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'I think photographers get TOO MUCH copyright for their work'

Reg Readers' views, sliced and diced for your delight and delectation

CoTW Copyright is a basic property right. It's one of those fundamental things you just don't muck around with: if someone creates something and others want to use it, they should be paid. Everyone agrees with this - except for one Register reader...

This week JeffyPoooh caught a virtual packet from the rest of you for his, ahem, unconventional view of how photographers should benefit from the copyright in their pictures.

His comment came after the row over that infamous monkey photo, which threw Wikipedophiles into a tizzy after the Wikimedia Foundation claimed photographer David Slater couldn't claim copyright over the simian selfie.

Catching 46 downvotes at the time of writing, JeffyPoooh's missive read:

The fact that the Copyright Office has refused to register the image, for the same reasons and logic Wiki uses, is good ammunition for a case.

Me thinks photographers get too much copyright for what is often 1/60s work.

In happier news, more than 100 of you good people upvoted Andy Tunnah's excellent comment on Phoummala Schmitt's thought-provoking story about experiencing sexual harassment at tech conferences...

I thought this was going to be an article about how it sucks to be "a woman in a male dominated field" and focused on the alpha male traits you normally see in the likes of the banking and hedge fund world, but this was just...wow.

I don't think I've ever had enough drinks at any event to tell any random girl, mid conversation, that you've gotten my er...attention. That's just vile. It sounds like the stuff you overhear from spotty 18 year olds at the local Wetherspoons. The fact that this is a professional atmosphere is crazy. Maybe it's different circles but if me or one of my colleagues heard a stranger say that to one of the lasses we were with they'd probably end up with a knee to reduce that attention span.

Meanwhile, in the never-ending battle between fans of different operating systems (because nothing says you're an independent-minded person better than ranting on the internet about whether your OS has a main menu at the side or at the top of your screen), brave reader NoneSuch put his head over the parapet. Why brave? Well, because he said this...

Linux is supposed to be boring.

If you do notice your operating system, it's usually because it failed.

This, remarkably, garnered more than 50 upvotes at the time of writing. It seems devotees of all things penguin are short on the ground here at El Reg. Perhaps they're all reading that well known terrorist publication the Linux Journal?

In a first-time submission that made Vulture Central's backroom gremlins giggle, one reader - who was unimpressed with Dyson's video teaser, which seemed to promise a robot vacuum cleaner from the Brit firm in the near future - weighed in with his experience of automated cleaning tech...

My beloved Roomba from 7 years ago had a wonderful spiral algorithm for covering the whole room, that was until it trod in a cat pooh and methodically smeared it over every square inch of my house. The pooh killed poor Roomba, I hope Mr Dyson has solved this glaring design flaw.

Yes, indeed. He who invents an automatic vacuum cleaner which doesn't coat your carpets in a quarter-inch layer of fresh feline turd will surely inherit the earth.

In a rare display of balance on El Reg forums, veteran poster jake has, at the time of writing, scooped 30 upvotes and downvotes for this little snippet:

Personally ...

... I use vi as my text editor. Because I'm inputting ... er ... text.

Correct tool for the job, and all that.

Markup comes long after typoing/editing.

Where do you stand - markup as you write, or write first and then insert all those tiresome tags afterwards? Get stuck into the comments and tell us all.

And finally, in the comments section of a story about big data and HUGE data, WraithCadmus felt moved to share his experience of, er, artifical genitals:

True story*, when working in a hospital I discovered that prosthetic bollocks are provided in sizes starting at 'medium'.

I think given the state of a patient in need of such things we can understand avoiding any further damage to their ego and sense of masculinity.

*I recall this being true, but it was a lot of beer ago...

This reminds Vulture Central's backroom gremlins of the old story, sadly apocryphal, about Winston Churchill and condoms.

The tale goes that British soldiers deployed to Norway in the early stages of the war discovered that condoms fitted over the barrels of their rifles helped stop seawater, snow and so on from getting into the bore and freezing solid in the harsh Norwegian weather conditions. Thus the Army put in a special order for several thousand condoms, 11" long.

Churchill, upon hearing of the order, is claimed to have said: "Deliver them in boxes stamped 'British. Size: Medium.' That will show the Nazis, if they ever capture any of them, who the master race really is." ®

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