The burden of proof is not on citizens to prove that they have rights, but on
the government to prove that they do not. The Bill of Rights guaranties the
rights of citizens largely by limiting the rights of government. These restrictions
include a prohibition on laws governing speech and a prohibition on arbitrary searches.
People are making a comparison between this system and having officers on the street looking
for known criminals. But ordinary humans are not able to look at everyone (the cameras can)
and they are not able to compare anyone to a master list of criminals. At best, they
could compare people to a few of the wanted photos. The facial recognition software
is really more similar to the police roping of a city block and then demanding that
everyone inside present them with ID. People wouldn't stand for that kind of behavior
from the police and it wouldn't stand up in court.
So, the real question here is why do the police have the right to use facial recognition
and ID people on a massive scale when they don't have the right to do it in person right
on the street?
Even more concerning is the fact that there are no safeguards to prevent the government to
use this for other purposes. Can you imagine what McCarthy could have done with this kind
of technology? Although it is apparently astonishing to some people, most of us do
have things to hide that are not illegal. Maybe I like to visit left-wing book stores
and attend communist party meetings. Nothing illegal about that, but I may not want the government
to know about it. This kind of system could easily enable them to ID people who engage in
socially unacceptable, but legal, activities.
Now, prove to me (using the US Constitution -- not just personal opinion)
that the government has the right to use this system and that it won't be used in an
abusive manner.
It's a free market, companies should be able to do what they want to do,
and if you don't like it, don't use that company.
Ah! The old Libertarian standby -- if you don't like what corporations are doing to you,
don't do business with them. Everyone is free to do business only with those corps
who respect their privacy and behave in ways that the customer finds ethically acceptable.
One question: How the hell am I supposed to find out what companies are doing behind closed
doors? What little information we do get is generally required by law. And even then, businesses
are not usually required to dispense of that info in language that the average human being
can understand. Are we supposed to bring all of our mail to an attorney to decipher it for us,
or what? Most people don't have the time or the money to engage in such nonsense.
And if we followed the advice of the Libertarian party and elliminated all laws governing
corporate behavior, we would get even less information (or, rather, more disinformation). Nobody
in business (NOBODY -- not even the small ones) is looking out for the consumer. Businesses look out for themselves and
tell the rest of us what they want us to hear.
Free markets might work according to the Libertarians' idealized version of reality
if consumers actually had reliable information with which to make decisions, but we don't and
never will without strict laws with severe penalties that require corporations to tell us what
it is that they are really doing. Free markets require free information in order to function,
and that's a far cry from what we are getting now.
We don't necessarily need to understand what consciousness is in order to replicate it. If we understand how the components of the brain (neurons) work, and how they are put together (neural paths) then we should be able to replicate it in a sufficiently powerful computer. It won't happen on the x86 architecture, mind you, but it will happen.
I still think Penrose is wrong about understanding consciousness, though. Our understanding of the brain is just too immature to be making this assertion one way or the other. Maybe we can understand, maybe not. We don't know enough yet to ask (let alone answer) the right questions.
Speed is a fair criticism. The test is to fool a panel of judges so they don't know which of two terminals is being controled by a real person and which is controled by a turing machine. If one responds to a question in 5 seconds and the other takes days or longer, I won't be fooled. There is no conceivable way that a person (or a group of people) could translate symbols using lookup tables fast enough to even approach the speed of a human response. The complexity of the operations and the number of tables needed would just be too great. If the Chinese Room cannot operate at a near-human speed, it won't pass the test and won't be considered to be intelligent (according to Turing).
BTW -- This is the same kind of response that Neils Bohr used to answer Einsteins criticisms of quantum theory. Einstein designed devices that would violate QM, but Bohr was always able to point out some reason why the device could not physically be built to the precision required by the design.
The problem with this is the first premise. It's true, intelligence may be driven by quantum events, but there is no evidence that it is in reality. What Penrose demonstrated is that neurons have structures that are small enough to respond to quantum interactions. He did not show that these structures are important to the functioning of neurons. This is just pure speculation at this point. We still don't have adequate definitions of intelligence and/or consciousness, so Penrose's arguments are an answer to a question that has not been properly defined.
Besides that, if quantum effects turn out to be important to intelligence, it would be trivial to incorporate them into a computer. Simply plug a photomultiplier or geiger counter into a serial port and use the output to drive random events in a neural net.
The Turing test is a poor indicator of intelligence, but Searle's argument is complete crap. Turing was wrong, but not for the reasons Searle came up with. He used the Chinese Room as an example of a 'machine' that would pass the Turing test, but that people would not consider to be intelligent. The big problem is that the Chinese Room would not pass the test, simply because it would take too long to forge answers to questions. A person could answer most questions instantly -- the Chinese Room would take years and wouldn't fool anyone.
