Actually, if you're an American citizen, then it may be illegal for you to buy drugs in Holland (I'm not saying it is, but I know there are laws which prohibit certain activities abroad by U.S. citizens). On the other hand, the person who sold the drugs to you would have no legal liability whatsoever (unless, of course, there is a law in Holland saying you can't sell to Americans, yada, yada). This same principal applies to the Yahoo case. It may be illegal for a French citizen to buy Nazi memorabilia, even if no part of the transaction occurs in France, but that doesn't mean that Yahoo has any liability for selling it to them.
Personally, I think that there has been a fundamental change in the marketplace during the last three years that Microsoft didn't anticipate. Three years ago, they were trying to figure out the best way to protect their interests from the likes of Linux and the rest of OSS. However, while they were concentrating on the external enemy, they missed the internal one. With Windows and Office 2K, Microsoft developed a product that is good enough for most people. That, combined with the subsequent major falloff in PC sales that accompanied the tech bust, meant that people had no reason to buy their software in the huge numbers they had previously been buying them in, and they certainly didn't see much need for further updates. Why pay for more software when what you have works. I would argue that OSS software is superior in most ways to CSS, but the simple fact is that most of Microsofts recent sales falloffs have not been attributable to OSS. Rather, we are seeing a general falloff in sales, mostly due to the fact that people don't need to buy more MS software. Thus, we have seen many of the recent (scared sh*tless) tactics that MS has been using. I'm sure Linux is still on Microsofts radar, but their real worry right now is how to get people to pay for something they really don't want or need, because their current business model is unsustainable long term. Therefore, they are making stupid moves that just serve to make people mad (licensing, Passport, copy protection). This is both good and bad news for Linux. It's good news because Linux has an opportunity to move in and usurp the reigning king. On the other hand, it could be very dangerous for OSS in general. There are few things deadlier than a cornered animal, and right now Microsoft has been backed into a pretty tight corner.
I forgot one thing: when you point out exponential growth of population, you should remember that population growth tends to be inversely proportional to national wealth. As countries increase their wealth, they will start to have fewer and fewer babies.
You are absolutely right. There are most certainly not enough raw materials on the Earth to produce all of the things you list given current technology. You make the mistake, though, of assuming that things will remain static. They won't, though. We will continue to come up with more and more ways to get more out of what we already have, as well as completely new ways to produce goods (i.e. large scale miniaturization, deep space mining, nuclear fission, etc.).
The pie is not unlimited, but neither is it static. Every time someone improves efficiency, or taps a new resource, they have effected a net increase in the world's total wealth. There will always be naysayers who claim that we've reached our cap, and that no more wealth can possibly be generated (or at least not enough). On the other hand, there are also always people who claim that Moore's law is on the edge of failure because we've reached the limit of technology. I remember reading a few years ago that we were probably going to cap out in 2005 around 1.2-1.3 GHz. Oops. Remember, too, that in the 1890's (or sometime close to that), the head of the U.S. Patent Office resigned because everything that could be invented had been invented, and we all know how wrong he was.
There are extremely poor people in the world, and they do have an extremely tough road ahead of them. As the lucky few who are benefitting from the fact that our ancestors already went through the pain of progress, we should do everything possible to help them through that process, and to save them as much pain as we can. Giving them our wealth won't do it though. It's the old adage about giving a man a fish, versus teaching him how to fish. Instead of giving away our wealth, we should teach the rest of the world how to generate their own. That way, they can rise above the leaches like Nike, rather than falling back to the days before Nike showed up.
Along the same lines, what about those actors/actresses who are no longer able to make known their opinions. It seems somehow wrong to me to exploit the memory of dead actors and actresses in order to sell a product, when they were never consulted about supporting that product while they were still alive.
You're making the mistake of assuming that RMS's interpretation of the code is correct, and SloMedia's is incorrect. Certainly RMS's interpretation is that which was intended, but it will be up to the courts to decide which one is legally correct based only on the wording of the GPL, and not on RMS's opinion.
My guess is that the courts will (assuming they rule in favor of the GPL) tell SloMedia that they either have to remove the code immediately or bring themselves into compliance with the license. I seriously doubt they will attempt to force SloMedia to open up their own source regardless of what they do to remedy the problem.
