I apologize for the rant. There was no need for me to get defensive. Though I disagree with you in what copyright should be, in your calm and reasonable reply to my rant, you reminded me that a soft answer turns away wrath. Thanks.
"So long as we live in an essentially capitalist society, the right to a return on the time and energy required to be creative should be honored. If you inherently disagree with capitalism (quite possible), then we have no ground for discussion I'm afraid."
Actually, I am quite a firm believer in capitalism. However, I do not believe that people have an inherent right to be rewarded for the time they spend being creative. If they can find a way to get money for being creative, good for them, and there are plenty ways to pick from. People should only be rewarded for the time they spend being creative if the market decides that what they created was worthwhile.
I think that's our only difference - I agree with everything else you said.
Long live capitalism, but *wow* there are lots of different interpretations of it.
> Creative people have a right to get a return on the fruits of their labor, and anyone, slashdot or otherwise that cheats people of that return deserves to get burned. Tes, this means you.
$rant = 1;
You sir, deserve the United Corps of America.
Creative people, yes. Publishers, no. If copyright defended the author, I could support it - but not if copyrights can be sold to the highest bidder or anyone.
I believe in free speech, so I won't tell you to shut up - but do not be surprised when the US becomes a police state. Your attitude and others like it are what will create that dictatorship.
$rant = 0;
That said, IP law (as it is) is wrong. I won't go into why, there are those who are far better at explaining that than me. The question isn't "does it need fixed?" but "how should it be fixed or repealed?" and "how can we help that happen?"
Every time this happens, I see some people blaming idiotic laws for allowing this kind of junk to happen, and others blaming the corporations doing the sueing, and others blaming the lawyers who advised it. I may be missing a group here, but all three are responsible. The lawyers for creating such a culture of fear and blame and litigation, the corporate management that does anything and everything it's legal department says, and the goverment for passing unconstitional laws in the first place.
This is one of the reasons "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
The First Amendment has many purposes, but this is one of them. We should remember this, next time someone seemingly violates the GPL, or copies into a book something one of us says. Freedom of speech is a two-edged sword, and sometimes it does things we don't like. We should sit back and let it happen when someone violates our copyrights.
As long as they are not limiting our freedoms, let's not limit theirs.
One project that I've wanted to see done for a while now is a total mapping of the internet, to find every website. Of course, trying every possible domain name won't work, too many possibilities, and it'll miss web servers that don't have dns entries. What if we could map every IP address, finding out which ones had web servers on them?
Computer A connects to 123.45.12.34 Computer A sends http request to 123.45.12.34 If request is replied to, add IP to list of web server adresses - If request is ignored, increment IP by one and repeat
Trouble is, we need a way to scan through these adresses in a way that doesn't take too long, preferably, less time than the half-life of a web server. What good is a list of web servers if half the entries are invalid? It might make a great starting point for a webspider, but it's no Encyclopeadia Internautica.
4 billion adresses, 1 hundred computers dedicated to searching, 5 seconds spent on each IP address. ETA: 6.8 years. A joke.
4 billion adresses, 10 thousand computers in a distributed network, 10 seconds spent on each IP address. ETA: 49.7 days. Doable.
We need a Seti@Home approach to this. Naturally, IPv6 presents a new problem.:)
Personally, I never gave a second thought to that silly disclaimer at the bottom of the page. It's just a bone to throw to rabid, lawsuit-happy people. When I say something on Slashdot, which is a public forum, it's in the public domain. I may wish I hadn't said it, I may want to keep control of it, but I have no right to, and no ability.
What am I going to do? Sue somebody? That'd make me as bad as the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, etc...
There's a sig around here that says something like... "The Internet makes control of digital media impossible. Deal with it." While we can agrue forever over whether that should be the case, it's already obvious that it *is* the case.
Imho, we should just let it go. We can't control what other people say, and imho, we shouldn't try. Freedom of speech and fair use are a double-edged sword - sometimes they don't work in our favour.
So - what can you put beside a nuke that won't get radioactive? Graphite? Ceramic? Hydrogen? Would it be possible to put a radiation-containing shield around the nuke?
"It took a Saturn V rocket to get men to the moon in 1969, I doubt that an ICBM in 1959 could even reach the moon much less have an accuracy of 2 miles. And if you're a weapons designer only interested getting ICBMs to the USSR, why overdesign one that could go all the way to the moon?"
