Copyrights and patents are not "unrelated", they both deal with "intellectual property"."\
Since "intellectual property" is nothing but catch-all propaganda phrase created by rights-holders, has no real meaning, and is actually a contradiction (patents and copyrights are NOT "property" at all, in any sense of the term, morally, ethically, or legally), I would have to say you are wrong and he was right.
Copyright and patent law are not terribly similar. They have very little in common, except that in the beginning, after this country was founded, they had similar time limits (depending on exact when you are talking about, it was between 15 and 20 years). Other than that, they have almost nothing to do with each other.
They don't have much in common except that they both go under the dubious umbrella of "intellectual property".
"Intellectual property" is a term that was entirely made up for use as propaganda by rights-holders. It is actually a contradiction in terms, because there is no "property" at all involved in copyrights and patents, just time-limited privileges granted by government. But they have wanted you to THINK in terms of it being their "property". That makes you more amenable to distortions of the policies and laws.
It's the same basic idea as calling downloading "piracy", when it isn't. (Copyright piracy actually has a legal definition that hasn't really changed in about 100 years.) Downloading is not a crime. Piracy is. But Big Media wants you to think of them as the same. They can get away with more that way.
"The requirement they accomplished is a 10 meter square, not 10 square meters."
I was going to say... I've seen pictures of it and the helicopter itself is bigger than 10 square meters, so I did not see how it could fulfill this requirement.
A 10 meter square makes much more sense.
Re:I Guess This Is What Happens When I Don't Watch
on
The Case Against DNA
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
"It scares me that people's entire lives can depend on methods that would get any scientist laughed out of the room."
I have been saying this for years. It is ridiculously easy to contaminate or even plant DNA. Fingerprints are relatively hard to fake, and they don't "accidentally" move from place to place. However, DNA does accidentally move from place to place. Worse: drop a few skin scrapings or spit from someone in the right places, and watch the police foam at the mouth in rabid excitement.
It's worse than ridiculous. It's a tragedy that doesn't need to exist.
"It's a dick expression that has become popular due to Slashdot's dick community."
In some cases (I am not claiming this was one of them) it can be pretty humorous. But of course in order to think so, you must first have a sense of humor.
"So you're saying 'Don't care about the risks, because we can always fix it later'. Glad you think that - it worked so well for the banks four years ago."
... And it worked so well with the zebra mussels in the great lakes, and the "walking catfish" in Florida, and the myriad other invasive species that have wreaked havoc on our local environment.
Where I live, we have a very serious problem with a decorative aquarium plant from Asia, which some bozo introduced into a lake because he couldn't bring himself to flush his kid's goldfish. It is now in most of the lakes and rivers around here, forming giant mats that make swimming and navigation a hazard. Millions of dollars have been spent trying to mitigate this, and we haven't figured out how to "fix it" yet.
"If we exterminated a species, we have a moral duty to bring it back and eventually, reintroduce it to it's former natural habitat."
I'm not so sure I would take that TOO literally. There is something to be said for evolution, and evolution does not, in itself, create a moral obligation to protect something against which you might be competing.
But if you mean "unnecessary" extinction, due merely to ignorance or something like corporate profit motive, then I definitely agree with you.
But not ALL extinctions are bad. That's how we got here.
"My personal theory is that we killed all mammoths because they were delicious. Can't wait to taste one!"
Which might actually be a decent reason to bring them back.
More seriously: we have had bad enough experience with invasive species. Re-creating them, and re-introducing them, are two very different things.
I don't see a lot of harm in the former, as long as precautions AND good isolation techniques are put in place. But I don't think, at our current level of technology, that the latter is even close to a good idea.
Crichton's books were not anti-science; they were intended as warnings. We need to know a lot more before we attempt such things.
"And it was my words, too. You basically were nitpicking some minor word choice to try to claim I was wrong in my statement."
No, I was differentiating, not nitpicking.
I did not feel that you emphasized enough that security for obscurity can indeed be effective, but only for noobs or casual snoopers.
Just my opinion. We basically agree, I was just trying to clarify the point a bit. Not to nitpick. "Fixed that for you" is often considered to be humorous on Slashdot. It wasn't an insult or an attempt to actually disagree.
"Because lets face it folks, Java was a security nightmare when Sun ran it and Oracle isn't doing any better of a job at fixing the mess than Sun did, no different than how Flash sucked for security when it was Macromedia and it sucks under Adobe."