'Publicly Available Software' means each of (i) any software that contains, or is derived in any manner (in whole or in part) from, any software that is distributed as free software, open source software (e.g. Linux) or similar licensing or distribution models; and
(ii) any software that requires as a condition of use, modification and/or distribution of such software that other software distributed with such software (A) be disclosed or distributed in source code form; (B) be licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; or (C) be redistributable at no charge.
Amazing! They even put FUD into their licenses now. Free Software and Open Source licenses are distribuition licenses, not usage licenses. The GPL has no restriction whatsoever on who can use the software and for what purposes. It certainly does not require those using it to release any software they have written in source code form (or any form, for that matter). In fact, section 2 of the GPL states:
... it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.
Restrictions only come into play when a developer redistributes a program containing GPL (or other free-licensed) code. The MS lawyers are certainly smart enough to understand this, and yet, they lie anyway. As other posters have mentioned in previous articles, MS itself distributes the gcc compiler.
I think many of us who write code all day think it is absurd that code would not be
considered to be expressive speech, but I can think of a couple of examples of code-as-art
that might help the uninitiated to grasp this.
The most obvious example I can think of is the Mandelbrot set. Many people, even those
who have never touched a computer, consider the images produced from it to be art. The
images are beautiful by themselves, but in order to grasp the full meaning of
the artwork (that is the purpose of art, isn't it?), it is necessary to understand the
algorithm that produced it. The deepest understanding is only available by looking at the
exact code that produced a particular image. Pseudocode is good, but real code is better.
Many traditional artists would argue that a real oil-on-canvas Van Gogh contains more
expressive content than a simple print. Only the real painting contains the brush strokes,
texture, and gobs of paint. Even a high quality print loses detail that is important to
the full appreciation of the artwork. The same is true for the code that produced an
image from the Mandelbrot set. Only by examining the code can you see what shortcuts
may have been taken with the algorithm, how many iterations were used per pixel, and
what kind of color map was used. None of this may be relevant to a layperson who knows
nothing of the technical aspects of fractal art, but the same can be said of Van Gogh's
gobs of paint -- many (most) people don't care.
A second example: Consider a program that contains a complex algorithm that solves several
differential equations, manipulates the results in some fashion, and then displays the
final results on the screen. It would be possible to write the algorithm in such a way that
the final output is a poem, or even a single sentence ("I am an algorithm," maybe). In this
case, the code itself can be considered to be a work of art. The output is meaningless
without having the ability to see the code. The code may also be meaningless without
seeing the output (recursive art?).
I am disturbed that the courts seem to be redefining speech as art so that functional speech
is not considered to be worthy of protection, but since that is the trend, maybe some
artistic code is needed to save it as a protected form of communication.
On balance I approve of the idea of purely independent media, but that does NOT instantly translate into "Communist/Anarchist Mouthpiece Media".
Red-baiting asside, nobody has attempted to say so. The "independent" in IMC is in reference to the fact that it is independent of corporate control, not independent of bias. Some semantic context would be in order here.
Want Joe Paycheck to read the material? Provide balanced, insightful coverage that kowtows to Nobody and that's good enough to start getting
picked up by mainstream media once in a while.
Joe Paycheck doesn't care about balance, he cares about being entertained. Granted, most left-leaning news is pretty dry, but at least it has content. PBS and NPR have about the best news you can get out of the mainstream media, and Joe Paycheck isn't watching or listening to those, either. Insight has nothing to do with it -- shock value is all that matters to most people.
BTW, I am an extreme lefty type, in case you didn't notice. I am perfectly able to disagree with other leftists on a wide range of issues, and frequently do so. Nobody other than extreme righties seems to think that is remarkable. Now let's see how many right-leaning moderators this post infuriates.
Mostly unsubstantiated, poorly written crap that is so badly biased that it is impossible
to take anything seriously.
Kind of like the mainstream corporate media, isn't it? Indymedia doesn't qualify as groupthink. Groupthink is a phenomenon that occurs when people assume the beliefs and thought processes of the group (organization) they belong to (usually from birth). Reporters for IMC are generally people who have abandoned the mainstream because they did not subject themselves to the common mythology of the culture. For them, the beliefs preceded the affiliation with the "group." Groupthink requires the inverse.
Besides that, IMC hardly qualifies as a group, anyway. There is no real membership to speak of. People who have something interesting to send in do so, and that's that. No secret handshake required.
I have to agree. Everyone who has seriously studied science knows that the history of science is full of surprises. And this is how it should be. The goal of science is to learn something about the universe and how it works, not to demonstrate that our preconceived beliefs were right all along. If a science isn't turned on it's ear every now and then, then the scientists aren't doing their jobs.
Just look at physics for a good example of a science that has been repeatedly thrown into turmoil over the last century. In 1900, it was widely believed that physics was essentially complete, and that all that remained to be done was to clean up a few details. Then along came Einstein. Now we're talking about strings vibrating in 15 dimensions (among other things).