The Saturn V's were designed to get to the moon, carrying a crew of three, landing equipment, and enough fuel to come back. That takes a hideous amount of fuel. I can believe a mildly improved ICBM could make it one way without a crew.
"Violence is not only the last resort of the incompetent, it's also the first. If war is the price of incompetency, may whatever God that exists PLEASE make humanity competent. Now."
Wasn't there a quote in Terminator 2 how humanity tends towards self-destruction? Sucks, huh?:P
That's the flip side of free will - personal responsibility. Yeah, humanity has done these things, and it is our fault, but with God's help we can learn to do better *if* we remember our mistakes.
"And then of course: the people suggesting these things probably knew absolutely nothing about nuclear physics. These guys were most probably civil engineers or maybe just politicians."
Wasn't it Edward Teller who suggested making the harbor in Alaska with small fusion bombs? I mean, you can accuse those scientists of many things, but they understood.
I don't know enough about radioactive fallout to know whether or not it'd be possible to make a harbor without long-term contamination, but I understand that, megaton for megaton, H-Bombs are a lot less radioactive than fission nukes. If they detonated a series of small H-Bombs in a ring underwater, maybe they could wash away the radioactives. Otoh, maybe they'll send tsunamis over half of California - I don't know.
"If I were them I'd not unfurl the sail until the device was out of the ecliptic or outside jupiter."
Actually, a solar sail's power is inversely proportional to its distance from the sun - it might be better to cut in toward the sun at first, then unfurl near mercury. If it didn't fry, it would get one terrific kick.
If you can find the energy to leave the ecliptic from the start, head in toward the sun in a polar orbit, then unfurl and shoot off toward the stars, that'd give you the best of both worlds. AFAIK, there aren't those many asteroids out there, and our best bet it to pretend they aren't there and hope for the best. Of course, the occasional small meteoroid will still hit it, so the sail needs to be made of a material that stops rips but will break away cleanly if hit by a fast-moving object.
Eventually, it's going to hit something, but it will probably be a long time before it hits anything big.
I'm gonna do something I never thought I'd do, least of all on Slashdot. I am now going to write a "me too!" post.:)
Seriously, though - if I'd seen this thread earlier, I would have written something similar. Probably not as well thought-out and put-together, though.
"What these folks are doing is foolish, yes, particularly in today's witch-hunt atmosphere."
That's the worst thing they are doing - inviting trouble. Too bad, I like them already.
Kris_J said: "If I can get this system to record Buffy from the US, well ahead of the local Australian channels, I'm not going to watch it here (well, with Realmedia quality I might) so local ratings go down, local ad revenue drops and local stations drop the program. This leads to a drop in revenue for the Buffy creators."
He then called that theft. What he's missing is, by that standard, competition is theft. Doing something that inadvertantly, as a side effect, drops someone else's profits, is not theft. It is not wrong. By Kris_J's standards, Slashdot is stealing from ABC, etc, Linux is stealing from Microsoft and Apple, who are stealing from each other, and by the time you add up everyone who's stealing from somebody else, every man, woman, and child on the planet gets 50-to-life in the electric chair.
"imo, The right wing in the US represents fascist, not capitalist, values. M$ is a shining example of their socio-economic paradigm."
I totally agree. The strife between Capitalist US and the Communist Soviet Union always puzzled me, because I thought they both were at least partially fascist.
For example, www.m-w.com says that fascism is "a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition."
Replace race with economy, and we already have the first. Microsoft, etc, are trying to do the last.
"I also agree with the various posters who have pointed out that/. is more true to capitalistic goals (as I understand them) than M$."
Aye. As I see it, Slashdot is a capitalism of information, truly free so far. The only things more I'd wish for is the ability for the readers to choose which stories got put on the front page, and the ability to write my own client to access their comment database, so I could filter the messages as I felt, not using the moderator system, but I don't feel a real need for either.
Capitalism desperately needs freedom for individuals. Those freedoms must be protected from other individuals and goverments. Corporations I never really understood too well. What are they, but a temporary alliance of individuals? I used to be a Republican myself, but I felt betrayed when I saw them increasing the scope of government power, instead of striving to do a few things very very well. Defending the nation, deterring (punishment can only make examples of criminals, it can't right the wrongs they've done) crimes that actually hurt somebody, providing basic public resources... these things goverment can do well, if it's not distracted by a million other things. That's why I'm not a democrat or socialist - public social programs generally don't work in the long run anyway, so why even start? I never expected to see republicans doing the exact same thing.
