Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Hypocrisy (again) (Score 5, Insightful) 132

When it's wearing its YouTube hat, Google says

"fair use is not for us to decide, it's for courts to decide"

so they always side with those who claim copyright infringement in any uploaded content. As a result, videos and even entire channels get unfairly removed.

However, when Google is wearing its AI hat *it* claims that is is exempted from copyright because of "fair use" -- *without* waiting for the courts to decide.

Come on Google... you can't have it both ways -- either you need the court's consent for "fair use" or you don't. Which is it?

Comment Re:Starting with their ads (Score 1) 198

Not just trashy but scammy!

I've been reporting YT ads for their "scams and deceptive practices" and all I get is... nothing.

Even on X @teamyoutube simply says "Thanks for bringing this to our attention — we'll pass this along & handle all the next steps from here" yet, weeks later, the same scam ads continue to run.

Nothing buys immunity from the TOS more than an advertiser's wallet.

Comment Re:Hypercard could have been basis of internet (Score 1) 53

I wrote bankruptcy filing software for my own use in the late 80s on hypercard. Some things it generated itself, and some it sent a mail merge file to word 5.1 (the last version that could simply use a text file as input rather than those bizarre inserts). In fairly short order, it ended up transferred to supercars, which could have multiple stacks open (but I never transitioned back when hypercard 2.0 came out. I suppose I could have scripted that, but . . .).

I thought about making a commercial project of it, but then in '92 (?) new forms were coming out, and the court clerk told me that anything submitted would have to be pixel perfect when they got their new scanners in the coming months. Add that to Macs only having 1% market penetration in law offices at the time, and I ended up simply buy-in another program (to my secretaries' dismay!)

The next year, supercard shipped a PC version. Oh, well.

And more than 30 years later, no such scanners (nor will they ever be; we electronically submit pdfs these days).

Had I known *either* of those*, I could have been the biggest player in the field.

After being away for more than a decade and a half, I trie what was then the biggest player--and it *still* didn't do stuff that I easily did with hypercard in the 80s!

I ended up implementing it, largely from scratch, using LiveCode.

Initially metacard on the NeXT, then runner on several platforms, and now LiveCode, it's basically HyperCard on steroids able to use databases and so much more. Now they're pushing AI, and I'm retired, so not my problem any more.

Comment Re:Inefficient when programming (Score 1) 189

>The QWERTY and PC-based layout (especially for some non-EN
>layouts) are simply not suited for the prolonged use of the SHIFT-
>pinky and stretching the hand to the control characters on the
>numeric row,

Nor is EMACS, at least on a CKIE (control key in exile) keyboard.

I actually had to get medical treatment in grad school after days of heavy editing, requiring me to twist my wrist and fully extend my pinky to reach the key. He said that they could send me to physical therapy, but I could do just as well myself with rubber bands on my last two fingers, stretching against them for some amount of time a couple of times a day.

Now, I surely wouldn't be one to tamper with university equipment, but a couple of days later, there was a little piece of plastic on my desk next to the keyboard. It apparently somehow escaped from the toggle mechanism on the capslock key, allowing me to remap control to it!
 

Comment Re:Learning your IDE is more effective ... (Score 1) 189

>Nothing of this comes natural.

some does, actually, under the right circumstances.

wordstar (and I mean the original eight bit stuff, not the later extensions) was laid out rather logically and consistently with its diamonds and prefixes.

To the point that a couple of times, I instinctively used combinations that I hadn't consciously realized existed--and then sat back amazed as I realized what I'd done!

hawk, who used to type over 100wpm on a manual

Comment Re:Not At All (Score 5, Interesting) 189

While I agree that touch-typing isn't the primary skill of a competent, fast programmer -- it is still an amazing skill to have.

Although I've been touch-typing for almost half a century, it still fascinates me that the words appear on my screen simply as I think them. I don't even have to speak those thoughts -- my fingers automatically race around the keys and the words appear. It's almost like a direct interface between my mind and the computer.

Yes, I'm pretty fast -- about 140wpm which makes the whole experience even more fascinating since the words appear almost as fast as I think them.

Would I recommend that people learn touch-typing. Hell yes... I think people should learn *everything* they can, while they can. When you're young it's so much easier to learn than when you get old (like me). There are so many things I wish I'd learned when it would have been easier to do so -- foreign languages, playing a musical instrument, etc,etc.

However, here I am, a relic of the past. I can program in assembler for lots of 8-bit micros from the Signetics 2650 through the 8080, Z80, 6502, 6800 etc; BASIC, Pascal, C, Modula2, Java but now I'm faced with learning the intricacies of Python, Kotlin, Rust and crafting AI queries. It's getting harder every day because my brain seems to have simultaneously run out of RAM, CPU cycles and backup storage all at the same time :-)

Comment Re:Show It! (Score 1) 77

I considered uploading to X but discovered that unless you pay them a monthly stipend, you can only upload very short vids (90 seconds I think).

So, if you do start paying them and upload longer vids, what happens if you stop your payment either voluntarily or perhaps because you die? Will your longer vids suddenly disappear?

None of the alternative platforms offer any kind of guarantee of continued service... hence people are far better off to self-host and federate if they are in a position to do so.

Slashdot Top Deals

The nation that controls magnetism controls the universe. -- Chester Gould/Dick Tracy

Working...