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.""

Comments

Except...

[Anonymous Coward]

The (hackers), in most cases, cannot avoid the coming "storm."

Re:Except...

[SYFer]

I'm not so sure I accept the premise at all (although you did say "in most cases"). I'd even suggest that the zeal, determination and industriousness of the hacker community is directly proportional to the magnitude of the "storm."

Hackers have many advantages over the animals. They have linksys routers running open source, they have thumb drives, they have coding skills. Even if a new dark ages were to come, there still would be guys using old TiVos, discarded mobile phone LCD screens and coat hangers to play chess over clandestine LANs.

Maybe I've watched too many movies or read too much "Stealing the Network," but I honestly believe the hacker world will well keep pace.

Spider Sense

[angedinoir]

Hmm, batman, my spider sense must be out of whack. I thought it was an oligarchy approaching.

Re:Spider Sense

[xsupergr0verx]

Yeah, I can smell hackers coming out of the way, but my senses are nothing special.

Re:Spider Sense

[javaman235]

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.

Re:Spider Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the recognition here that hacking is a bigger thing than computers and geeks, its all about aquiring knowledge.

Acquiring knowledge is too simple. It's about challenges. Solving problems, scratching an itch, making something do something it wasn't designed (or expected) to do.

Is there really any point in a coffee pot cam? Do we learn anything from it? Probably not, but it was cool being able to finger a coke machine and check it's inventory. And that is all that's necessary for a good hack.

Re:Spider Sense

[javaman235]

Yeah, but I'll bet the a huge amount of human knowledge was earned by doing things like the coffee pot cam...I think the way the term 'hacking' is used implies there is some other more official way of gaining knowledge...But I'll bet when whoever created the bow and arrow for instance, they were doing as you said: making something do something it wasn't designed (or expected) to do.

Re:Spider Sense

[Hatta]

As a fledgling biochemist, I can tell you science is all hacking. The way we reverse engineer the cell is exactly the way you might reverse engineer a network protocol. "Lets see what happens if we do this." And the wildest ideas sometimes pay off immensely. We can visually track the movement of single proteins by conjugating them to green fluorescent protein from jellyfish. Who knew jellyfish proteins would be so useful? But I'm glad someone looked.

Except Animals are more likely to be right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hackers are as likely to be wrong as they are to be right. In their case it isn't an accute sense, but chronic pessimism.

Re:Except Animals are more likely to be right.

[DAldredge]

pessimism doesn't exist. people who are labeled pessimistic simply know they way the world works and tell others about it.

Re:Except Animals are more likely to be right.

[BiggerIsBetter]

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.

Re:Except Animals are more likely to be right.

[el-spectre]

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 :)

Re:Except Animals are more likely to be right.

[SwellJoe]

I'm a hacker...

...Just like many people didn't when the whole Nazi thing was going on in the beginning.

Hacker's know Godwin's Law.

Re:Except Animals are more likely to be right.

[QuantumFTL]

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.

That's exactly the problem, though - humans are so good at detecting patterns that we often detect patterns when they don't exist. The need to rationalize the often irrational world around us is one of the reasons that I feel that a lot of otherwise intelligent people tend to gather at the conspiracy/tinfoil hat fringe - because to them it's better to have an explaination (even a scary one) than to feel that they can't understand all of the crazy stuff going on around them. Random sequences often don't look random, and with the sheer number of events happenning in the world every day, strange coincidences are to be expected. And hey, isn't it nice to have something/one ("the Man"/Ashcroft/whatever) to blame for the woes of society?

I'm not saying that there isn't trouble brewing or that hackers aren't necessarily better at seeing this than others, its just like all the hackers that predicted the death of the internet for the last few decades... They saw change and picked up a pattern that turned out not to be there.

I'm a little concerned by the attitude on slashdot that the sky is falling when in reality, we're dealing with the same kinds of political problems we've always had - presidents being elected without a popular majority and decided by someone other than the people (1824 election), our rights being eroded/Patriot act (Sedition Act, McCarthyism during Red Scare), and a general distrust of politicians (even our founding fathers distrusted politicians!) I really don't think any of this is new, or that we're doomed. This country has had our dark moments and our bright ones, but has survived many things and will continue to survive. 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.

Now, of course that might be just a bit optimistic on my part, but I feel that those who have power tend to want to keep things nice and stable so they can keep it, and part of that means keeping the masses happy, so we're probably OK.

Cheers,
Justin

Re:Except Animals are more likely to be right.

[QuantumFTL]

One of the things that make good hackers better at spotting trends is that they rely on evidence rather than suspicion and speculation. One of my good friends used to LART people constantly in meetings with 'Don't speculate - profile!'

The problem with this is that many hackers, while quite well versed in topics related to computers etc, have most likely not done any form of sociolical or economic field research. There is a lot that goes into analysis of trends and statistical information, as well as specific individual experiences etc. Combine that with a lack of law, economics, or politics education, and honestly I don't understand how it's anything but speculation. I mean, that's not to say that an intelligent person can't pick up a few things about those subjects without a formal education, however one really needs to have actual scientific research background to fully appreciate the difficulties associated with culling meaningful patterns out of the rediculously huge amount of events going on out there. Many of the supposed "warning signs" that we hear about are statistical anomolies, or things that are naturally corrected by the checks iand balances in our various political, social, and economic systems.

And now onto the grammar trolling (or related) part of your post. Yes, I'm that bored tonight. Enjoy a free english lesson.

I'm not saying that there isn't trouble brewing or that hackers aren't necessarily better at seeing this than others, its just like all the hackers that predicted the death of the internet for the last few decades...

1) 'All the hackers' is a hopelessly ambiguous modifier. Do you mean 'the majority'? I don't think so, based on context. Do you really mean 'many'? If so, how many? Who?

"that predicted ... " is known as a restrictive clause. It reduces the set of possible meanings of the subject "All the hackers" from the set of all hackers, to the set of all hackers that predicted the death of the internet. It does not imply that these two sets are the same, nor is it ambiguous. I was referring to a subset of all hackers. As for how many of them, well, that's part of the problem here: given a simple question "how many hackers predicted the death of the internet, which did not occur" it is very difficult to quantify this without extensive research. Given that this is difficult, imagine how hard it would be for a hacker type person to form an accurate prediction about the socioeconomic/political future of the world, or even teh united states, over any long term, using only what they hear on the news or on places like slashdot (or maybe read in books). Without extensive research, the hard numbers just aren't there. And this "gut feeling" nonsense is exactly that - nonsense. It's utterly unscientific and until someone can prove this effect, or even create a decent hypothesis, I'm not going to believe it to be any more than wishful thinking on their part.

2) 'Predicted the death of the Internet' is another useless phrase. I can predict the death of the Internet with certainty. Watch: Some time before the heat death of the Universe, what we now know as the Internet will cease to exist. See? That was easy. 8^)

I'm nearly finished with my degree in physics, and the first thing you learn in physics is that theories change. The heat death of the universe is certain in theory but these very theories have massive holes in them. We really don't know how far things will expand etc. If the universe remains for an infinite amount of time, and eventually stops expanding, then the universe can (and will) spontaneously reorganize to lower entropy states - like resetting the clock. And if it collapses to a point and big-bangs again, it's possible that information could survive this (maybe by jumping ahead in time, or a wormhole through another universe or some other such theoretical nonsense involving string theory that we can't currently test). The heat death of

Re:Except Animals are more likely to be right.