All this really does is shield the shareholders from complete responsibility for the actions of a corportation they own stock in. The people who work for a company are still responsible for their own actions. To use the example of another respondent to this post, if a corporation goes out and gasses a village somewhere, then the stockholders have no personal responsibility, but the corporate employees who made the decision to perform the gassing, and the employees who carried it out will still go to jail for a long time. People on Slashdot seem to forget sometimes that corporations are run by real people who are expected by society and the law to make ethical decisions, even if an unethical decision could be more profitable. Of course, those people too often fail to make the proper ethical decision, and quite often get caught up in the blind quest for money and power at all costs. Then again, so do people in government, and at least corporations have less direct power over our lives than the government does (although, if many in government get their way, corporations will have a lot more power than they should).
In a way, though, I think you just agreed with his statement by saying that you pick one method of doing things and stick to it. It's been a while since I've read the book, but if I remember right his point is more that you should be able to do the same thing the same way, every time you do it. Not that you should never have a choice of which way to do it.
That may be all well and good right now, but what happens when the laws change? What happens when something you do becomes illegal? For instance, what if the government decided to round up everyone who had just attended a particular religious service (or to round up everyone who wasn't currently attending a particular religious service)?
Did anyone else notice that up through the early nineties (Sneakers), there isn't a bad movie on the list, but in the past eight years the only good movie to make the list was Matrix.
There are a couple of problems with this argument, that you may or may not be aware of as a non-US citizen.
1) The first is practical. Under the U.S. Constitution, the government is Forbidden from infringing on certain human rights. The U.S. Constitution is not a guidline. It is absolute law, and changing it is purposefully extremely difficult.
2) The second problem is more philosophical. The founders of the U.S. believed in the idea that there are certain human rights that exist in nature, regardless of politics or social structure. One of those rights is the right for a human being to make his/her views public. Governments do not have a right to infringe on this. To ensure that the U.S. government would not infringe on this (and other) human rights, the founders of the U.S. put into our constitution a legal clause called the Bill of Rights, which forbids infringement. The Bill of Rights does not grant people rights, it only protects rights which already exist. Rights are also not contradictory as you proposed. I have a right to speech, and you have a right to life (and vice versa). I cannot through exercising my right to speech take away your right to live. Only by physically picking up a gun and shooting you do I have the ability to take away your life. For this reason, I don't have a right to shoot you.
Does anyone else find it slightly disturbing that the operating system has built into it the ability to purchase cds from windowsmedia.com? It seems like it's IE all over again, although this time I would say it is even worse. Does anyone out there know if that is a customizable list of web links, or if the OS is permanently configured to allow you to purchase easily from windowsmedia.com, and only from windowsmedia.com?
Unless you slandered them or broke an NDA/noncompete, then they don't have much in the way of legal or ethical recourse. However, based on what you've said here about why you quit, I wouldn't count on them being ethical. They probably can't sue you, but that won't stop them from talking to your current employer and saying things that could get you fired. Assuming that you have a decent relation with your current boss, it might be a good idea to go talk to him/her preemptively and explain your side of the story. That way, if you ex-company calls, your boss will be on your side.
The problem with your argument that people would sit on a product/service which would be profitable in the short term in order to protect long term profits is that most short term profit opportunities that have the potential to wipe out an existing industry, are extremely profitable. That means that the person/company who develops it will be extremely wealthy after the short term profits dry up. Since most established industries only make normal profits, this is a good deal for the short term profiteer. For your argument to hold, you are implying that the average corporate critter would sacrifice his/her own profits in order to ensure long term profits for his/her peers. Personally, I am too cynical to believe that one.
Whether or not "good scientists" are in it for the money or not depends on how you define "good". Just because a scientist agrees with your moral view of "good science", doesn't make him/her talented. Sure, there are a lot of scientists with no drive to see big profits working for the betterment of humanity. And I comend them for the effort. There are just as many (if not more), who are doing research, not just because they see it as a noble cause, but also because they hope to find something which will allow them to make a profit, by which they can not only feed their families, but can provide said families with a better life. It's not that they don't care about the people they are trying to help, but that they also care about the quality of life of both themselves and their family, and if there were no profit in the research they would find a field where they could be profitable. Then, since it is completely impossible to force someone to do brilliant research, we would lose their potential contribution to society.
I actually found this Emperor to be less annoying than Lynch's Emperor. That said, I agree that he looked like he was pulled out of a bad 50's era sci-fi (as opposed to SF) movie. I could have sworn that the sequined costume he wore on Geidi Prime was the same one Ed Wood used for the aliens in Plan Nine From Outer Space. Why is it that no one seems to be able to acuately depict the Emperor from the book?