Sure. The only thing I would add is that Sun java was either less exploitable, or that exploits have simply become better-discovered since being acquired. I actually lean a bit toward the latter, because Oracle does not have the sympathy of its own user base, and I can see them finding flaws, just to strike at Oracle.
Sooner or later, Page should get the clue that most people -- or at least most developers, who count the most here -- don't like him or his products very much.
"Duh? In this case, since he is being port scanned by what is most likely Chinese script kiddies moving the port will stop probably 99% of them. No one said such things will prevent any possible intrusion, but it's an easy and cheap way to prevent the vast majority and causes no compromising to the underlying system."
Thank you for restating, in different words, what I already said.
"But using some level of secrecy as a first line of defense can be quite useful in preventing casual attacks."
There, fixed that for you.
Security through obscurity is useful in preventing casual, naive attacks. Nothing more. In the same way that lock on your front door (unless you have one of a few good, expensive ones) prevents casual, naive attacks... but hardly slows a professional down.
"You can't discuss success without also discussing the odds of failure."
While that is true, it is also true that overall, Silicon Valley has been a success story for California. That is regardless of whether California, as a whole, is a success story.
Aside from that, however, I have to wonder how it is that OP counts "takeovers" as a sign of success in an industry. As often as not, it is a sign of decadence and stagnation.
"... and I had heard most of the bigger corps went.NET for their backends."
Java is not primarily -- or even mostly -- for Web use. The vast majority of Java programs don't involve the Web at all. So yes, it is still used a lot. However, of course only the ones that are accessed via the Web are susceptible to the remote exploit.
Having said all that, I will reply to OP and say yes, it's time we started using a forked Java. In fact, most of us should have seen the writing on the wall from the actions Oracle took immediately after acquiring the rights to it. We're only a few years late.
"I would say that the "smartphone" is an innovation."
Yes, I think the guy is a nutcase. I he thinks the ability to have access to the internet almost anywhere is not an innovation, he's got a screw loose.
"Oh please. It's called the Masada Defense, and it's been an old joke for about two millennia. 'Ha! Didn't we make those Roman Legions look stupid! Nyaa, nyaa, you can't kill us because we committed suicide. Nyaa, nyaa!'"
So? How is that relevant to the fact that it is still the best line I have read on Slashdot in a long while?
It doesn't have to be new to be funny and appropriate.
"Umm... You are drifting into ignoratio elenchi territory.
No, I wasn't. It might not have been directly relevant but it is not "ignoratio elenchi" material.
We were talking about 9,200 and 2,500 years ago, as a point in time when the arctic ice melted to the level it melts today."
Correct. Well within the period that has been measured in previous ice cores by researchers, which is more to the point and which I stated before. And as the article itself stated: it is very likely that the areas where previous ice cores were gathered may not have been adequately representative of antarctica as a whole.
Nevertheless, those earlier ice cores have been a foundation stone for much of AGW theory.
There are other issues with ice cores as well, but those are probably not relevant to this particular discussion. Suffice it to say that this article did in fact contradict much of the information that has been bandied about by the "mainstream" AGW promoters.
"Claiming "they are contradictory" is completely meaningless, it's "true or not" that counts."
Complete bollocks, since this entire exchange was kicked off by your statement that my claim they are contradictory is false. That's what this whole conversation is about. I won't acknowledge your attempt to change the subject in midstream.
"One or the other MUST be true for the contradiction to be of any significance."
Spare me your attempt at Logic 101 lessons.
"Should BOTH A and B be true to the same degree, only THEN is the contradiction of some logical significance, as it would be somewhat of a paradox."
Your opinion of what is significant is totally irrelevant and straw-man argument at this point, since this WHOLE conversation was about whether they were contradictory, not whether that contradiction has significance. I did not make that claim, which I stated in plain English.
So, Mr. Logic, knock off the straw man. My point is made and your irrelevancies have no bearing on it.
Slashdot Mirror
Copyrights and patents are not "unrelated", they both deal with "intellectual property"."\
Since "intellectual property" is nothing but catch-all propaganda phrase created by rights-holders, has no real meaning, and is actually a contradiction (patents and copyrights are NOT "property" at all, in any sense of the term, morally, ethically, or legally), I would have to say you are wrong and he was right.
Copyright and patent law are not terribly similar. They have very little in common, except that in the beginning, after this country was founded, they had similar time limits (depending on exact when you are talking about, it was between 15 and 20 years). Other than that, they have almost nothing to do with each other.
They don't have much in common except that they both go under the dubious umbrella of "intellectual property".
