@Robusto wood treads?

Weird.

Yes. The part you step on is called a tread. The part that is vertical is called a riser. The parts that support both of those are called stringers. You could look it up.

BRB taking picture to support point.

But tread is a squishy word. I can understand how you would think I meant the grippy stuff, which is also called that.

sundown, you better take care / if I find you been creepin' 'round my back stair

Hey, stop stairing.

I got to make a sandwich while I wait for the spreadsheet.

Or not.

No samwich?

(?(?=(^.*[^a-z](t=[0-9]+)(?!=[0-9]).*$))(\1)|(^.*$))

Look, my Regex works!

Right. "Your" Regex.

I have made it!

Haven't copied or pasted a thing!

Well, good on ya, mate.

Thanks!

I can't code, so I have to do something.

Turns out conditionals are not so hard. Maybe there is an easier way to accomplish what I needed, but I couldn't find it.

Why do you put the ^ and $ inside the capture groups?

You never know, what with laziness and such.

It's safe.

One potentially weak link fewer.

But those are zero-width assertions.

So?

I can never remember how * works by default.

And ^ and $ make it so that I don't have to remember.

* means "none or any"

@Cerberus No, you do have to remember.

Yes, but in which direction does it search?

Anyway, I'm not having this argument with you.

That's what I can never remember.

@Cerberus ...

What?

You don't know nothin', and you don't wanna learn nothin'.

Thanks for your respectful and constructive suggestions.

But I'll stick with Regex Coach!

I usually don't need it, but it was helpful with the conditional.

Oh, so you are bitching about me in other chats. Now I won't ever help you again. Enjoy your AHK.

@Robusto I was in fact trying to represent your position in the debate there.

See?

@Cerberus what is this supposed to match?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 The time indication in Youtube urls.

Well, it's supposed to match it only if it exists; otherwise, it must match the whole url.

Because I replace the whole url with either the time or nothing, depending on whether it exists.

so... wouldn't it be just as easy to match the time or nothing, and use the result either way as the replacement?

I then stick it on the other two functional parts of the Youtube url, and copy it to clipboard.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'm not sure how that would work; but what happened was that it would match nothing if there was no time (t=99), and then it would not replace anything, so the result would be the whole url.

The whole reason behind this is that I wanted to be able to automatically clear the clutter from Youtube links, because they will only auto-onebox in this chat room if they are clutter free.

Or at least free of certain unknown kinds of clutter, like "feature=blahblah".

[?&]t=[0-9]+

They one-box if the v parameter is first

the other params after that don't matter

Are you sure?

I think so

Well, it was a good exercise anyway.

Removing the clutter also makes it easier to look at.

also youtube pages have a share button that lets you share it with youtu.be urls

@Robusto forgot my bread was mouldy.

Oh, he's gone.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I wanted it to work even when the time indicator came first. Even though Youtube normally doesn't do that.

the youtu.be urls have no clutter

But I don't want to use a button. I didn't even known it existed, and it might disappear again.

The url is nice and stable.

Well, up to a point...

But anyway, I could have done it in a simpler way a long time ago.

I just wanted to see whether I could do it this way and learn in the process.

New Nexus 7 may not get factory images due to legal issues, JBQ leaves AOSP over it

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Ugh, that's terrible.

So it's probably Qualcomm's fault?

In combination wither a certain ridiculous patent system?

It's so frustrating that in 2013 the world's most popular OS is still crippled by proprietary video drivers.

Not patents.

Video drivers

The video card makers hide some secret sauce in their drivers and are afraid that their competitors might benefit from their source code.

As if they don't just reverse-engineer them anyway.

So, many GPUs have proprietary drivers, even for Linux which is otherwise fairly intolerant of proprietary drivers.

You are saying this is exclusively an issue of secrets?

And yet you say they can be reverse-engineered?

Strangely, open-source drivers have helped every single other hardware maker. But for some reason graphics chips makers are paranoid.

Yes, it's an issue of secrets. They don't want the source code revealed. So they use copyright to prevent its release and to limit how the binary drivers can be distributed.