What really irked me was this comment:
The old dream of reducing biology to physics... has received a serious blow.
WTF? What's responsible for biology then? Fairy magic? There's been no blow whatsoever. Genetics is just turning out to be more complex than we once believed.
Re:Most sucessful robots don't have human qualitie
on
Robo Sapiens
·
· Score: 1
You really underestimate the intelligence of the average person. Just doing simple things like walking down the street and noticing a friend walking in the opposite direction requires way more intelligence than computers have. Even severely retarded humans exceed the cognitive capabilities of computers.
Now, why should we compare machine intelligence to human intelligence? Because machines (and especially robots) are usually developed to do tasks that would otherwise have to be done by humans. If we want robots that do general purpose kinds of things and are easy to interact with, a human look-and-feel makes sense. It's an interface that everyone is able to use instinctively. Granted, not everyone wants these kinds of robots hanging around, and not everyone thinks it's a good idea, but many people do, so they will be developed.
You shouldn't have to use tricks at all if your passphrase is actually a phrase. If a dictionary has 30,000 words in it (I don't know how many crack has, but this sounds modest to me), then a four word phrase, with no trickery, has 30,000^4 possible combinations -- that's 8.1E17. If you assume a computer could go through a billion combinations a second (I think that would require a substantial amount of computing power) that would still require 3.17 years to get through the entire list. And that's if the attacker knows that you're using a four word phrase. If you start with one word phrases and work up, that's 30,000x30,000^2x30,000^3x30,000^4 and so on for longer phrases. And any puctuation makes the situation even worse for the attacker. If you use a stock phrase, like a movie or book title, then you would be more open to attack, but most people should be able to come up with an original and easy to remember phrase on their own. Am I wrong?
There are two project pages so far and it looks like they have some good slots for info that is frequently left off of project home pages. Conflicts, fixes, similar projects...
One thing I would really like to see for OS projects is a dependency tracker (esp. when trying to compile from source). I don't know how many times I have been thwarted while trying to compile promissing code because the config script failed to find libxyz. After searching for an hour, I find the source to libxyz and find that it requires libqrs (and so on). Or, nearly as irritating, the original project page announces where to find libxyz, but its developers fail to document libxyz's dependencies.
I'm as bad as everyone else when it comes to documenting dependencies in my own code, but it would sure be nice if there was a convenient way to document and cross-reference this kind of stuff.
What about Inspector Gadget (the cartoons from the early 80's, not the MB movie)? Doesn't Penny's little computer/e-book device count as prior art? It functioned something like a PDA. I don't think you need an actual device for prior art, just the description of a device, so that should count.
Thank you for your post -- it saved me from making my own protracted rant. If businesses really want a distribution that does all of the things she proposes right now (many of her points have been moot for years), they can (and will) pay for it. They will not get it as a gift on demand. IBM is already moving in this direction. Complain to them if they aren't moving fast enough (I personally think they have already done a tremendous service to Linux).
What angers me even more than rude whining is when journalists complain about the lack of user documentation for free software. If they think the situation is so bad, why don't they start writing some docs and get other tech-literate writers to do the same? Most of the people who write free software are skilled programmers, not skilled tech writers. Few of them claim to be. The same thing goes for corporate programmers. Who writes the user docs for Word? Not the programmers. It is just maddening that I can spend several evenings a week writing software on my own time and giving it away and people like her complain about it because I did not include adequate documenation. I don't like writing docs, I'm not good at it, and I don't want to be good at it. Yet, I'm supposed to write them anyway, just to be business-friendly. In the real world, business doesn't have friends, it has whores. If business wants me as a bitch, it can pay me. Otherwise, shut up and leave me alone.
Is 20 really The Magic Number? I've been above 20 for quite some time now, and I don't get to post with +1. Is there an additional trick that I have to figure out first? Do I have to find the unicorn with the gold key and use it to unlock the blue door in the dwarf's cottage before I get +1? Damn that CowboyNeal and his geek trickery!
I know, people will say that there can be no exceptions, but if this argument was about linking to child pornography, there'd be no argument.
Yes, there would be an argument. Go after the people posting illegal content, not those who announce where to find it. Speech is one of the most difficult freedoms to protect, which is why we must fight any infringement no matter how distastful the speech is. Copying DVDs may violate copyright holder's rights under some circumstances, but describing a method of copying does not. That's why it's called copyright -- it's a right to make copies of a protected work for public distribution. That's it. That's all the US Constitution says about the matter. If it meant more, it wouldn't be called copyright, it would be called restrict-all-information-about-my-product-right.
First of all, RMS does not require that a license be the GPL to be free. That is certainly his preferred license, but there are many other free licenses out there, so it isn't really fair to restrict this to GPL.
