Random News Stories

[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.

[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]

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.

[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]

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]

Japan declares war on floppy disks!

war_on_floppy_discs.png

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?

[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]

My father had an Altos CP/M computer with two 8" drives: the first (A held the operating system and applications software, and the disk in the B: drive was for data. If you had an insane amount of money, you could add a hard drive (with a capacity of something like 20 MB) that was C:. As a hangover from those days, this drive letter convention has survived to the present day, with the result that A: and B: are not typically used, even in Windows 11 (which, IIRC, is the first version of Windows not to support floppy drive controllers at all: I've used a W10 machine with a 3.5" internal drive, without any problems).

Notoriously, 8" floppies were used as part of America's nuclear ICBM launch system until June 2019. The discs held the targeting and navigation data. Basically, you selected the appropriate disk from a box depending on whether you wanted to nuke Moscow, Leningrad, etc., loaded it into the drive, and the data was then uploaded into the navigation system of the missile itself. I guess that was more a case of declaring war with floppies than on them!

[Jim Cassedy]

FROM BOXOFFICE MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 1945:
ScrnIceCrm_BxOfc021945.jpg
Adjusting for inflation, that $500 screen would cost $8,226
to replace today. . . and a quart of ice cream is now less
than ½ a pint!

(inflation aside, what kind of quart of ice cream "rips through
a screen," even if frozen solid? Back than quarts of ice cream
came either in cardboard boxes from a supermarket, or in little
cardboard containers, like are used for Chinese take-out, if it
was hand-packed at an ice cream shoppe or deli )

[Leo Enticknap]

Two crazies to start the day:

Fox News:

North Carolina woman cited by police for shooting Mountain Dew cans in backyard: 'Don't DEW this'

A North Carolina woman was issued a criminal citation this week for shooting at cans of Diet Mountain Dew in her backyard.

Gastonia Police Department officers responded to reports of shots fired in the neighborhood and found a 64-year-old woman who said she was firing a revolver at the soda cans because she didn’t approve of her father drinking them, the department said on Facebook.

"We totally understand that not everybody is a fan of the Dew but we can’t stress enough how dangerous this is!" the department said.

It continued, "There are much safer alternatives to disposing of beverages that you don’t like instead of using the full bottles as target practice…in your backyard… in your neighborhood… surrounded by other homes and people."

The department added, "guns and Diet Mountain Dew don’t mix!"

The woman was cited with discharging a firearm within the city limits.

"From the just when you think you’ve heard it all file," one commenter wrote on the post.

"Come on people, this is Gastonia. SUN DROP ONLY," another added.

"I would fully understand if it had been dr. Pepper," a third quipped.

And closer to home, from the LA Daily News:

A 65-year-old woman who police say was videotaped swinging a pickaxe to smash windows at a Pasadena home was charged Wednesday, Oct. 26, with felony vandalism.

Beverly Ann Baker caused an estimated $20,000 in damage to the eight windows Monday at a home in the 1700 block of Asbury Drive, Pasadena police Lt. Rudy Lemos said.

Baker is due to enter a plea on Friday in Superior Court in Pasadena, said Matthew Krasnowski, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

Police had no motive for the attack on the home, which was reported at about 4:50 p.m. The video showed the vandal, wearing a flowing green dress, taking a few swings, leaving and then returning to inflict more damage.

The vandal was gone when police arrived, but a resident helped police track the woman to the 1600 block of Casa Grande Street. That’s when Baker was arrested. She was being held at Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood in lieu of $20,000 bail.

At least the Mountain Dew shooter had an actual motive, albeit a somewhat bizarre one. The Pasadena psycho looks like Carrie Nation smashing up bars in the nineteenth century, but unlike Carrie Nation, no-one has any idea as to why, and she isn't willing to tell us. The (Armenian) victim is claiming racism, but no evidence for that has entered the public domain as yet - it looks completely random.

[Leo Enticknap]

Daily Telegraph:

Mexico is poised to scrap daylight saving time and return to “God’s clock” after government officials argued there were health, personal safety and energy-saving benefits.

The country’s senate approved the measure with a 59-25 vote, after it already passed the lower house of congress. It will now go to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to be signed into law before Sunday - when the clocks would go back for the last time.

Jorge Alcocer, the health secretary, said Mexico should return to “God’s clock”, or standard time, arguing that setting the hours back or forward damages people’s health.

