I think the original reference to drugs was the to the attempts to control illegal drugs, which has been so phenomonally succesful. The US has almost gone to war trying to prevent Saddam from researching nuclear weapons, and it's quite questionable as to how succesful they've been. Nanotech research can be carried on in a basement lab, and it doesn't require access to very rare materials to be succesful.
Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich (among countless other experts) predicted a huge famine. He stated "The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years."
Life magazine reported "Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support... the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution... by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the earch by one half..."
Doesn't seem like much has changed since then and now except the exact nature of the impending disaster.
You misunderstand me, my friend. I don't consider this a good thing at all; merely inevitable.
The War on (Some) Drugs is not only a dismal failure and a complete waste of resources but also an active evil which harms both individuals and society as a whole. I no longer use drugs myself (other than cafeine) but my personal history with them is rather extensive. I've enjoyed their use and seen first hand the tragedy of their misuse. I don't encourage their use but neither do I think that your personal use is grounds for me to use force against you to prevent it.
I'm not sure what it should be used for, but I can tell you what it will be used for: electronic drug dogs. Posted on every street corner, at every building entrance.
You forgot all of the US citizens under the age of 18 and a significant percentage of those with felony convictions. And by independent, I intended independent or third party. Poorly worded on my part.
My vote isn't meaningless because it's statistically insignificant. My vote is meaningless because, for many of the issues I'm concerned with, it doesn't matter WHO gets elected.
Let us suppose that you're correct - that if everyone suddenly started voting and became actively involved, the government would automagically began reflecting the will of the people rather than the desires of those supplying the campaing funding. Do you suppose that this would also automagically remove the danger of the DMCA, UCITA, CDA, etc. If you believe this, I've got a heckuva real estate deal for you.
Semantical clap-trap, and wrong to boot. Not all US citizens have the right to vote, and voting does not mean you are a part of the government in any meaningful sense. Do I vote? Yes. Am I under the illusion that it actually makes a real difference? No.
Run for office? To which party am I going to sell my soul in exchange for enough backing to stand a chance of being elected? Ventura's election in Minnesota gives a slight amount of encouragement, but it doesn't change the fact that getting elected as an independent is almost impossible unless you're personally sickeninglyl rich.
Just voting leaves me with an interesting dilema, however. Do I vote for the party which wants to pass an internet decency act and reduce everything on the net to a level suitable for third grade children, or for the party which wants to pass a law which says that it's illegal to use any encryption other than the program supplied by the government with a built-in backdoor? Voting is, at best, a choice of which evil you want. To put it crudely, just because you can choose whether to grab you ankles or swallow doesn't mean you aren't being raped.
I use Junkbuster, which means ebay doesn't get any ad revenue from me in any event. So am I "stealing" cycles from ebay too? Is my conduct indefensible and really lousy?
Certainly, you can control who visits your site. However, in order to do so, you need to exercise control. Require a (verified) log-in. Restrict access to internal or selected IPs. Do something which says that this isn't a public access site - it's a controlled access. Because if it IS a public access site, then you gave up the right to control access.
It isn't quite that simple. ebay's servers are private property but they are also explicitly public access. That's their very purpose. If the public couldn't access them, ebay wouldn't have much of a business, would it?
It isn't a question, really, of controlling access. It's a question of controlling how MUCH access, and to what use the info is put AFTER it's accessed.
ebay intentionally and purposefully puts the information up on it's servers for public access. It seems to me that doing so rather negates the claim that it has "control" over that access. If ebay wants to maintain control over who accessed its sites, it should take steps such as requiring log-in to view the site, not just to place bids.
Bidder's Edge is nothing more than a search engine of auction sites. ebay's real objection is that it hurts ebay's business by allowing users to compare prices with other sites.
We can agree to disagree, of course, but I think the problem here is the tool, not the source. From the very fact that a centralized government with that much power exists, it follows that the power will be abused. If you find some way to control or elliminate corporate influence in the American political landscape, someone or something else will step in to fill the void. The government will not automagically begin serving the best interests of the people.
Re:Why wasn't it controlled before?
on
At The Crossroads
·
· Score: 1
Perhaps. Or perhaps a few of those wizards will come up with mechanisms that can be used by all and sundry. Is freenet fundamentally incompatible with IPv6?
Re:Why wasn't it controlled before?
on
At The Crossroads
·
· Score: 1
I don't think the dilema is so much about right and wrong. I think it's more about possibilities and impossibilities.
We have a massive War on Drugs at which we throw billions of dollars, and you can buy crack on just about any street corner. Do we want to create a "War on Piracy" that endlessly gobbles money with little or no return? The result of the War on Drugs is generally that the poor and/or minorities end up in prison. A War on Piracy will punish a much "higher class" (in the sense of social standing, not social fitness) of people and will get much less public support.