"Intellectual property" is a term that was entirely made up for use as propaganda by rights-holders. It is actually a contradiction in terms, because there is no "property" at all involved in copyrights and patents, just time-limited privileges granted by government. But they have wanted you to THINK in terms of it being their "property". That makes you more amenable to distortions of the policies and laws.
It's the same basic idea as calling downloading "piracy", when it isn't. (Copyright piracy actually has a legal definition that hasn't really changed in about 100 years.) Downloading is not a crime. Piracy is. But Big Media wants you to think of them as the same. They can get away with more that way.
"Basically, if you work around a patent's claim by ommiting step(s), but the user(s) are able to perform these ommitted steps, then you are liable."
Right. By analogy: now I can be liable for murder because I sold someone a gun legally, and he used it to kill somebody. He's not liable, but I am!
That's just loony.
"The requirement they accomplished is a 10 meter square, not 10 square meters."
I was going to say... I've seen pictures of it and the helicopter itself is bigger than 10 square meters, so I did not see how it could fulfill this requirement.
A 10 meter square makes much more sense.
"It scares me that people's entire lives can depend on methods that would get any scientist laughed out of the room."
I have been saying this for years. It is ridiculously easy to contaminate or even plant DNA. Fingerprints are relatively hard to fake, and they don't "accidentally" move from place to place. However, DNA does accidentally move from place to place. Worse: drop a few skin scrapings or spit from someone in the right places, and watch the police foam at the mouth in rabid excitement.
It's worse than ridiculous. It's a tragedy that doesn't need to exist.
"The problem is that every cowboy coder insists that he is the rockstar, it's the others that are the cowboys."
Yes, but again, almost by definition, it is generally not what he thinks that makes him a "rockstar". It's what others think.
"It's a dick expression that has become popular due to Slashdot's dick community."
In some cases (I am not claiming this was one of them) it can be pretty humorous. But of course in order to think so, you must first have a sense of humor.
"So you're saying 'Don't care about the risks, because we can always fix it later'. Glad you think that - it worked so well for the banks four years ago."
... And it worked so well with the zebra mussels in the great lakes, and the "walking catfish" in Florida, and the myriad other invasive species that have wreaked havoc on our local environment.
Where I live, we have a very serious problem with a decorative aquarium plant from Asia, which some bozo introduced into a lake because he couldn't bring himself to flush his kid's goldfish. It is now in most of the lakes and rivers around here, forming giant mats that make swimming and navigation a hazard. Millions of dollars have been spent trying to mitigate this, and we haven't figured out how to "fix it" yet.
"If we exterminated a species, we have a moral duty to bring it back and eventually, reintroduce it to it's former natural habitat."
I'm not so sure I would take that TOO literally. There is something to be said for evolution, and evolution does not, in itself, create a moral obligation to protect something against which you might be competing.
But if you mean "unnecessary" extinction, due merely to ignorance or something like corporate profit motive, then I definitely agree with you.
But not ALL extinctions are bad. That's how we got here.
"My personal theory is that we killed all mammoths because they were delicious. Can't wait to taste one!"
Which might actually be a decent reason to bring them back.
More seriously: we have had bad enough experience with invasive species. Re-creating them, and re-introducing them, are two very different things.
I don't see a lot of harm in the former, as long as precautions AND good isolation techniques are put in place. But I don't think, at our current level of technology, that the latter is even close to a good idea.
Crichton's books were not anti-science; they were intended as warnings. We need to know a lot more before we attempt such things.
"My personal theory is that we killed all mammoths because they were delicious. Can't wait to taste one!"
Actually, if memory serves, according to the paleontologists that is pretty damned close to the truth.
"Yes, only criminal master minds can afford tools like nmap."
Or BackTrack 5. Oh, so terribly hard to acquire.
"And it was my words, too. You basically were nitpicking some minor word choice to try to claim I was wrong in my statement."
No, I was differentiating, not nitpicking.
I did not feel that you emphasized enough that security for obscurity can indeed be effective, but only for noobs or casual snoopers.
Just my opinion. We basically agree, I was just trying to clarify the point a bit. Not to nitpick. "Fixed that for you" is often considered to be humorous on Slashdot. It wasn't an insult or an attempt to actually disagree.
"Because lets face it folks, Java was a security nightmare when Sun ran it and Oracle isn't doing any better of a job at fixing the mess than Sun did, no different than how Flash sucked for security when it was Macromedia and it sucks under Adobe."