My biggest complaint with the movie was that you really need to have read the book to really understand the movie. Otherwise, large parts of it are just going to make no sense. Of course, I think someone has more of a chance of understanding this one than they do of understanding the David Lynch movie. Overall, though, it was pretty okay, but not great. Reasonably true to the book. I'm definately looking forward to seeing Dune Messiah and Children of Dune.
What we need is for more people to know about the issues involved here. It's fine to keep discussing things like this, or DeCSS, or the DMCA here on slashdot, but everyone on slashdot already knows about it. Everyone on slashdot is also a fairly small minority. Tech people in general are still really a fairly small minority. When I mention the DMCA to my non-technical friends, they don't have a clue what I'm talking about. On the other hand, most people I talk to know about the CDA. The CDA also isn't around anymore. I think that's it's time to start a campaign similiar to the blue ribbon campaign that I'm sure everyone here is familiar with. We need a distinctive logo and a web page for it to link to. I'm not sure, but there may already be a suitable web page out there that discusses the issues in a straightforward manner. I would do this myself, but I unfortunately don't have the time. Therefore, I am tossing it out into the slashdot community. Let's get a logo out there that people see on every other web page they visit. Then maybe the powers that be will start taking notice.
Poland was an independent nation with a substandard military force that could not stand up to the overwhelming force of the German military. A more appropriate response would be "German Jews fight back with handguns as German soldiers attempt to pack them into cargo trains and ship them off to concentration camps to be gassed." One of the first things that Hitler did was to confiscate private guns.
So, do you actually have evidence to back up this claim. Charging a company with using slave labor (as opposed to simply paying rediculously low wages) is a pretty serious charge. Slave labor is illegal in almost every country in the world, and against all kinds of international law. Even China won't admit to actually using slave labor, and iirc it is technically illegal even there. I seriously doubt that Lucent Technologies actually had their shareholders vote on whether or not to continue using slave labor (and if they did, I'd be really surprised if it went through). If you do have evidence, please provide a link. I'm sure there are lots of people here on slashdot who'd really like to see that. If you don't have evidence, please stop slandering innocent corporations simply to make a point.
Right now, telephone calls can be traced. Everyone knows that and few people have a major problem with the fact. The reason, of course, is that phone calls have never been anonymous, and so people got used to the idea. At the same time, however, the government cannot legally listen to those conversations, or even peruse the list of people you called without a court order. I think the same thing can be applied to the internet. A protocol in which people are not able to spoof ip's would be a good thing, as long as a persons privacy is legally respected. The FBI should not be able to legally watch all packets that cross the internet for something they find suspicious. They should also not be able to keep an archive of all of the information that gets transfered on the internet. With proper warrants, though, the technology should be there to allow the tracing of a packet back to its source.
Slashdot Mirror
In short, globalization is...
Actually, if you're an American citizen, then it may be illegal for you to buy drugs in Holland (I'm not saying it is, but I know there are laws which prohibit certain activities abroad by U.S. citizens). On the other hand, the person who sold the drugs to you would have no legal liability whatsoever (unless, of course, there is a law in Holland saying you can't sell to Americans, yada, yada). This same principal applies to the Yahoo case. It may be illegal for a French citizen to buy Nazi memorabilia, even if no part of the transaction occurs in France, but that doesn't mean that Yahoo has any liability for selling it to them.
Personally, I think that there has been a fundamental change in the marketplace during the last three years that Microsoft didn't anticipate. Three years ago, they were trying to figure out the best way to protect their interests from the likes of Linux and the rest of OSS. However, while they were concentrating on the external enemy, they missed the internal one. With Windows and Office 2K, Microsoft developed a product that is good enough for most people. That, combined with the subsequent major falloff in PC sales that accompanied the tech bust, meant that people had no reason to buy their software in the huge numbers they had previously been buying them in, and they certainly didn't see much need for further updates. Why pay for more software when what you have works. I would argue that OSS software is superior in most ways to CSS, but the simple fact is that most of Microsofts recent sales falloffs have not been attributable to OSS. Rather, we are seeing a general falloff in sales, mostly due to the fact that people don't need to buy more MS software. Thus, we have seen many of the recent (scared sh*tless) tactics that MS has been using. I'm sure Linux is still on Microsofts radar, but their real worry right now is how to get people to pay for something they really don't want or need, because their current business model is unsustainable long term. Therefore, they are making stupid moves that just serve to make people mad (licensing, Passport, copy protection). This is both good and bad news for Linux. It's good news because Linux has an opportunity to move in and usurp the reigning king. On the other hand, it could be very dangerous for OSS in general. There are few things deadlier than a cornered animal, and right now Microsoft has been backed into a pretty tight corner.
