and it has nothing to do with the availability of information. How many Americans would ever read the Communist Manifesto? How many Americans would read Atheism: A Philosophical Justification or consider polyamory? Some, I admit, but the fact of the matter is that if you teach them young enough and from all angles that one view is right and the other is absurd, fringe, radical, or evil, the vast majority will reject that view outright, regardless of whether the information is readily available; they simply won't be willing to read it, or take it seriously in the rare case that they do. They certainly won't wait to read both sides before coming to a conclusion. There's more than one way to prevent a society to read, and it seams the censorship of the future is to grind it into them at a young enough age not to question the authority of the government. A few will slip by, but not enough to convince the rest. 90% of the world's humans practice the religion of their parents - the lasting and enormous power of childhood censorship and propaganda cannot be seriously denied.
Now I don't mean to be over-sensitive
on
China and the MPA
·
· Score: 2
but really, it's just inappropriate to refer to the Chinese government as "China", especially if you're going to say something like "China is stupid". I know this wasn't Katz's intention, I'm sure he's not a racist, but he should still be more careful with the words he uses.
..and replace drives as they fail. Of course, that seems to be only cheaper in the relatively short term, but as drives themselves continue to become cheaper, it will hold over the long term too, assuming he's got enough business.
and the listing itself explains why. In the (relatively) not-so-distant future, it's very possible that an entire century worth of data be stored on thousands or hundreds of dollars worth of equipment (as opposed to millions) - keep in mind that not much data has been produced in centuries previous to this, and not much produced in this compared to future ones. (By this century I mean the 20th: one more year folks).
Perhaps the amount of data will increase faster than the amount (price) of storage, but I doubt it. 640k should be enough for anyone! In any case, all the data generated thus far is likely to remain safely stored somewhere until extinction, if it is ever digitized and made publically available (and anybody cares to store it).
I can imagine them in 3000 CE looking back on the logs of the (at that future time) most popular web site ever to have existed, and reading this very thread:) I suppose it'll be found somewhere on ENCYCLOPEDIA, DISC 1: PREHISTORY-2012.
It appears we have reached the point where we should agree to disagree.
I don't think so. You still seem not to even understand my position.
You aren't going to change my mind about the original/. post. The fellow that originally bought linux.com had every right to sale it for whatever he could get for it.
I never contested that he had the right to do it; my only claim was that it should not be condoned (on the basis that it is not work (physical or intellectual) and thus exploitation (of those who do work)). If all you assert is that he has the right, we've not disagreed!
But if you insist that this fellow is a productive worker (in the capacity of his DNS speculation), I must ask (only) that you tell me what was produced by him, ie what existed not before his effort but after, that he traded with VA. Your inability to name this product, even under the pretense of making peace, I must take as concession (assuming the best). It seems clear to me, and is surely clear to you, that such a product does not exist, and rather than admit this you would bow out of the conversation altogether. (No insult is intended by this; I honestly believe this conclusion is very well-warranted.)
The $75 was spent to create a new product. A domain name.
Ha! The domain name already existed. Actually, the domain name doesn't "exist", in any physical sense, at all. What this fellow did was buy rights to choose to what IP the DNS name would resolve. The rights were for sale, he bought them, and sold them for more than his original buying price. That makes it zero-sum, whether or not it was right, commendable, wise, ethical, or anything else. If your only basis for defending it is that it is not zero-sum, your defense fails.
The reason it's called DNS speculation is that in practice it works very much the same as speculation in land (even though the DNS situation was set up artificially, and the land one not). Surely you agree that speculation in land is zero-sum?
Your definition of labor apparently differs from mine. Mental labor counts, too. Not just manual labor.
The first time you falsely characterized my use of the word "labor" (or "work") as referring only to manual labor, I gave you the benefit of the doubt; I assumed you simply misinterpreted my previous statements, and corrected you. But it appears your false characterization (at least this later one) was a deliberate straw-man. I won't repeat what I've already said; suffice to say if you are unwilling to take what I explicitly state as my position you do both of us a disservice by replying, and make meaningful discussion futile.
The profit is zero-sum. $75 is spent, no new product is created, and $2million is income.
I get something. I hold on to it. Be it land, or Hershey bars or domain names, it is paid for at the time of my acquisition at the market value. Now that the demand is higher, I can either continue to hold it for myself, or I can sale it to someone else that is willing to pay me for it.
I never said you couldn't do it, only that it was zero-sum. And it is. Nothing new is created, unlike trading money for labor, where the labor did not previously exist. Don't you see how you've just proved my argument? You buy it, and sell it, and nothing is produced by you. If VA had bought it themselves for $75, the rest of the world would not have been without $3million dollars in some product produced by this fellow (as he produced no product). That makes it zero-sum.
