Handy dandy who’s sueing who wall chart
We seem to have a “rights” theme this week!
Courtesy of the Guardian, here’s a handy dandy wall chart of all the IT companies who are currently in litigation to resolve patent disputes.
As if we didn’t already have evidence enough that software patents are are very bad idea. Software should be adequately covered by copyright, just like any other structure of a logical form, like music for instance.
When is it not ok to use a picture of an astronaut?
Usually images from NASA are not copyright, unless otherwise stated :
As a government entity, NASA does not “license” the use of NASA materials or sign license agreements. The Agency generally has no objection to the reproduction and use of these materials (audio transmissions and recordings; video transmissions and recording; or still and motion picture photography) (source : http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Info/use.htm)
Apparently astronaut Bruce McCandless II doesn’t go along with this, or at least not when it’s a picture of him. Featured on Dido’s 2008 album “Safe Trip Home”, the picture shows (a very small) him floating, like a brick doesn’t, above the earth in 1984.
Dido, Sony Music Inc. and Getty Images are apparently space-walking on Bruce’s publicity rights, so he’s suing because he says his image was used without permission.
Blog comment luncheon meat
Posted by Kevin Phillips on October 10, 2010 · 1 Comment
Or spam spam spam spam, as the famous Monty Python song goes.
Most blogs have comment facilities, which you can optionally turn on or off as the blog administrator. When you’re mulling this option over you usually have two things on your mind, the gravity of each depending on you being a optimist :
1) someone might say something interesting and profound or give me kudos for my excellent prose
..or a pessimist :
2) I’m gonna get spammed to Hades and back.
Being a moderator or admin can sometimes drive you crazy if you have the comments option turned on. You’ll receive a constant stream of emails from you blogging system, alerting you to a “new comment”. The majority of which you’ll want to delete immediately, which wastes two minutes of your life – the pessimists will undoubtedly be cleaning down their campervan in preperation for the big trip by the end of the first week (see option 2).
Some folks get around the hassle of comment moderation by automatically allowing comments and relying on the machinery to pluck out the bad ones. We tend to advise against this, because in doing so you’re really not helping. For instance, I received a comment to morate this morning which started with the line :
Now, the intesting thing about this comment is that it’s written in English (almost), so the automatic spam filters will think it’s perfectly ok to allow it – my old English teacher clearly didn’t write the filter code.
An amusing game to play is to cut/paste the first line of text into google to see if anybody else received this glowing review :
Google says yes
Sure enough, 202 blogs are currently listed.
So, what’s the point of this comment? Well, it’s purpose is simply to deliver the link which is provided as part of the comment and publish it on your blog. Most of the blog platforms allow this, and usually it’s a good thing because it helps bloggers promote each other.
We could remove this feature, but that would be sad for those who make sensible commentary and deserve the link as a token of thanks.
Anyway, this post grew a little longer than I’d first indended, sorry about that, hopefully it does illustrate the importance of that initial decision when setting up your blog, to allow comments or not. If you do, you will have to make time to moderate comments because there’s a growing percentage of individuals and businesses who are keen to waste your time. If you don’t, then you lose a very good peer (and wider community) review facility.
Filed under Blog tips, Strange but true, Uncategorized · Tagged with blog tips, campervan, can i just say, comments, hades, moderation, spam