That aside, what about FreeNet? That's under the GPL and is one of the most inovative pieces of software to be developed in the past several years, IMO. It isn't complete yet, but I see no reason it won't be completed.
Re:Open Source will change our civilisation.
on
Rebel Code
·
· Score: 2
Nothing like communism whatsoever. In fact, its closer to a form of anarchy than anything else. ie, a ruthless application of Darwinian survival of the fittest by the people. In open source its the fittest code that survives. In anarchy, its the fittest people.
What you have just described is not Anarchy, it is Nihilism. Classical Anarchy, as a political philosophy, began when Michael Bakunin, an early colaborator with Karl Marx, split with Marx on the issue of implementing a communist society. Bakunin coined the term "Red Bureaucracy" to describe the Marxist proposal of the dictatorship of the proletariat and predicted that such an institution would outdo the evils of any tyrant (he seems to have been correct). Anarchism holds that the only way to achieve the ideals of Marx is to eliminate all power structures between people. This would include government and corporations as some of the first structures to be dismantled. In order to survive, however, an anarchist society would require a high degree of (voluntary) cooperation between citizens -- nothing like the social darwinism proposed by Nihilism, but very close to the ideals of Free Software/Open Source.
The GPL may fail when it is finally tested in court (and I'm sure it will be), but not for any of the reasons you listed.
I also think that it could well be argued that the license is prejudicial against commercial software developers with malicious intent.
Can you please explain how the GPL is prejudicial against any developer, commercial or otherwise? Anyone is free to use GPL'd programs, and anyone can modify and redistribute them, they just have to agree to the terms of the license. The GPL says nothing about commercial development, and contrary to your perception of FSF philosophy, RMS actually encourages the sale of Free software. Redhat is undoubtedly a commercial entity (full of commercial developers), and the only negative things I have ever heard RMS say about them is that they say "Linux" instead of "GNU/Linux" and "Open Source" instead of "Free Software." Microsoft, BTW, is also free to modify and distribute GPLd software, they just have to agree to the terms first. How in the world can you honestly think this is prejudicial or malicious. The fact that I choose to release the Stupendous-Transmogrifying Time Travel Simulator (TM) under the GPL does nothing whatsoever to Microsoft's ability to write their own software and sell it. They could even write a clone of my program, and as long as it doesn't use any of my GPLd code, I can't do anything about it. This is malicious!?! The horror! Compare this to proprietary software licenses. They don't give anybody the right to redistribute or modify anything under any circumstances.
Then there's the question of whether a lawsuit against a GPL violator could actually be awarded damages. The copyright holder is not using his
copyright to secure a profit for himself, and it's damage to just such a profit that's supposed to be reimbursed in a copyright suit; you're not
supposed to be awarded damages just because you don't like the way the violator makes his living. The courts might very well toss out all cases
as frivolous.
Why don't you go out and test this theory yourself. The Disney company no longer distributes Song of the South, and they intend to keep it that way. By their own admission, they will never again make a profit off that movie. By your reasoning, you should now be free under copyright law to take your old videotape of the show and start running off your own copies for sale. Go ahead and try it and see how far Disney makes it in court before the case is thrown out.
Remember, we're talking about copyright here, not profitright. I don't have to attempt to make a profit off my code in order to be fully protected by copyright law.
In fact your second paragraph ("I agree that...") is pretty much Postmodernism's
disinterested view towards science in a nutshell.
You are confusing skepticism with disinterest. I am a scientist and believe that all good scientists are also good skeptics. I reject the assertion of an objective, all-encompasing truth to the universe not because I agree with postmodernism, but because of the practical impossibilities of accumulating all of the evidence needed to formulate such a truth. This means that the universe is ultimately unknowable, not that an object truth is replacable by other subjective truths.
I completely agree that I don't get the gist of postmodernism in the sense that I don't understand what it proposes as a replacement for the ideals of the Enlightenment, but I do get the gist of its criticism of science as the prime product of the Enlightenment. Postmodernism, in general, rejects the scientific method as an acceptable method of epistemology. The deconstructionists reject the scientific method because they reject the notion of objectivity in general, and the constructivists reject it because the objective facts (which they accept as being true) are not interpreted in a social context. In other words, the experiments are fine, but the mathematical interpretation of the evidence is not. They want an additional social/relational interpretation of the evidence to make science 'truthful' in a human and moral sense. So the critisism of science in this case is not because it is essentially wrong, but because it does not go far enough -- facts cannot have meaning outside of a social context. The major problem with this is that the scientific method is not good at revealing truth about morality, ethics, or metaphysics. It does not go beyond objective, observable phenomena. Scientists understand this, but postmodernists apparently do not.
The comment about gravity was aimed at the deconstructive postmodernism and is an example from a real discussion I had with a real postmodernist several years ago. He was essentially arguing that gravity is an illusion and, in reality, is the result of the desires of a collective, social free will.