Sure. The only thing I would add is that Sun java was either less exploitable, or that exploits have simply become better-discovered since being acquired. I actually lean a bit toward the latter, because Oracle does not have the sympathy of its own user base, and I can see them finding flaws, just to strike at Oracle.
Sooner or later, Page should get the clue that most people -- or at least most developers, who count the most here -- don't like him or his products very much.
"Duh? In this case, since he is being port scanned by what is most likely Chinese script kiddies moving the port will stop probably 99% of them. No one said such things will prevent any possible intrusion, but it's an easy and cheap way to prevent the vast majority and causes no compromising to the underlying system."
Thank you for restating, in different words, what I already said.
Do you want to play "/. Stereotypes?"
Yes, of course that's what I was doing, in a humorous/sarcastic way. And it was pretty silly.
Having said that, I object somewhat to (iib), but I really like (v).
"But using some level of secrecy as a first line of defense can be quite useful in preventing casual attacks."
There, fixed that for you.
Security through obscurity is useful in preventing casual, naive attacks. Nothing more. In the same way that lock on your front door (unless you have one of a few good, expensive ones) prevents casual, naive attacks... but hardly slows a professional down.
"You can't discuss success without also discussing the odds of failure."
While that is true, it is also true that overall, Silicon Valley has been a success story for California. That is regardless of whether California, as a whole, is a success story.
Aside from that, however, I have to wonder how it is that OP counts "takeovers" as a sign of success in an industry. As often as not, it is a sign of decadence and stagnation.
"It took a fairly strong and changing field to erase credit cards."
Yes, but magnetic resonance charging specifically involves strong and changing magnetic fields.
I think I'd keep my cards, external drives, etc. a bit more than just a few inches away.
"... and I had heard most of the bigger corps went .NET for their backends."
Java is not primarily -- or even mostly -- for Web use. The vast majority of Java programs don't involve the Web at all. So yes, it is still used a lot. However, of course only the ones that are accessed via the Web are susceptible to the remote exploit.
Having said all that, I will reply to OP and say yes, it's time we started using a forked Java. In fact, most of us should have seen the writing on the wall from the actions Oracle took immediately after acquiring the rights to it. We're only a few years late.
"I would say that the "smartphone" is an innovation."
Yes, I think the guy is a nutcase. I he thinks the ability to have access to the internet almost anywhere is not an innovation, he's got a screw loose.
"Oh please."
Further yet, it doesn't even have to be particularly funny or appropriate to be a good line in the context of Slashdot.
"Oh please. It's called the Masada Defense, and it's been an old joke for about two millennia. 'Ha! Didn't we make those Roman Legions look stupid! Nyaa, nyaa, you can't kill us because we committed suicide. Nyaa, nyaa!'"
So? How is that relevant to the fact that it is still the best line I have read on Slashdot in a long while?
It doesn't have to be new to be funny and appropriate.
"Umm... You are drifting into ignoratio elenchi territory.
No, I wasn't. It might not have been directly relevant but it is not "ignoratio elenchi" material.
We were talking about 9,200 and 2,500 years ago, as a point in time when the arctic ice melted to the level it melts today."
Correct. Well within the period that has been measured in previous ice cores by researchers, which is more to the point and which I stated before. And as the article itself stated: it is very likely that the areas where previous ice cores were gathered may not have been adequately representative of antarctica as a whole.
Nevertheless, those earlier ice cores have been a foundation stone for much of AGW theory.
There are other issues with ice cores as well, but those are probably not relevant to this particular discussion. Suffice it to say that this article did in fact contradict much of the information that has been bandied about by the "mainstream" AGW promoters.
"Claiming "they are contradictory" is completely meaningless, it's "true or not" that counts."
Complete bollocks, since this entire exchange was kicked off by your statement that my claim they are contradictory is false. That's what this whole conversation is about. I won't acknowledge your attempt to change the subject in midstream.
"One or the other MUST be true for the contradiction to be of any significance."
Spare me your attempt at Logic 101 lessons.
"Should BOTH A and B be true to the same degree, only THEN is the contradiction of some logical significance, as it would be somewhat of a paradox."
Your opinion of what is significant is totally irrelevant and straw-man argument at this point, since this WHOLE conversation was about whether they were contradictory, not whether that contradiction has significance. I did not make that claim, which I stated in plain English.
So, Mr. Logic, knock off the straw man. My point is made and your irrelevancies have no bearing on it.
"... but that's only degrading the enemy's capability in the sense that shooting yourself denies them the chance to kill you."
Hahaha! Mod up. Best line I've read in a long time.