[QuantumFTL]

Reading your post, what sprung to my mind is the quote 'they who know history are doomed to see it repeated'. Just because something bad has happened before is no reason to sit idly by as a different form of the same happens again. The whole point of civilisation is to /not/ repeat past mistakes.

Wow, I'd hate to see how bad our score is then, considering that that seems to be about all we're capable of (repeating the mistakes of yesterday, but with new spiffy technology to amplify it)

Quick example: real hackers (or anyone who bothered to do some (just a tiny amount) research) knew y2k was not something which would bring disaster, only mild discomfort if not dealt with.

That drives me nuts when people say that. The amazing amount of effort that was put into fixing the Y2K problem was not imaginary! There was a very real problem, and while yes some did blow it wildly out of proportion, if no one had fixed it, there would have been a *LOT* of bad things happenning. And the problem is that in a complex system like our society, there's serious issues with cascade failures (with interdependent subsystems, all it takes is one important thing like power or phone to fail, and a ton of other things fail as well, and those dependent on them, etc). When there's a large blackout, it causes a lot of problems, even if it's just for a day. I took a tour of a local power station just before Y2K and saw all of their auditing - there is a lot of equipment, some of which was actually affected by the bug. If that hadn't been fixed, bad things would have happenned. Y2K was blown out of proportion but just like any problem, let go too long, and it could have had a real nasty impact.

And anyone with a knowledge of history would have compared this to any other 'the world is going to end' craze of the past millenia (and there have been a few) and pretty much known that y2k wouldn't be as bad as it was made out to be. And hackers who know history? They'd have known /that/ the craze would happen and have some insight as to why.

Are you kidding? The fact that the world hasn't ended yet is no proof that it won't end - that doesn't even make sense! Lets say you drive a car 100 times on really icy roads and don't have an accident, that does not in any way prove that the 101st time, or 102nd time you won't have one. All it takes is for the world to end once. And unlike 1000 years ago, we have this nice little devices that can destroy EVERYTHING ON THE SURFACE OF THE PLANET. Sounds pretty final to me.

And then there is stuff like the greenhouse effect, which is not in the above catagory for two reasons: nothing like it has happened before (ice-ages and the like don't count/compare with all the stuff humanity is putting up there) and it is scientific fact (just ask any scientist), against which we don't have any prevention/circumvention tools.

Oh geez... of course the greenhouse effect is a scientific fact... it was here long before man. Its effects, however, cannot currently be accurately modelled due the high nonlinearity of the system. It's possible we've already done a ton of damage, it's possible that we have little to do with global warming (a lot has to do with ocean currents and solar radiation flux, thigns that we don't really control). Hell we can't even come up with a model that can accurately predict past climates based on first principles and the same data we have today!

But I do agree that we shouldn't sit idly by... it's just that I think tinfoil hats and spreading FUD about the future just because the government does some things we don't agree with is the answer. Voting is a great way to start... after that, the sky's the limit! Maybe we need a hacker running for office? Well I guess Badnarik is the closest we'll get, since he was a software engineer.

Cheers,
Justin

Re:Except Animals are more likely to be right.

[TTK Ciar]

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

Re:Except Animals are more likely to be right.

[cowbutt]

Yeah. It was a good thing that the hackers picked up on that Nazi thing early, wasn't it?

I expect that at least one or two of the exiles from Nazi-controlled states would be classed as 'hackers' by the modern definition.

--

Re:Hackers are animals?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'm sure the animals are quite pissed.

"Hackers can sense...

[BizidyDizidy]

totalitariansim coming a mile away"

Is it just me or is this one of the more ridiculous sounding things you've heard in a while? Let's see what other deep sounding vacuous statements we can come up with:

There is no group with such an ability for singleminded devotion to the pursuit of universal betterance than the New York Cab Drivers association.

More than any other group formed since the first descent of man from the trees, Sanitation Engineers are able to ensure the future of democracy in our nation.

I bet I have more support for either of these than he's got for his hackers. Too bad there's no taxidot.org or cleandot.org so I could get an article posted too.

Re:"Hackers can sense...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Quite possibly the most saintly of any human organization, the members of the National Chimney Sweeps of America have defended our nation and its democratic heritage from the evil denizens of corrupt political machinery.

American taxidermists have always championed feminist principles, often protecting innocent would-be victims of alley rape with their uncanny intuitive abilities and superhuman strength.

Re:"Hackers can sense...

[el-spectre]

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...

But apparently we can't sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

self congratulatory bullshit.

6th sense

[amichalo]

Choice quote: "(Hackers) can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm."

I sense an approaching bad essay.

Re:6th sense

[weighn]

maybe, but he's attempting to generate discusion about things that will have a bearing on your lifestyle and is inline with much of what this crowd is thinking and doing.

But then, maybe it is best to just post 6ibb3ri5h, explaining how 3l33t one is and watch all you take for granted slowly evaporate.

Now if hackers could just learn to hack the gov't

[Cryofan]

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.

Not sixth sense, rather...

[potus98]

"(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.

Evidence

[NardofDoom]

That girl in Jurassic Park was a hacker, and she was always the first to freak out about an approaching dinosaur.

"This is a despotic system. I know this."

Civil liberties and GNP

[MyLongNickName]

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.

Wake me up...

[shadowmatter]

... when a server can sense a Slashdoting approaching from over 4 hops away.

Paul Graham's next essay

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why everything I write gets posted on Slashdot"

From the Slashdot random quotes file...

[LostCluster]

This showed up at the bottom of the page while reading this thread...

We question most of the mantras around here periodically, in case you hadn't noticed. :-) -- Larry Wall in

I think that sums this one up.

I'd put more money on the animals...

[Jay9333]

Another quote, "...Authoritarian countries become corrupt; corrupt countries become poor; and poor countries are weak."

True... but the fact is the animals (in the headlined quote from story) are much more keen and aware then many "hackers" out there. The problem is that many people posing as hackers are really just cheap and are trying to deprive legitimate and earnest copyright holders of the money due them. Hack all you damn want, just don't break copyright or patent law, that's what I say.

This country has been so innovative because of its encouragement through patents and copyright law. I'm not saying our patent system doesn't need reform... it most certainly does. But I'm tired of people who want to throw the baby out with the bathwater... who actually are just cheap bastards in disguise.

jay

I Command You!

[slimyrubber]

someone who can make a computer do what he wants-- whether the computer wants to or not.

I'hv had it with you, you dumb box. Get me a girl friend and a bottle of beer, right now! i comM@nD j00!!!

Mod me down if you like...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

...but it seems to me that hackers like to fantasize that somehow they are on the forefront of the battle to defend people's rights. I guess it's not just hackers, any group likes to think that what they do is more important than just the tiny niche they have influence over. But it's particularly entertaining reading the post hoc rationalizations that are made by hackers.

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.

Re:Mod me down if you like...

[el-spectre]

You cracked some crypto. Spiffy. Might not be the best idea to lump yourself in with a lot of talented folks who ARE working to defend rights.

The EFF and others probably wouldn't appreciate that.

