Modern C++ has a strict type system if you don't walk around it.
Nevertheless, the borrow checker can help with bugs that otherwise could be hiding, which is the actual advantage over C++. But those are not the kind you see right away after running your program again.
I'm not just talking about the borrow checker though - Rust has a much more strict type system in general. It's really explicit about everything, for example you can't just `println!("{}", some_path)` because `Path` might contain invalid UTF-8 that can't be converted to a string.
No, copyright restricts copying and derivative works without royalties. As I said in my comment, I propose the restriction only be on profiting from work, and for a much shorter period of time than currently (70 years for creative works? Absurd. 10 years is far more appropriate).
I would actually go even further and say that the only restriction we should eventually need is crediting the original author. Potential individual profit (as in economic profit) makes sense in the current world where the distribution of resources is terrible and you want to be able to capitalize on your ideas. But ideally, if that's not an issue in the future, all you could reasonably want is "acknowledgement for your contributions". Even there the line is hard to draw, but I find myself more and more aligned with this perspective lately. Might still be too egocentric, though, and maybe not even "acknowledgement" is necessary. Maybe if acknowledgement was culturally more widespread even a law like this wouldn't make sense to me.
Yes, profit is only a problem if money is a problem. But given money is still used by society (and will be used for decades), it is pretty obvious you cannot remove profit.
Do it, and only rich people will be able to create. No Harry Potter for us.
I mean, I said "ideally", and I didn't talk about money disappearing, only about, as you expressed, "money [not] being a problem". Which you might still consider naive, fair enough, but that's another story. And honestly, even if in practice it makes no immediate difference, telling apart the "moral" issues and the practical ones is relevant for analysis and defining the direction we want to move towards.
Free copies, even if you restrict profiting on the copies, implies the value effectively goes to zero. Most things can be digitally copied for free (art, books, software...). It is already a problem even with the restrictions.
Derivative works without royalties implies you would get countless copy-pasted works with the minimum amount of changes done to claim they are derivative. It already happens nowadays with things that try to claim they are not derivative works but completely new things when it is clear they are not.
Both these things are already super expensive to keep track and defend for small companies. If anything, what should be done is make them cheaper.
The 70 years is the only thing I agree. 10 is quite short. 20 would be fair and way better than the 70.
I'm sure many people are going to disagree with this, but authors should only receive income if people think their work is valuable enough to be rewarded for it. There will always be selfish people that would rather just download a copy rather than support an author. But I don't think simply writing a book entitles you to income. It was your choice to write it, nobody paid you to (if they did, then you are already paid for the work). If you choose to write a book, and nobody wants to pay you for it, then how good actually is it?
I have perhaps a different view of the arts to some people. I see them as good, noble pursuits in and of themselves. They should be done for their own sake. Art and literature was in my opinion, at its highest point, when the motivation for profit was secondary to the motivation for expression and exploration. As such, I see no reason for we as a society to restrict what people can and can't do with the stories, artistic works, and cultural works of our society. They best serve the interests of a society when they are free to spread, free to be shared, and free to be adapted.
I don't believe in artificial scarcity. If the only way for me to get access to a book is to pay a publisher for it, then it's worth has been artificially increased. I value the experience of going to the theatre, so I will still buy a ticket even if I can pirate the film a couple months later. I value seeing a musical artist perform live, so I will pay for a concert even if I can download their album for free. I value possessing hard copies of good works, so I will pay for them to support the author even if I can download the PDF for free. This is how you separate the truly valued works, from the works that have been artificially given a monetary value for the sake of profit raising.
And I hate to say it, but our social media frenzied society has inflated everybody's self worth. Just because you can publish an ebook in 3 clicks, doesn't mean it is good literature, and doesn't mean it is worth paying for. Copyright law which makes bad literature valuable is a bad law. Good literature will always be good, regardless of any laws that exist to protect it from distribution.
> But I don't think simply writing a book entitles you to income.
Writing a copyrighted book today does not entitle you to income either.
Do you really think artists make money just because they publish something?
> I see them as good, noble pursuits in and of themselves. They should be done for their own sake.
