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why should I trust that ONE KEY that microsoft...

JP

Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit. As we were talking I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows on my PC, I told him how happy I was with this operating system and showed him the Windows CD. Too my astonishment and distress he threw it into my micro-wave oven and turned it on. I was upset because the CD had become precious to me, but he said: 'Do not worry, it is unharmed.' After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said: 'Take a close look at it.' To my surprise the CD was quite cold and it seemed to have become thicker and heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw an inscription, in lines finer than anything I have ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:

4F6E 6520 4F53 2074 6F20 7275 6C65 2074 6865 6D20 616C 6C2C 204F 6E65 204F 5320 746F
2066 696E 6420 7468 656D 2C0D 0A4F 6E65 204F 5320 746F 2062 7269 6E67 2074 6865 6D20
616C 6C20 616E 6420 696E 2074 6865 2064 6172 6B6E 6573 7320 6269 6E64 2074 6865 6D

'I cannot read the fiery letters,' I said.
'No,' he said, 'but I can. The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says:'

        One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
        One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

One OS to rule them all

If GPL were truly free, it wouldn't need to lean on copyright law to work, since copyright law is specifically designed to restrict what people can do. GPL is free in the same way you're "free" to convert to Islam during a jihad.

(I'm not saying copyright is wrong; I actually enjoy the right to "own" the distribution of any intellectual property I create. I'm just saying GPL advocates have this one all wrong.)

As a sibling post said, we need GPL *because* we have copyright---not the other way around.

I, on the other hand, believe that copyright is evil (or, at least, immoral) in the modern context and should be abolished (if you'd like to read a better reasoned argument, here it is).

Yes, that would mean that GPL would lose its force as well. But, without copyright, we wouldn't need copyleft.

a microwave oven emits less radiation density then the amounts used in this study

Er, I think you lost a decimal place (or three) there, friend.

Figure a 1000 watt microwave oven with 1 kg (about 2 pounds) of ground beef defrosting. The bulk of the microwaves emitted are absorbed by the food, giving a SAR (specific absorption rate) of 1000 watts per kilogram (W/kg). The average mass of a human head, meanwhile, is about 5 kg; that makes an SAR of 200 W/kg.

The SAR used in this study was an average of 1.4 W/kg. This low level results in minimal local heating, particularly in a well-perfused part of the body like the brain (lots of blood flowing through equals lots of capacity to draw off excess heat to the rest of the body.) On the other hand, if you were to stick your head in the microwave (after jimmying the safety interlocks) I guarantee that you would find the level of local heating to be...uncomfortable.

as this website, of an Australian Internet activist, points out.

Having the thing doesn't give you a right to download a copy. I've yet to see a respected scholar in the field of IP law say anything like that.

Aside from not being allowed to own firearms, lack of free speech and rampant Internet censorship, riots caused by unchecked immigration, and Crocodile Dundee; sure, sounds like a great place! I'll just pack my bags.

Danny.

How do oyu microwave your brand new microwave?

What happens when your steel toe capped boots go in there?

Will the fabric on your GFs dress screw up if you you zap it?

Will the DVD you just bought be playable or writable?

It depends on where it came from.

Look here for more info.

However, it's a big win for Lindows. They get $20 million just for changing their domain name and company name. It's pretty clear that MS would have lost this case. You don't get trademarks to everything that even sounds like what you have a trademark to.

As a libertarian, I'm against trademarks, tradesecrets, patents, and copyrights to begin with. See the following articles:

Against Intellectual Property. Kinsella, Stephan.

Do patents and copyrights undermine private property?

Patents and Copyrights: Do the Benefits Exceed the Costs? Cole, Julio H.

Government and Microsoft: A Libertarian View on Monopolies. Rideau, François-René.

Against Intellectual Property. Martin, Brian.

The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights. Long, Roderick T.