Re:Hackers are animals?

[nebaz]

Hackers are Anti-Sheep , while others are content to keep thier heads down grazing on what is fed to them

So this is why hackers shun social contact? They would disappear in a bright flash of light if exposed to sheep?

Choice quote?

[fyngyrz]

"(Hackers) can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm."

Perhaps that should be:

"Hackers can cause totalitarianism to approach from a distance, as a protective father approaches when a juvenile delinquent ventures a hand under a daughter's dress."

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.

Re:Choice quote?

[euxneks]

That keeps them alive, doesn't it?

If you think about it, a rabbit is quite an apt analogy... They may overreact to a lot of things, but that prevents them from getting dinged from some of the real threats.

Re:Choice quote?

[Schwarzchild]

"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."

Well, if you there was some race of creatures that were ten times bigger than humans that would occasionally eat one of our kind then wouldn't you flee in a blind panic if they happened by?

Re:Choice quote?

[fyngyrz]

Parents don't understand computers, or hacking in general.

Oh, come on. I'm a parent. An old parent. My kids are out of college, have degrees and do cool stuff with themselves, are having families of their own and so on (and they don't steal, either.) I know more about computers than most kids have dreamed of - yet. I designed the flipping things for years. Give me a break with the "poor, dumb, clueless parents" routine.

Parents missing current information can learn. Computers, intellectual property issues, etc. They're pretty likely to be just as smart as their offspring, plus they generally already know its a bad idea to steal, break into places you don't have property rights to, pull nasty tricks on people, etc.

Parents can teach these things, both generally and in context. Most parents could do all of the above without straining. If they don't, they suck as parents, and I blame them, as I said previously.

Re:Now if hackers could just learn to hack the gov

[NardofDoom]

If voting worked it would be illegal.

Dumb ass metaphor

[Lord Kano]

(Hackers) can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.

People can sense approaching thunderstorms too, all you have to do is look around. Watch the leaves on trees. Smell the air. If that fails, look for dark clouds in the sky.

LK

Re:Now if hackers could just learn to hack the gov

[billbaggins]

Government is a tool that can be hacked to work for you, just as a computer can be hacked to work for you.

There's just one problem with your analogy - I hack my computer to make it work for me, but most other people would find it more or less unusable. That's fine, because they have their own computers. A government, we have to share. And we don't have root on it. So while we're trying, in our small ways, to hack the gov't to do X, other people are working, oftentimes much harder, to make it do not-X.

Which is not to say that we shouldn't try to make it better, because we should. Just that it's going to be many many orders of magnitude harder to get anything useful accomplished.

Re:Now if hackers could just learn to hack the gov

[the_meager]

You completely neglected to mention the FACT that the wealthy use government to deter competition and maintain their control.

Limited government and free markets undermine that entire system.

(And seriously... if you're going to say that we should use tools to get back at the wealthy, why stop at government? Why not expand into physical coercion with guns, like government seems to?)

Choice quote?

[porkchop_d_clown]

"(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.

Re:Now if hackers could just learn to hack the gov

[metlin]

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.

Re:Now if hackers could just learn to hack the gov

[Cryofan]

Umm... no. Hackers or IT people or programmers or engineers are NOT members of the Elite. Maybe 5% of them are. Again, this is just another aspect of the shell game casino that has become America: work your ass off for most of your short life and maybe you will get a 1 in 10 shot at becoming a member of the elite.

Man, The House ALWAYS wins.....

Re:Hackers, tell us when it will get here

[smclean]

I agree that the article has a little bit of a paranoid tone, but also I think it makes a valid point, and that the governments' willingness to bow to corporate interests because they have conslidated power in the form of money, whereas the consumers do not, is a good indications of the destabilizing of the integrity of the government.

The threat to governments always lives in the gray, not the black or the white. Any destabilization of government takes the form of choices in the gray area, choices which are made for reasons which are in a perceived auxilliary environment to morality, and then leads to the polarization which destroys said government.

Article is completely correct...

[crawdaddy]

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I started crying out like an animal sensing a thunderstorm shortly after November 2000.

Re:Now if hackers could just learn to hack the gov

[GoofyBoy]

>A government, we have to share. And we don't have root on it. So while we're trying, in our small ways, to hack the gov't to do X, other people are working, oftentimes much harder, to make it do not-X.

Great! So now you've defined what to hack and its unique problems. Sort of like getting your PC and its strange sound card to work with Linux AND have it dual boot so other members of your family can use it too.

Nothing you have pointed out makes it impossible to hack. Is it hard to hack? Sure, but no one is implying that it isn't.

Re:Now if hackers could just learn to hack the gov

[jellomizer]

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.

Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[turnstyle]

It's also interesting to observe some of the differences between old-school hackers and new-school hackers.

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.

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[networkBoy]

I'd add to that:
Grey-beards and those who are gainfully employed in the non-IT segment of high tech.

I work with a couple of fellow hackers and we always get miffed with our co-workers wo e-mule this and kazza that . . .
I'm only 28 and yet I find myself in a position which is very conservative when compared to my peers.
On the IT note, I don't know quite why it is but those who are in IT positions vs. those like myself who may perform the occasional IT function as part of a larger job scope tend to have remarkably different attitudes. . . good or bad I don't know, but different, yes.

-nB

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[showardkid]

Well, I'm one of the younger generations of hackers, but I have thought KaZaA to be amoral from the first time I saw it. I admit that not all people my age agree with me, but don't put us all in boxes that say "for illegal p2p" and "against illegal p2p" by age.

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[eric.t.f.bat]

It's not so much the greyness of the beards; the real reason, I think, is that the older hackers have had more time to produce something they want to protect, so they care more about the idea of protection. It doesn't have to mean conventional copyright, tho. Me, I write songs and poetry; I'm happy to let people read and perform them if they wish, but they need to credit me as the author. I don't charge for the privilege, but if you take my stuff without even "paying" me in that simple way, then you're dishonourable and you deserve a thumping. If I create something of value, I expect to have the right to say how it's used. It's not fascism, it's just simple courtesy. No amount of argument will convince me that you have more right than me to decide how my work is used!

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[Anonymous Coward]

The distinction seems fairly clear to me.

IT folks are consumers of software. Fairly empowered consumers, but still consumers at heart. Whereas the guys with the "larger job scope" are likely to be, at some level or another, producers as well.

Stealing software suddenly seems alot less cool when it might be your software that's being stolen.

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Kazaa is amoral. What people choose to do with it may or may not be moral.

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[harikiri]

I have several workmates who are heavily into downloading movies via bittorrent and morpheus. They also ask to borrow my DVD's so they can burn themselves copies.

I used to share their mindset, but that was when I couldn't afford to purchase those items on my own. Now I can, and it's simply more convenient to purchase a DVD than it is to wait a day or so for it to download via bittorrent, while maxxing my cable connection and being unable to do much else.

The only exception to this is when something is unavailable and doesn't appear likely to become available for a while. An example is Ghost in the Shell 2. I haven't seen any announcements for its cinematic (let alone DVD) release in Australia, so I willingly grabbed it off a friend. However, as soon as it comes out in Australia on DVD, I will be buying a copy.

People who willingly pirate for the sake of it, not because they can't afford it, are the epitome of leeches.

