was a waste of time to teach it. In fact we've cut back our typing drill time to ten minutes rather than twenty. Handwriting and typing will be dead in ten years as speech recognition takes over. Or at least thumb typing on your Blackberry, iPhone, G1, or other handheld.
Older_Wiser
· 1 year ago
Yes, I remember when my grandchildren, in middle school, were taught to "keyboard" and not type. Yet I could outdo them any day of the week on the computer (since I type at 100 wpm). But, additionally, their English skills were extremely poor, reading and writing were almost non-existent after elementary school. I don't know how this will translate in the future, but I'm appalled at clerks who can't give out change without the use of the computer/cash register.
We may be teaching our kids to use machines, but are we really teaching them to be intellectual? I'm not so sure...
Bostonian_Queer_in_Dallas
· 1 year ago
Agreed...in my lab they are taught to self teach the software...I never spoonfeed...but their classroom teachers do a good job on writing skills. Our litmag wins awards.
Older_Wiser
· 1 year ago
OK, but creative writing and expository writing are so very different, but good for those kids. You can judge by the number of MSM "journalists" and reporters out there who have turned to the fantastical...even they don't seem to appreciate the difference. Of course, most kids today are being taught to value the dollar over anything else--witness the overabundance of MBAs and other degrees that simply ensure the well paying job and do nothing to turn out well-rounded individuals. Students bitch about taking humanity courses all the time--they want to get to the money. I say hurrah for those who have the conscience to buck the trend.
I've even noticed that book proofreaders depend too much on "spell check" and don't seem to notice when homonyms are mixed up--and the authors don't even catch mistakes in the proofs, either. It's infuriating to someone who takes the language seriously--words have consequences. I see the number of great writers in the US dwindling as well; most are now from other countries. We all know that intellectualism in the US has been despised for some time and that is a black mark on the US. To me, great literature is a learning tool in and of itself, but I'm thinking in the US it is going the way of our industrial base. Does anyone really believe in supporting real art and not just hacks that simply use templates for "writing"?
Pornography sells almost $40 billion a year in the US, much of it downloaded on the computer--how much does good literature sell?
Call me old fashioned...but I just believe too many are out there selling their whole beings for as much money as they can.
Bostonian_Queer_in_Dallas
· 1 year ago
Well I am all for porn being widely available!!!!! j/k smootch
Indigo
· 1 year ago
The concern I have is not with the technology but with access to technology. It's expensive enough to create social gaps between haves and have-nots that are much deeper than we've seen in the past fifty years or so. The trust fund princesses already brag on their Apples over PCs as if it were a social point in their favor, like driving an Audi instead of Lexus. This technology we're looking at is triggering unmapped social disruptions that already pave the way into the near future in Cybersnobbery.
Bostonian_Queer_in_Dallas
· 1 year ago
Actually some inner city kids have better hardware and software than many suburban kids. It's inconsistent. I've applied via Obama's people to work for the Dept of Education on this issue. I worked on his campaign and they invited us to send resumes. So far nuthin
Indigo
· 1 year ago
Good move! I hope it goes well.
gwpriester
· 1 year ago
The Stanford Research Center, or was it PARC, Palo Alto Research Center, a division of Xerox? I really don't remember, which first came up with the graphical user interface. The mouse and GUI are often associated with Apple who was the first to use these commercially, but it was PARC and not Apple that invented these systems. Personally, I do not miss the UNIX or DOS commands. :-)
serge
· 1 year ago
Chris, I had to laugh at your reference to 8" floppies...I remember them all too well. Every once in a while, an attorney will find one in an old file and ask me to retrieve some document from it. It's an endless source of laughter.
Some people have no idea that the 8" floppy was an improvement over the mag card. IBM used to charge about $15,000 for a mag card reader, little more than than a Selectric typewriter connected by an umbilical cord to the reader thingy. Life used to be so simple then. Then Reagan came along...
Asterix
· 1 year ago
Not just mag cards--ordinary punch cards were replaced by floppies in a lot of cases. To anyone who's ever spilled a box of cards, it was a godsend.
I still have a large file full of 8" floppies (as well as 5.25" and some oddball ones like 3.25", 3" and 2.8"). The 8" are still quite readable 30+ years later. Wish I could say the same about some of the 3.5" media.
AdmNaismith
· 1 year ago
I love the mouse, but I hate laser mice. I'm so glad I found a new-in-package USB roller mouse last month when my old PC blew up and I needed to change just about everything.
The computer will likely never replace printouts. IBM is trying, but that means having screens EVERYWHERE to access documents.
Asterix
· 1 year ago
Just look what the mouse did for RSD specialists. It's actually a pretty lousy invention--the arm is not suited to making fine adjustments, so the wrist takes the brunt of the abuse.