The problem with postmodernists isn't that they question science, but the way that they question science. They aren't really skeptics who are questioning initial assumptions. They assert that logic should have no role whatsoever in the judgement of fact or the validity of a theory. They have abandoned any framework for finding truth other than raw emotion.
I agree that skepticism is good and that there is no one objective TRUTH (at least no objective TRUTH that humans are capable of comprehending). But this does not mean that an explanation of gravity (or quantum mechanics) in terms of the social relationships and emotions of humans is just as valid as a description based on careful experiment, observation, and mathematical analysis. Scientists do get it wrong sometimes, and old theories are updated and replaced by more comprehensive theories, but that does not mean that any theory derived by any method is as valid (and truthful) as any other theory. That is the mistake made by postmodernism. Isaac Newton wasn't wrong with his theory of gravity, he was just incomplete and did not have access to all of the evidence that Einstein had when he formulated general relativity.
She's right about the postmodernism, whether she's an undergrad or not (which is irrelevant to the argument anyway -- it should be judged on its merits, not the educational status of the person stating it). Postmodernism, in the academic world, is primarily a philosophical theory with its origins in existentialism and phenomenology. Postmodern philosophy postulates that there is no objective truth, but there is social/relational truth. I won't try to explain what postmodernists mean when they talk about social/relational truth -- you can turn your brain to stew trying to understand a postmodernist 'definition' of the terms on your own time (I couldn't do them justice). In any case, they use their criticisms of objective truth to criticize anything that does not conform to their worldview. Science frequently receives the brunt of the abuse, and is blamed for everything from sexism to racism and any other negative -ism you can think of. To the postmodernist, everything in the world started going wrong when ancient goddess-worshiping (and matriarchal) tribes abandoned the goddess in favor of male warrior-gods. Science is just another product of this misguided adoration of warrior-gods and is a metaphorical way for men to continue to worship the warrior-gods. Radical feminists (NOTE TO FLAMERS: notice that I am talking about radical feminists, not mainstream feminists) have latched on to postmodernism as a way to make outrageous claims about the nature of society and the various ways that men oppress women without having to resort to logic or fact. They can make up whatever appeals to them emotionally at the time, because they are drawing on the truth of their relationship with the social world, which is superior to the truth of objective fact (according to them).
Why is this important to the discussion? Because postmodernist philosophy isn't just some fringe movement. Name any social science, and you can find postmodernists practicing and influencing it. We now have postmodern psychology, postmodern sociology, and probably postmodern economics. It isn't just the 'stupid public' that has abandoned belief in objective fact, well educated academics are doing it, also. BTW -- most people are not stupid. Very few people actually believe in the kind of nonsence espoused on the show. You should also not equate lack of education (ignorance) with stupidity. Doing so reveals your own social maladjustment.
And just because credentials seem to be so important to your evaluation of any argument, let me give you mine (not that anyone should think this is at all relevant). I currently hold a BA in Philosophy and a BS in Physics. I graduated 4 years ago. I took three philosophy classes from a postmodernist and was able to reproduce the language well enough to get an 'A' in each, although I still don't know what the hell he was really talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
Even more concerning is the fact that there are no safeguards to prevent the government to use this for other purposes. Can you imagine what McCarthy could have done with this kind of technology? Although it is apparently astonishing to some people, most of us do have things to hide that are not illegal. Maybe I like to visit left-wing book stores and attend communist party meetings. Nothing illegal about that, but I may not want the government to know about it. This kind of system could easily enable them to ID people who engage in socially unacceptable, but legal, activities.
Now, prove to me (using the US Constitution -- not just personal opinion) that the government has the right to use this system and that it won't be used in an abusive manner.
Ah! The old Libertarian standby -- if you don't like what corporations are doing to you, don't do business with them. Everyone is free to do business only with those corps who respect their privacy and behave in ways that the customer finds ethically acceptable.
One question: How the hell am I supposed to find out what companies are doing behind closed doors? What little information we do get is generally required by law. And even then, businesses are not usually required to dispense of that info in language that the average human being can understand. Are we supposed to bring all of our mail to an attorney to decipher it for us, or what? Most people don't have the time or the money to engage in such nonsense.
And if we followed the advice of the Libertarian party and elliminated all laws governing corporate behavior, we would get even less information (or, rather, more disinformation). Nobody in business (NOBODY -- not even the small ones) is looking out for the consumer. Businesses look out for themselves and tell the rest of us what they want us to hear.
Free markets might work according to the Libertarians' idealized version of reality if consumers actually had reliable information with which to make decisions, but we don't and never will without strict laws with severe penalties that require corporations to tell us what it is that they are really doing. Free markets require free information in order to function, and that's a far cry from what we are getting now.