I forgot one thing: when you point out exponential growth of population, you should remember that population growth tends to be inversely proportional to national wealth. As countries increase their wealth, they will start to have fewer and fewer babies.
You are absolutely right. There are most certainly not enough raw materials on the Earth to produce all of the things you list given current technology. You make the mistake, though, of assuming that things will remain static. They won't, though. We will continue to come up with more and more ways to get more out of what we already have, as well as completely new ways to produce goods (i.e. large scale miniaturization, deep space mining, nuclear fission, etc.).
The pie is not unlimited, but neither is it static. Every time someone improves efficiency, or taps a new resource, they have effected a net increase in the world's total wealth. There will always be naysayers who claim that we've reached our cap, and that no more wealth can possibly be generated (or at least not enough). On the other hand, there are also always people who claim that Moore's law is on the edge of failure because we've reached the limit of technology. I remember reading a few years ago that we were probably going to cap out in 2005 around 1.2-1.3 GHz. Oops. Remember, too, that in the 1890's (or sometime close to that), the head of the U.S. Patent Office resigned because everything that could be invented had been invented, and we all know how wrong he was.
There are extremely poor people in the world, and they do have an extremely tough road ahead of them. As the lucky few who are benefitting from the fact that our ancestors already went through the pain of progress, we should do everything possible to help them through that process, and to save them as much pain as we can. Giving them our wealth won't do it though. It's the old adage about giving a man a fish, versus teaching him how to fish. Instead of giving away our wealth, we should teach the rest of the world how to generate their own. That way, they can rise above the leaches like Nike, rather than falling back to the days before Nike showed up.
Along the same lines, what about those actors/actresses who are no longer able to make known their opinions. It seems somehow wrong to me to exploit the memory of dead actors and actresses in order to sell a product, when they were never consulted about supporting that product while they were still alive.
You're making the mistake of assuming that RMS's interpretation of the code is correct, and SloMedia's is incorrect. Certainly RMS's interpretation is that which was intended, but it will be up to the courts to decide which one is legally correct based only on the wording of the GPL, and not on RMS's opinion.
My guess is that the courts will (assuming they rule in favor of the GPL) tell SloMedia that they either have to remove the code immediately or bring themselves into compliance with the license. I seriously doubt they will attempt to force SloMedia to open up their own source regardless of what they do to remedy the problem.
All this really does is shield the shareholders from complete responsibility for the actions of a corportation they own stock in. The people who work for a company are still responsible for their own actions. To use the example of another respondent to this post, if a corporation goes out and gasses a village somewhere, then the stockholders have no personal responsibility, but the corporate employees who made the decision to perform the gassing, and the employees who carried it out will still go to jail for a long time. People on Slashdot seem to forget sometimes that corporations are run by real people who are expected by society and the law to make ethical decisions, even if an unethical decision could be more profitable. Of course, those people too often fail to make the proper ethical decision, and quite often get caught up in the blind quest for money and power at all costs. Then again, so do people in government, and at least corporations have less direct power over our lives than the government does (although, if many in government get their way, corporations will have a lot more power than they should).
In a way, though, I think you just agreed with his statement by saying that you pick one method of doing things and stick to it. It's been a while since I've read the book, but if I remember right his point is more that you should be able to do the same thing the same way, every time you do it. Not that you should never have a choice of which way to do it.
Actually, at least in the U.S., the law was changed about ten years ago so that works are automatically copywrited, whether they say it or not.
That may be all well and good right now, but what happens when the laws change? What happens when something you do becomes illegal? For instance, what if the government decided to round up everyone who had just attended a particular religious service (or to round up everyone who wasn't currently attending a particular religious service)?
Did anyone else notice that up through the early nineties (Sneakers), there isn't a bad movie on the list, but in the past eight years the only good movie to make the list was Matrix.
There are a couple of problems with this argument, that you may or may not be aware of as a non-US citizen.