It all leads to a lot of power being concentrated in a very small group of people, which invites corruption. People need to keep their freedom, keep their power over themselves. In the long run, that's the only power any of us really have.
"I think "extend the capitalist paradigm beyond its functional parameters at the point of a gun" is a very accurate description of what has been going on in the US for some time. M$ is part of it."
As do I. People who think in terms of the physical world are so used to scarcity that they try to apply it to information, when it was known even in Revolutionary times that that doesn't work. Copyright and Patent law and Intellectual Property are merely tools for an end, and sometimes quite useful, but they are not natural rights. This is why "software pirate" and "music pirate" sound so bizarre to me, almost laughable. Yeah, they're breaking the law, kinda. I don't think they should be doing it, they're inviting trouble, but I don't feel anything against them. Who are "pirates" hurting? Maybe themselves, maybe not. Patent extortionists... now there's somebody who's causing trouble.
I can't really blame M$ or Amazon or Unisys either, not really. They're taking advantage of a flawed system. They worked in a climate where doing certain Bad Things was rewarded, and they were corrupted. The real blame lies with the reward system that the government set up. Fix that - I mean, find a system that really works, and the big, bad evil corporations will fall into line.
"IMO, this activity should be as abhorent to capitalsists as to anyone else. Totalitarianism is not a healthy climate for enterprise. Freedom is more valuable than gold."
Abosultely. I am a capitalist, but capatalism is worthless and impossible without individual freedom.
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected. "When *I* use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you *can* make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."
Yeah, you can make words mean whatever you want them to mean - otoh, this can make communication rather tricky...:) We use words, we are the master of words. But unless two people are using the same definitions, how will they know what each other is saying? That's why we have standards bodies - to promote common definitions, to ease communication. Otoh, anyone who sticks *too* close to the official definition is just being pedantic. I agree with both of you.
It does, at least IMHO. If the world were a perfect place, the GPL would be redundant.
The GPL is copyright turned against itself - copyleft. The GPL attempts to insure freedoms to the users, the exact opposite of copyright. The GPL is a defense against companies that would censor programmers. If we lived in a free world, the GPL would be silly, paranoid, obselete.
Don't get me wrong - I believe there are times when the GPL shouldn't be used. Otoh, it might be one of the greatest ideas ever to help open source and free software. Might.
You can speak for me, sir. Dinna let those others get you down, they're being pedantic or something. Who wouldn't wish Slashdot good luck? Does anyone here actually *want* Microsoft to be able to censor Slashdot? You might not be speaking for two or three slashdotters, but you're speaking for me.
And btw, I've been boycotting M$ for a couple years, now. The revolution grows stronger every day... *ahem* sorry:)
"Whether you believe information should be free, information does "want" to be free... it is free (in the free speech sense and the free beer sense) unless artificially penned in by walls erected by the government and patrolled by the corporations."
I totally agree, and I'd like to add something - a capitalist, free market, lassiez faire(sp?) system does not recognize IP. Any enforcement of IP is an unnatural restraint on a system, and it's no longer free.
I hear a lot of things like "we live in a capitalist society and both individuals and business entities own their ideas." This makes no sense at all to me. If I or anyone has a truly original thought (probably impossible, even given Ramanajan(sp?) and Tesla) it is theirs for as long as they tell no one. Once they tell people, it's out, it's free to mutate like a virus spreading through the minds of anyone who sees, reads, or hears about it. It belongs to God, or society, or no one, or everyone, whatever you believe - but it makes no sense to say it still belongs to the creator, when there are a thousand, or a million different versions of the idea bouncing around in as many minds.
IP laws artificially limit the application of and inflate the value of ideas. As a capitalist, I cannot believe that this is right.
"...the free market activity of a company would be wrong."
What about a EULA enforcing, or copyright, or patent law, or IP of any sort, has anything to do with a free market? IIRC, they are artificial restraints put on the market, backed up by government force, in the hopes of rewarding creators.
IMHO, Slashdot is more capitalist than Microsoft is.
"But many of those posts were blatant copyright infringement and MS has every right to want to have them taken down."
Legal right? Maybe, depending on what you think of the constitution. Moral right? Absolutely not. Any law that supports censorship *must* be repealed, or I live in a totalitarian USA already. Everyone must be free to speak, even hate speech, even cult preaching, even speech critical of certain companies.