Buying and selling stock is indeed work, but not how you think of it. The stock broker who researches and chooses stocks is working, whereas the investor whose money he uses is not working (in that capacity). If the investor chooses his own stocks, he is only working in the capacity that he chooses those stocks. Profits he makes by buying low and selling high are not made through work - at least, not his work. They are made through exploitation of the work of the employees of the company in which he invests.
For a definition, I'll take a snippet from Webster's Unabridged, 1913: 1. Exertion of strength or faculties; physical or intellectual effort directed to an end
But you must keep in mind that one may acquire wealth by a combination of work in addition to e.g. usury or theft - so even a worker can be an exploiter, insofar as he obtains more than he has worked for.
Whether or not there is a product is not relevant. The fellow in question did not create any product, regardless of whether any product does in fact exist.
This is not a zero-sum game.
Repeating what some objectivist told you? A free market in general might not be a zero-sum game, BUT THIS IS. If anything is a zero-sum game, speculation is. Do you not know what "zero-sum" means? It means nothing new is produced, only shuffled around. WHAT NEW WAS PRODUCED? Rent, interest, speculation, charity, theft - all are zero-sum.
..in that effort was expended by (I forget his name as well). Effort is also expended by burglars. Crowbars aren't free, you know. Those TV's aren't going to walk into the van themselves. Still, the work involved in stealing, or in speculating, is NOT what brings about the profit. Rather, the profit exists beforehand and, as society has not been able to devise a way to maintain fairness, it goes to whomever has it in his ability to take it.
Investing money (and thus profiting without having to work) may have positive effects, but that still doesn't make it working. Stealing can positively affect economies, but that doesn't make it working.
(Writing books *IS* work, of course, as there is product. Speculation is not, as there is none. Speculation of US land was just as bad (actually, far worse) than that of DNS names. The products of labor belong to laborers, regardless of who claims to "own" the land on which they work. Likewise with the means of production in general. The opposite position, that someone should be able to make money without working (ie be in such a situation where he could be a rock rather than a person and it would not affect his income - certainly you could not call that working, yet this state could be brought about easily by a sufficiently wealthy investor), is ridiculous.)
What did this fellow ever produce? The answer is nothing, and so should be his income for it.
(And just because most might do the same does not mean we should support it when one does.)
but I don't see how anyone can support a person making money through any means other than work. Now this fellow has obtained millions of dollars without having to work at all for it, and will probably continue to use that money to exploit people who do work, "earning" more money, still without having to work. That may be unavoidable, but it's odious to condone it, even if one admits the futility of trying to prevent it.
..nobody has ever gotten away with any crime. Sorry, this is wrong. Kids may not be willing to work hard to cheat for profit, but plenty of criminals are. Why? Not because they don't have to work, but because they get far greater returns for less or the same amount of work.
..because nobody was talking about closing an interface. The interface is already open, and even further, the code behind the interface is GPL. Nothing could be more open. The problem is that software using the interface, which is also GPL, might be stolen and used in proprietary software, illegally.
This person does not understand the issue, and should not have been moderated up. I don't understand what's so hard to understand here. I guess people don't read the story before they post, anymore. Maybe they never did.
..he doesn't understand the problem. The authors of these mods want to GPL their code, and they don't want propriety software makers to rip off the GPL code. If the code were LGPL, or anything else for that matter, the same problem would be. This guy seems to think [something else]. (I dunno if this sounds like a troll, but a 5 post that misunderstands the whole issue is just bad moderating, and should be fixed.)
While GPL code can be, and possibly is frequently, stolen from smaller firms quite easily, Microsoft (or Sun, or any other giant firm big enough to have lawyers) would never DREAM of it (blackdown had NOTHING to do with the GPL). If they (any big firm) were suspect, they run the risk of the court demanding code be presented before the judge. Trade secret can't help them either - the code would stay off the record, the court would appoint an expert who would sign an NDA, judges eyes only, etc. So the courts would demand the code, and if the judge decided that it should go to trial, it would, and MS(/Sun/etc) would loose far more in public image than the FSF could hope to take in damages.
And what if Microsoft was unable to present code required to compile the suspected software? Wouldn't exactly look good for them, in the court's eyes and especially the public's. Besides, we already know that MS employees aren't even allowed to LOOK at copylefted code.
(There's still a question of how to get the court to consider some code suspect, and I suppose that would be impossible for a lot of things that aren't immediately visible. Then again, I doubt MS is going to run the risk of some bug in the linux IP stack affecting Windows. Besides, there's plenty BSD code they can use all they want.)