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[bcrowell]

I think I'd say that, generally, old-school hackers are more respectful of intellectual property than new-school hackers. 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.
I think what you're seeing is the way a person changes with age. If you go back 20 or 30 years, those same grey-beards might have had different attitudes.

Consider the picture at the top of Graham's essay. It shows two guys who are now grey-bearded hackers (Jobs and Wozniak) messing with a blue box (a device for making free phone calls, illegally).

When I was a college student in the 80's, I routinely taped my roommates' albums if I liked them. Now I'm older, I have a real job, and I can afford to buy my music, so naturally I disapprove of my students when they trade MP3's :-)

There's also something about having kids that makes you become a lot more cautious...

If you control for age, I think there might be a trend in the opposite direction of what you're suggesting, toward radicalism. The open-source movement has caused some hackers to reconsider some of the basic institutions of our society (like property laws), and organize to resist them. Hacking as a critique of society didn't even exist 20 years ago.

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[ArbitraryConstant]

There's a distinction here no one else seems to see.

I think the actual use of P2P software to upload or download files might be unethical, but the phenomenon of file sharing in general is nothing more and nothing less than the invisible hand attempting to correct the price of the media being distributed. It's no more unethical than the phenomenon of male Lions killing cubs when they take over a pride. It might be nasty when each individual does it, but the practice has helped Lions survive as a species.

The simple fact is that the market is hardwired into humans. Trade is in our nature. We may argue with actions people take, but there's very little that can be done to stop anything completely. We can no more stop file sharing than we can the drug trade or prostitution. There's demand, there's supply, the market takes care of the rest whether we like it or not.

The problem with those trying to stop it is that they're fighting human nature. Human nature won't change. It's not that the **AA is wrong (or at least, exclusively wrong), it's that their goal is not achievable. They will either continue to fight, capitulate, or compromise. My money's on compromise, but no bets on when.

The price of the media in question is higher than the market is willing to bear. I'm not saying it is or is not a fair price, only that it's higher than people are willing to pay. As a result, there were a lot of people that wanted the media but didn't want to pay for it. To the tune of several times the total volume of legitimate sales.

Napster was growing 15% a day for several months. And I've got news for you, Napster sucked. That just doesn't happen unless there's a huge unmet demand.

It's the **AA's fault for ignoring the market. While I might consider the actions of the file traders themselves to be unethical, I recognize that they're following human nature.

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[coopaq]

Well, I'm one of the younger generations of hackers, but I have thought KaZaA to be amoral from the first time I saw it.

Score: 5, Insightful? What the hell!

Have RIAA members become moderators around here?

More like:

Score: 5, Karma whores know it's cool to be different today.

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[maxpublic]

I have no respect whatsoever for people who try to limit my freedom in order to "make money".

And I have no respect whatsoever for little brats who think they're somehow morally justified in taking what I've produced simply because they can. If I write a book and you want a copy of that book, you can goddamn well pay for it. Don't want to pay for it? Then fuck off already; you have no 'right' to make a copy of that book to avoid the gate fee.

Patents and copyrights should only be there to encourage creativity. Nothing more.

The only way they "encourage creativity" is by allowing folks like me to profit from our endeavors. Otherwise we'd be working as garbagemen or lawyers or programmers and spending our free time on more important things, like family. And then you wouldn't have the opportunity to buy the book, the music, or the invention at all.

And don't go off on any college-kid horseshit about 'artists' doing their thang anyways, in the copious amounts of time they have after spending 8-12 hours a day working at a job, then taking care of the family, then trying to find some small amount of time for personal entertainment, or projects, or chores, or household repairs. It doesn't happen very often in the real world, Skippy. Without the lure of money and the ability NOT to work away our lives first at a paid job, and then an UNPAID job on top of that one, many of us have no problem telling those of you who yammer on about the 'greater good' to go fuck yourselves.

If you see the world as a gravy train you're entitled to ride, you can write your own damned books, make your own damned music, and come up with your own damned inventions. But then, if you had any ability at all to do any of these things, you wouldn't be flipping burgers at McDonald's, now would you?

Max

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[sosume]

Just don't let your exclusive mindset make it impossible for others to share their work for free.. that is called fundamentalism. Your way or the highway. If you're so focused on making money, you should take an 80-hours job instead of hoping to make a song or painting that will support all your habits for a lifetime. That is just ridiculous.

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[msergeant]

http://www.dvdsoon.com/ for all your ghost in the shell 2 needs, my copy arrived monday and I'm living in Brisbane. Heck I get a few dvd releases before the movie even gets to the cinemas in AU !!

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[LordLucless]

And don't go off on any college-kid horseshit about 'artists' doing their thang anyways, in the copious amounts of time they have after spending 8-12 hours a day working at a job...etc

Which is precisely why there were no works of art produced before copyright law was enforced.

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[Psychochild]

Actually, a better solution is to get out there and find independent artists that you enjoy. Think the latest "teen diva" CD is crap? Don't download it off of P2P to "get back at the system", go out and find music you do like. Find a local band or even a band on the internet and support them by going to shows and/or buying their CD directly. More money goes into the pocket of the artist you enjoy instead of to fuel the machine that enforces the status quo.

Illegally downloading songs (or any other entertainment) off of a P2P network only gives more power to the RIAA(/MPAA/whatever). They can bloat their piracy numbers and complain about lost sales; common people will believe the figures because everybody downloads music! But, if you go support an independent then you REALLY do something subversive. You go outside the mainstream, into the areas that aren't controlled by the large industry organizations. Most importantly: You give the indies that don't sell their creative freedom for a long shot at "stardom" a chance to live off of their abilities. As an indie computer game developer, I can attest that it's often hard to make a serious living off of providing entertainment to people.

Supporting the independent artist is the best way to beat the system, something that intrigues all hackers both old and new. Unfortunately, too many people want to be entertained for no effort, and are willing to do whatever they can to justify their illegal activities. Let that "do-it-yourself" hacker attitude shine through and go look for the alternatives. We're out there if you choose to look past mainstream advertising.

Have fun,

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[smittyoneeach]

Truly. Nothing more boring than seeing people blame the tool, not the user. See gun control, abortion.

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[dwlovell]

Line feed inserted a space, here is a link: http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-04 -29&res=l -David

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[DongleFondle]

Anyone else sensing the irony of this point followed by a signature discussing the hacking of an xBox?

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[muhcashin]

It's more greed than anything else. I doubt it has anything to do with a hacker's mindset. I mean there are people who have literally weeks of music on their computer, I garantee it that they haven't listen to everything they own. They just pirate for the sake of having it. I recently ripped all my CDs to my computer and realized that I have over a week worth of music. I have listened to every single one of these records at least a dozen of times. That's the difference, when you pay for something you generally pay more attention to it, use it and appreciate more that if you pirate it. Otherwise, you might download Gigli(or any bad movie) just for the sake of having it, knowing full well that won't ever watch it. For the record, I am a greedy person. Was I not stuck on dial-up, I would join the ranks of the pirates.

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[Jucius Maximus]

"An example is Ghost in the Shell 2. I haven't seen any announcements for its cinematic (let alone DVD) release in Australia,",

Region 1 DVD Release: Dec 28, 2004. Source: Main page of AnimeOnDVD. It was announced a couple of days ago. Though I do agree that there has been no Australian release date set.