I still think Penrose is wrong about understanding consciousness, though. Our understanding of the brain is just too immature to be making this assertion one way or the other. Maybe we can understand, maybe not. We don't know enough yet to ask (let alone answer) the right questions.
BTW -- This is the same kind of response that Neils Bohr used to answer Einsteins criticisms of quantum theory. Einstein designed devices that would violate QM, but Bohr was always able to point out some reason why the device could not physically be built to the precision required by the design.
Besides that, if quantum effects turn out to be important to intelligence, it would be trivial to incorporate them into a computer. Simply plug a photomultiplier or geiger counter into a serial port and use the output to drive random events in a neural net.
The Turing test is a poor indicator of intelligence, but Searle's argument is complete crap. Turing was wrong, but not for the reasons Searle came up with. He used the Chinese Room as an example of a 'machine' that would pass the Turing test, but that people would not consider to be intelligent. The big problem is that the Chinese Room would not pass the test, simply because it would take too long to forge answers to questions. A person could answer most questions instantly -- the Chinese Room would take years and wouldn't fool anyone.
Amazing! They even put FUD into their licenses now. Free Software and Open Source licenses are distribuition licenses, not usage licenses. The GPL has no restriction whatsoever on who can use the software and for what purposes. It certainly does not require those using it to release any software they have written in source code form (or any form, for that matter). In fact, section 2 of the GPL states:
Restrictions only come into play when a developer redistributes a program containing GPL (or other free-licensed) code. The MS lawyers are certainly smart enough to understand this, and yet, they lie anyway. As other posters have mentioned in previous articles, MS itself distributes the gcc compiler.The most obvious example I can think of is the Mandelbrot set. Many people, even those who have never touched a computer, consider the images produced from it to be art. The images are beautiful by themselves, but in order to grasp the full meaning of the artwork (that is the purpose of art, isn't it?), it is necessary to understand the algorithm that produced it. The deepest understanding is only available by looking at the exact code that produced a particular image. Pseudocode is good, but real code is better.
Many traditional artists would argue that a real oil-on-canvas Van Gogh contains more expressive content than a simple print. Only the real painting contains the brush strokes, texture, and gobs of paint. Even a high quality print loses detail that is important to the full appreciation of the artwork. The same is true for the code that produced an image from the Mandelbrot set. Only by examining the code can you see what shortcuts may have been taken with the algorithm, how many iterations were used per pixel, and what kind of color map was used. None of this may be relevant to a layperson who knows nothing of the technical aspects of fractal art, but the same can be said of Van Gogh's gobs of paint -- many (most) people don't care.
A second example: Consider a program that contains a complex algorithm that solves several differential equations, manipulates the results in some fashion, and then displays the final results on the screen. It would be possible to write the algorithm in such a way that the final output is a poem, or even a single sentence ("I am an algorithm," maybe). In this case, the code itself can be considered to be a work of art. The output is meaningless without having the ability to see the code. The code may also be meaningless without seeing the output (recursive art?).
I am disturbed that the courts seem to be redefining speech as art so that functional speech is not considered to be worthy of protection, but since that is the trend, maybe some artistic code is needed to save it as a protected form of communication.
Red-baiting asside, nobody has attempted to say so. The "independent" in IMC is in reference to the fact that it is independent of corporate control, not independent of bias. Some semantic context would be in order here.
Want Joe Paycheck to read the material? Provide balanced, insightful coverage that kowtows to Nobody and that's good enough to start getting picked up by mainstream media once in a while.
Joe Paycheck doesn't care about balance, he cares about being entertained. Granted, most left-leaning news is pretty dry, but at least it has content. PBS and NPR have about the best news you can get out of the mainstream media, and Joe Paycheck isn't watching or listening to those, either. Insight has nothing to do with it -- shock value is all that matters to most people.
BTW, I am an extreme lefty type, in case you didn't notice. I am perfectly able to disagree with other leftists on a wide range of issues, and frequently do so. Nobody other than extreme righties seems to think that is remarkable. Now let's see how many right-leaning moderators this post infuriates.
Kind of like the mainstream corporate media, isn't it? Indymedia doesn't qualify as groupthink. Groupthink is a phenomenon that occurs when people assume the beliefs and thought processes of the group (organization) they belong to (usually from birth). Reporters for IMC are generally people who have abandoned the mainstream because they did not subject themselves to the common mythology of the culture. For them, the beliefs preceded the affiliation with the "group." Groupthink requires the inverse.
Besides that, IMC hardly qualifies as a group, anyway. There is no real membership to speak of. People who have something interesting to send in do so, and that's that. No secret handshake required.
Just look at physics for a good example of a science that has been repeatedly thrown into turmoil over the last century. In 1900, it was widely believed that physics was essentially complete, and that all that remained to be done was to clean up a few details. Then along came Einstein. Now we're talking about strings vibrating in 15 dimensions (among other things).