I was looking into this myself for a while, and found quite a bit of stuff priced decently on ebay. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything selling in my area and obviously shipping on this kind of thing would be outrageous. But maybe you'll be able to find someone in your area, in which case that's probably the way to go.
Well neither am I. But as the MPAA has given *permission* for CSS decryption to DVD makers, softDVD authors, etc, this is hardly a hole.
IANAL either, though, but your theory seems far-fetched.
This actually looks real.. sorta
on
Hole in GNU GPL?
·
· Score: 1
A lot of people are saying that because corporations are legally considered individuals, this guys argument is bunk. That's bass ackwards... He's saying that if corporations are individuals, which they are, then they can distribute closed-source copies internally. Now all a corporation has to do is make a license with their shrink-wrap that, when you sign it, makes you part of the company. And there you have lost your rights to source, BECAUSE corporations are individuals. So I take gcc, make "super-gcc corporation", charge you $100 to be hired by that company, and give you super-gcc, sans source. It's legal, because as a member of super-gcc corp you have no rights.
Now this does seem like it would be technically true, but judges are people, not robots. Any company that would try this would need some serious balls, not to mention the PR problems it would cause.
So the argument by this fellow is that currently corporations ARE individuals, but for the GPL to work perfectly, they SHOULDN'T be.
We just want good software for ourselves. Gates will always be rich, but that doesn't hurt us. His company doesn't have to be unethical, though, and since we're currently afforded the power to force it not to be, it looks like that's what's going to happen. Hopefully we'll all be able to join Gates in his laugh with Office and MSIE for *NIX (etc), at least until proprietary software becomes completely obsolete.
Anybody who feels the need for some sort of jealous fit of revenge against Gates just has problems. It's about the software.
..for TradeMark. Of course there's probably already a.tm country code. Maybe.trademark or something.. but the point is that registration in some TLD somewhere should REQUIRE a registered trademark. The trademark registration system has worked for years, apparently, and it's the same type of thing required in domain names.
Trademarks have a different namespaces for different types of business, so there can be an apple detective agency and an apple computers both with trademarks... So the next level below the.tm would be.computers or etc. (Obviously you wouldn't sell the next-to-TL domains either).
I don't really know much about the trademark system, but at least it's got maturity, and I believe trademarks are respected internationally to some degree.
Slashdot Mirror
and it has nothing to do with the availability of information. How many Americans would ever read the Communist Manifesto? How many Americans would read Atheism: A Philosophical Justification or consider polyamory? Some, I admit, but the fact of the matter is that if you teach them young enough and from all angles that one view is right and the other is absurd, fringe, radical, or evil, the vast majority will reject that view outright, regardless of whether the information is readily available; they simply won't be willing to read it, or take it seriously in the rare case that they do. They certainly won't wait to read both sides before coming to a conclusion. There's more than one way to prevent a society to read, and it seams the censorship of the future is to grind it into them at a young enough age not to question the authority of the government. A few will slip by, but not enough to convince the rest. 90% of the world's humans practice the religion of their parents - the lasting and enormous power of childhood censorship and propaganda cannot be seriously denied.
but really, it's just inappropriate to refer to the Chinese government as "China", especially if you're going to say something like "China is stupid". I know this wasn't Katz's intention, I'm sure he's not a racist, but he should still be more careful with the words he uses.
oh well, typos happen I guess. How embarrassing :)
..and replace drives as they fail. Of course, that seems to be only cheaper in the relatively short term, but as drives themselves continue to become cheaper, it will hold over the long term too, assuming he's got enough business.
x
and the listing itself explains why. In the (relatively) not-so-distant future, it's very possible that an entire century worth of data be stored on thousands or hundreds of dollars worth of equipment (as opposed to millions) - keep in mind that not much data has been produced in centuries previous to this, and not much produced in this compared to future ones. (By this century I mean the 20th: one more year folks).
:) I suppose it'll be found somewhere on ENCYCLOPEDIA, DISC 1: PREHISTORY-2012.
Perhaps the amount of data will increase faster than the amount (price) of storage, but I doubt it. 640k should be enough for anyone! In any case, all the data generated thus far is likely to remain safely stored somewhere until extinction, if it is ever digitized and made publically available (and anybody cares to store it).
I can imagine them in 3000 CE looking back on the logs of the (at that future time) most popular web site ever to have existed, and reading this very thread
It appears we have reached the point where we should agree to disagree.
/. post. The fellow that originally bought linux.com had every right to sale it for whatever he could get for it.
I don't think so. You still seem not to even understand my position.