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[networkBoy]

I am gainfully employed, but of my income half my take-home (minus $60) goes to rent. I am curerntly supporting a wife and a kid and my wife is a full time student at a UC school. Per quarter books average $200+ Tuition is $$$$ per quarter (not semester). I have so little disposable income that it would make your head spin.
The website in my sig? The money I make from that pays for my DSL line and the excess will be paying for Halo2 (already pre-ordered). I'm as broke as you, yet I don't pirate. . . go figure.
-nB

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[networkBoy]

Have you visited my site?
If you have you will no-where find tools or instructions for piracy of games. I have two open letters to M$ about homebrew content on their console. I have received numerous visits from M$ IP addresses three DMCA notices, though I post no (C) IP on my site. I understand the double standard that is apparent and I see plenty of irony. The difference is that homebrew does not take money away from the game studios, piracy does; same for ripping and distributing movies.
-nB

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[LordLucless]

Now do you see why copyright laws are needed to encourage creativity today?

No, frankly, I don't. Copyright laws today do not encourage creativity. They encourage intellectual hoarding.

In the 'old days' the execution of the idea was at least as valuable as the intellectual copyright. So what if you steal the "idea" for the mona lisa? You could never create a painting that equalled it, because if you had that kind of skill you would be spending the time creating something of your own that was equally as good - hence the low number of mona lisa bootleg copies in existence.

Their have been plenty of "bootlegs" of paintings. Usually not of the Mona Lisa, because it would be obvious they are fakes (especially since the location of the original is well established), but there are plenty of counterfeiters and counterfeits out there - and nobody is queueing up to see them for their "subtle naunces". But the Mona Lisa is not an accurate comparison to today's art - the Mona Lisa was a unique work. There is very little comparable today - all our art is designed for mass production and mass consumption.

I went through a Creative Writing degree at University; pretty much everyone who graduated that degree was resigned to the knowledge that they would have to work another job and write in their spare time, that they would likely not become a success, and that only the very, very few authors on the top of the pile manage to make enough money to write full-time. Nobody at all knowledgable about the industry goes into writing with the incentive of making money - because, most likely, you won't. I assume the same goes for music and the visual arts - the visible few get richly rewarded, the vast majority get nothing. Copyright does not provide an incentive for the people creating the artwork. It provides a reward for the few whose work is accepted by the publisher, marketed by the publisher and acceptable to the public taste, which is notoriously hard to pin down.

Now anyone can rip a DVD to create a near perfect copy in minutes, with zero skill - and so, many people do. Are those people as talented as the film's creators?

Who cares? They're not claiming to be. They're not claiming to be the creator of the film, any more than the people who work at the DVD manufacturing plant that produces legit DVDs are.

What people are missing is that copyright is not an inalienable right. If it was, it would not expire, and could not be bought and sold. In fact copyright isn't a "right" at all. As has been stated numerous times on this forum, it is an agreement between the artist and the public, that the artist get an exclusive right to reproduce his work, if, in exchange, that work is eventually signed over to the public. If the public no longer believes that agreement is beneficial to them (as they are showing through their actions), they should withdraw from the agreement - particularly as the original agreement has been changed so many times over the years.

Are people still prepared to pay for the original after they see a copy? in most cases no, and no.

Any numerical proof of that? Or just your statement. Some anecdotal evidence: I download most movies that look interesting when they first come out. I also own over 100 DVDs, most of which are movies I have already seen, many of which I previously downloaded copies of. The only difference downloading DVDs has made to my purchasing practices, is now I can make sure I'm not buying a pile of crap without shelling out for it first. Many people do appreciate the real thing - which explains why prints of the Mona Lisa are a dime a dozen, while the real thing is still priceless.

Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.

[Dyolf Knip]

Sell them cheaply. Make it cheap, convenient, and reliable enough that it's simply not worth the time and effort and exasperation to go through the P2P networks. I'm thinking an absolute maximum of $.50 per track, depending on size. They should really strive for less, so an entire album would cost $2 or $3.

Add value that P2P can't match. Allow for purchase of miscellanceous artwork, interviews with the band, behind-the-scenes, crap like that. Keep a well organized discography database with links to similar artists. Allow downloads or mailing of the CD insert and stick-on labels so the customer can make their own CD's (Ha! Have a service that will create CD labels for custom mix CDs. Just specify the bands and/or albums and they'll send you a label with a montage of all the requested artwork). Allow downloads or streaming for free in crap-quality 48kbps MP3 and sell in a multitude of popular formats (MP3, OGG, lossy, lossless, whatever) and bitrates. Allow downloading of entire albums at once. Give promotionals for things like posters and concert tickets and t-shirts when you buy the album. And for the love of god, do not cripple it all with DRM shit that doesn't work!

Have the customer keep a PayPal-type debit account, so they can deposit a few bucks periodically and then just buy whatever song or album they want with a simple one-click purchase system.

Will the songs end up on P2P networks? Absolutely. But so what? They'll _never_ stamp it out; there will always be files available for free. The RIAA members need to have this fact drilled into their skulls. But this way they could at least compete with it. Look how will iTunes did, and that was expensive, limited, and had nothing I couldn't get from P2P. With a system like this in place, they could sweep illicit music trading under the rug almost at once and make even more money than they are now. I mean, there's almost no distribution costs apart from bandwidth. No middle-men, it's all profit.

But, no. Instead they declare war on the people who give them money. That's much better.

You almost made some sense, there!

[Cryofan]

You finally said something that had an inkling of truth to it!

you wrote:

You completely neglected to mention the FACT that the wealthy use government to deter competition and maintain their control.


I COMPLETELY AGREE! At least that is the case here in America. And that tactic has a LOOOONNNGGG history!

Now go over to Sweden, Finland, Norway, or Denmark (or study them over the Net), and tell me if you think that also applies to the same degee with those countries...


Limited government and free markets undermine that entire system.


No, it leaves a vacuum of power that only ONE group can fill--the Rich and Powerful. Nice going! (please see Russia for an example).


(And seriously... if you're going to say that we should use tools to get back at the wealthy, why stop at government? Why not expand into physical coercion with guns, like government seems to?)


Please read Howard Zinn's _A People's History of the United States_!

Re:You almost made some sense, there!

[the_meager]

"Now go over to Sweden, Finland, Norway, or Denmark (or study them over the Net), and tell me if you think that also applies to the same degee with those countries..."

What is that suppose to prove? They don't have as much wealth, nor as many wealthy people (on our scale). Over there, everybody is equally unwealthy [except politicos]. And over there, they're slowly going bankrupt as their welfare states are costing more and more, including healthcare and education, while GDP is not keeping pace (surprise, surprise).

"No, it leaves a vacuum of power that only ONE group can fill--the Rich and Powerful. Nice going! (please see Russia for an example)."

Complete misinterpretation of the facts.

Russia HARDLY has limited government. Russia never had limited government. Russia also never had a free market, either. For you to say that is proof of your lack of understanding. The Russian government sold off businesses to friends and old communists -- the Russian government created oligopolies and monopolies. This is not a free market. It is not a failure of "capitalism", but rather of government.