What really irked me was this comment:
WTF? What's responsible for biology then? Fairy magic? There's been no blow whatsoever. Genetics is just turning out to be more complex than we once believed.Now, why should we compare machine intelligence to human intelligence? Because machines (and especially robots) are usually developed to do tasks that would otherwise have to be done by humans. If we want robots that do general purpose kinds of things and are easy to interact with, a human look-and-feel makes sense. It's an interface that everyone is able to use instinctively. Granted, not everyone wants these kinds of robots hanging around, and not everyone thinks it's a good idea, but many people do, so they will be developed.
You shouldn't have to use tricks at all if your passphrase is actually a phrase. If a dictionary has 30,000 words in it (I don't know how many crack has, but this sounds modest to me), then a four word phrase, with no trickery, has 30,000^4 possible combinations -- that's 8.1E17. If you assume a computer could go through a billion combinations a second (I think that would require a substantial amount of computing power) that would still require 3.17 years to get through the entire list. And that's if the attacker knows that you're using a four word phrase. If you start with one word phrases and work up, that's 30,000x30,000^2x30,000^3x30,000^4 and so on for longer phrases. And any puctuation makes the situation even worse for the attacker. If you use a stock phrase, like a movie or book title, then you would be more open to attack, but most people should be able to come up with an original and easy to remember phrase on their own. Am I wrong?
One thing I would really like to see for OS projects is a dependency tracker (esp. when trying to compile from source). I don't know how many times I have been thwarted while trying to compile promissing code because the config script failed to find libxyz. After searching for an hour, I find the source to libxyz and find that it requires libqrs (and so on). Or, nearly as irritating, the original project page announces where to find libxyz, but its developers fail to document libxyz's dependencies.
I'm as bad as everyone else when it comes to documenting dependencies in my own code, but it would sure be nice if there was a convenient way to document and cross-reference this kind of stuff.
What about Inspector Gadget (the cartoons from the early 80's, not the MB movie)? Doesn't Penny's little computer/e-book device count as prior art? It functioned something like a PDA. I don't think you need an actual device for prior art, just the description of a device, so that should count.
What angers me even more than rude whining is when journalists complain about the lack of user documentation for free software. If they think the situation is so bad, why don't they start writing some docs and get other tech-literate writers to do the same? Most of the people who write free software are skilled programmers, not skilled tech writers. Few of them claim to be. The same thing goes for corporate programmers. Who writes the user docs for Word? Not the programmers. It is just maddening that I can spend several evenings a week writing software on my own time and giving it away and people like her complain about it because I did not include adequate documenation. I don't like writing docs, I'm not good at it, and I don't want to be good at it. Yet, I'm supposed to write them anyway, just to be business-friendly. In the real world, business doesn't have friends, it has whores. If business wants me as a bitch, it can pay me. Otherwise, shut up and leave me alone.
Looks like I ranted anyway. So it goes.
Is 20 really The Magic Number? I've been above 20 for quite some time now, and I don't get to post with +1. Is there an additional trick that I have to figure out first? Do I have to find the unicorn with the gold key and use it to unlock the blue door in the dwarf's cottage before I get +1? Damn that CowboyNeal and his geek trickery!
Yes, there would be an argument. Go after the people posting illegal content, not those who announce where to find it. Speech is one of the most difficult freedoms to protect, which is why we must fight any infringement no matter how distastful the speech is. Copying DVDs may violate copyright holder's rights under some circumstances, but describing a method of copying does not. That's why it's called copyright -- it's a right to make copies of a protected work for public distribution. That's it. That's all the US Constitution says about the matter. If it meant more, it wouldn't be called copyright, it would be called restrict-all-information-about-my-product-right.
That aside, what about FreeNet? That's under the GPL and is one of the most inovative pieces of software to be developed in the past several years, IMO. It isn't complete yet, but I see no reason it won't be completed.
What you have just described is not Anarchy, it is Nihilism. Classical Anarchy, as a political philosophy, began when Michael Bakunin, an early colaborator with Karl Marx, split with Marx on the issue of implementing a communist society. Bakunin coined the term "Red Bureaucracy" to describe the Marxist proposal of the dictatorship of the proletariat and predicted that such an institution would outdo the evils of any tyrant (he seems to have been correct). Anarchism holds that the only way to achieve the ideals of Marx is to eliminate all power structures between people. This would include government and corporations as some of the first structures to be dismantled. In order to survive, however, an anarchist society would require a high degree of (voluntary) cooperation between citizens -- nothing like the social darwinism proposed by Nihilism, but very close to the ideals of Free Software/Open Source.
Sun and IBM both have GPLd software, and they should have lawyers to match any other company.
I also think that it could well be argued that the license is prejudicial against commercial software developers with malicious intent.