Agreed, but unless you are rich or someone supports you, that simply does not work.
I suggest you take a look at universal income instead. One of its advantages is that people could work on non-profitable endeavors if they are fine with a very basic life.
That, or wait until Star Trek becomes a reality :-)
> I value seeing a musical artist perform live, so I will pay for a concert even if I can download their album for free.
How do you do that for books and software which do not have any equivalent to a concert or performance?
> This is how you separate the truly valued works, from the works that have been artificially given a monetary value for the sake of profit raising.
Giving a concert does not mean your work is valuable. Neither publishing it digitally. And neither guarantee any audience whatsoever, much less profit...
> Just because you can publish an ebook in 3 clicks, doesn't mean it is good literature, and doesn't mean it is worth paying for.
This seems to follow from the "copyright entitles you to income", but since that isn't true, this does not follow either.
Someone publishing a bad ebook (actually, not even a bad one, average ones and even many good ones too) is not going to get any sales. Ask any aspiring average author or artist. They will have countless stories of how their endeavors have not paid any bills yet.
> Ask any aspiring average author or artist. They will have countless stories of how their endeavors have not paid any bills yet.
How doesn't this support my argument of reforming copyright laws? If even the (imo flawed) intent of copyright laws isn't doing what it's supposed to do (an economic incentive for creation of work) then what is the harm in reform?
You're right that holding copyright doesn't magically generate sales. People have to value the work in the first place. But I don't see how copyright laws as they exist now, make the work any more valuable.
When I talk about value, I am not talking about something in a supply-demand sense. I am talking about a work being genuinely quality so that it earns some kind of reward for its merit.
For example, I don't see buying a book the same as buying a ticket for entry. I see it as supporting an author. Let me use an example:
I might buy a ticket to a museum, not knowing what artwork is inside. It could all be atrocious, or maybe just not to my taste. Regardless, it could be work I would never buy. Now, the sale of the ticket as been a "fee to see". I made no choice over whether I wanted to support the artists. I believe that copyright laws as they exist now, place books in a kind of imaginary museum. An author isn't deserving of income simply because they produced something. Nobody asked them to. If they were paid by a publisher to, then great. If not, then what makes them entitled to income? The mere act of putting pen to paper? Anybody can do that. If I want to support them I will do so based on merit. And I can only assess merit of I can read what they have written.
> How doesn't this support my argument of reforming copyright laws? If even the (imo flawed) intent of copyright laws isn't doing what it's supposed to do (an economic incentive for creation of work) then what is the harm in reform?
It doesn't because your suggested reform would only make it (even) worse...
It'd imply only rich people could be full-time artists/authors. That is how it used to be centuries ago, by the way.
I know a lot of folks who don't love that they have to choose between charging for their work and starving. You seem to suggest that the first of those options should be foreclosed and replaced with "beg for patronage".
Which is pretty cool, because all else equal, that forces people to keep creating, lest they lose for lack of output whatever patronage they've managed to obtain.
Like, it's fine to say ars gratia artis, but you need to come up with a way for that actually to happen. What you've described here is much more ars gratia affluentium. What ends up getting made is, and is only, what people want to pay for, which at best is no improvement over the status quo, and probably isn't even as good as that.
I fail to see how copyright law as it exists now, removes the need to "beg for patronage". If anything, being able to freely access an authors work may generate more interest for lesser known authors.
I think, as with many industries, there is an unfair wealth divide amongst creative professionals. I don't think JK Rowling is such a better writer than most other writers alive today, that she deserves to have made billions of dollars for her work. The only reason she has made that much is because of copyright law. If anything, copyright law increases the divide between the lucky authors, and the much more talented but much more unlucky ones.
I tend to think the eight-movie deal had something to do with the money. Would it have failed to happen without copyright law? Your analysis should account for that, and it doesn't.
It also doesn't account for how, when there's no option to do anything but give it away, the people who succeed aren't those doing the best work, but those doing the best marketing. What's to stop them from simply finding good work by "talented but unlucky" people, representing it as their own, and getting rich on the back of it?
> The 70 years is the only thing I agree. 10 is quite short. 20 would be fair and way better than the 70.
