Random News Stories

[Harold Hallikainen]

My Tek scope uses a 3.5 inch floppy disk. I use it to get trace images out of it. I have a USB 3.5 inch drive to get the images into a computer. My first computer (Cromemco CP/M system) used 8 inch floppies, then 5.25 inch floppies. I designed a product that used the Commodore 1541 disk drive (5.25 inch floppy). I still have a few of those systems and drives.

[Leo Enticknap]

Japan declares war on floppy disks!

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From Business Insider:

The 'last man' selling floppy-disks says airlines continue to make orders for the ancient storage technology

The archaic floppy disk apparently isn't as obsolete as we thought in the US.

While they're a relic of another time, at least one industry is still interested in the storage devices, according to the person who claims to be "last man standing in the floppy disk business."

Tom Persky, the founder of floppydisk.com — which sells and recycles floppy disks — said that the airline industry is one of his biggest customers in the new book "Floppy Disk Fever: The Curious Afterlives of a Flexible Medium" by Niek Hilkmann and Thomas Walskaar.

"My biggest customers — and the place where most of the money comes from — are the industrial users," Persky said, in an interview from the book published online in Eye On Design last week. "These are people who use floppy disks as a way to get information in and out of a machine. Imagine it's 1990, and you're building a big industrial machine of one kind or another. You design it to last 50 years and you'd want to use the best technology available."

Persky added: "Take the airline industry for example. Probably half of the air fleet in the world today is more than 20 years old and still uses floppy disks in some of the avionics. That's a huge consumer."

He also said that the medical sector still uses floppy disks. And then there's "hobbyists," who want to "buy ten, 20, or maybe 50 floppy disks."

Floppy disks made news recently when Japan's digital minister, Taro Kano, declared "a war" on the devices, tweeting earlier this month that Japan's digital agency would change regulations requiring businesses to use floppy disks and CDs, instead shifting to online services.

Chop them up with Samurai swords, maybe?

[Frank Cox]

https://canoe.com/news/local-news/wa...f-847b96916179

teacher.jpg

The Halton District School Board is “standing behind” an “accepted” transgender teacher who has gone viral in social media video posts.

In addition, HDSB Chair Margo Shuttleworth tells the Toronto Sun that staff are looking at “going through creating a safety plan” to ensure the Oakville Trafalgar High School teacher’s security as they prepare for potential protests when the school opens for classes Monday.

Protecting any persons “gender rights” is “the stance the school board is taking and they are standing behind the teacher,” said Shuttleworth.

Pre-transitioning the teacher was known to students and faculty as a male and went by a man’s name. But the teacher now identifies as a woman and is referenced with a female name.

The school board says it sees her simply as a good teacher.

“This teacher (who teaches shop) is an extremely effective teacher,” said Shuttleworth. “All the kids really love being in the class.”

But videos posted to social media showing the Oakville industrial arts teacher, who began identifying as female last year, appearing in class with large prosthetic breasts while operating a circular saw has created much commentary.

Some more photos of the Canadian trans teacher who wears the extremely large breast prosthetic with protruding nipples: pic.twitter.com/vsi9oE7A9B
— Andy Ngô ?️? (@MrAndyNgo) September 17, 2022

As a result Shuttleworth said she articulated to those who run the board’s day-to-day operations that “we can’t just wait around and see what happens because I am quite confident it won’t be a normal return to school Monday,”

Already, thanks to videos recorded by students, the school has been receiving comments on the matter.

“There will the protesters and the anti-protesters,” said Shuttleworth. “I do know there have been phone calls made to the school that haven’t been the most pleasant in nature.”

She said her position to HDSB Director of Education Curtis Ennis is to “make sure she (the teacher) is protected” and “ensure that everybody remains safe.”

The Sun has reached out to the teacher for comment but so far has not received a response.

The teacher, who the Sun has decided not to name at this point, has not had any previous issues that have come to the attention of the board.

"We have had no phone calls prior to this, saying anything about it,” said Shuttleworth.

But having said that, Shuttleworth acknowledges “there had to be some disconnect because one of the students created this video.”

Some of that concern has been expressed on social media, including one student taking to Twitter to write “the kids here most definitely don’t think it’s normal… but realistically we can’t say anything. Last year, the teacher was a man. I don’t think the school can fire him.”

In fact, Shuttleworth said the employee will be supported, adding “the teacher is completely accepted and welcomed into the school community as far as the staff is concerned.”

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[Leo Enticknap]

Daily Wail...

Nigerian officials intercept 7,000 smuggled donkey penises at international airport after smell from sacks aroused suspicion

Nigerian officials have intercepted 7,000 donkey penises at an international airport after the smell from the packages aroused suspicion.

The donkey penises were being smuggled to Hong Kong in 16 sacks but customs officers at Murtala Muhammed airport in the Nigerian city of Lagos intercepted the packages.

Sambo Dangaladima, the customs controller at the airport, told the BBC that the animal parts were found in sacks in the animal export section.

He said that a pungent smell was coming from the bags, arousing suspicion among the customs officers who then opened the packages to find the 7,000 donkey penises.