You aren't going to change my mind about the original
I never contested that he had the right to do it; my only claim was that it should not be condoned (on the basis that it is not work (physical or intellectual) and thus exploitation (of those who do work)). If all you assert is that he has the right, we've not disagreed!
But if you insist that this fellow is a productive worker (in the capacity of his DNS speculation), I must ask (only) that you tell me what was produced by him, ie what existed not before his effort but after, that he traded with VA. Your inability to name this product, even under the pretense of making peace, I must take as concession (assuming the best). It seems clear to me, and is surely clear to you, that such a product does not exist, and rather than admit this you would bow out of the conversation altogether. (No insult is intended by this; I honestly believe this conclusion is very well-warranted.)
The $75 was spent to create a new product. A domain name.
Ha! The domain name already existed. Actually, the domain name doesn't "exist", in any physical sense, at all. What this fellow did was buy rights to choose to what IP the DNS name would resolve. The rights were for sale, he bought them, and sold them for more than his original buying price. That makes it zero-sum, whether or not it was right, commendable, wise, ethical, or anything else. If your only basis for defending it is that it is not zero-sum, your defense fails.
The reason it's called DNS speculation is that in practice it works very much the same as speculation in land (even though the DNS situation was set up artificially, and the land one not). Surely you agree that speculation in land is zero-sum?
Your definition of labor apparently differs from mine. Mental labor counts, too. Not just manual labor.
The first time you falsely characterized my use of the word "labor" (or "work") as referring only to manual labor, I gave you the benefit of the doubt; I assumed you simply misinterpreted my previous statements, and corrected you. But it appears your false characterization (at least this later one) was a deliberate straw-man. I won't repeat what I've already said; suffice to say if you are unwilling to take what I explicitly state as my position you do both of us a disservice by replying, and make meaningful discussion futile.
The profit is zero-sum. $75 is spent, no new product is created, and $2million is income.
I get something. I hold on to it. Be it land, or Hershey bars or domain names, it is paid for at the time of my acquisition at the market value. Now that the demand is higher, I can either continue to hold it for myself, or I can sale it to someone else that is willing to pay me for it.
I never said you couldn't do it, only that it was zero-sum. And it is. Nothing new is created, unlike trading money for labor, where the labor did not previously exist. Don't you see how you've just proved my argument? You buy it, and sell it, and nothing is produced by you. If VA had bought it themselves for $75, the rest of the world would not have been without $3million dollars in some product produced by this fellow (as he produced no product). That makes it zero-sum.
Buying and selling stock is indeed work, but not how you think of it. The stock broker who researches and chooses stocks is working, whereas the investor whose money he uses is not working (in that capacity). If the investor chooses his own stocks, he is only working in the capacity that he chooses those stocks. Profits he makes by buying low and selling high are not made through work - at least, not his work. They are made through exploitation of the work of the employees of the company in which he invests.
For a definition, I'll take a snippet from Webster's Unabridged, 1913:
1. Exertion of strength or faculties; physical or intellectual effort directed to an end
But you must keep in mind that one may acquire wealth by a combination of work in addition to e.g. usury or theft - so even a worker can be an exploiter, insofar as he obtains more than he has worked for.
Whether or not there is a product is not relevant. The fellow in question did not create any product, regardless of whether any product does in fact exist.
This is not a zero-sum game.
Repeating what some objectivist told you? A free market in general might not be a zero-sum game, BUT THIS IS. If anything is a zero-sum game, speculation is. Do you not know what "zero-sum" means? It means nothing new is produced, only shuffled around. WHAT NEW WAS PRODUCED? Rent, interest, speculation, charity, theft - all are zero-sum.
..in that effort was expended by (I forget his name as well). Effort is also expended by burglars. Crowbars aren't free, you know. Those TV's aren't going to walk into the van themselves. Still, the work involved in stealing, or in speculating, is NOT what brings about the profit. Rather, the profit exists beforehand and, as society has not been able to devise a way to maintain fairness, it goes to whomever has it in his ability to take it.
Investing money (and thus profiting without having to work) may have positive effects, but that still doesn't make it working. Stealing can positively affect economies, but that doesn't make it working.
(Writing books *IS* work, of course, as there is product. Speculation is not, as there is none. Speculation of US land was just as bad (actually, far worse) than that of DNS names. The products of labor belong to laborers, regardless of who claims to "own" the land on which they work. Likewise with the means of production in general. The opposite position, that someone should be able to make money without working (ie be in such a situation where he could be a rock rather than a person and it would not affect his income - certainly you could not call that working, yet this state could be brought about easily by a sufficiently wealthy investor), is ridiculous.)
