denyerec.co.uk

Software patents bemuse me. Whilst I can see one side of the arguement, in that a software idea or concept should be judge no different to a physical one, it still doesn’t seem quite right. Take for example emoticons. Lets say someone tries to whack a patent on the system by which an ASCII emoticon is replaced in realtime or at parse-time by a small graphic. Given that people are trying to whack patents on scrollbars and text boxes I hardly think this idea is too outlandish, so, to continue… The problem is that these crazy lawyer-fuelled maniacs aren’t just protecting their own source code, they’re trying to protect with a thick wall of cash “intellectual property”, or ideas to you and I. Why is this bad? It’s bad because there are some fundamental ideas, some devices and methods of doing things that are so basic that not only is it difficult to attribute them to a single originator, it just doesn’t make sense to. I don’t pretend to be a legal expert, but given how the US legal system works (Whoever has the money gets the “justice”) there would be nothing to stop a certain software vendor buying up every patent out there and, BAM, all of a sudden if you want to write software to count to 10 you have to pay a fee to them, simply because they have rights to labels, text boxes, OK buttons and the concept of displaying information on a VDU in a box, or “window”, if you will.

Can I patent smiling? Can I put a patent on the reaction between having a humerous thought and conveying it to someone else using a visible physical medium? Didn’t think so, I’d be laughed out of court.

Maybe if I tried again with a few billion US dollars I’d have more luck. Then I could sue the arse off the judge I had to bribe with a billion US dollars for not paying his smiling licence fee.

The people at the Protecting Innovation Website know far more than I do, please check them out.

Following a discourse in good old channel #Webdev, it ocurred to me that although my work is for sale (Yes, it is true…) it’s not nearly well advertised enough. In fact the only mention of it is in my website FAQ which thanks to its lack of advertisement no-one seems to read. (I get a fair number of emails , one could say I received them frequently, asking questions which are answered in the FAQ.)

The willpower to put up a full-blown automated sales system is not within me, not only that but I really don’t want to turn into a bargain-basement stock salesman which, if you sell images above 1024×768 is rapidly what you’ll become, afterall, no-one gives a crap about photographic rights these days anway. On the flipside, I’m not actually selling anything anyway at the moment so you could argue something is better than nothing. Would the images find their way into the public domain? Would someone use them as their own, build them into a website, print them in a brochure or a flier after paying only a small fee to “Use it as a desktop wallpaper” ?

One line of discussion was about music and the way in which an awful lot of people don’t pay to listen to it.
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Things have gotten very slack around here and I do apologise. The usual story of no new photos, no new posts, no advancement of the site and also no progress on the Gallery project.
Ho hum.

On a better note, I can make rent this month, which is nice.

Despite the lack of updates this page is still receiving around about 450 unique hits a day which makes me wonder what they’re looking out for My top search term is sadly still “Veiled pages” and I think that’s some kind of dodgy porn thing, though I’m not quite sure. If you got to this page by searching for “Veiled pages”, please drop me a line and let me know what you were really looking for.

Once more I shall promise to become more active, though the nagging thoughts of “Why should I try for more traffic?” still plague me and I’ve not quite figured it out yet.

There are oodles of photo’s that need uploading and, really, printing and putting in some kind of print portfolio. If anyone out there has a cure for terminal apathy, get in touch.