Mr Foster contacted the university for comment, revealing how he had gathered the information. He received an email from the proctors saying they had reason to suspect he had committed a criminal act and would be referred to Thames Valley police. Half an hour later, and three weeks before his exams, Mr Foster's university email account was cut off and all his IT privileges were revoked.
So he waved his name around before the article. In any case (I imagine) the Uni or police probably would have slapped the paper a fine or done something nasty to go after the names. Of course I'm thinking of Australian Uni's here.

I happen to know about Nestle's wrong doings very well. My mum was a member of the Nursing Mothers Association of Australia (now the Australian Breastfeeding Association) and was local leader for a little while. So I grew up around a lot of this stuff :P

I found two pages with some information: THE NESTLE "COVER UP" IN AUSTRALIA and CORPORATE SCUMBAG: Nestle demands millions from famine-stricken country.

IIRC, the "first" problem was that poverty caused the mothers to stretch the baby formula as far as they could. This left the infants severely under-nourished. You're right about the second problem: very poor sanitation in many areas meant that the water used was often contanimated with raw sewerage. The people didn't know to boil the water because of poor education and couldn't even read the instructions on the can, which would have told them to do so.

It looks like you've already gotten some knee-jerk responses from MS fanboys, so I'll make the analogy (as I see it) clear:

• The mothers were advised by docters who were on the take from Nestle, and encouraged by advertising to be "modern" like the west. The doctors often handed the mother their first can of infant formula free, "donated" by Nestle.
• With this "donated" software, these third-world countries desire to be "modern", just like the west. They will probably be "advised" by MS or others with an interest. This first batch of MS software is donated but who says it will be free in the future?

• The mothers almost always had to water down the formula to make it last longer on their meager earnings. The water was also contaminated with raw sewerage, resulting in very sick infants and many deaths.
• I'm sure these countries will try to also stretch this donated software as far as they can. There will be unauthorized copying and MS will no doubt crack down on "piracy" in the future. We've in fact seen MS do this many times already. It's almost a given.

• The mothers' own milk supply would "dry up", so to speak, leaving them dependant the formula to feed their infant.
• These "donations" by MS could also be seen as dumping. It may seem like the easy was to jump-start a countrys software industry, but in the long run it will limit it, if not stifle it. This will lock many administrators and developers into knowing only MS systems. It will likely also affect any local open-source development, both now and in the future.

The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:

4F6E65204F5320746F2072756C65207468656D20616C6C2C 20 4F6E65204F5320746F
2066696E64207468656D2C0D0A4F6E 65204F5320746F206272 696E67207468656D20
616C6C20616E6420696E2074686520 6461726B6E6573732062 696E64207468656D
'I cannot read the fiery letters,' I said.
'No,' he said, 'but I can. The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says:'
One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

oldie but a goodie

This photo shows a place (between the Shandur Pass and Gilgit) where we had to wait three hours while they re-dynamited the road...

Danny.

This photo shows a place (between the Shandur Pass and Gilgit) where we had to wait three hours while they re-dynamited the road...

Danny.

We have a copy of this pinned up in the lab at University: http://danny.oz.au/danny/humour/phd_lotr.html

Personally I especially like the part about supervisors disappearing (and being presumed dead)...

More censorship humour.

Danny.

Danny.

The EFA site lists a number of sites blocked by one particular tool, iFilter that was supposedly going to be installed in some schools (as of 1999). One "recommended" by one particular Senator in 1999. A simple keyword searcher, and not a particularly good one. That's it.

FWIW I had no problem getting to 3 of the 4 sites listed, and the other one isn't being reported as existing by Google.

But thanks for the attempt... looks like Australia's Internet Blocking isn't anyone's specialist subject. You made as good an attempt at helping me as I could ask for, and my sincere thanks for that. But you're in a minority, it appears that most people don't want to be confused by the facts.

Danny (who plays gamelan and is interested in Indonesia).

> Intellectual property is fundamental to the peaceful progress of such societies and, without them, everything does break down to the very concept of "might makes right" that RMS claims to fear now.

And your proof is ... ?