What did this fellow ever produce? The answer is nothing, and so should be his income for it.
(And just because most might do the same does not mean we should support it when one does.)
but I don't see how anyone can support a person making money through any means other than work. Now this fellow has obtained millions of dollars without having to work at all for it, and will probably continue to use that money to exploit people who do work, "earning" more money, still without having to work. That may be unavoidable, but it's odious to condone it, even if one admits the futility of trying to prevent it.
..nobody has ever gotten away with any crime. Sorry, this is wrong. Kids may not be willing to work hard to cheat for profit, but plenty of criminals are. Why? Not because they don't have to work, but because they get far greater returns for less or the same amount of work.
..because nobody was talking about closing an interface. The interface is already open, and even further, the code behind the interface is GPL. Nothing could be more open. The problem is that software using the interface, which is also GPL, might be stolen and used in proprietary software, illegally.
This person does not understand the issue, and should not have been moderated up. I don't understand what's so hard to understand here. I guess people don't read the story before they post, anymore. Maybe they never did.
..he doesn't understand the problem. The authors of these mods want to GPL their code, and they don't want propriety software makers to rip off the GPL code. If the code were LGPL, or anything else for that matter, the same problem would be. This guy seems to think [something else]. (I dunno if this sounds like a troll, but a 5 post that misunderstands the whole issue is just bad moderating, and should be fixed.)
While GPL code can be, and possibly is frequently, stolen from smaller firms quite easily, Microsoft (or Sun, or any other giant firm big enough to have lawyers) would never DREAM of it (blackdown had NOTHING to do with the GPL). If they (any big firm) were suspect, they run the risk of the court demanding code be presented before the judge. Trade secret can't help them either - the code would stay off the record, the court would appoint an expert who would sign an NDA, judges eyes only, etc. So the courts would demand the code, and if the judge decided that it should go to trial, it would, and MS(/Sun/etc) would loose far more in public image than the FSF could hope to take in damages.
And what if Microsoft was unable to present code required to compile the suspected software? Wouldn't exactly look good for them, in the court's eyes and especially the public's. Besides, we already know that MS employees aren't even allowed to LOOK at copylefted code.
(There's still a question of how to get the court to consider some code suspect, and I suppose that would be impossible for a lot of things that aren't immediately visible. Then again, I doubt MS is going to run the risk of some bug in the linux IP stack affecting Windows. Besides, there's plenty BSD code they can use all they want.)
x
I was looking into this myself for a while, and found quite a bit of stuff priced decently on ebay. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything selling in my area and obviously shipping on this kind of thing would be outrageous. But maybe you'll be able to find someone in your area, in which case that's probably the way to go.
Well neither am I. But as the MPAA has given *permission* for CSS decryption to DVD makers, softDVD authors, etc, this is hardly a hole.
IANAL either, though, but your theory seems far-fetched.
A lot of people are saying that because corporations are legally considered individuals, this guys argument is bunk. That's bass ackwards... He's saying that if corporations are individuals, which they are, then they can distribute closed-source copies internally. Now all a corporation has to do is make a license with their shrink-wrap that, when you sign it, makes you part of the company. And there you have lost your rights to source, BECAUSE corporations are individuals. So I take gcc, make "super-gcc corporation", charge you $100 to be hired by that company, and give you super-gcc, sans source. It's legal, because as a member of super-gcc corp you have no rights.
Now this does seem like it would be technically true, but judges are people, not robots. Any company that would try this would need some serious balls, not to mention the PR problems it would cause.
So the argument by this fellow is that currently corporations ARE individuals, but for the GPL to work perfectly, they SHOULDN'T be.
We just want good software for ourselves. Gates will always be rich, but that doesn't hurt us. His company doesn't have to be unethical, though, and since we're currently afforded the power to force it not to be, it looks like that's what's going to happen. Hopefully we'll all be able to join Gates in his laugh with Office and MSIE for *NIX (etc), at least until proprietary software becomes completely obsolete.
Anybody who feels the need for some sort of jealous fit of revenge against Gates just has problems. It's about the software.
..for TradeMark. Of course there's probably already a .tm country code. Maybe .trademark or something.. but the point is that registration in some TLD somewhere should REQUIRE a registered trademark. The trademark registration system has worked for years, apparently, and it's the same type of thing required in domain names.
.tm would be .computers or etc. (Obviously you wouldn't sell the next-to-TL domains either).
Trademarks have a different namespaces for different types of business, so there can be an apple detective agency and an apple computers both with trademarks... So the next level below the
I don't really know much about the trademark system, but at least it's got maturity, and I believe trademarks are respected internationally to some degree.
So how can this be possible?