Word and OOo both behave in ways that drive me mad! Why, when I delete a line immediately preceding a heading, does that heading lose its heading style, for example?
Time to dump these paper paradigmed monstrosities for tools more relevant to the screen paradigm our kids are growing up with.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Economics != happiness
Is the pursuit of economic growth (i.e. more money) isomorphic with increasing happiness? If so, why do the Japanese and Scandinavians, among the materially richest nations on Earth, have record high suicide rates?
Money appears to be a poor (ouch! :-)) measure of personal happiness, too. (Lack of it tho' is an excellent indicator of misery.) Is Bill gates really 50 times happier than Mark Shuttleworth? Are either of them happier than a mere millionaire?
What if we could quantise happiness, both personal and collective? Would we, or our government, dare to apply the logical conclusions? Whatever, it would be a very different world!
Money appears to be a poor (ouch! :-)) measure of personal happiness, too. (Lack of it tho' is an excellent indicator of misery.) Is Bill gates really 50 times happier than Mark Shuttleworth? Are either of them happier than a mere millionaire?
What if we could quantise happiness, both personal and collective? Would we, or our government, dare to apply the logical conclusions? Whatever, it would be a very different world!
DRM - I want it, now!
Digital Rights Management has so far been touted as the saviour of big media, forcing us hoi polloi to do as we're told. That's bad for us hoi polloi.
Government and corporations will increasingly digitise and consolidate the data they hold about us, as citizens and consumers etc.. That's potentially bad, too, if inaccurate or badly managed. The Data Protection Act does give me some rights to discover what stuff is collected, what for, and so on, but I'd be happier if I had the right to control that data *before* its use. Give me DRM that grants that right now, before the crackers feed the spammers my entire financial and medical history...
Government and corporations will increasingly digitise and consolidate the data they hold about us, as citizens and consumers etc.. That's potentially bad, too, if inaccurate or badly managed. The Data Protection Act does give me some rights to discover what stuff is collected, what for, and so on, but I'd be happier if I had the right to control that data *before* its use. Give me DRM that grants that right now, before the crackers feed the spammers my entire financial and medical history...
Documentation - obsolete?
Modern system software is so flexible, integrateable, mashable, and generally malleable, that it's increasingly difficult to document: there are too many contexts to consider. Then there's GUI stuff that reconfigures itself depending on how its used, making screenshots irrelevant. {Aside: getting difficult to write meaningful reviews on stuff too}
Alternatives? Maybe write interactive demonstrations rather than do static documentation. Definitely include the important stuff directly in the GUI (which no one does right yet, not even Apple) - why should I have to open a completely separate application to explain the one I'm in??? senseless. *Very* definitely allow the user(s) to add their own notes and comments to the application.
Alternatives? Maybe write interactive demonstrations rather than do static documentation. Definitely include the important stuff directly in the GUI (which no one does right yet, not even Apple) - why should I have to open a completely separate application to explain the one I'm in??? senseless. *Very* definitely allow the user(s) to add their own notes and comments to the application.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Proportional Patents
I've just been reading how the threat of US style software patents has delayed the Munich to Linux. Which set me thinking. Is it reasonable to provide the same protection for a software "feature" as for a new drug?
A new drug costs hundreds of millions of dollars to develop and launch. A software idea takes at most a few months, all of which (in the US) could be spent writing the patent application rather than code.
It seems to me that the drug company has too short a window to recover its costs, hence the price of new drugs is inflated. Were the patent protection time extended, lets say to 30 from the current 17 years, drug costs would be the same in the long term, fall in the short term, and encourage increased pharmaceutical investment.
On the other hand, any company and their monkeys can generate software patents for a few thousand dollars each. Do they deserve the same protection as a new drug? I think not.
What if the period of protection was made proportional to the investment needed to develop / marketise the "thing"? A mere idea could get 3 years protection, a new drug 30, with the majority of inventions falling around the 10 year mark.
[Small inventors would still have the problem of affording to defend their patents. Maybe patent violations should be made part of the criminal code, and thus protected by the state. If that was considered, then it wouls only work if a patent was implicit in the 'publication' of the thing, similar to how copyright works.]
A new drug costs hundreds of millions of dollars to develop and launch. A software idea takes at most a few months, all of which (in the US) could be spent writing the patent application rather than code.
It seems to me that the drug company has too short a window to recover its costs, hence the price of new drugs is inflated. Were the patent protection time extended, lets say to 30 from the current 17 years, drug costs would be the same in the long term, fall in the short term, and encourage increased pharmaceutical investment.
On the other hand, any company and their monkeys can generate software patents for a few thousand dollars each. Do they deserve the same protection as a new drug? I think not.
What if the period of protection was made proportional to the investment needed to develop / marketise the "thing"? A mere idea could get 3 years protection, a new drug 30, with the majority of inventions falling around the 10 year mark.
[Small inventors would still have the problem of affording to defend their patents. Maybe patent violations should be made part of the criminal code, and thus protected by the state. If that was considered, then it wouls only work if a patent was implicit in the 'publication' of the thing, similar to how copyright works.]
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