Aquarionics

• AqWiki 0.3 delayed due to an authentication bug, no thanks to the zero people who followed the link on Thursday
• Examine the logo carefully, since that is the last use of the old Aquarionics logo. Two weeks of Other Things, then the new logo debuts.
• All moterists who think that it is appropriate to overtake on the inside, at the approach to a roundabout, at the top of a hill are to report to the bladesman for extremity removal. Even if the person you overtake is a cyclist.
• Starsky & Hutch not a good movie, but is still worth seeing.

• Steve Jackson Games have announced Gurps fourth edition

From: Aquarion;
Newsgroups: alt.fan.pratchett
Subject: Re: [I] Copyright and rambling // was Televised books // was Top 100 Musicals (Re: [I] Re: Buffy/LOTR)
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2004 12:10:34 +0000
Lines: 72
Message-ID:
References: <20031230161948.21847.00001077@mb-m19.aol.com>

Take a letter Miss Jones: To Graycat, Re: [I] Copyright and rambling (long) // was Televised books // was Top 100 Musicals (Re: [I] Re: Buffy/LOTR):
> On Fri, 26 Mar 2004 23:04:57 +0000, Alec Cawley
> wrote:
>
>>In message , Graycat
>> writes
>>>On Fri, 26 Mar 2004 20:04:10 +0000, Alec Cawley
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>>In message , Graycat
>>>> writes
>>>>
>
> Well, I think that the copyright and benefits should rest with the
> creator. As long as the creator is around he/she should get to say
> what’s to be done with it. If the creator is dead he/she can’t have
> financial or intellectual interests so it doesn’t matter that
> copyright has ended.

My penny: (Two cents at current exchange rates)

I) Copyright is a Good Thing for current authors, since it enables them to earn money from what they do. Nobody trys to tell a blacksmith he shouldn’t charge for his work, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to. (Not that anyone – in this argument – appears to have put forward the Information Wants To Be Free thing, but it’s a basis)

II) There are times when a copyright should follow a company instead of an indervidual. Whilst Disney are still using Mickey Mouse as a logo, they should be protected from people being able to produce “Mickey Does Dallas” legally.

III) When something is no longer commercially viable to reproduce, it should fall out of copyright. This means that things like Gutenburg and the Abandonware archives become useful (Not that Gutenburg isn’t useful, but it’s useful because things have fallen out of copyright)

So far, so standard. The difficult bit:

IV) The idea that upon my death my entire oeuvre falls into the public domain isn’t really good if I want my work to support any decendants I have, or if – citing J. M. Barrie – I want to leave all profits from it to a charitable institution. I would prefer to have the freedom to do this.

IV.b) On the other hand, the last thing I want is a Tolkienesque/Fleming/Scientology world where there is an organisation whose entire purpose in life is to milk my entire output until it dies, chop the meat and sell it for sausages, then sell the bones for glue.

So, basically, I want to take copyright extension out of land law altogether and give creators the ability to say in their will “I cede all rights to my works to $foo, on the condition that on his death the rights fall into the public domain” with sub-clauses to the effect that works based on these rights don’t fall into the public domain immediatly, but will do eventually as negotiated, or something.

I don’t think blanket copyright is working, and individual cases would probably be better.

Good sigmonster, Have a bikkit.

Yours in total sincerity,

Aquarion
—
Aquarion, http://www.aquarionics.com, aquarion@suespammers.org
copyright, noun

The notion that you can protect from the future what you stole
from the past. <http://www.eod.com/devil/>

So, I’m reinstalling Gentoo on my desktop in the hope that this time I’ll stick with it. I’m getting quite good at going though the install sequence, although since they did major revisions in January and my boot disc was from 2002 I’ve spent some time translating stuff for the new world.

Oh, and Java failed to compile last night, but it was fixed this morning, so that’s all right then.

This has given me a unique oppertunity to discover what the web looks like from lynx, since it’s the only browser I can use whilst the compile is happening. Somewhat to my suprise, Aquarionics works quite well (As do most – but not all – CSS based designs), though ATI lose points for making their “Which driver” dialog javascript dependant, so I’ll have to do that from X. Grr.

Today, whilst Gentoo was compiling, I went shopping. This was primarily to buy things, but also to explore Letchworth. I’ve lived here for three weeks now, and this is really the first time I’ve actually explored the place. It’s nice. It has a great mix of generic branded shops (Dixons etc.) along with the little single shops that I prefer. This means that I’ve acutally mangaged to conform with my oft-intended “Support your local trader” ethos, and get stuff from butchers etc. rather than picking it all up at Sainsbury’s. The primary benefit of a supermarket is that it’s all in one place and you can get everything at once, but since both me and LC are constrained by what we can carry on our bicycles anyway bulk isn’t a useful attribute, so getting stuff in individual shops is actually easier.

Letchworth also has a shop which I fear will be my undoing. It’s called “David’s Bookshop”. It sells both first and second hand books, is next to “David’s Music” which does the same for other media, and contains an Aladdin’s cave of stuff that made me glad I didn’t have much cash on me. As it is, I escaped with merely an old copy of the Good Housekeeping Cookbook (A Real Cookbook. One that tells you how to roast a shoulder of lamb, make dumplings and cook bread rather than a thousand and one uses for olive oil) and an Oscar Wilde complete plays volume. This, I feel, is me getting off lightly since last time LoneCat went in there she came out with a complete set of Agatha Christie books in hard-back.

Oh, and I found some gloves. They’re slightly too small, have embroidered snowflakes on them, and look slightly silly. They do, however, enable me to retain the ability to bend my fingers after cycling to town and back. This is meant to be spring, damnit. It shouldn’t hail on me while I’m cycling…

AqWiki 0.3 is about to be released, if anyone would like to see if they can break it before I do so, there is a test installation here

Dump anything you find that’s interesting into the bugs page

We now have NTL Broadband. They came, they installed it, they went away to get more cable, they came back, they connected it.

They were polite, on time, and quick.

They gave me the cables, told me to use the CD on the computer, and went away.

And I ignored them.

I plugged in the router, connected to it, and tried to find the magic address where you register your PIN number and everything, which – until you register – is the only site you are able to access at all.

This magic address which took me several hours to find is:

autoreg.autoregister.net/

This guide to installing NTL under Linux is also really helpful.