Changing the time twice a year disrupts people’s circadian rhythm, which is closely linked to sunlight, resulting in more people feeling tired.

Mexico City is currently five hours behind the UK. It would be six hours behind in the summer.

The measure would mean an earlier sunrise and darkness falling an hour earlier on summer evenings.

Advocates argue that people would be safer on their way to work in the morning.

While there appear to be energy-saving benefits by switching to daylight saving, the Mexican government says they are minimal and can be countered.

In 2021, the savings were only 537GWh, which is equivalent to 0.16 per cent of national consumption and savings of £49 million, the government said.

“This new law seeks to guarantee the human right to health and increase safety in the mornings, procure the well-being and productivity of the population, and contribute to saving electric energy,” the Senate said on Twitter.

The change will not apply to northern border states, however, so as not to disrupt trade and the flow of people.

However, some economists have argued that going back to standard time might cause trouble for financial markets in Mexico by putting US East Coast markets so far ahead.

Businesses such as restaurants that have become accustomed to staying open later may have to close earlier as many crime-wary Mexicans often try to be off the streets after dark.

Finally, some sanity! There has been campaigning to end the clock change ritual here in California for years, but the proposal has always been for year round DST, not year round standard time. If you don't get up until well after breakfast time I can see how this might be attractive, but for those of us who need to commute it would be a very depressing prospect. Two weeks before the clocks go back, I'm writing that at nearly 7am, and it's still pitch black outside, and very depressing. In the middle of the summer it isn't fully dark until 9.30pm, which makes it very difficult to get children to bed at a reasonable time, and it is actually difficult for me, too, as on service call days I typically have to get up at 3-4am. Year round standard time would mitigate both these problems.

As for the safety aspect, I'd much rather drive in the dark in the afternoon, when I've been awake for several hours and am fully alert, than first thing in the morning when I've only just got up, and am likely having to share the road with hung over drivers. With any luck, Mexico's move will form a powerful argument against California adopting year round DST.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Which "Gods Clock" are they going to use. There are over 8000 known gods.

[Leo Enticknap]

And 38 officially recognized time zones.

[Frank Cox]

When I was a kid every town decided on its own timezone. The town I lived in was an hour either ahead or behind the next town over (I can't remember which) and both were different than the nearest city. I remember it always played hell with the television program listings in the paper since they printed it in the "city time" and we always had to translate it into "our time". I vaguely remember something about there being a half-hour offset somewhere in there too.

Eventually the province passed the Time Act and put everyone onto the same time. There was some opposition to that too even though it ultimately simplified everyone's life.

People didn't travel or communicate over long distances then like they do now so it wasn't as big of a problem then as it would be these days, of course. It was inconvenient, but it's what people were used to. Until they passed that Time Act, anyway.

[Leo Enticknap]

I bought this book as an impulse buy at Amsterdam airport, before beginning a 12-hour flight. This was in 2007 or '08, a few years before everyone had electronic entertainment devices, and I'd forgotten to pack my customary couple of paperbacks. It was an eye-opener: I had no idea that DST had been such a political hot potato.

The justification for it when it was first introduced (during World War I) was energy saving. At that time, a much higher proportion of electricity usage was for lighting than is the case now. What struck me about the Mexican change reported above was "While there appear to be energy-saving benefits by switching to daylight saving, the Mexican government says they are minimal and can be countered." In other words, we use LEDs for lighting now and most electricity consumption is to do other stuff, and it doesn't matter whether it's dark or light outside when that other stuff is done. So the selling point of DST when it was first invented, no longer exists.

I can't quote you the actual chapter and verse, but my understanding is that per US federal law, all that individual states can do is to opt in or out of DST. If they opt in, they have to change the clocks back and forth on the same day as all the other states, and as of now, only Arizona and Hawaii opt out and have standard time year round. Hawaii is so near the Equator that DST would be complete insanity - they have around 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark pretty much all the year round. The same applies to the southern end of Mexico, which I suspect could be behind their new law, and why the northern states of Mexico have been given an opt out from it.

I completely agree that the changing of the clocks ritual is stressful, unpleasant, and knocks you out for a week or two afterwards, and would like to see the end of it. Maybe there is a case for DST in longitudes that have a big variation in daylight hours between summer and winter, but that is no reason to impose it on those parts of the planet that don't.