Methinks you need to read:

Against IP

The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights

You're forgetting so called "Hate speech", which is really the criminalization of the expression of unpopular political views, as well as a host of other "forbidden" topics. Racism may be ugly and ignorant, but the state shouldn't be able to decide that a personally held belief is "incorrect", and therefore worthy of sanction if it is ever expressed. But if it only stopped there. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

Re: monitoring of it's citizen's internet activity
It does? Care to provide some reasoning behind that...

Sure. I don't know how you could deny this. The article's very title is: Australia Spying On Its Own
From the body of the post: "the Defence Signals Directorate listens to just about every bit of communications in Australia...In this case the govt spied because they were trying to win an election, ...National security be damned, this is echelon for political gain."

I am by no means suggesting that other countries, including the U.S., do not do it, but that was not my point to begin with.

Re: Gun confiscation.
My anonymous friend answered this, but I would add that the confiscation of any property merely because you own it obviously *is* both a seizure of property and a restriction on freedom. If a guy wants to build a howitzer in his back yard, isn't it his business so long as he doesn't use it to endanger or destroy other people's property, or otherwise deprive his neighbors of their right to peace and quiet?

Regrettably, the United States has been seduced by this "progressive reform", [albeit to a lesser degree], despite compelling statistical evidence that states which allow citizens to carry handguns have seen their crimes against persons drop in direct proportion to a surge in crimes against property. Apparently criminals are willing to consider career changes, because this strongly suggests that a criminal would rather break into an empty house or car than confront a potentially armed citizen. OTOH, "Home invasions" in Australia have skyrocketed since weapons suitable for personal defense have been confiscated. Here is a link with some interesting statistics, and here is another with graphs.

Re: restrictions upon encryption
Unfortunately, Australia, the United States, and 32 other countries are signatories of the Wassenaar Agreement. The agreement to subject commercial cryptosystems of moderate strength to inspection is not a big restriction, [and I certainly don't mind bans on exports to the "T7" (the so-called "Terrorist 7")], but it is stupid to pass a law which is impossible to enforce, unless that is not your motive, which in fact is the case. The licensing system is enough to stop and harrass a lot of commercial ventures, which in effect explains why most people do not use, or even know how to use encryption for email, while they will buy and use an envelope when using the post. [Trust me, I have worked on both the Berstein and Junger Federal lawsuits which challenged the U.S. export restrictions on crypto.]

You're forgetting so called "Hate speech", which is really the criminalization of the expression of unpopular political views, as well as a host of other "forbidden" topics. Racism may be ugly and ignorant, but the state shouldn't be able to decide that a personally held belief is "incorrect", and therefore worthy of sanction if it is ever expressed. But if it only stopped there. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

Re: monitoring of it's citizen's internet activity
It does? Care to provide some reasoning behind that...

Sure. I don't know how you could deny this. The article's very title is: Australia Spying On Its Own
From the body of the post: "the Defence Signals Directorate listens to just about every bit of communications in Australia...In this case the govt spied because they were trying to win an election, ...National security be damned, this is echelon for political gain."

I am by no means suggesting that other countries, including the U.S., do not do it, but that was not my point to begin with.

Re: Gun confiscation.
My anonymous friend answered this, but I would add that the confiscation of any property merely because you own it obviously *is* both a seizure of property and a restriction on freedom. If a guy wants to build a howitzer in his back yard, isn't it his business so long as he doesn't use it to endanger or destroy other people's property, or otherwise deprive his neighbors of their right to peace and quiet?

Regrettably, the United States has been seduced by this "progressive reform", [albeit to a lesser degree], despite compelling statistical evidence that states which allow citizens to carry handguns have seen their crimes against persons drop in direct proportion to a surge in crimes against property. Apparently criminals are willing to consider career changes, because this strongly suggests that a criminal would rather break into an empty house or car than confront a potentially armed citizen. OTOH, "Home invasions" in Australia have skyrocketed since weapons suitable for personal defense have been confiscated. Here is a link with some interesting statistics, and here is another with graphs.