Why is 10 years too short? Why is 20 better? What kind of profit does a huge book publishing company or a software corporation still need to extract after first 10 years of earning the revenue that needs to be protected?
Remember, most of profits from copyright don't go to starving artists, but to huge media and software conglomerates which then use this money to pay lawyers and lobby for more copyright extensions.
Limiting it to "profiting" opens up a giant load of issues. Is an artist not profiting from their art, do they not pay the rent with it, increase their reputation? Isn't a scientist profiting from their research, as results will also benefit their reputation and get them the next grant or tenure position / promotion?
If you're limiting it to "immediate profit", I guess Amazon could've used anything and everything because they never made a profit until 2001.
I very much agree regarding the years, though. And it's not even 70 years, it's 70 years after the creator's death.
The United States is the world's third most populous country, and home to a number of technology businesses–one of the main draws of the site. I don't know if anyone has officially disclosed Hacker News's traffic data, but a lot of people have done analysis of what kind of traffic they get from being on the front page and it's invariably dominated by the United States: https://nicklafferty.com/blog/what-happens-when-you-re-on-th...
1) Even if you combine the top 3, they would be quite smaller than the rest combined.
2) The actual markets is what you should look at, since you are talking about business, trade, etc. The EU is bigger than the US.
3) You wrote "most websites", not just HN. That is just incredibly wrong. Even if you had written "most English-speaking websites", you would still be wrong for the most popular sites.
Being ignorant didn't make you a prima donna tho, as above says.
Also, they have to have some clue about the domain, because the domain is their own problem and they're writing a solution for it. So I don't think we can really just someone as not having any clue about their own engineering challenges.... especially if they're working solutions to them....
Antirez said literally he didn't know about existing solutions when he went to write redis, and he and redis are awesome. nothing bad about that
but I get your point about bad solutions are bad but that's sort of a tautology, doesn't add much value, and who are we to judge someone else's solutions are bad we don't know everything about their use case.
Again... even if we can say that you choosing someone else's technology for your problem is not a good solution we just can't criticize the author because it's your responsibility what you choose. so I just don't think it's valid to criticize the author
> they have to have some clue about the domain, because the domain is their own problem
They can be lifelong experts on their problem, yet have no clue about writing a database engine and low-level programming in general.
> Antirez said literally he didn't know about existing solutions when he went to write redis
Nobody is born with knowledge. The difference is that Antirez studied previous solutions, studied how to do it, and then applied that knowledge right.
Instead, that person did the equivalent of building a bridge disregarding everything humans learnt about it since the Roman empire. It will not be a surprise if the bridge ends up collapsing.
> comparing web pages with cockpits does not make any sense at all.
Why not? It is a user interface whether 2D (on a monitor) or 3D (cockpit). It has common purpose - to allow the user to interact with the machine or Human-Machine-Interface/HMI. Why are they fundamentally different?
As the light rays hit your retina, process through V1-V4 regions in the occipital lobe, and your limbic system acts on it - to me, a website UI, a door knob, an audio amplifier front panel or a cockpit are all forms of user interfaces that allow the user to interact with the machine. There is no difference besides the context you mentioned.
I presume all interactions map to:
- enums/ints (dropdowns, DPST, DPDT, rotary selectors, radio buttons)
- bools (toggles, SPST, SPDT, checkboxes)
- floats (sliders and continuous rollers, including 2d pads and 3d joysticks)
Fundamental types in programming languages, I need to think about this a little more - just guessing.
Give me any UI and I can probably boil it down to fundamental types in a programming language. Or a circuit element.
It is difficult to argue with you with all due respect when all you have to say is based on ad-hominem attacks. Please get down to the bottom of the problem, I am willing to concede if logic or data dictates. I don't know you and you don't know me and my "UI vision".
Edit:
I can't respond to you anymore, so here it is, quoting your comment which I found as personal jab:
> You are taking design decisions made in a wildly different context and assuming they were made that way because it fits your UI vision.
How do know my "UI vision"? I've distilled every response with logical reasoning to which you respond with this?