Any software can be reverse-engineered.

Ah, so it's copyright, not patents.

Stupid things.

kicks copyrights

And they stay in force for another 100 years.

well, it's secrecy

protected through copyright. But copyright isn't the problem here.

open-source software relies on a strong copyright system.

So your great-great grandchildren may still not see the new Nexus-7 ROM published!

I don't believe Linux relies on a strong copyright system.

of course it does

if there were no copyright, there could be no GPL

GPL?

The Gnu Public License

Free Software uses copyright to state terms on how the software is to be distributed

If you follow the rules, you are allowed to make copies - that is, you are granted a license under copyright law

If you don't follow the rules, you are not allowed to make copies, and copyright law can be used to make you stop

HAMMERTIME!

@CapricaSix Haha.

And so what if people make copies?

So, Linux is licensed under the GPL which states "make copies if you want, but if you distribute a copy, you have to provide the source code of what you are distributing"

If I distribute, say, a router, that uses Linux, but doesn't have source code, the linux kernel devs can sue me

and they have done so in the past.

So?

Why does Linux care?

Because Linux is improved due to everyone having to play along. If people were allowed to take it and make secret improvements, it would be a fragmented mess and it never would have achieved the level of excellence it has now.

Example: Apple's OSX is based on open-source software that does not require them to distribute the source code.

None of the improvements they've made to that software have been useful to anyone else because they are secret and copyright (c) Apple.

But WebKit, the rendering engine for Safari, is LGPL, which means you can put it in a proprietary browser, but improvements made to the engine have to be released as code.

So for years WebKit has been improving, to the benefit of lots of people.

e.g. Chrome, etc.

Without copyright, Apple could have just taken WebKit (then KHTML) as-is, made it completely in-house, and kept all the improvements to themselves.

But what was OSX based on?

Unix, right?

well.... "Unix" is not one thing. It's a family of things, or a description of a hypothetical thing.

> OS X is based upon the Mach kernel. Certain parts from FreeBSD's and NetBSD's implementation of Unix were incorporated in NeXTSTEP, the core of Mac OS X. NeXTSTEP was the graphical, object-oriented, and UNIX-based operating system developed by Steve Jobs' company NeXT after he left Apple in 1985.

Okay, well, so what does it matter if Apple forks Unix and performs its black magic upon it? The other branches can still go on. If you fork away from the open "stem", then eventually you won't be able to profit from the open work done on the stem any more. So you lose out.

@Cerberus yes. Everyone loses out.

Look at FreeBSD and NetBSD today. They are a shadow of what Linux is.

But also and mainly whoever decides to close his fork.

So the resources of the community will be mostly spent for free on the open stem or open branches.

It depends.

So Apple might have fared better had they kept their fork open. Its their loss, right?

It is everyone's loss.

As you say, their improvements could still be reverse-engineered if they were so good.

If Apple had kept their fork open, people could have improved their own Mac machines.

@Cerberus Well, I meant that in relation to competing GPU vendors.

?

NVIDIA has some secret GPU-enhancing sauce that they put into their driver. They don't want AMD to have that so they put restrictive terms on the license for the drivers and only deliver binaries instead of source.

But if AMD really wants it they can crack open the binary and look inside.

Regular people, however, cannot do that.

Anyway most open-source projects shy away from that because of the dubious legality. They prefer to reverse engineer from the outside of the driver code. This prevents possible copyright violations.

A project with no budget and only volunteer coders can't afford a lawsuit from NVIDIA

even responding to a Cease and Desist order might be too costly

And in the case of, eg, Apple, because none of the OS code is open, there is little benefit in reverse-engineering it, because it will be too difficult to maintain changes going forward. If you want an OS you can modify, you just go with Linux from the get-go

And there is a reason Linux dominates everywhere.

It is the only choice in high-performance computing.

It is the main choice in embedded devices.

It is the main choice for things like TVs and routers and phones

The only place it's not the main choice is desktops, Due to the network effect of the installed-base of software.