Re: restrictions upon encryption
Unfortunately, Australia, the United States, and 32 other countries are signatories of the Wassenaar Agreement. The agreement to subject commercial cryptosystems of moderate strength to inspection is not a big restriction, [and I certainly don't mind bans on exports to the "T7" (the so-called "Terrorist 7")], but it is stupid to pass a law which is impossible to enforce, unless that is not your motive, which in fact is the case. The licensing system is enough to stop and harrass a lot of commercial ventures, which in effect explains why most people do not use, or even know how to use encryption for email, while they will buy and use an envelope when using the post. [Trust me, I have worked on both the Berstein and Junger Federal lawsuits which challenged the U.S. export restrictions on crypto.]

Danny.

If you can afford it you can short-cut that process - you can buy some good content or convince friends, family, and strangers to provide it. And if the long-term approach to building up a profile is too slow, you could alwas buy come advertising (all I've ever spent was $20 as an experiment). Just make sure you put the content up before you do the advertising!

Danny.

In any event, it didn't turn out to be a "we must ban it" whitewash. It was particularly good having the Australian Broadcasting Authority give a speech about how wonderful filtering software was and having David Goldman blow everything they said away completely.

Danny.

Most sites have material that falls into multiple ICRA classifications, and labelling it all just isn't going to be feasible. And when I looked a few years back at Australian sites that tried to rate themselves, most had either failed technically or clearly mislabelled themselves.

Danny.

• my Nestle Boycott page
• good backgrounder on baby food issues

200002: 1628: 1.70%
200004: 1116: 0.92%
200005: 3583: 3.21%
200006: 3184: 5.05%
200007: 3347: 5.83%
200008: 5085: 6.89%
200009: 6216: 5.29%
200010: 9341: 7.06%
200011: 7786: 6.18%
200012: 7345: 7.44%
200101: 8985: 8.08%
200102: 8422: 7.45%
200103: 9685: 7.60%
200104: 11588: 8.56%
200105: 12983: 9.02%
200106: 11740: 10.85%
200107: 11917: 13.23%
200108: 15378: 14.06%

The percentages need to be multipled by about 2.5 to get fractions of external referers - ie in August 2001 about 35% of my traffic came from www.google.com. (Also, these figures don't include google.yahoo.com or google.co.uk or the other sites using Google.)

Danny.

Iranian democracy is far from perfect, but that's the whole point of those trying to reform it.

Danny

The depressing thing is that much US foreign policy seems almost as ignorant.

Danny
[I have written 600 book reviews]

Interesting reading:

• Terror in the Mind of God: the Global Rise of Religious Violence
• Political Islam

Danny
[I have written 600 book reviews]

Interesting reading:

• Terror in the Mind of God: the Global Rise of Religious Violence
• Political Islam

Danny
[I have written 600 book reviews]

The most terrible thing about terrorism is that it targets totally innocent civilians; what you propose is that the United States stoop to the same level.

Danny.

What has it gots in its cachesssss...

But wait a minute, I thought the one OS to rule them all was supposed to be Windows 95... :/

Danny.

1 - Post a comment on SlashDot with a link here...
2 - In time this will get modded up to Score:5, Funny (trust me ;-))
3 - Wait for the SlashDot effect to kick in!

My own site has some details of takedown notices and classifications.

Danny.

Someone posted a citation from this page so I surfed there and read a bit more and found a very interesting example:

Ashleigh Brilliant is a "professional epigrammatist." He creates and copyrights thousands of short sayings, such as "Fundamentally, there may be no basis for anything." When he finds someone who has "used" one of his epigrams, he contacts them demanding a payment for breach of copyright. Television journalist David Brinkley wrote a book, Everyone is Entitled to My Opinion, the title of which he attributed to a friend of his daughter. Brilliant contacted Brinkley about copyright violation. Random House, Brinkley's publisher, paid Brilliant $1000 without contesting the issue, perhaps because it would have cost more than this to contest it.

I wonder if this works here in Sweden also. Very nice and ethical way to earn some money, don't you think...

- Det är inte ofta man ser en levande kofta

Edwin C. Hettinger has provided an insightful critique of the main arguments used to justify intellectual property, so it is worthwhile summarising his analysis. [12] He begins by noting the obvious argument against intellectual property, namely that sharing intellectual objects still allows the original possessor to use them. Therefore, the burden of proof should lie on those who argue for intellectual property.

