Posted by
chrisd
on from the taking-your-toys-apart-to-see-how-they-work dept.
shaikeiro writes "A fine
article in the Economist about Ed Felten and what he is up to now. Also a good summary of what "freedom to tinker" means. From the article: "Thus, the freedom to tinker ends up being about the freedom of culture."" Are you a member of the EFF yet?
I think that the majority already agrees on the benefits on the "freedom to tinker". What companies currently cannot solve, is the free-riding problem. It does not matter how much you preach about tinkering, as long as it damages existing business, it is freedom stinker for many companies. Dr Felten is clearly a clever man, maybe he could put his energy in solving that instead.
If your business model revolves around restricting others' freedom, and it's easier to change laws than to actually provide the public with a product worth buying, isn't that a sign that something is seriously fucked up? Obviously not... let's just work on improving the bars and chains, then.
-- deus does not exist but if he does
Tinkering - not only copyright and not only soft
by
nickol
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Just look around - more and more things are above normal person's ability to "tinker" or repair it. There was RS-232. It was easy and convenient. Everyone could make an add-on for the PC to do some task, using RS-232. Search the net - there are hundreds of home built devices that use this simple interface. Now we have USB. Faster, more features. But it is very hard to implement. Was it really necessary to do it in such complicated way ? I don't think so. I think there was an intention to make the interface that only large companies would be able to use. Remember the story of PC. IBM made a very simple device, everybody could do the same. That device has been built using very strict and open standards. For example, there was a completely documented hardware CGA/EGA interface. Now we have dozens of different SVGAs and no standard at all. We should rely on vendor's device drivers. Linux suffered from such politics a lot. There was a word 'engineer' - someone who can invent or construct different things - machines, cars, devices, tools. The key point is that they are different things. Nowaday's 'engineers' can built something very special - typically one part of a machine. One particular kind of software. When there is not exist one human or small group of people who can observe and discuss the whole information in some area, the progress in that area stops. The classic idea of invention came to its end now. Corporation can not invent anything, but only human brain can.
The free-riding problem *cannot be solved* with digital information.
Companies only have their distribution mechanisms for digital information to compete with. If a CD distributor doesn't perform as well in the bandwith*convenience/price arena as your local ISP/telco, then it's a matter of *tough luck*, at least in a free market.
Oh, you want to publish something to some but keep it secret to others who haven't paid? You want to tell someone a secret but you want to guarantee, beforehand, that he cannot possibly tell another? *Tough luck*, unless you tell the secret and then rip out the other person's tongue and chop off his hands prevent him from further communicating with anybody else. The only way to make that happen digitally is to make every PC a read-only device. Oh, that's what you want then? But we already have that, you dumbf'ck, it's called TV. We don't want TV. We're sick of TV, and we won't allow our computers to be replaced by TVs just because some industry paid f'ck said so. Get over it.
RIAA, MPAA: the game is *over*. Cope. Please take your whining elsewhere, and please stop abusing society by buying f'cking laws.
When no good music gets recorded, no good books get written, no good movies get produced and no good paintings are being made anymore because the artists are starving, I'm sure society can come up with a *better* solution than simply handcuffing all its inhabitants, don't you think?
I'd say if you want to publish something digitally, you'll just have to live with the initial payment. If that's not enough, convince more people to pay before publishing it. If not enough people want to do so, then *tough luck*. If they do, all the better. It's still a free market after all, only one where the public is a *single* customer. If that customer wants to buy something valuable, he may have to make some savings up front. The concept is not even new, it already works fine for public highways. Society wants them, because society as a whole benefits from them, so society decides to pay for them as a whole. What's so f'cking hard about that?
-- All generalizations are false, including this one. (Mark Twain)
Slashdot Mirror
I think that the majority already agrees on the benefits on the "freedom to tinker". What companies currently cannot solve, is the free-riding problem. It does not matter how much you preach about tinkering, as long as it damages existing business, it is freedom stinker for many companies. Dr Felten is clearly a clever man, maybe he could put his energy in solving that instead.
If your business model revolves around restricting others' freedom, and it's easier to change laws than to actually provide the public with a product worth buying, isn't that a sign that something is seriously fucked up? Obviously not... let's just work on improving the bars and chains, then.
deus does not exist but if he does
Just look around - more and more things
are above normal person's ability to "tinker"
or repair it. There was RS-232. It was easy
and convenient. Everyone could make an add-on
for the PC to do some task, using RS-232.
Search the net - there are hundreds of home
built devices that use this simple interface.
Now we have USB. Faster, more features. But it
is very hard to implement. Was it really
necessary to do it in such complicated way ?
I don't think so. I think there was an intention
to make the interface that only large companies
would be able to use.
Remember the story of PC. IBM made a very simple
device, everybody could do the same. That device
has been built using very strict and open standards.
For example, there was a completely documented
hardware CGA/EGA interface. Now we have dozens
of different SVGAs and no standard at all.
We should rely on vendor's device drivers.
Linux suffered from such politics a lot.
There was a word 'engineer' - someone who can
invent or construct different things -
machines, cars, devices, tools. The key point is that they are different things. Nowaday's 'engineers'
can built something very special - typically one
part of a machine. One particular kind of software.
When there is not exist one human or small group
of people who can observe and discuss the whole
information in some area, the progress in that
area stops. The classic idea of invention came to its end now. Corporation can not invent anything, but only human brain can.
The free-riding problem *cannot be solved* with digital information.
Companies only have their distribution mechanisms for digital information to compete with. If a CD distributor doesn't perform as well in the bandwith*convenience/price arena as your local ISP/telco, then it's a matter of *tough luck*, at least in a free market.
Oh, you want to publish something to some but keep it secret to others who haven't paid? You want to tell someone a secret but you want to guarantee, beforehand, that he cannot possibly tell another? *Tough luck*, unless you tell the secret and then rip out the other person's tongue and chop off his hands prevent him from further communicating with anybody else. The only way to make that happen digitally is to make every PC a read-only device. Oh, that's what you want then? But we already have that, you dumbf'ck, it's called TV. We don't want TV. We're sick of TV, and we won't allow our computers to be replaced by TVs just because some industry paid f'ck said so. Get over it.
RIAA, MPAA: the game is *over*. Cope. Please take your whining elsewhere, and please stop abusing society by buying f'cking laws.
When no good music gets recorded, no good books get written, no good movies get produced and no good paintings are being made anymore because the artists are starving, I'm sure society can come up with a *better* solution than simply handcuffing all its inhabitants, don't you think?
I'd say if you want to publish something digitally, you'll just have to live with the initial payment. If that's not enough, convince more people to pay before publishing it. If not enough people want to do so, then *tough luck*. If they do, all the better. It's still a free market after all, only one where the public is a *single* customer. If that customer wants to buy something valuable, he may have to make some savings up front. The concept is not even new, it already works fine for public highways. Society wants them, because society as a whole benefits from them, so society decides to pay for them as a whole. What's so f'cking hard about that?
All generalizations are false, including this one. (Mark Twain)