"I must say though that Microsoft seems a bit childish about it. These documents are quite easy to find elsewhere. And I don't see how they would seriously be harmed by this. Though they are probably in their right to ask this."
Well, their request is a legal one to make, and might actually be enforcable with the DMCA. However, they would be completely out of their moral, ethical, and constitutional rights to try to enforce this.
They are allowed to say anything they want to, no matter how unsupported it may be - by the same token, so are Slashdot posters. The government has no right to get involved on either side, yet.
Good point. I somehow got the weird notion that slashdotters could agree on something like IP and free speech.:)
What do I believe? I believe people in general act like they are expected to. Treat them like children, they'll act liek children. Trust them, and some will abuse it, but most will see the light. "Escalante" by Jay Matthews is a good example.
I believe free speech is a good thing, and I'm willing to put up with flamers, trollers, spammers, libelious spin docters, etc. Those who aren't willing to, don't really believe in free speech, imho. They believe in their own free speech, but not for people who abuse it. That's okay, too. They could be right, but I disagree. As Larry Niven puts it, "it takes a lot of people to run a civilization."
Otoh, if there's a way to silence spammers without using censorship, I'd love to hear it. I haven't thought of a way yet, but it might be possible. What do you believe?
> But it is very annoying to hear everyone at Slashdot working by basis on the assumption that US Law is the all-dominant factor....that it is the only, true "RIGHT" way and that all countries should, by definition, accept its sovereignity.
I disagree with a great many US laws, IP being an example. I hope this lyrics site in Russia does well, I hope this US law doesn't apply. I think Roblimo felt the same way.
I don't think that US law applies everywhere, but I fear that it might.
How, exactly, are names owned? My name's Keith. I know of a couple other guys named Keith. What's the problem, and why can't a company put up with this facet of reality - that some things are different, yet they have the same name.
Slashdot Mirror
I apologize for the rant. There was no need for me to get defensive. Though I disagree with you in what copyright should be, in your calm and reasonable reply to my rant, you reminded me that a soft answer turns away wrath. Thanks.
"So long as we live in an essentially capitalist society, the right to a return on the time and energy required to be creative should be honored. If you inherently disagree with capitalism (quite possible), then we have no ground for discussion I'm afraid."
Actually, I am quite a firm believer in capitalism. However, I do not believe that people have an inherent right to be rewarded for the time they spend being creative. If they can find a way to get money for being creative, good for them, and there are plenty ways to pick from. People should only be rewarded for the time they spend being creative if the market decides that what they created was worthwhile.
I think that's our only difference - I agree with everything else you said.
Long live capitalism, but *wow* there are lots of different interpretations of it.
> Creative people have a right to get a return on the fruits of their labor, and anyone, slashdot or otherwise that cheats people of that return deserves to get burned. Tes, this means you.
$rant = 1;
You sir, deserve the United Corps of America.
Creative people, yes. Publishers, no. If copyright defended the author, I could support it - but not if copyrights can be sold to the highest bidder or anyone.
I believe in free speech, so I won't tell you to shut up - but do not be surprised when the US becomes a police state. Your attitude and others like it are what will create that dictatorship.
$rant = 0;
That said, IP law (as it is) is wrong. I won't go into why, there are those who are far better at explaining that than me. The question isn't "does it need fixed?" but "how should it be fixed or repealed?" and "how can we help that happen?"
I'm open to suggestions.
Every time this happens, I see some people blaming idiotic laws for allowing this kind of junk to happen, and others blaming the corporations doing the sueing, and others blaming the lawyers who advised it. I may be missing a group here, but all three are responsible. The lawyers for creating such a culture of fear and blame and litigation, the corporate management that does anything and everything it's legal department says, and the goverment for passing unconstitional laws in the first place.
This is one of the reasons "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
The First Amendment has many purposes, but this is one of them. We should remember this, next time someone seemingly violates the GPL, or copies into a book something one of us says. Freedom of speech is a two-edged sword, and sometimes it does things we don't like. We should sit back and let it happen when someone violates our copyrights.
As long as they are not limiting our freedoms, let's not limit theirs.
One project that I've wanted to see done for a while now is a total mapping of the internet, to find every website. Of course, trying every possible domain name won't work, too many possibilities, and it'll miss web servers that don't have dns entries. What if we could map every IP address, finding out which ones had web servers on them?