Linux has conquered the computing world, and it has done so because everyone was forced to collaborate. And as Linux gets better and better, the benefits of collaboration get better and better.

That collaboration is forced by copyright.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, and I'm saying that would be much less of a problem without copyrights.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You seem to be proving the opposite!

No, you don't understand. Without copyright, the only tool we would have is reverse-engineering. With copyright, we have the GPL (copyleft), which FORCES collaboration

If you want to use Linux, you CAN'T keep your fork closed

Reverse engineering and cracking the binary can be done, you said.

@Cerberus It's difficult and error-prone and problematic.

And does not constitute collaboration

And OSes that close thsemselves will eventually perish, because they lose community support.

Survival of the fittest.

@Cerberus yes, like Windows and OS X have perished.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You seem to be reasoning based on a system where copyright exists here.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 They will eventually...

@Cerberus I'm not. If there was no copyright, then there would only be secrecy and obfuscation.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 And it would have happened a lot faster had there been no copyright.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I believe the opposite of that.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 If you hide your stuff, you don't profit from the community.

@Cerberus really? I highly doubt it. In the early days of computer software most people doubted that copyright applied to software.

You should have seen the tricks people went through to try to prevent copying.

But not later on.

Later on they believed that copyright DID apply, and didn't use such awful stunts to prevent copying, because the law prevented it.

Just look at DRM today.

It was, in some ways, worse back then

If there is no copyright, cracking DRM is easy.

manufacturers did things like ship software on diskettes that were intentionally defective in some way that prevented copying, and the software relied on the defect in order to function properly.

And it is already easy as it is.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 And yet DRM is always cracked.

And it becomes even easier if it is entirely above ground.

Yes. The state of the art in DRM is pretty poor. It has been held back by the lack of need for it.

More collaboration on DRM cracking, perhaps even state assistance.

lol as if

state assistance?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Again, the opposite of what I believe.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Why not?

@Cerberus Because of lobbying. What do states gain by allowing unfettered copying? If they wanted that, they could have it now.

DRM has been doing its utmost for years, because the people behind it think or used to think it was of the utmost importance to them. And yet they failed.

There is no copyright. It has been abolished. That's the situation I'm talking about.

Noöne is trying to enforce anything like it.

@Cerberus No. DRM exists in a world where copyright exists, and software and computing have evolved in that world, and users have certain expectations.

@Cerberus Yes, I heard you the first time. I already addressed this. In the early days of software there WAS no copyright on it. And vendors did crazy shit to prevent copying.

That crazy shit abated because it wasn't necessary

Lately people have tried adding DRM back to a mature ecosystem and it doesn't work well.

But imagine if there had never been copyright and DRM had been the only way, since the early 80s.

The state of the art for DRM would be much better than now.

All hardware would be totally locked down.

It's possible, actually: MS is sorta doing this with Windows RT

They can try it there because it's a new platform.

sorta like mobile phones

20 years ago vendors tried to make hard drives that had files you couldn't copy

so that if you had, eg, a song you purchased, you couldn't just copy it off onto a CDROM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 If you think various companies haven't gone to great length to get the strongest DRM they could, then there is no point in discussing that any further...like Sony's rootkits, which were bordering on criminal, and EA's "always online", which basically crippled their product...

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Because it didn't work!

there would be some kind of centralized control over that, and the song could only be moved to a compliant device that would ensure its protection, and it would have to be securely erased from your disk at the same time

@Cerberus No. You misunderstand. "the strongest DRM they could" is within the context of the current computing world. Not a computing world that had DRM from its outset.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, and people would either crack it or buy a different drive that imitates that kind of drive but without the controls.

I am imagining a world that never had copyright on software.

@Cerberus No. They wouldn't be able to crack it or buy other drives, because it was an industry consortium and all drives were to be like that.

I rather think they would have depended on different business models, like Google.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 "Were to be"?

What prevents someone else to make an imitation drive?

@Cerberus Yes. Guess who stopped this from happening? The Linux devs.

@Cerberus The fact that all the drive manufacturers are colluding, and the OS vendors are enabling that collusion.