The first argument for intellectual property is that people are entitled to the results of their labour. Hettinger's response is that not all the value of intellectual products is due to labour. Nor is the value of intellectual products due to the work of a single labourer, or any small group. Intellectual products are social products.

Suppose you have written an essay or made an invention. Your intellectual work does not exist in a social vacuum. It would not have been possible without lots of earlier work - both intellectual and nonintellectual - by many other people. This includes your teachers and parents. It includes the earlier authors and inventors who provided the foundation for your contribution. It also includes the many people who discussed and used ideas and techniques, at both theoretical and practical levels, and provided a cultural foundation for your contribution. It includes the people who built printing presses, laid telephone cables, built roads and buildings and in many other ways contributed to the "construction" of society. Many other people could be mentioned. The point is that any piece of intellectual work is always built on and is inconceivable without the prior work of numerous people.

Hettinger points out that the earlier contributors to the development of ideas are not present. Today's contributor therefore cannot validly claim full credit.

Is the market value of a piece of an intellectual product a reasonable indicator of a person's contribution? Certainly not. As noted by Hettinger and as will be discussed in the next section, markets only work once property rights have been established, so it is circular to argue that the market can be used to measure intellectual contributions. Hettinger summarises this point in this fashion: "The notion that a laborer is naturally entitled as a matter of right to receive the market value of her product is a myth. To what extent individual laborers should be allowed to receive the market value of their products is a question of social policy."

A related argument is that people have a right to possess and personally use what they develop. Hettinger's response is that this doesn't show that they deserve market values, nor that they should have a right to prevent others from using the invention.

A second major argument for intellectual property is that people deserve property rights because of their labour. This brings up the general issue of what people deserve, a topic that has been analysed by philosophers. Their usual conclusions go against what many people think is "common sense." Hettinger says that a fitting reward for labour should be proportionate to the person's effort, the risk taken and moral considerations. This sounds all right - but it is not proportionate to the value of the results of the labour, whether assessed through markets or by other criteria. This is because the value of intellectual work is affected by things not controlled by the worker, including luck and natural talent. Hettinger says "A person who is born with extraordinary natural talents, or who is extremely lucky, deserves nothing on the basis of these characteristics."

A musical genius like Mozart may make enormous contributions to society. But being born with enormous musical talents does not provide a justification for owning rights to musical compositions or performances. Likewise, the labour of developing a toy like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that becomes incredibly popular does not provide a justification for owning rights to all possible uses of turtle symbols.

What about a situation where one person works hard at a task and a second person with equal talent works less hard? Doesn't the first worker deserve more reward? Perhaps so, but property rights do not provide a suitable mechanism for allocating rewards. The market can give great rewards to the person who successfully claims property rights for a discovery, with little or nothing for the person who just missed out.

A third argument for intellectual property is that private property is a means for promoting privacy and a means for personal autonomy. Hettinger responds that privacy is protected by not revealing information, not by owning it. Trade secrets cannot be defended on the grounds of privacy, because corporations are not individuals. As for personal autonomy, copyrights and patents aren't required for this.

A fourth argument is that rights in intellectual property are needed to promote the creation of more ideas. The idea is that intellectual property gives financial incentives to produce ideas. Hettinger thinks that this is the only decent argument for intellectual property. He is still somewhat sceptical, though. He notes that the whole argument is built on a contradiction, namely that in order to promote the development of ideas, it is necessary to reduce people's freedom to use them. Copyrights and patents may encourage new ideas and innovations, but they also restrict others from using them freely.

This argument for intellectual property cannot be resolved without further investigation. Hettinger says that there needs to be an investigation of how long patents and copyrights should be granted, to determine an optimum period for promoting intellectual work.

Below is the introduction to the chapter Against intellectual property:

This should be a line of dashes to divide what I wrote from the quote. Lamness filter won't allow it though. Isn't it lame that the lameness filter is making this post more difficult to read?