Traditionally, the libertarian is concerned about reducing the power of government. But threats to liberty change: in our time, they increasingly arise from corporate, not governmental power. And there is no mainstream political movement primarily concerned with that, in part because corporatism has acquired much of the press and now provides the primary funding for the political system.
The primary threat to freedom is still governmental power. The problem is that governmental power is increasingly controlled and directed by corporate interests. The DMCA and its kin benefit and are driven by corporate interests, but they are still laws. They are backed by the threat of governmental force. Until such time as corporations begin fielding their own armies, government remains the primary threat.
Get a clue. It isn't that a more primitive installation is better. A more primitive installation is more fun. We're geeks. We like to tinker, to play, to get under the hood.
For an analogy, look at modern motorcycles: fuel-injected, load balanced engines, hi-tech suspension, etc. Dependeble, comfortable, and you have to have a PhD to work on the damned things. My '78 Shovelhead rattles and damn nears vibrates my teeth out of my head but I can tear it down to where there isn't a single nut left on a single bolt and put it back together. It's mine in a way that a sleek, impressive and impersonal modern bike will never be.
While I agree with the gist of your argument, I have to take exception with one area of your post. Moderating you down is NOT a form of censorship or oppression. This is a privately owned forumn. Yes, it is publicly accessible. But, like TV and radio, Slashdot is under no requirement, legally, morally, ethically or otherwise, to provide you with a soapbox from which to preach your own particular brand of salvation. Censorship occurs when someone uses violence or the force of government to silence opposing speech. (Not a comprehensive definition, but close enough for this discussion.) It doesn't occur when someone refuses to listen to you, or when someone refuses to support your beliefs.
The only proper response to censorship of any kind is "Free Speech." Have you ever thought about *why* so many people oppose your politicaly correct consorship?
You find it puzzling that I would extend free speech protection to Nazism, which suppressed free speech. I find it absolutely incomprehensible that you could live in an region so affected by tolitarian reigns and apparently learn nothing from them. You claim to fight oppression and racism by using the tools of oppression and consorship, and see no hypocrisy in your stance.
Certainly wounds still exist. But you don't treat wounds by covering them up and pretending they never happened.
I like your "shopping cart" idea, although it might be better to call it a "purchasing agent." Add the ability to describe items and set a maximum price. Something like: "Buy me an original edition of Gone With the Wind in good condition for under $500, a used Pentium II processor, at least 300Mhz, for under $50 and a running '50s panhead for no more than $6000."
You could authorize the program to act autonomously (the processor) or to prompt you with the best deal it could find (the bike). If it can not find a match for your specs, it could add it to a "find" list and notify you when one becomes available.
Diablo failed because of a pathetic server/client model. I don't argue otherwise. Certainly security and attempting to prevent cheating are important.
For another example, however, look at the original Unreal. The game did reasonably well on the basis of it's state-of-the-art (at the time) graphics engine but was routinely and roundly lambasted for its crappy multiplayer. If Unreal had had decent internet performance, it may very well have taken the FPS crown away from Quake II. Without it, it was just another also-ran.
As for playing on a LAN, I have a three system LAN (actually, four but one is a Linux server) that's used for that a great deal. However, a private LAN is beyond the reach of most people, as is using a business LAN for gaming. For the vast majority of game buyers, playing on a LAN simply isn't an option. For those of us who do have access to a LAN, they are often limited in size and there are plenty of times when no one else is available or interested in playing. In short, LAN play is cool as hell but it's neither a substitute for nor a competitor with internet play.
I can't lay claim to telnetting over a 2400 baud modem. My first internet connection was, however, a dial-up text mode account over a 9600 buad modem so I'm not exactly a child of high speed access. I played Doom (and Heretic) over modem and over LAN. Playing over the modem was cool until I played over LAN for awhile. Once I got use to the speed of a LAN, it was near impossible to go back to a modem. Similarly, few gamers are going to accept slower performance for the sake of reducing cheating.
Wrong anser, -5. The GPL does not obligate you to release anything. Read the damned thing. The GPL only controls how you are allowed to release, not whether you release.
Wow, talking about Not Getting It. You need to look at the situation here.
It's sometimes acceptable for performance to suffer in the interest of reliability for a business application. But we're talking about a game. We're talking about a product aimed at a specific market with the intent of making money. We're talking about a rapidly changing technological base which presents you with a relatively narrow window in which to sell your product before it becomes obsolete.