You don't understand just how fully DRM can be baked into a system.

It is possible to design a computing system that is pretty damn secure.

However, that system will be severely crippled in functionality, compared to a modern desktop

That's why it doesn't fly now: we know better

but we wouldn't have gotten here if we grew up on DRM

In oligopolies, all sorts of evil can happen.

DRM is ineffective now because it is an add-on feature

it is an add-on feature now because it wasn't really needed before.

Even though there was no copyright?

It arguably isn't needed now either.

All this is idle speculation.

You always argue for the status quo and expect changes to be impossible.

I take the opposite position.

@Cerberus There WAS no copyright, or rather, many people believed there wasn't, and we had DRM. Then as people figured out that copyright did work for software, DRM went away. Then DRM came back once the internet made copying movies and songs easier.

So be it!

@Cerberus The status quo hasn't always been status quo!

But it is now.

And it is what you base your position on in a way that I do not.

So explain to me how, in a hypothetical society that never had copyright, would software collaboration like Linux happen.

@Cerberus No, I'm basing my position on the evidence I've seen.

FreeBSD and NetBSD have liberal licenses that do not require open forks. They are largely unsuccessful projects despite pre-dating Linux and being first to implement many important features.

It is the GPL, which requires open forks, and is enforced by the power of copyright law, that made linux what it is now.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I already told you, but I don't think this discussion is really going anywhere. We both speculate in different directions.

@Cerberus No, please explain it again. Let's say there is no copyright at all. How do you make a reliable operating system? How do you force people to collaborate?

or s/force/encourage strongly/

Instead, I have a very nice video for you, if you're interested in the subject.

You see that brown thing?

It's a mosquito's ehm needle.

yeah

It pries around the skin of a mouse, trying to find a big vein.

The thing is, Cerb, the "no copyright" experiment has been tried several times already in software.

Good evening.

I am a believer in Copyright. I think it is a logical thing and useful for society. However, in modern states it goes way too far and becomes unwieldy and harmful.

Copyright terms should be limited. They should be limited to years, not decades upon decades. They should be renewable a limited number of times. There should be an easy renewal process with a nominal fee. Their should be a generous allowance for derivative works and fair use.

@Mahnax Evening!

Oh—might not be a good evening after all. I'll be back.

e.g. copyright shouldn't prevent format-shifting. yet in many countries it does. It shouldn't prevent reverse-engineering. Yet in many countries it does, or as good as.

It shouldn't be perpetual. Yet in the US it is. Or as good as.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That would be a start. Compulsory licences should also be required for everything.

But I think we should rather get rid of it altogether.

Extensions shouldn't be granted automatically. They should require the copyright holder to perform an affirmative action which can be looked up in a public database. That way it would be easy to see if a work had left copyright.

@Mahnax We were just ending this discussion.

It's safe!

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 So let's agree to disagree, or we'll be sitting her till the crack of dawn. Your dawn!

@Cerberus I think it's important enough for most kinds of protected works that it is useful.

I don't. Most of the money goes to pop culture anyway.

And nearly all artists make most of their money from things unrelated to copyright.

But now I will say no more about this subject!

I mean, there's enough evidence of writers having books pirated in other nations before the Berne Convention. It's pretty clear that in a regime without copyright people lose lots of money and freeloaders profit.

@Cerberus This applies only to, eg, musicians. Not, e.g., book writers, or movie makers.

They have enough other ways to make money too.

@Cerberus do they? seriously?

And I don't think the big artists need the incentive anyway.

But I said I wasn't going to talk about this any more!

How do they get big?

remains silent

changes subject

No, I'm curious, how do the arts get funded in a world without copyright?

Didn't you hear? The subject was changed.

Look!

extends subject It's changed, see?

@Cerberus Not the discussion. Something bad could have been happening here, but it's okay now.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 whispers <Read stuff on Techdirt if you want a refreshing perspective on the topic. Especially the "must-read" articles, I think there are three, on the lower right or something.>

@Mahnax Naaaah like what?

@Cerberus I'll send you an e-mail.