Pointing out a flaw in your argument has nothing to do with your person or condition, which as you say I have no clue about. You have made your UI preferences crystal clear in this thread, and I disputed your arguments supporting them. Discussion is the goal of this forum, by the way.
If you really believe you have been attacked, then may I suggest we leave the discussion here and please flag the comments you find disruptive and let a moderator work it out.
As a friendly side note: claiming "all someone has to say is attacking ad hominem" is quite ad hominem itself, because you are attributing an implicit trait to that person (eg pushy) or a motive irrelevant to the discussion (eg not "liking you" or whatever).
> It is like saying a touchscreen is thousands of switches just because it has that many sensor points.
Huh? This is such a bad counter analogy. Allow me to expand and prove my point.
First, let's clarify what type of an input a keyboard switch is? It is Single Pole Single Throw or SPST. It is also momentary (meaning you have to keep the key pressed to close the circuit). 104 keys on a keyboard, each key is a momentary SPST switch representing the ASCII character set (let's simplify).
On a touch screen, if it had 104 boxes, each representing a monentary SPST, then it is identical as far as the interaction is concerned. The finger went down, pressed inside a box or a key, and a character appeared on the screen. They are identical (in logical sense). The circuit element is the same, see the symbol for SPST here [1].
You're comparing 104 individual options for character input to a pixel on the touchscreen? Why? I don't follow and what point are you trying to make? The action is taken as a press of a finger in a specific area, not a single pixel.
The point is that it does not matter that keyboards have 50, 100 or 200 keys dedicated to characters for text entry. That is something that came out of biology and the average human capacity to coordinate their fingers, their length, etc.; as well as the limits of technology at the time.
The comparison with cockpits is meaningless because keyboards are not "104 switches", but a single method to deliver input text (for the most part). The same way touchscreens are a method to deliver input, not an interface on itself.
No one is talking about the method of input or classification of input device, the response I provided to the parent comment if you scan back up is about switches. To which I said a keyboard has 104 switches. That's all.
I think you are right and if they could use a simulator to practice it would be very easy to learn all the buttons by heart. Certain controls will just easily translate across any aircraft and the others you can just train on like any other vehicle slowly learning until you master it. I don't think 200 controls would take much mental capacity with practice. In many aspects of life we are taking in countless factors in what we do and make decisions instantaneously based on those factors.
Absolutely--this is a standard practice in a lot of flight training. Some places use "cockpit procedure trainers," which are basically plywood mockups of aircraft cockpits, featuring all the switches in the right places but no simulation capabilities. It only takes a few hours of practice to learn to locate and identify an arbitrary switch or instrument in the cockpit with your eyes closed. CPTs are fantastic for learning all kinds of procedures and building good habit patterns without the expense of a full-blown sim or actual flight.
Is this an ad? Not only you mention a single engine, you also sell it as super easy.
The reality is that making good games is extremely hard, and has always been.
Unity is not the first game framework, there have been many along the years. Flash being one of them (while not even designed for that originally!).
Some of them are easier, some are more featureful, some have better graphics, some are specialized into a genre etc.
While some genres need almost no code, others are full of pages of tricky game logic. And that is without counting into account the engine code.
Further, Unity had nothing to do with Steam being flooded. The actual reason is that
1- Valve pivoted into being a distribution platform,
2- they stopped curating what goes in,
3- gaming exploded and became way more mainstream (along with streaming, e-sports and programming, all which helped a lot), and
4- people started making money selling courses, degrees and content on how to make games.
You broke the site guidelines here. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? Note that they ask people not to post insinuations about astroturfing or shilling.
I know that's not a perfect answer, but it's pretty much all we have, and the approach does have one major advantage: it doesn't need to care how veiled an ad is, or if it's an ad at all.
I'm not as optimistic about thinking skills, because manipulation techniques seem to work anyhow. But barring actual evidence of abuse, I think we mostly can only try to get better at countering false or distorted information with more correct information.
If you were talking about C, perhaps.
Modern C++ has a strict type system if you don't walk around it.
Nevertheless, the borrow checker can help with bugs that otherwise could be hiding, which is the actual advantage over C++. But those are not the kind you see right away after running your program again.