Dangaladima said that a suspect linked to the shipment, which is worth an estimated 200 million Naira (£416,000), managed to escape.

The illicit trade of donkey parts - including the animal's penises and skin - from Nigeria to China is common.

The animal parts are used in China to make a traditional medicine called ejiao.

In June, the Nigerian Customs Service said that they had intercepted three 100kg bags filled with donkey genitalia and 3,712 pieces of donkey skin at an airport.

Four months earlier in March, four Nigeria lost over £6 billion to the illicit trade of smuggling donkey parts to China from 2012 to 2018, officials said.

It is illegal in Nigeria to kill donkeys for their body parts and smuggle them to foreign countries - but illicit smuggling continues.

The Donkey Dealers Association of Nigeria this week urged the Nigerian government to prosecute those who engage in the indiscriminate killing of donkeys and the smuggling of their animal parts outside the country.

The charity said they have invested millions into the breeding of donkeys but the smugglers are sabotaging their efforts.suspects were arrested while they were trying to smuggle 2,754 donkey penises and 3,712 pieces of skin.

I hope the a/c system at that airport terminal is in good working order...

[Frank Cox]

Intellectual Property is very hard to valuate.

One way around this that I think is quite clever is to simply allow the owner of the intellectual property to put his own value on it, subject to the property being available for sale for exactly that price. If I believe that my intellectual property is worth ten million dollars, then the first person to give me ten million dollars (or $1.95 if that's the value that I decided it has) just bought himself an intellectual property and he gets to determine the value that he places on it in the future.

[Marcel Birgelen]

You cannot copyright a recipe, you can't patent a recipe either. You can't copyright an algorithm and technically, you also can't get a patent on an algorithm either. In the U.S. however, you can patent certain steps inside an algorithm and as such, you can get a defacto patent on an algoritm via that route.

Copyright on software has long time been non-homogenous across many jurisdictions. Like Frank indicated, it wasn't until 1974 until it applied to computer programs in the U.S. and while most European countries had some copyright scheme in place, it took until 1991 to make that somewhat homogenous amongst EU members. East Germany, for example, never recognized copyright on software for its entire existence.

While the term Intellectual Property contains the word "property", most jurisdictions treat it differently and therefore have different sets of laws covering both. Like Frank indicated, you usually don't pay taxes on Intellectual Property, while you do pay taxes on many forms of "property". One problem with this idea though, is that Intellectual Property is very hard to valuate.

There is a big difference between creative inspiration and plagiarism. Greatly limiting the rights of certain creatives so others can presumably freeload is 100% hogwash.

In the case of book authors, like my father, the long term of copyrights is one of the few things that makes being a writer worth it financially. It sure isn't about some jerk-off notion like "the honor of being published." A small, but steady stream of royalty payments will help writers who are seemingly unknown still make a decent amount of money from their works over the long term. Shutting off the spigot after only 10 or 20 years ruins that business model. A shorter term makes it far easier for big companies to push around writers.

After my brother died, I decided to write a book myself. I've written a lot of stuff over the years, ranging from technical articles, manuals and computer programs, but never an entire book. I'm not sure why I put so much time in such a folly, but at the time it felt good... A hell of a lot of my time went into writing that thing, and I'm not even sure if I'll ever publish it. I don't expect to ever make a dime on it, because that's unfortunately how it works for unknown authors. The value of creative content isn't nessecairily measured by the amount of time and efforts it cost to create.

I know people that have published four or five books and although they actually got it published and sold quite a few copies, none of them can make a living from the existing "stream of royalities", most of it dissapears already at the publisher, who now holds most of the copyrights as they fronted all the costs for publication. So, they need to create new content to create new income. I don't know if this is necessairily a bad thing though. Most work I create doesn't come with a perpetual license to print money, once it's done, it's done...

I even know someone who was part of a rock band that had some minor local hits back in the 90s. He receives a payout of anything between 25 and 100 euros a year, on which he still has to pay taxes...

My point is: That steady stream of royalties is only for the happy few. Most of that money doesn't even make it back to the artist or authors, but ends up at publishers and record companies. They litterally don't have to do anything to earn that money and they're the biggest force behind stretching copyright to infinity.

[Frank Cox]

Recipes on their own are not copyrightable (ref. https://www.lexology.com/library/det...f-727f25421201 )

Computer programs were not subject to copyright prior to 1974 either, which occasionally leads to interesting situations with respect to software that has a long history (like UNIX).

Interestingly enough, people still invent and publish both recipes and computer programs.

There's a reasonable argument to be made that computer programs and technical specifications for things like chips should be subject to a much shorter copyright and/or patent period than other things since they become obsolete much faster than some other kinds of "intellectual property".

I've also heard arguments that, if intellectual property is, in fact, property, then it should be subject to property taxes in the same way as your house or the farmer's field.

[Randy Stankey]

If you spend years developing a recipe for the world's best chicken soup for which you have put a lot of time, effort and money into getting everything "just right," does some random restaurant have the right to copy your recipe, call it their own and sell it to customers without your permission?