Oh!

OK...

Something extracameral, I gather.

Sent to hotmail.

OK.

@Cerberus So yeah. That "economics of free" article is wrong in its basic assumptions.

It's pretty fallacious. In fact the biggest fallacy is comparing intellectual property with real property, which the other article says you shouldn't do.

Hi @Cerberus

Good morning.

The air is much/ more hotter today than yesterday.

What will come?

@Cerberus: Its pretty cool here. What about at your end?

Finally, the Grand Unified Theory of Free just says "give away your creative output and sell something else instead", then goes on to list "CDs" as an example of stuff you can sell. Listen: if you already gave away the music, how much do you expect to get for the CD? I can burn a CD way cheaper. And what is the analogous "scarce" item for book authors?

@Mahnax Replied.

@Sudhir Much hotter. "More hotter" would be a pleonasm (you can look that word up).

@Cerberus: busy?

It is cool here too, finally!

19 degrees inside.

At least in this room.

Its ideal temp.

"More hotter" would be a pleonasm

What does it mean?

@Cerberus OK.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Have you looked at how bands sell CDs during concerts? Do you know how much money bands make by selling CDs? Fans like to have special physical items. Besides, he explains all that. He is an economist, you know. Or at least someone with an education in economics.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 How/where does he compare copyright to physical property?

@Cerberus He directly compares making a movie to making cars.

@Cerberus: I read in news The Netherlands has been chosen for best country to live. Also has high Global competitive index.

@Cerberus Look. Obviously, bands can make money on performances. But what is the analogous business model for writers? Who pays the songwriter? The novelist?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Where?

In his model, songwriters can only make money if they sell songs outright, or if they perform them themselves.

@Sudhir Oh, haha, well, those rankings are always very subjective and somewhat arbitrary.

> Say I own a factory that cost me $100 million to build (fixed cost) and it produces cars that each cost $20,000 to build (marginal cost). If the market is perfectly competitive, then eventually I'm going to be forced to sell those cars at $20,000 -- leaving no profit. Now, let's look at a different situation. Let's say that I want to make a movie.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 There are many potential ways. A songwriter could be commissioned to write a song by a band.

No, Netherlands has done quite remarkably in recent times.

@Cerberus And in a world with no copyright, if I hear your band play a good song, I can just play the same song myself. The original songwriter gets no additional compensation, and neither do you.

A book writer could sell signed copies, copies with specially designed covers, do readings, Kickstarter projects, they could be commissioned by other people...

@Sudhir It's not bad, but our food is pretty bad! I ate Indian food tonight, soooo much better!

@Cerberus: I really wonder Netherland

@Cerberus They already do that, and yet somehow, most authors make no money at all.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 The songwriter was already paid by the band and/or gets a commission on songs when performed by that band.

@Cerberus I made chili with a Thai spin today. Mm.

@Cerberus: Best country to live.

I love it.

No corruption, no poverty

All gets job easily.

@Cerberus So it's okay then that a song might become hugely popular, with dozens of bands playing it, and the songwriter is only compensated exactly the same as if he wrote the world's most mediocre song.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 And yet we have strong copyright. Only best-selling authors make a lot of money in this system. But Rowling could still make lots of money by doing readings, etc.

@Sudhir Hah, we have corruption, and unemployment too. The difference is gradual!

@Cerberus Do you think she would make enough money doing readings?

@Mahnax Interesting. Coconut? Lemon grass?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, that would be perfectly fine.

But I think its most developed country.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, plenty.

@Cerberus There was coconut milk and Thai red curry paste.

Rowling is super rich because of merchandising, movie deals, etc. She wouldn't get any of those in a world without copyright. All her profits would instead go to whoever copied her work.

@Sudhir I don't know, it is a fairly typical European country, not that different from the others.

@Mahnax Ah, good. I like Thai.

@Cerberus I highly doubt it. Seriously who goes to book readings? and pays for it?

@Cerberus Me too.

Concerts are one thing. Book readings? please.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That's nonsense.

And there was sweet potato. Yum.