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Good Bad Attitude
teidou writes "Paul Graham has posted a new essay titled 'Good Bad Attitude' talking about the hacker attitude toward rules and government regulation of Intellectual Property. Choice quote: "(Hackers) can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.""
The (hackers), in most cases, cannot avoid the coming "storm."
self congratulatory bullshit.
Choice quote: "(Hackers) can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm."
I sense an approaching bad essay.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Too bad that so many hackers understand well all about how to use tools (e.g., computers), but do not understand how to use the government as a tool for themselves and other ordinary people just like themselves. Instead, many hackers reject government totally. That attitude is akin to Luddism. Government is a tool that can be hacked to work for you, just as a computer can be hacked to work for you.
One problem is that young people seem to think that the wealth and the power is on THEIR side. They seem not to see that the the upper 10% of America owns most of the wealth.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
"(Hackers) can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.""
I think it's less sixth sense and more the fact that some people just pay attention instead of shuffling around in a fog all day looking at their feet while they stroll (or follow other lemmings) right off the proverbial cliff.
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
The author argues that the amunt of civil liberties afforded to the population is proportional to GNP. He may be right. However, it can also be argues that the amount of protection of the individual's right to personal property (intellectual and physical) is also proportional. While the article was well written, we need to keep both halves of the equation balanced. If either of the two sides gets out of whack, they both come tumbling down.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I've cracked copy protection and digital rights management code a few times in my life. I did it because it was an interesting challenge for a few days (though it's rarely been much of an intellectual challenge, more mindless stepping through routines with a debugger). I don't pontificate about how I'm helping to preserve the freedom of people everywhere.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I'm not so sure about that.
I'm a hacker, and I'm a little idealistic and somewhat optimistic. But I'm also rather good at seeing structures, and getting a feel for emerging patterns. That's a large part of what hacking is about.
If the patterns (in this case government and corporate policy changes and actions) are negative despite what I'm being told via the media, I notice. Just like many people didn't when the whole Nazi thing was going on in the beginning.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Perhaps that should be:
In other words, if the less-than-clever members of the population would refrain from stealing, no one would be copy protecting anything. Copy protection costs money, time and must constantly be reworked to have any effect upon the bottom line. The only reason that publishers of stuff bother with it is because they are trying to keep the intellectual rights they have loosed within the bounds they defined for that loosing in the face of a society that, by and large, winks at the thieves that bedevil them.
There's nothing honorable about being a hacker in the "I will invade your stuff for whatever reason" sense of the word. Speaking as a hacker in the "I am curious about everything but I completely respect the limits you put on your property" sense of the word.
Personally, I blame the parents.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If voting worked it would be illegal.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
An observation: People often resort to 'reality' when they don't have a better argument.
:)
This isn't an attack on you by any means, just something I've noticed in most people. When they are beaten in a debate, or the issue is not provable (see religions / politics / whatever) they fall back to:
"Sure, but the truth is...X"
"Yeah, but in the REAL world, X"
"You have to admit X"
Where X is their (unproved) position. Interesting.
Alternately, they fall back to arguing 'common sense', which is extremely subjective, despite an OBJECTIVE name.
People are odd
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
"(Hackers) can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm."
that's more apt than you realize. After all, how many times have I gone jogging down the forest trail and seen every small furry critter flee in a blind panic because I happened to pass near by.
In other words - for every time a rabbit correctly "senses danger" they over-react to 99 completely benign events.
Clear, Dark Skies
In several ways, perhaps it is not that bad a thing after all - there needs to be a mix of both the kinds - hacker and non-hacker.
The problem with the intellectual elite is just that - they are the intellectual elite. Often times, smart solutions on paper is not the same as applying them in the real world - socialism/communism is a classic example of this.
You can see this at work in real life, when you notice that geeks make bad business men. True, some of what the businesses needs is some amount of bullshitting capability, but that's not always true - it's not enough if you can just code up a smart hack. You need to be able to market it and sell it, if you want to be able to sell it to the _layman_. Hackers miss that vital element - they are almost quite incapable of thinking like the common man.
The common man does not care about the things that hackers care about, his needs are simpler - get the food on the table, buy the new SUV and get a holiday week off to some tropical island.
The problem is that the other side (corporate/government) is extremely anti-liberal, while hackers are most often extremely liberal. Both of these are bad, and a balance needs to be stuck.
We need that - a balance between the two. But entire control of America under hackers may not be a good idea.
People who hack the government are called Lawyers. Think about it, Lawyers do the same things that hackers do but use the rigidness or the openness of laws to get what they want done.
Ex.
If person has signed paperwork then it is legally binding. So if there is a contract with general information and small print or using uncommon vocabulary and the person signs it they are still legally contracted. So the rigidity of that law allows the lawyers to hack the system and scam people and government to do things that are not nessarly right.
Or if there is a law that is vague. Lets say a zoning law about that says your house needs to be in good repair. So if there is a house that could be borderline the lawyer could push the case any way he needs it to be done.
Lawyers generally hack the laws to get things done for their clients most of the time they do it to help out the people in the community but there are a lot of them who use the laws beyond their intent.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'd say that, generally, old-school hackers are more respectful of intellectual property than new-school hackers. (yes, that was a generality)
For example, most grey-beards that I know don't really favor the idea of p2p being used to share files against the wishes of the author.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Can't agree with ya on this one. The fact that hackers come from so many different countries / economies / beliefs tends to instill in them a respect for freedom (of speech, thought, etc). As a group, we're probably much more alert to challenges to that freedom.