You can certainly "bite the bullet and do things the right way..." That right way will end up with you having a game that is unplayable over the internet by the technology in use by most of your target audience. That right way will end up with your game languishing on the shelves while the competition, with imperfect but playable internet performance, sells. It'll "hurt for a while," yeah. It'll hurt you right out of business.
They can not ask for the copyright to the whole thing. They can, however, claim copyright to the modifications. (Whether their claim would be upheld, I can't say.) This means that it could get dicey for the employee if he wants to make the same modifications to the GPL'd version. It would be difficult if not impossible to prove that he completely reimplemented it in how off time. Furthermore, even if he sits down and rewrites the code in his offtime, much of the work of planning the code and ironing out the bugs has already been done.
No, they would not have to put out the changes to the code unless they released the program. Also, if I release a progam under GPL, I (and only I) can also release it under a different license. I can make a modification and sell it to a company for private use.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the original reference to drugs was the to the attempts to control illegal drugs, which has been so phenomonally succesful. The US has almost gone to war trying to prevent Saddam from researching nuclear weapons, and it's quite questionable as to how succesful they've been. Nanotech research can be carried on in a basement lab, and it doesn't require access to very rare materials to be succesful.
Exactly what points would those be? That nanotech has the possibility to be dangerous? Took a real genius to figure that one out, didn't it?
Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich (among countless other experts) predicted a huge famine. He stated "The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years."
Life magazine reported "Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support ... the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution... by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the earch by one half..."
Doesn't seem like much has changed since then and now except the exact nature of the impending disaster.
Electronic drug dogs and electronic bloodhounds. Sounds like the whole project is going to the dogs. (Ouch! Put down the rotten tomatoes, OK?)
The War on (Some) Drugs is not only a dismal failure and a complete waste of resources but also an active evil which harms both individuals and society as a whole. I no longer use drugs myself (other than cafeine) but my personal history with them is rather extensive. I've enjoyed their use and seen first hand the tragedy of their misuse. I don't encourage their use but neither do I think that your personal use is grounds for me to use force against you to prevent it.
I'm not sure what it should be used for, but I can tell you what it will be used for: electronic drug dogs. Posted on every street corner, at every building entrance.
My vote isn't meaningless because it's statistically insignificant. My vote is meaningless because, for many of the issues I'm concerned with, it doesn't matter WHO gets elected.
Let us suppose that you're correct - that if everyone suddenly started voting and became actively involved, the government would automagically began reflecting the will of the people rather than the desires of those supplying the campaing funding. Do you suppose that this would also automagically remove the danger of the DMCA, UCITA, CDA, etc. If you believe this, I've got a heckuva real estate deal for you.
Run for office? To which party am I going to sell my soul in exchange for enough backing to stand a chance of being elected? Ventura's election in Minnesota gives a slight amount of encouragement, but it doesn't change the fact that getting elected as an independent is almost impossible unless you're personally sickeninglyl rich.
Just voting leaves me with an interesting dilema, however. Do I vote for the party which wants to pass an internet decency act and reduce everything on the net to a level suitable for third grade children, or for the party which wants to pass a law which says that it's illegal to use any encryption other than the program supplied by the government with a built-in backdoor? Voting is, at best, a choice of which evil you want. To put it crudely, just because you can choose whether to grab you ankles or swallow doesn't mean you aren't being raped.
I use Junkbuster, which means ebay doesn't get any ad revenue from me in any event. So am I "stealing" cycles from ebay too? Is my conduct indefensible and really lousy?
Certainly, you can control who visits your site. However, in order to do so, you need to exercise control. Require a (verified) log-in. Restrict access to internal or selected IPs. Do something which says that this isn't a public access site - it's a controlled access. Because if it IS a public access site, then you gave up the right to control access.
It isn't a question, really, of controlling access. It's a question of controlling how MUCH access, and to what use the info is put AFTER it's accessed.
ebay intentionally and purposefully puts the information up on it's servers for public access. It seems to me that doing so rather negates the claim that it has "control" over that access. If ebay wants to maintain control over who accessed its sites, it should take steps such as requiring log-in to view the site, not just to place bids.
Bidder's Edge is nothing more than a search engine of auction sites. ebay's real objection is that it hurts ebay's business by allowing users to compare prices with other sites.
We can agree to disagree, of course, but I think the problem here is the tool, not the source. From the very fact that a centralized government with that much power exists, it follows that the power will be abused. If you find some way to control or elliminate corporate influence in the American political landscape, someone or something else will step in to fill the void. The government will not automagically begin serving the best interests of the people.
My sig says it all.
Perhaps. Or perhaps a few of those wizards will come up with mechanisms that can be used by all and sundry. Is freenet fundamentally incompatible with IPv6?