It was the same way in Chile, where the "free market" supposedly failed. Government created oligopoly is not the free market.

"Please read Howard Zinn's _A People's History of the United States!"

I read most of that Marxist nonsense. Zinn basically took the ideals he thought would improve the world, and skewed history to give the perception that his ideals are correct. Fortunately for us, most of the million or so copies of his book that were sold were forced on readers by professors [as one can imagine, most copies were purchased in university book stores or in major Liberal college towns...].

Re:You almost made some sense, there!

[the arbiter]

Sorry, I can't let this one go. You are so full of shit it's amazing.

EVERY SINGLE Scandanavian "socialist" nation, is, once again this year, in the top ten as regards such minor factors as:

per capita income
GDP
"standard of living"
life expectancy

You know, minor things like that. The U.S., if you're curious, is number 2 on the list. The "godless commie" state of Finland is number 1.

Plus the chicks there are totally hot. Not that you would or will ever know.

Thankfully, your idiotic way of thinking is fading into history, although not quickly enough, my clueless friend. Good luck with the education.

It's You

[serutan]

Is it just me or is this one of the more ridiculous sounding things you've heard in a while?

It's you. I thought the thunderstorm was a nice metaphor. Here's another good line:

"A society in which people can do and say what they want will also tend to be one in which the most efficient solutions win, rather than those sponsored by the most influential people."

But here in the Rush Limbaugh era, we place as much value on making fun of something as on making an actual point. Oh well, too bad for us.

Re:It's You

[Oligonicella]

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.

Re:It's You

[NichG]

Well, I could justify that with other analogies, but it wouldn't really be a good argument.

Instead, I'll propose that perhaps what happens is that people who interact meaningfully with humans come to equilibrium with the rest of society much more quickly. So if there's some process by which people are being made to believe that certain infractions of their rights are okay, or even desireable, people who interact strongly with society will be more susceptible to picking up the same reasoning than people who are isolated from it.

To put it another way, people who feel that they need to sustain themselves independantly from society will be more concerned with their personal freedoms than society's goals, whereas people who feel they draw more support from society will be less concerned with the freedom to act in a way perpendicular to the majority of society, but will be more concerned with how society as a whole behaves. So someone who defines the important thing in their life to be how they interact with society won't necessarily care as much if the particular form of the interaction changes (you can do this and that, but not the other thing) so long as the interaction itself remains.
On the other hand, someone isolated from society will care more about the specific nature of actions, rather than doing said actions in groups.

Given how abstract the preceeding paragraphs were, maybe I should've stuck with analogies: 'It's easier to spot the shape of a forest from the outside than from the inside'.

Re:It's You

[NichG]

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.

There is more on Earth than US

[gustgr]

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.

Re:There is more on Earth than US

[Stridar]

>Really ?

Yes. I provided an example by showing that a disproportional number number of nobel prize winners reside in the US. As another example, take the listing of the top universities in the world . In the top 10, only Oxford exists outside of the US. In the top 25, only 6 are outside of the US. In top 100, the US holds over 50% of the slots. One of the main reasons for this is the ability for the US to draw in the best talent in science and engineering from around the world.

>You mean like stem cell research ?
>Ummm ....

Stem cell research is very active in the US. A simple google search would show you the research centers at NIH and University of Wisconsin-Madison . Even California is floating a $3billion dollar bond to support stem cell research. However, yes, the current ban on the harvesting of embroyonic stem cells is not doing much good to foster research in this area in the US.

>I've always thought it wise to actually do the thinking part *BEFORE* the speaking part.

You obviously think one way and act another.

Re:"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"

[Nitish]

Not quite... The wife of Dean Eisenhart (Dean of the Graduate College at Princeton when Feynman was a grad student there) said this when Feynman committed the social gaffe of saying that he wanted both cream and lemon in his tea.

I have no idea why I know this... :-)

Re:Now if hackers could just learn to hack the gov

[qopax]

I think you might be dividing the classes too greatly. Why must a hacker not want to get the food on the table, buy a new SUV, and get a holiday week off to a tropical island? Some hackers aren't that different from "the common man", I'd even say most of them aren't. Of course you might be talking about the "common american idiot", but I don't think there are many of even those left...

Re:Hackers, tell us when it will get here

[hibiki_r]

You are right: DVD copy protection is not really all that important in the big scheme of things. Worst case scenario, "all of your music and movies are belong to us". Not good, but it's not a catastrophe. The issue is that there are much more dangerous IP issues out there. What about patented vegetables? Monsanto is doing just that with genetically engineered crops. If the GE crop pollinizes yours, suddenly you're breaking the law. Worst case scenario: All sources of wheat/corn being owned/taxed by one or two companies. That seems like an unacceptable scenario to me.

In any case, the author's point has more to do with the hacker mentality than computers. It's similar to a good lawyer's mentality too. When, during your daily work, the first thing you do when in front of a new system is to figure out how to exploit it, figuring out how to break anything becomes almost instinctive. Lawyers try to find cracks in the legal system to the benefit of their clients every day. Using this, it's easy to put yourself in the 'bad guy' position, and figure out how, as a big corporation, crooked politician, or corrupted federal cop, our modern way of life could be twisted in your benefit. IMO, modern society needs more people that looks at life in this way. Looking for vulnerabilities in the big program that is any western legal system is a good thing.

The hackers' only claim to fame is that finding problems in IP law is mostily their turf. The essay's author is probably not delusional, as you seem to think. he just tries to cater to his audience, full of computer geeks. I don't think he was going to get a good, positive response if he said that accountants and lawyers were the best examples of this kind of thinking :).

Eeewwww

[poptones]

"Hackers can cause totalitarianism to approach from a distance, as a protective father approaches when a juvenile delinquent ventures a hand under a daughter's dress."

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.

Re:Eeewwww

[fyngyrz]

Apparently, you don't understand the concept of "guardian."

That's just fine. However, stay away from my daughter. I mean it.

Re:Now if hackers could just learn to hack the gov

[nomadic]

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.

Actually many courts won't enforce contracts that they think were unfairly entered into. For example, when one side has a vastly stronger bargaining position, or when there's no consideration (i.e. one person gets something while the other party gets screwed), or if the terms of the contract are too vague, OR if an important clause is buried in pages of boilerplate fine print. And obviously, you can't legally contract to commit an illegal act.

But actually, you do have an important point beneath the similarity between law and hacking. The American common law system has been doing pure open source law for a lot longer than OSS programmers have.

Personally, I blame...

[MacDork]

Personally, I blame the parents.

Personally, I blame 100+ year copyrights and a system that made silence into private property in 1952.

Re:Personally, I blame...

[Artifakt]

You can't live to see your copyright expire under current law. It's currently set at Life+70 years. Here's one reason I don't think you should have it (and I shouldn't either).

Original copyright law set the bar at a finite time (once 14 years/+14 years more with renewal). The way the constitution was set up, nothing was indexed to a variable time (as in one man's life may be much longer than another's - that's variable). People such as Thomas Jefferson specifically avoided using life or life+ variable times because they didn't think that should be legal, and several of them wrote in their papers and memoirs about why they thought it was unfair. The government now seems to disagree with those founding fathers. Doesn't that make you in the least uncomfortable?