I have an old trackball that I like much better. Eventually, someone will come out with a practical device to simply track my eye movements.
bobmunck
· 1 year ago
Englebart actually invented the mouse in the early 60's, so its 40th birthday is long since passed. I saw and used (for about 30 seconds) the original at SRI in the summer of 1967. We were working on HYPERTEXT at Brown, and had a great deal in common with Doug's AHI text processing system.
That first mouse was made of wood and had three buttons, which were used in concert with a 5-key chord keyboard under the other hand. You typed on the display by pushing a subset of the eight keys in concert to enter the ASCII bit pattern of the character. Doug could type about 20 words per minute. I've always though that PARC (established in 1971, btw) made a big mistake when they didn't keep the chord keyboard as part of the mouse.
cowboyneok
· 1 year ago
"Yet in one sense Engelbart, now 83, was far ahead of his time. He never received royalties, partly because his patent ran out just before the tech revolution that saw the computer and mouse supplant pen and paper. " How typical. The "man before his time" gets screwed and the money goes to a bunch of "entitled Republicans." You can count on it.
akryan
· 1 year ago
OK, you're nutz if you think the Mac track pad is better than anything that a pc offers. The introduction of multiple mouse buttons is a big part of the reason why gaming is still dominated by PC's. That's my nerd rant. You're a mac. I'm a PC!
Peter
· 1 year ago
"which is so much better than what PCs offer"
Hate to tell you this, but in terms of hardware, there is nothing that Macs offer that PCs can't. The hardware platforms and peripherals are identical. Apple just slaps on a fancy sticker and a proprietary chip to enable their OS so that they can justify charging you 2x the price.
Big Time Patriot
· 1 year ago
Some people like Mac's. If Bill Gates said no one could use Windows unless they bought a Microsoft computer, he could control the quality of PC's better, and if PC's only had a small percentage of the market, they would get a lot less virus attacks as well. But if you like the idea of a software/hardware monopoly, go for it..
P.S. John Hodgman is a PC. Who wouldn't wan't to be John Hodgman (seriously, he is sooo cool, not like that smarmy Mac guy, he seems like a really boring, shallow guy).
All Comments
Originally, copyright duration was the same as patent protection--28 years.
You'll be dead before any of the Gershwin stuff makes it into the public domain. Heck, a student work George wrote when he was 17 will be under protection until about 2060--it was discovered in George's papers after his death.
Disney, the Gershwin Trust and Hal Leonard will keep lobbying to get copyright extended to perpetuity, you can bet on it.
web.
And what happens when oils from one's fingers destroy the touch screen? I see profits.
We may be teaching our kids to use machines, but are we really teaching them to be intellectual? I'm not so sure...
spoonfeed...but their classroom teachers do a good job on writing skills.
Our litmag wins awards.
I've even noticed that book proofreaders depend too much on "spell check" and don't seem to notice when homonyms are mixed up--and the authors don't even catch mistakes in the proofs, either. It's infuriating to someone who takes the language seriously--words have consequences. I see the number of great writers in the US dwindling as well; most are now from other countries. We all know that intellectualism in the US has been despised for some time and that is a black mark on the US. To me, great literature is a learning tool in and of itself, but I'm thinking in the US it is going the way of our industrial base. Does anyone really believe in supporting real art and not just hacks that simply use templates for "writing"?
Pornography sells almost $40 billion a year in the US, much of it downloaded on the computer--how much does good literature sell?
Call me old fashioned...but I just believe too many are out there selling their whole beings for as much money as they can.
suburban kids. It's inconsistent. I've applied via Obama's people to work
for the Dept of Education on this issue. I worked on his campaign and they
invited us to send resumes. So far nuthin
Some people have no idea that the 8" floppy was an improvement over the mag card. IBM used to charge about $15,000 for a mag card reader, little more than than a Selectric typewriter connected by an umbilical cord to the reader thingy. Life used to be so simple then. Then Reagan came along...
I still have a large file full of 8" floppies (as well as 5.25" and some oddball ones like 3.25", 3" and 2.8"). The 8" are still quite readable 30+ years later. Wish I could say the same about some of the 3.5" media.
The computer will likely never replace printouts. IBM is trying, but that means having screens EVERYWHERE to access documents.
I have an old trackball that I like much better. Eventually, someone will come out with a practical device to simply track my eye movements.
That first mouse was made of wood and had three buttons, which were used in concert with a 5-key chord keyboard under the other hand. You typed on the display by pushing a subset of the eight keys in concert to enter the ASCII bit pattern of the character. Doug could type about 20 words per minute. I've always though that PARC (established in 1971, btw) made a big mistake when they didn't keep the chord keyboard as part of the mouse.
Hate to tell you this, but in terms of hardware, there is nothing that Macs offer that PCs can't. The hardware platforms and peripherals are identical. Apple just slaps on a fancy sticker and a proprietary chip to enable their OS so that they can justify charging you 2x the price.
P.S. John Hodgman is a PC. Who wouldn't wan't to be John Hodgman (seriously, he is sooo cool, not like that smarmy Mac guy, he seems like a really boring, shallow guy).