:)
Computer A connects to 123.45.12.34
Computer A sends http request to 123.45.12.34
If request is replied to, add IP to list of web server adresses - If request is ignored, increment IP by one and repeat
Trouble is, we need a way to scan through these adresses in a way that doesn't take too long, preferably, less time than the half-life of a web server. What good is a list of web servers if half the entries are invalid? It might make a great starting point for a webspider, but it's no Encyclopeadia Internautica.
4 billion adresses, 1 hundred computers dedicated to searching, 5 seconds spent on each IP address. ETA: 6.8 years. A joke.
4 billion adresses, 10 thousand computers in a distributed network, 10 seconds spent on each IP address. ETA: 49.7 days. Doable.
We need a Seti@Home approach to this. Naturally, IPv6 presents a new problem.
Personally, I never gave a second thought to that silly disclaimer at the bottom of the page. It's just a bone to throw to rabid, lawsuit-happy people. When I say something on Slashdot, which is a public forum, it's in the public domain. I may wish I hadn't said it, I may want to keep control of it, but I have no right to, and no ability.
What am I going to do? Sue somebody? That'd make me as bad as the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, etc...
There's a sig around here that says something like... "The Internet makes control of digital media impossible. Deal with it." While we can agrue forever over whether that should be the case, it's already obvious that it *is* the case.
Imho, we should just let it go. We can't control what other people say, and imho, we shouldn't try. Freedom of speech and fair use are a double-edged sword - sometimes they don't work in our favour.
I never thought of that, but that's right.
Someone moderate this guy up, please?
So - what can you put beside a nuke that won't get radioactive? Graphite? Ceramic? Hydrogen? Would it be possible to put a radiation-containing shield around the nuke?
"It took a Saturn V rocket to get men to the moon in 1969, I doubt that an ICBM in 1959 could even reach the moon much less have an accuracy of 2 miles. And if you're a weapons designer only interested getting ICBMs to the USSR, why overdesign one that could go all the way to the moon?"
The Saturn V's were designed to get to the moon, carrying a crew of three, landing equipment, and enough fuel to come back. That takes a hideous amount of fuel. I can believe a mildly improved ICBM could make it one way without a crew.
"Violence is not only the last resort of the incompetent, it's also the first. If war is the price of incompetency, may whatever God that exists PLEASE make humanity competent. Now."
:P
Wasn't there a quote in Terminator 2 how humanity tends towards self-destruction? Sucks, huh?
That's the flip side of free will - personal responsibility. Yeah, humanity has done these things, and it is our fault, but with God's help we can learn to do better *if* we remember our mistakes.
"And then of course: the people suggesting these things probably knew absolutely nothing about nuclear physics. These guys were most probably civil engineers or maybe just politicians."
Wasn't it Edward Teller who suggested making the harbor in Alaska with small fusion bombs? I mean, you can accuse those scientists of many things, but they understood.
I don't know enough about radioactive fallout to know whether or not it'd be possible to make a harbor without long-term contamination, but I understand that, megaton for megaton, H-Bombs are a lot less radioactive than fission nukes. If they detonated a series of small H-Bombs in a ring underwater, maybe they could wash away the radioactives. Otoh, maybe they'll send tsunamis over half of California - I don't know.
"If I were them I'd not unfurl the sail until the device was out of the ecliptic or outside jupiter."
Actually, a solar sail's power is inversely proportional to its distance from the sun - it might be better to cut in toward the sun at first, then unfurl near mercury. If it didn't fry, it would get one terrific kick.
If you can find the energy to leave the ecliptic from the start, head in toward the sun in a polar orbit, then unfurl and shoot off toward the stars, that'd give you the best of both worlds. AFAIK, there aren't those many asteroids out there, and our best bet it to pretend they aren't there and hope for the best. Of course, the occasional small meteoroid will still hit it, so the sail needs to be made of a material that stops rips but will break away cleanly if hit by a fast-moving object.
Eventually, it's going to hit something, but it will probably be a long time before it hits anything big.
I'm gonna do something I never thought I'd do, least of all on Slashdot. I am now going to write a "me too!" post. :)
Seriously, though - if I'd seen this thread earlier, I would have written something similar. Probably not as well thought-out and put-together, though.
"What these folks are doing is foolish, yes, particularly in today's witch-hunt atmosphere."