To be fair, however... we're also much more aware of whether Han shot first...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Ha! stereotypes. Some of us actually do bathe, amongst other unexpected things. From the article:
Hacking predates computers. When he was working on the Manhattan Project, Richard Feynman used to amuse himself by breaking into safes containing secret documents.
I love the recognition here that hacking is a bigger thing than computers and geeks, its all about aquiring knowledge.
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
There are some intelligent and smart quotes in this essay, but I wouldn't say it is really good. The main reason it is too US centred. This article gives us the impression that all greatest hackers (or even most of brilliant minds) are from US and always will be.
Dude... a daughter's dress? In a discussion of IP matters? Nice to see you're one of those illuminated parents who doesn't consider one's feminine children property... or, uh, anything like that.
Personally, I blame the parents.
Personally, I blame 100+ year copyrights and a system that made silence into private property in 1952.
It's not just him. While the thunderstorm might be a nice metaphor, the false granting of some superior political/social sense to a bunch of kiddies who can't seem to relate in any meaningful way with other humans is the part that was stretched beyond believablility.
"The common man does not care about the things that hackers care about, his needs are simpler..."
What pray tell, made you decide that you were more complex than the common man? Indeed, what prey tell, made you decide that you weren't just another common man?
That's a ridiculously pompous statement. Meant or not.
I'd relpace "hacker" with "artist" (particularly writer) and then accept that what is good about "hackers" is what has always been good about artists.
This would, of course, inflame those who have invested ego in the idea that programming is "a science" instead of an art.
They, in turn make bad scientists too, because good science is an art too.
Basically, anybody who understands how much their daily work depends on the exchange of information will be drawn into odd persuits and will "sense totalitarianisim like animals sense an oncomming thunderstorm." (or whatever the quote was.)
To lionize "hackers" over, say "sound techs" or "teachers" is huberous.
The problem is that the world is full of machinests and sheep. Machinests want the world to conform to plans, and sheep want someone else to handle it. Between those two large groups, it is hard to get an artistic thought in edgewise.
So South America or Aferica will "be the next America" and it is almost too late to do anything about that. Europe has learned to turn-on-a-dime and will hopefully maintian a stolid bullwork in the current first-world economic structure. America will be the new Africa (but with some good natural resources to totally exploit into garbage) whith increasingly "Bushist", "we cannot possibly be wrong" tendencies to ossification that will ride us deeply into hunta-styled default and decay.
Then who knows?
As a side note, wihout space, as in outer space, as a frontier, expansionisim cannot be sustained; and all we humans are expansionest. We have until the count of "no cheap fuel" to get off this planet, elsewise we will have to eat our own offspring and call it meet. So all this short term lionizing means little, and the real issues remain. Will the machinists hold us to the ground and kill us all, or will we escape?
Screw the hackers, lets get the artists and the scientists moving again. If some of that art is computer programming, all the better.
But I ramble... 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
In all fairness, the US is like the last frontier.
As a US citizen, I can't stand how intrusive our government is with civil liberties and with taxes, and especially frivolous tickets and things like zoneing and sue-happyness .... but I've studied the stats of countries all over the world, and the simple truth is that there is a very very tiny number of countries that even have marginal improvement. I wish there was a "really" better, but there isn't and that's just the way it is.
I own property in a desert area just north of the border, and hundreds of people have died arround that area in the last 10 years just trying to get in - you can't say that about very many places. oh yeah, the border patrol - another dislike, I really don't have faith in their ability to protect us from terrorists, and I resent being "protected" from fruit pickers and others who just want to make an honest living.
Anyhow, I don't think it's too US centered - it's just that the information age and all it's problems happened here first. I can only hope someday that there will be a better frontier of freedom. Perhaps vast cities on the ocean, perhaps in space. But right now it seems here physically and cyberspace for everything else.
IMHO, For now the biggest issue is copyrights. They are effectively dead even if noone wants to admit it - God help us. You can just tell the shit is about to hit the fan and when it does all hell will break loose.
Maybe it will not be the same, but this "slippery slope" falicy that so many people call upon when they look at the compramises that are made in our name will not be our end. As long as we're alive, there's hope that things will get better, and there is always something we can do, even if it's small, to make the world a better place.
I think you've put your finger right on it. If we value freedom, if we love liberty, then every year should see more freedoms, less restriction on our liberty, than every year preceeding it. There is far too much oppression in our society as it is. We aren't on a "slippery slope", we're already here! The situation is intolerable right now, and has been for some time!
And yet we are regressing! Despite our hopes for improvement, life in America is worse than it was last year, and worse still than the year before that! Compromises? That is putting all too pleasant a face on the degeneration that has afflicted our lives. The politicians are leading us to hell by our noses, and all we do is try to be polite about it.
The best thing we can do to make the world a better place is strike their hand from our face, turn around, and walk the other way into a better future.
-- TTK
It doesn't take great powers of judgement, all it takes is a special interest. View it as a particular case of a more general phenomenon. If you have 'set of things you value' then you will be oversensitive to any perceived threat on 'set of things you value'. Saying that hackers are able to detect totalitarianism is no different than saying that mothers are able to detect threats against their children or if you want a negative example, saying that extreme racists are able to detect whenever the targets of their hatred are making progress in society.
The point isn't that this is some magical special power that hackers and hackers alone have. It's that the ability to perceive threats to specific things depends on how much you care about said things, and that hackers as a fringe group are more likely to have something they consider their right taken away
than a group that is not on the fringe.