Copyright involves a trade, a quid-pro-quo, as it is originally expressed in the constitution. The public gives up the natural right to make copies for a fixed time. The creator gains protection that will encourage him to create. The public gains the release of the work to themselves and their posterity for all coming generations after the copyright expires.
During the first 30 years of my life, a fixed time law meant that I was supposed to be respecting an artist's created rights and refrain from using my natural ability to make copies, but he was expected to see that, in turn, those works would become available to my kids, and their kids, as part of the general culture they could draw upon .
Maybe they'd even be available to me if I lived long enough, to be a comfort in my declining years when I might be poor and infirm. That was the deal. The deal has been re-written, each time more in the author's favor. It has been rewritten 5 times in my own lifetime.
If you've dome any of your work before 1994, your government unilaterally renegotiated your contract to simply give you some more of what was once my natural right. In your case, starting in the 70's, you've already had your contract with me renegotiated 3 times in your favor. How about you start honoring your end of the deal?
Copyright law has become an ethical morrass, where some people who have had the law bent in their favor five times since they joined the contract (or their heirs) are now calling other people thieves. I urge you not to slip into that mode.
There were rules in effect at the time you wrote your works. You knew what they were, or you had every chance to learn. You presumably thought the law of that time was fair when you put the works into publication. Do you want to stand by the promises you made, or at least let the government make for you then, or let new governments keep breaking it for you, just so long as they do it for your side each time?
And why do you trust the government on this? They gave you my natural right to copy. That ends for me, at the very best, when I die. I may get lucky and be able to make a copy of yiour works right up to the time an anvel mysteriously falls on me, but I guarentee 1 second after I die I will be unable to copy your work.
So where did you get the +70 years of that life+70 clause? The government now takes the position that it made that +70 years up out of nothing. In practice, it's taken from my children's and grandchildren's natural rights, but legally, copyright becomes a created right instead of a transferred one.
Once the government is seen as creating your rights, it can take them away as well. You're dependant on a government handout, just like anyone on welfare, and if the government decides to take that right away, what principle will you claim they are violating? If they shorten your copyright, will they give the natural right back to me and generations to come, or will they keep the parts they trim off for themselves? And if they can keep it for themselves, how long do you think it will be before that shortening begins?

Re:Personally, I blame...

[Cili]

Quote:

The government - by which I mean society's minders as codified in law and the law enforcement that makes those laws a concrete social force - creates, maintains, modifies, and destroys all the rights you have. There are no other rights. Anything else is wishful thinking. If you want that to change, you'll need a revolution. There are no natural rights. Wants, certainly. Needs too. Desires. Itches, even. But not rights.

No,no,no
You naturally have any right possible to think of. It's the laws and law-enforcement that limits your rights. Laws are like this:

You are not allowed to do the following (read:You don't have the right to do) :that(1), that(2) and that(3) because these actions harm the society. Should you do such actions, law enforcement will punish you. You may do anything that is not on the list. New actions that harm society will be put on this list next time the list is updated(by passing laws to regulate it).

Note that anything that is not on the *not allowed to* list is allowed.

That is completely different from:

You are allowed to do that(1), that(2) and that(3) because only these actions are good to the society. Should you do something not on this list, law enforcement will punish you.

Now that's completely fucked up and I hope no states that work by such laws exist in reality.

Graham's Essays

[cthlptlk]

By now, I should know better than to read the Paul Graham essays when they're posted on slashdot, but I can't help myself. I think it's my sick obsession with lisp.

Now that I've read a few in the space of a few weeks, I think I'm able to pin down what bothers me. Graham is really good at a certain rhetorical style: he talks at length about a topic that really isn't the topic at hand, until you start to wonder if you're really reading the essay that you thought you were reading, and suddenly the focus shifts to the target. "Maori customs are really a metaphor/synedoche for the perl philosophy!" or whatever. The change is so dizzying (because it is unexpected but not completly random) and such changes come so fast that the reader doesn't stop to evaluate the correctness of Graham's assertions or the depth of what he's saying. It's like a cheesy magic show...the magician distracts you by waving the wand around, so that you don't see that he's actually pulling the rabbit out of his sleeve, rather than out of the hat. To his credit, I think Graham does this trick really well, and it's hard to do.

The thing is, I can appreciate cheesy-magic-show writing, but at some point, I would like to take away an actual idea from what I'm reading. And what are Graham's ideas? Lisp is really l33t! Hackers are really l33t! Graham's ideas are really that simple; they're not refinements or unexpected corrollaries of ideas that were first trotted out ten or twenty years ago. After a few essays, it becomes apparent that all of these ideas really reduce to I, Paul Graham, am really l33t because I like this l33t stuff! I don't fault Graham in the slightest for thinking this, or even about writing it, but since I'm not Paul Graham, it's not a very interesting idea to me.

Re:Graham's Essays

[zsau]

Actually, I've started reading it as: These things are leet because I like them, which makes me leet...

Somewhen I think Graham said something like he and Stallman and so forth were great men because they weren't afraid to say they were great. I think Graham's gone a bit too far down that path; I still respect RMS.

Re:Graham's Essays

[bugbear]

Lisp is really l33t! Hackers are really l33t! Graham's ideas are really that simple

Really? It seems to me that I go into great detail. For example, in the third paragraph of this latest essay I explain the connection between the two senses of "hack." That's a substantial point, and new too, as far as I know. At least, it was news to me when I realized it.

Other quite specific points: that hackers get in trouble because authorities don't understand one of their biggest motives (curiosity); that young hackers deliberately fake eccentricities; that copy protection mechanisms, because they're mechanisms, tend to attract rather than deter hackers; that new technology often isn't developed by the people who are supposed to be developing it; that the kind of attitude that existed during the Manahttan Project is hard to imagine existing in Germany at that time; etc, etc.

Surely this is a lot more than just saying that hackers are great. (And where exactly do I say that, by the way?)

Re:Hackers are animals?

[Anonymous Coward]

And therefore... hackers are witches!

Burn them!

GNP and freedom

[Dr.Syshalt]

Their interdependency is not as clear as author insists. They rather both depend on how much recources a nation has to spend on wars and military preparations. US developed in a situation where they didn't have any serious military competition nearby - nothing like Europe (until lately), Russia, China, Middle East or Africa. If US would have to constantly fight for a couple of centuries with, let's say, Canada for territories and resources, the situation would be completely different now. Again, if US would get a serious threat right on their borders, the situation with freedoms and economical prosperity would change pretty soon. Just look at how things have changed after 9/11 - two big buildings destroyed by an enemy. Now imagine the same on the scale of the hole country, with millions of casualties and whole cities in ruins - that's the real war on your territory. Do you get the picture now?

Re:GNP and freedom

[glasse]

Coming from a psychology background, I agree that the relationship is probably very complicated. RSF has some figures on press freedom, and I've never heard anyone object strongly to them. As they note:

Wealth and press freedom don't always go together As in 2002, the ranking shows that a country's respect for press freedom is not solely linked to its economic development. The top 50 include countries that are among the poorest in the world, such as Benin (29th position), Timor-Leste (30th) and Madagascar (46th).

Conversely, the 50 countries that respect press freedom least include such rich nations as Bahrain (117th) and Singapore (144th).