We have a massive War on Drugs at which we throw billions of dollars, and you can buy crack on just about any street corner. Do we want to create a "War on Piracy" that endlessly gobbles money with little or no return? The result of the War on Drugs is generally that the poor and/or minorities end up in prison. A War on Piracy will punish a much "higher class" (in the sense of social standing, not social fitness) of people and will get much less public support.
The primary threat to freedom is still governmental power. The problem is that governmental power is increasingly controlled and directed by corporate interests. The DMCA and its kin benefit and are driven by corporate interests, but they are still laws. They are backed by the threat of governmental force. Until such time as corporations begin fielding their own armies, government remains the primary threat.
For an analogy, look at modern motorcycles: fuel-injected, load balanced engines, hi-tech suspension, etc. Dependeble, comfortable, and you have to have a PhD to work on the damned things. My '78 Shovelhead rattles and damn nears vibrates my teeth out of my head but I can tear it down to where there isn't a single nut left on a single bolt and put it back together. It's mine in a way that a sleek, impressive and impersonal modern bike will never be.
While I agree with the gist of your argument, I have to take exception with one area of your post. Moderating you down is NOT a form of censorship or oppression. This is a privately owned forumn. Yes, it is publicly accessible. But, like TV and radio, Slashdot is under no requirement, legally, morally, ethically or otherwise, to provide you with a soapbox from which to preach your own particular brand of salvation. Censorship occurs when someone uses violence or the force of government to silence opposing speech. (Not a comprehensive definition, but close enough for this discussion.) It doesn't occur when someone refuses to listen to you, or when someone refuses to support your beliefs.
You find it puzzling that I would extend free speech protection to Nazism, which suppressed free speech. I find it absolutely incomprehensible that you could live in an region so affected by tolitarian reigns and apparently learn nothing from them. You claim to fight oppression and racism by using the tools of oppression and consorship, and see no hypocrisy in your stance.
Certainly wounds still exist. But you don't treat wounds by covering them up and pretending they never happened.
You could authorize the program to act autonomously (the processor) or to prompt you with the best deal it could find (the bike). If it can not find a match for your specs, it could add it to a "find" list and notify you when one becomes available.
For another example, however, look at the original Unreal. The game did reasonably well on the basis of it's state-of-the-art (at the time) graphics engine but was routinely and roundly lambasted for its crappy multiplayer. If Unreal had had decent internet performance, it may very well have taken the FPS crown away from Quake II. Without it, it was just another also-ran.
As for playing on a LAN, I have a three system LAN (actually, four but one is a Linux server) that's used for that a great deal. However, a private LAN is beyond the reach of most people, as is using a business LAN for gaming. For the vast majority of game buyers, playing on a LAN simply isn't an option. For those of us who do have access to a LAN, they are often limited in size and there are plenty of times when no one else is available or interested in playing. In short, LAN play is cool as hell but it's neither a substitute for nor a competitor with internet play.
I can't lay claim to telnetting over a 2400 baud modem. My first internet connection was, however, a dial-up text mode account over a 9600 buad modem so I'm not exactly a child of high speed access. I played Doom (and Heretic) over modem and over LAN. Playing over the modem was cool until I played over LAN for awhile. Once I got use to the speed of a LAN, it was near impossible to go back to a modem. Similarly, few gamers are going to accept slower performance for the sake of reducing cheating.
Wrong anser, -5. The GPL does not obligate you to release anything. Read the damned thing. The GPL only controls how you are allowed to release, not whether you release.
It's sometimes acceptable for performance to suffer in the interest of reliability for a business application. But we're talking about a game. We're talking about a product aimed at a specific market with the intent of making money. We're talking about a rapidly changing technological base which presents you with a relatively narrow window in which to sell your product before it becomes obsolete.
You can certainly "bite the bullet and do things the right way..." That right way will end up with you having a game that is unplayable over the internet by the technology in use by most of your target audience. That right way will end up with your game languishing on the shelves while the competition, with imperfect but playable internet performance, sells. It'll "hurt for a while," yeah. It'll hurt you right out of business.
They can not ask for the copyright to the whole thing. They can, however, claim copyright to the modifications. (Whether their claim would be upheld, I can't say.) This means that it could get dicey for the employee if he wants to make the same modifications to the GPL'd version. It would be difficult if not impossible to prove that he completely reimplemented it in how off time. Furthermore, even if he sits down and rewrites the code in his offtime, much of the work of planning the code and ironing out the bugs has already been done.
No, they would not have to put out the changes to the code unless they released the program. Also, if I release a progam under GPL, I (and only I) can also release it under a different license. I can make a modification and sell it to a company for private use.