Brian Martin presents the case against intellectual property, approaching the issue from a different background to most of us in the free software movement. (You'll note that Martin confuses "freeware", "free software", and "public domain", but that's my fault, since I should have picked this up in my proofreading.)

This is chapter three of Brian Martin's book Information Liberation, which is now online in its entirety. (Other chapters cover defamation, privacy, whistleblowing, and more.)

Against intellectual property

There is a strong case for opposing intellectual property. Among other things, it often retards innovation and exploits Third World peoples. Most of the usual arguments for intellectual property do not hold up under scrutiny. In particular, the metaphor of the marketplace of ideas provides no justification for ownership of ideas. The alternative to intellectual property is that intellectual products not be owned, as in the case of everyday language. Strategies against intellectual property include civil disobedience, promotion of non-owned information, and fostering of a more cooperative society.

• Electronic Frontiers Australia
• Irene Graham's site
• my own site

Danny.

1. I am sure there are many terabytes of movies, music and books available that are no longer protected by copyright (they have been liberated) laws. Distribution via a server based method might be better, more reliable etc, however, with no possibility for profit it would not exist.

2. It might be possible to use some sort of P2P system to distribute the traffic from high traffic websites more evenly around the internet. (what i am thinking about is kind of like caching, however each web browser would become a cache for machines around it... don't know if it is possible)

I am sure there are more...

Danny (my own Australian censorship pages).

yeah, right on. Its all just a game. However the filters will make it a little harder and hopefully everyone will leave it at that. The internet is inherently anti-cencorship anyway.

Its not like this is the end of the world. RIAA just went off on these guys by using our corrupt judges and our corrupt laws, but who cares.
Check out this IP rant

If a court rules that Alan Emtage was the first to develop the methods described in CMGI's patents and CMGI's patents are canceled (or whatever the legal term for canceling a patent is), can Alan Emtage then get patents on the same methods and sue CMGI?

Two wrongs don't make a right. You can't beat these slimeballs by sinking to their level, it would be better instead to work towards patent reform (or abolishment, whichever comes first). Check these out:

• Against Intellectual Property
• Intellectual Property is an Oxymoron

--

There's an old Army saying:
"Amateurs think tactics.
Professionals think Logistics."
How does that apply to the weird confusion of ethics and economics? Well, all other things being equal, a intelligently-regulated free market increases the standard of living by about an order of magnitude. If you believe that a high standard of living is a 'good' thing, then one has to espouse such a market economy.

OTOH, the values associated with capitalism are one dimensional, with the preaching of the virtues of self-interest and the the wonders of the pursuit of wealth. Altruism per se is denigrated, and too often the most profitable course for yourself is harmful to others. (see Nestle for the classic example) So, what's the solution? We need free markets to feed and clothe ourselves, but they work orthogonal to morality in the best case, and work against everything society holds sacred in the worst case...

The real problem is the Corporate Extremists: those who say the only salvation lies in the almighty buck, and the removal of all evil regulation. Then progress will continue on an exponential increase, solving all these transient problems like pollution and resource depletion. Their god is the dollar, whom they rely upon for the salvation of the planet. These guys are as whacked out as any religious nutcase, the kind that make the good people of the churches/mosques/temples of the world cringe. We need a term for them, a simple one-word condemnation like we have for religious nutcases(fanatic). We have a word to insult environmentalists,(tree-hugger), and even a word for the madmen who 'spike' trees,(eco-terrorist) but no word for the well dressed killers in our corporate boardrooms... just because they don't get their hands dirty personally doesn't mean they aren't as evil as any eco-terrorist... and they can cause a lot more deaths, anyways, just by the power of logistics: hundreds of millions of dollars in short-sighted exploitation

-------

Danny.

You can't compare ownership of hard goods and owenrship of software. It doesn't make sense to apply the same law to those fundamentaly differents things.
Protecting hard goods: Good. Protecting software the same as natural goods: Bad. That's why I'm Against Intelectual Property.
'nuf said.

For more information and links see my anti-censorship site.

Danny.