That's the worst thing they are doing - inviting trouble. Too bad, I like them already.
Kris_J said: "If I can get this system to record Buffy from the US, well ahead of the local Australian channels, I'm not going to watch it here (well, with Realmedia quality I might) so local ratings go down, local ad revenue drops and local stations drop the program. This leads to a drop in revenue for the Buffy creators."
He then called that theft. What he's missing is, by that standard, competition is theft. Doing something that inadvertantly, as a side effect, drops someone else's profits, is not theft. It is not wrong. By Kris_J's standards, Slashdot is stealing from ABC, etc, Linux is stealing from Microsoft and Apple, who are stealing from each other, and by the time you add up everyone who's stealing from somebody else, every man, woman, and child on the planet gets 50-to-life in the electric chair.
"imo, The right wing in the US represents fascist, not capitalist, values. M$ is a shining example of their socio-economic paradigm."
/. is more true to capitalistic goals (as I understand them) than M$."
I totally agree. The strife between Capitalist US and the Communist Soviet Union always puzzled me, because I thought they both were at least partially fascist.
For example, www.m-w.com says that fascism is "a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition."
Replace race with economy, and we already have the first. Microsoft, etc, are trying to do the last.
"I also agree with the various posters who have pointed out that
Aye. As I see it, Slashdot is a capitalism of information, truly free so far. The only things more I'd wish for is the ability for the readers to choose which stories got put on the front page, and the ability to write my own client to access their comment database, so I could filter the messages as I felt, not using the moderator system, but I don't feel a real need for either.
Capitalism desperately needs freedom for individuals. Those freedoms must be protected from other individuals and goverments. Corporations I never really understood too well. What are they, but a temporary alliance of individuals? I used to be a Republican myself, but I felt betrayed when I saw them increasing the scope of government power, instead of striving to do a few things very very well. Defending the nation, deterring (punishment can only make examples of criminals, it can't right the wrongs they've done) crimes that actually hurt somebody, providing basic public resources... these things goverment can do well, if it's not distracted by a million other things. That's why I'm not a democrat or socialist - public social programs generally don't work in the long run anyway, so why even start? I never expected to see republicans doing the exact same thing.
It all leads to a lot of power being concentrated in a very small group of people, which invites corruption. People need to keep their freedom, keep their power over themselves. In the long run, that's the only power any of us really have.
"I think "extend the capitalist paradigm beyond its functional parameters at the point of a gun" is a very accurate description of what has been going on in the US for some time. M$ is part of it."
As do I. People who think in terms of the physical world are so used to scarcity that they try to apply it to information, when it was known even in Revolutionary times that that doesn't work. Copyright and Patent law and Intellectual Property are merely tools for an end, and sometimes quite useful, but they are not natural rights. This is why "software pirate" and "music pirate" sound so bizarre to me, almost laughable. Yeah, they're breaking the law, kinda. I don't think they should be doing it, they're inviting trouble, but I don't feel anything against them. Who are "pirates" hurting? Maybe themselves, maybe not. Patent extortionists... now there's somebody who's causing trouble.
I can't really blame M$ or Amazon or Unisys either, not really. They're taking advantage of a flawed system. They worked in a climate where doing certain Bad Things was rewarded, and they were corrupted. The real blame lies with the reward system that the government set up. Fix that - I mean, find a system that really works, and the big, bad evil corporations will fall into line.
"IMO, this activity should be as abhorent to capitalsists as to anyone else. Totalitarianism is not a healthy climate for enterprise. Freedom is more valuable than gold."
Abosultely. I am a capitalist, but capatalism is worthless and impossible without individual freedom.
"Wake up to the harsh realities of capitalism, and stop being fooled by right-wing propagandists like Ayn Rand!"
Funny you should mention it - I can't stand Ayn Rand. I may have a few things wrong, I'm sure I do, but I didn't get them from Ayn Rand.
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected.
:) We use words, we are the master of words. But unless two people are using the same definitions, how will they know what each other is saying? That's why we have standards bodies - to promote common definitions, to ease communication. Otoh, anyone who sticks *too* close to the official definition is just being pedantic. I agree with both of you.
"When *I* use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you *can* make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."
Yeah, you can make words mean whatever you want them to mean - otoh, this can make communication rather tricky...
"I assume this also includes the GPL."