(Assuming you have written everything down in copyrightable form.)

[Frank Cox]

Beethoven made a living before the age of copyright and today everyone knows his name. So did Galileo and a whole host of others. It can be done.

Intellectual property is a very fuzzy and artificial concept.

[Bobby Henderson]

Frank, your analogy about restaurants versus home kitchens doesn't make any sense in relation to intellectual property. And small businesses typically have to pay employees to work at those businesses; no one has any obligation to work for free. Any business that feels its employees don't deserve to be able to make a living is a business that deserves to go the hell out of business.

[Frank Cox]

Nobody has a right to make a living at whatever they may choose to do. Small businesses go out of business every day of the week for all kinds of reasons, and in most cases people worked very hard attempting to make those businesses succeed right up to the point that they didn't.

We don't have any lobbyists pushing to outlaw home kitchens so the restaurant folks can make a living. Nobody's demanding that everyone wear wool suits to work to keep the dry cleaners in business.

[Bobby Henderson]

There is a big difference between creative inspiration and plagiarism. Greatly limiting the rights of certain creatives so others can presumably freeload is 100% hogwash.

In the case of book authors, like my father, the long term of copyrights is one of the few things that makes being a writer worth it financially. It sure isn't about some jerk-off notion like "the honor of being published." A small, but steady stream of royalty payments will help writers who are seemingly unknown still make a decent amount of money from their works over the long term. Shutting off the spigot after only 10 or 20 years ruins that business model. A shorter term makes it far easier for big companies to push around writers.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Artists don't need to work for free. The business model already sucks bad enough for people in any creative business. Much of the general public doesn't have the first damn clue how much time and effort has to go into something. They just think anything creative should be offered for free. Fuck that. Are you willing to do your job for free?

Most of my and my wife's income depends on creative work, either directly or indirectly, nobody is claiming that creative work should be free, quite to the contrary, many artists' work is completely undervaluated. But the solution isn't never-ending copyright, because that's not where the primary problem lies for most of those arttists.

Especially you should know that nothing is created from nothing. Creativity doesn't spring from a vacuum, it requires inspiration. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants. An artist should have the right to a clearly defined, but time-limited monopily over everything he/she creates, the same should be true for inventors, I see no reason why they should be punished even more, as patents have already become so expensive, they're not even attainable for normal people anymore. But once the period of exclusivity has run out, stuff should enter the public domain, so others can draw from that pool, draw inspiration from it and extend it.

[Bobby Henderson]

Still, theoretically, why do your "heirs" deserve to reap the benefits of your work? Are they continuing your line of work and expand the existing body of work available to the public?

The rights to something like a book is property. Passing those rights along to heirs is no different from a parent passing a house on to their kids.

I was a teenager when my dad wrote his first book. It took about 3 years of research and writing/editing to finish the manuscript. That meant a lot of time not spent doing usual family stuff. Plus me, my brother and my mother proof-read every manuscript draft. So I have a Goddamn stake in that IP. Screw anyone who says I don't.

There may be tons of examples where someone gets screwed over due to a bad deal, but copyright needs to be a balance between exclusive rights and public domain.

Artists don't need to work for free. The business model already sucks bad enough for people in any creative business. Much of the general public doesn't have the first damn clue how much time and effort has to go into something. They just think anything creative should be offered for free. Fuck that. Are you willing to do your job for free?

[Leo Enticknap]

I'm no Ansel Adams.

Which brings up an interesting issue, one that is, IMHO, somewhat of a sidebar when it comes to copyright. If you own an original Ansel Adams (i.e. a print that he actually made), you are probably a millionaire. If you own a coffee table book of reproductions of his photos, no matter how high quality it is, you own an object worth around $30. The entire fine art market is predicated on the rarity value of individual artifacts rather than their intrinsic artistic merit. At the risk of getting political, the paintings of Adolf Hitler and Hunter Biden would not be worth what they are otherwise: the value derives from the notoriety of their creator, not the creative craft skill or inspiration that went into creating them.

If you can find it, this documentary, about arguably the world's most successful art forger, is a hilarious indictment of this phenomenon:

But with books, recordings, and movies, the dynamic is different. The business model there is not about the uniqueness of the individual artifact: quite the opposite. It's based on the ability to copy and disseminate it as widely as possible, hence the need for legal protections on who can do this, and how, if anyone is going to invest in creating the work of IP in the first place. We can, and should, argue about precisely what is protectable by copyright (e.g. how different an "adaptation" has to be from an original work to not be linked to it for copyright purposes, which, IMHO, is an increasingly important question when it comes to remasterings and restorations), and copyright duration. Personally, I think that an "death of the author plus X years" option if the creator is an individual, or a set duration if it is a corporate entity, is the way to go. But like many others, I am worried by the fact that it constantly creeps upwards, and somewhat relieved that the current political climate is unlikely to give the mouse another extension in 2024. Even if the reason for drawing that line (political revenge, basically) is not the most noble, that line needs to be drawn.