Can you please explain how the GPL is prejudicial against any developer, commercial or otherwise? Anyone is free to use GPL'd programs, and anyone can modify and redistribute them, they just have to agree to the terms of the license. The GPL says nothing about commercial development, and contrary to your perception of FSF philosophy, RMS actually encourages the sale of Free software. Redhat is undoubtedly a commercial entity (full of commercial developers), and the only negative things I have ever heard RMS say about them is that they say "Linux" instead of "GNU/Linux" and "Open Source" instead of "Free Software." Microsoft, BTW, is also free to modify and distribute GPLd software, they just have to agree to the terms first. How in the world can you honestly think this is prejudicial or malicious. The fact that I choose to release the Stupendous-Transmogrifying Time Travel Simulator (TM) under the GPL does nothing whatsoever to Microsoft's ability to write their own software and sell it. They could even write a clone of my program, and as long as it doesn't use any of my GPLd code, I can't do anything about it. This is malicious!?! The horror! Compare this to proprietary software licenses. They don't give anybody the right to redistribute or modify anything under any circumstances.
Then there's the question of whether a lawsuit against a GPL violator could actually be awarded damages. The copyright holder is not using his copyright to secure a profit for himself, and it's damage to just such a profit that's supposed to be reimbursed in a copyright suit; you're not supposed to be awarded damages just because you don't like the way the violator makes his living. The courts might very well toss out all cases as frivolous.
Why don't you go out and test this theory yourself. The Disney company no longer distributes Song of the South, and they intend to keep it that way. By their own admission, they will never again make a profit off that movie. By your reasoning, you should now be free under copyright law to take your old videotape of the show and start running off your own copies for sale. Go ahead and try it and see how far Disney makes it in court before the case is thrown out.
Remember, we're talking about copyright here, not profitright. I don't have to attempt to make a profit off my code in order to be fully protected by copyright law.
You are confusing skepticism with disinterest. I am a scientist and believe that all good scientists are also good skeptics. I reject the assertion of an objective, all-encompasing truth to the universe not because I agree with postmodernism, but because of the practical impossibilities of accumulating all of the evidence needed to formulate such a truth. This means that the universe is ultimately unknowable, not that an object truth is replacable by other subjective truths.
I completely agree that I don't get the gist of postmodernism in the sense that I don't understand what it proposes as a replacement for the ideals of the Enlightenment, but I do get the gist of its criticism of science as the prime product of the Enlightenment. Postmodernism, in general, rejects the scientific method as an acceptable method of epistemology. The deconstructionists reject the scientific method because they reject the notion of objectivity in general, and the constructivists reject it because the objective facts (which they accept as being true) are not interpreted in a social context. In other words, the experiments are fine, but the mathematical interpretation of the evidence is not. They want an additional social/relational interpretation of the evidence to make science 'truthful' in a human and moral sense. So the critisism of science in this case is not because it is essentially wrong, but because it does not go far enough -- facts cannot have meaning outside of a social context. The major problem with this is that the scientific method is not good at revealing truth about morality, ethics, or metaphysics. It does not go beyond objective, observable phenomena. Scientists understand this, but postmodernists apparently do not.
The comment about gravity was aimed at the deconstructive postmodernism and is an example from a real discussion I had with a real postmodernist several years ago. He was essentially arguing that gravity is an illusion and, in reality, is the result of the desires of a collective, social free will.
I agree that skepticism is good and that there is no one objective TRUTH (at least no objective TRUTH that humans are capable of comprehending). But this does not mean that an explanation of gravity (or quantum mechanics) in terms of the social relationships and emotions of humans is just as valid as a description based on careful experiment, observation, and mathematical analysis. Scientists do get it wrong sometimes, and old theories are updated and replaced by more comprehensive theories, but that does not mean that any theory derived by any method is as valid (and truthful) as any other theory. That is the mistake made by postmodernism. Isaac Newton wasn't wrong with his theory of gravity, he was just incomplete and did not have access to all of the evidence that Einstein had when he formulated general relativity.
Why is this important to the discussion? Because postmodernist philosophy isn't just some fringe movement. Name any social science, and you can find postmodernists practicing and influencing it. We now have postmodern psychology, postmodern sociology, and probably postmodern economics. It isn't just the 'stupid public' that has abandoned belief in objective fact, well educated academics are doing it, also. BTW -- most people are not stupid. Very few people actually believe in the kind of nonsence espoused on the show. You should also not equate lack of education (ignorance) with stupidity. Doing so reveals your own social maladjustment.
And just because credentials seem to be so important to your evaluation of any argument, let me give you mine (not that anyone should think this is at all relevant). I currently hold a BA in Philosophy and a BS in Physics. I graduated 4 years ago. I took three philosophy classes from a postmodernist and was able to reproduce the language well enough to get an 'A' in each, although I still don't know what the hell he was really talking about.