It does, at least IMHO. If the world were a perfect place, the GPL would be redundant.
The GPL is copyright turned against itself - copyleft. The GPL attempts to insure freedoms to the users, the exact opposite of copyright. The GPL is a defense against companies that would censor programmers. If we lived in a free world, the GPL would be silly, paranoid, obselete.
Don't get me wrong - I believe there are times when the GPL shouldn't be used. Otoh, it might be one of the greatest ideas ever to help open source and free software. Might.
"On behalf of all Slashdot readers"
:)
You can speak for me, sir. Dinna let those others get you down, they're being pedantic or something. Who wouldn't wish Slashdot good luck? Does anyone here actually *want* Microsoft to be able to censor Slashdot? You might not be speaking for two or three slashdotters, but you're speaking for me.
And btw, I've been boycotting M$ for a couple years, now. The revolution grows stronger every day... *ahem* sorry
"Whether you believe information should be free, information does "want" to be free ... it is free (in the free speech sense and the free beer sense) unless artificially penned in by walls erected by the government and patrolled by the corporations."
I totally agree, and I'd like to add something - a capitalist, free market, lassiez faire(sp?) system does not recognize IP. Any enforcement of IP is an unnatural restraint on a system, and it's no longer free.
I hear a lot of things like "we live in a capitalist society and both individuals and business entities own their ideas." This makes no sense at all to me. If I or anyone has a truly original thought (probably impossible, even given Ramanajan(sp?) and Tesla) it is theirs for as long as they tell no one. Once they tell people, it's out, it's free to mutate like a virus spreading through the minds of anyone who sees, reads, or hears about it. It belongs to God, or society, or no one, or everyone, whatever you believe - but it makes no sense to say it still belongs to the creator, when there are a thousand, or a million different versions of the idea bouncing around in as many minds.
IP laws artificially limit the application of and inflate the value of ideas. As a capitalist, I cannot believe that this is right.
"...the free market activity of a company would be wrong."
What about a EULA enforcing, or copyright, or patent law, or IP of any sort, has anything to do with a free market? IIRC, they are artificial restraints put on the market, backed up by government force, in the hopes of rewarding creators.
IMHO, Slashdot is more capitalist than Microsoft is.
"But many of those posts were blatant copyright infringement and MS has every right to want to have them taken down."
Legal right? Maybe, depending on what you think of the constitution. Moral right? Absolutely not. Any law that supports censorship *must* be repealed, or I live in a totalitarian USA already. Everyone must be free to speak, even hate speech, even cult preaching, even speech critical of certain companies.
"I must say though that Microsoft seems a bit childish about it. These documents are quite easy to find elsewhere. And I don't see how they would seriously be harmed by this. Though they are probably in their right to ask this."
Well, their request is a legal one to make, and might actually be enforcable with the DMCA. However, they would be completely out of their moral, ethical, and constitutional rights to try to enforce this.
They are allowed to say anything they want to, no matter how unsupported it may be - by the same token, so are Slashdot posters. The government has no right to get involved on either side, yet.
What's the word... touche?
:)
Good point. I somehow got the weird notion that slashdotters could agree on something like IP and free speech.
What do I believe? I believe people in general act like they are expected to. Treat them like children, they'll act liek children. Trust them, and some will abuse it, but most will see the light. "Escalante" by Jay Matthews is a good example.
I believe free speech is a good thing, and I'm willing to put up with flamers, trollers, spammers, libelious spin docters, etc. Those who aren't willing to, don't really believe in free speech, imho. They believe in their own free speech, but not for people who abuse it. That's okay, too. They could be right, but I disagree. As Larry Niven puts it, "it takes a lot of people to run a civilization."
Otoh, if there's a way to silence spammers without using censorship, I'd love to hear it. I haven't thought of a way yet, but it might be possible. What do you believe?
> But it is very annoying to hear everyone at Slashdot working by basis on the assumption that US Law is the all-dominant factor....that it is the only, true "RIGHT" way and that all countries should, by definition, accept its sovereignity.
I disagree with a great many US laws, IP being an example. I hope this lyrics site in Russia does well, I hope this US law doesn't apply. I think Roblimo felt the same way.
I don't think that US law applies everywhere, but I fear that it might.
How, exactly, are names owned? My name's Keith. I know of a couple other guys named Keith. What's the problem, and why can't a company put up with this facet of reality - that some things are different, yet they have the same name.