While I know these numbers are for press freedom rather than personal freedom or anything more related to freedom of ideas, I think it's clear that greater freedom does not a GDP make. If anyone has any numbers on the GDPs of these nations, we can try to run the regression.

Ethan

Re:Now if hackers could just learn to hack the gov

[Oligonicella]

"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.

Missed it by that much...

[IBitOBear]

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-)

Re:Hackers are animals?

[Frogbert]

Or were clicked on too many times.

Lunch Money! Now!

[mekkab]

"A society in which people can do and say what they want will also tend to be one in which the most efficient solutions win, rather than those sponsored by the most influential people."


You are so dead in third period dodge ball, nerd!

They are NOT property rights

[argoff]

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

You're working on the assumption that intellectual "property" (copyright and patnet monopolies) are a property right. That's like saying slavey was a property right - no it wasn't! It was a form of controll over other people, and so is this.

Just because a bunch of people scream very loudly that something is a right doesn't mean that it is. Just because they scream that it's a property right doesn't mean that it is either.

US the last frontier?

[argoff]

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.

Paul is amazingly correct

[Almost-Retired]

I scanned on down the list to see what sort of replies I might find, thinking if someone has said it, why should I repeat and bore.

Unforch, in about the first 75 or so posts, I didn't see a reply that even indicated the poster had actually read the article!

Color me an old fool maybe, but Paul has hit the nail of the problem square on the head, and his essay should be required reading for every congress-critter on the face of the planet, the american ones in particular. They are not just stiffling innovation, the innovation that made america what it was in the first 2/3rds of the past century, they are choking it to death and will not be satisfied until even the reflexive heaving of the chest, long after the heart has stopped, has itself stopped. Only when it is well and truely inspected by the attending physician and declared dead will the likes of Jack Valanti be happy.

I don't know how to make it any clearer to our senators and representatives, the damage they have done in the last 25 years, than to make Pauls essay required reading, and to have them say in public that they have read it and agree with Paul, and will work to revert these onerous laws, and do it before they get our votes on Nov 2nd. If they don't, then don't re-elect the incumbent, its that simple. We need a thorough house (senate too) cleaning that breaks the chain of $$$ command between hollywood, congress and yes, even the Supremes. If we don't do it now, by the next time election day rolls around, the disneys and the diebolds will have total control of the country, to rape and pillage as they please instead of undercover like they are doing now. Most of the Bill of Rights will either be ignored, or legislated out of existence. I give you the so-called Patriot Act as the worst example, but don't worry, they'll think up even worse ones given another 2, 4 or 6 years.

When that day comes, and if I'm still around, you'll recognize the likes of me, we'll be the ancient ones saying "I told you so". We remember when america stood for freedom, freedom to go out and make a million if you had a better idea, not spend the rest of your life and all your income in court trying to prove prior art against some copycat. We'll also have plenty of ammo loaded for when it gets noisy, and if it gets noisy before the message is heard, it will be a lot noisier than the Boston Tea Party was. We were relatively few then, but not anymore.

No Cheers this time, Gene

amoral doesn't mean illegal.

[TWX]

"Kazaa is amoral. What people choose to do with it may or may not be moral."

This is the exact logic that has allowed Betamax (and other analog devices capable of duplication) to exist. If the device has a legitimate use then the device is legitimate. If the maker or marketter of the device or service specifically argues an illegal purpose then the service should be shut down or the specific marketter or seller should be targetted, but that does not mean that the users should be targetted unless it can be demonstrated that they are breaking the law.

Companies that sold multifunction card readers and writers, as well as blank cards were marketting these with the claim that it allows one to watch Cable or Satellite TV for free. This marketting strategy is illegal, and businesses advocating the illegal activity are subject to prosecution. The devices, however, have legitimate uses beyond TV, as the subscription TV industry risked using an industry standard card rather than developing their own technology. Subsequently I feel that prosecution solely based on the purchase of such equipment from one of the aforementioned retailers is wrong. If they can prove that the customer is actually using the devices for illegal purposes then they have grounds, otherwise posession is not a crime. Since posession is not a crime, there is no justification for even a search warrant to examine the customer's equipment. If the customer then has turned around and started selling copied key cards and the TV subscription company can prove this though obtaining one then they can make a case.

If I and a bunch of associates had such equipment and were all served, I wouldn't hesitate to find a lawyer with experience for this and counter with racketeering and extortion claims as a group, and to attempt to convince the local attorney general to criminally pursue the matter.

Portions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act related to devices capable of copying or playing copies need to be re-evaluated and repealed, for the logic that copying can be done legally of material not protected by copyright, therefore DMCA is restrictive.

May I *never* be required...

[IBitOBear]

... to rely on your code.

Choice of operators is as much an art as choice of words.

Bad artists make bad art. The "programming is not an art" people make bad code because they don't understand the nuance of their craft. [Some *are* artists despite themselves, but that is the profound exception.]

If you beleive that given the same plan, the same requriements, and the same docmuentation; twelve programmers of similar skill will each produce the same program, you are sadly mistaken.

Even the choice of the "non functional" bits, like choice of identifier names, is a *necessary* part of the art. Two people can produce two largely identical programs, and one can *still* be "better" because of excelence of craft. I have been forced to maintian code written by very smart programmers who were otherwise bereft of art. It was hell simply because "the nicities" were all wrong.

There are also cultural differences between various programs that do the same thing.

Programs instruct the computer and communicate with the user.

Doing that well is art, no matter what your egotistical opinion of "artists as inferiors" leads you to think. And you will likely never be much of a programmer as long as you think otherwise.

Exactly

[Mark_MF-WN]

You hit the nail on the head there. I remember the last time I was able to work, I purchased quite a number of albums, and more than a few video games.

When I'm a student, or too sick to do anything, I certainly can't afford to buy DVDs or CDs. I still buy the odd used game, but $10 for a game that will provide twenty to fifty hours of entertainment is within ANY budget.

But whenever I have dinner with my aunt and uncle, he regales me with stories of all the free software he downloads. It kind of disgusts me since he can obviously afford to purchase it legit. I switched to Linux precisely to get away from having to pirate software. I always encourage people to switch, so that they can benefit from truly a free operating system and office suite. I've gotten quite a few people to switch to OpenOffice.

Re:((((GROAN))))

[say]

>> look at what is happening in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, France, etc

> Stagnant economies with high unemployment? Thanks, I'll pass.

You are not very well informed. I'm from Norway, the country with the lowest unemployment rate in Europe, larger growth than the USA (last year or over the last 10 years) and (according to the UN (UNHDR 2004)) the highest standard of living in the world.

Sweden came second in UNHDI, Belgium sixth, US of A: eight.

The United States has the highest human poverty among the 17 high income OECD countries included in this year's human poverty index-2 (HPI). Source: HDR 2004.

I'd pick any of the countries instead of the US, thank you very much.

Oh, link to the facts? undp.org.

Color inside the lines?

[notAyank]

It is no accident that Silicon Valley is in America, and not France, or Germany, or England, or Japan. In those countries, people color inside the lines.

What a load of rubbish. Japan is colouring inside the lines but America is the world's innovator. It may have been true in the distant past but now that makes me laugh. What arrogant and patently absurd garbage.