1) The first is practical. Under the U.S. Constitution, the government is Forbidden from infringing on certain human rights. The U.S. Constitution is not a guidline. It is absolute law, and changing it is purposefully extremely difficult.
2) The second problem is more philosophical. The founders of the U.S. believed in the idea that there are certain human rights that exist in nature, regardless of politics or social structure. One of those rights is the right for a human being to make his/her views public. Governments do not have a right to infringe on this. To ensure that the U.S. government would not infringe on this (and other) human rights, the founders of the U.S. put into our constitution a legal clause called the Bill of Rights, which forbids infringement. The Bill of Rights does not grant people rights, it only protects rights which already exist. Rights are also not contradictory as you proposed. I have a right to speech, and you have a right to life (and vice versa). I cannot through exercising my right to speech take away your right to live. Only by physically picking up a gun and shooting you do I have the ability to take away your life. For this reason, I don't have a right to shoot you.
Does anyone else find it slightly disturbing that the operating system has built into it the ability to purchase cds from windowsmedia.com? It seems like it's IE all over again, although this time I would say it is even worse. Does anyone out there know if that is a customizable list of web links, or if the OS is permanently configured to allow you to purchase easily from windowsmedia.com, and only from windowsmedia.com?
Standard Disclaimer ==> IANAL
Unless you slandered them or broke an NDA/noncompete, then they don't have much in the way of legal or ethical recourse. However, based on what you've said here about why you quit, I wouldn't count on them being ethical. They probably can't sue you, but that won't stop them from talking to your current employer and saying things that could get you fired. Assuming that you have a decent relation with your current boss, it might be a good idea to go talk to him/her preemptively and explain your side of the story. That way, if you ex-company calls, your boss will be on your side.
The problem with your argument that people would sit on a product/service which would be profitable in the short term in order to protect long term profits is that most short term profit opportunities that have the potential to wipe out an existing industry, are extremely profitable. That means that the person/company who develops it will be extremely wealthy after the short term profits dry up. Since most established industries only make normal profits, this is a good deal for the short term profiteer. For your argument to hold, you are implying that the average corporate critter would sacrifice his/her own profits in order to ensure long term profits for his/her peers. Personally, I am too cynical to believe that one.
Whether or not "good scientists" are in it for the money or not depends on how you define "good". Just because a scientist agrees with your moral view of "good science", doesn't make him/her talented. Sure, there are a lot of scientists with no drive to see big profits working for the betterment of humanity. And I comend them for the effort. There are just as many (if not more), who are doing research, not just because they see it as a noble cause, but also because they hope to find something which will allow them to make a profit, by which they can not only feed their families, but can provide said families with a better life. It's not that they don't care about the people they are trying to help, but that they also care about the quality of life of both themselves and their family, and if there were no profit in the research they would find a field where they could be profitable. Then, since it is completely impossible to force someone to do brilliant research, we would lose their potential contribution to society.
I actually found this Emperor to be less annoying than Lynch's Emperor. That said, I agree that he looked like he was pulled out of a bad 50's era sci-fi (as opposed to SF) movie. I could have sworn that the sequined costume he wore on Geidi Prime was the same one Ed Wood used for the aliens in Plan Nine From Outer Space. Why is it that no one seems to be able to acuately depict the Emperor from the book?
My biggest complaint with the movie was that you really need to have read the book to really understand the movie. Otherwise, large parts of it are just going to make no sense. Of course, I think someone has more of a chance of understanding this one than they do of understanding the David Lynch movie. Overall, though, it was pretty okay, but not great. Reasonably true to the book. I'm definately looking forward to seeing Dune Messiah and Children of Dune.
What we need is for more people to know about the issues involved here. It's fine to keep discussing things like this, or DeCSS, or the DMCA here on slashdot, but everyone on slashdot already knows about it. Everyone on slashdot is also a fairly small minority. Tech people in general are still really a fairly small minority. When I mention the DMCA to my non-technical friends, they don't have a clue what I'm talking about. On the other hand, most people I talk to know about the CDA. The CDA also isn't around anymore. I think that's it's time to start a campaign similiar to the blue ribbon campaign that I'm sure everyone here is familiar with. We need a distinctive logo and a web page for it to link to. I'm not sure, but there may already be a suitable web page out there that discusses the issues in a straightforward manner. I would do this myself, but I unfortunately don't have the time. Therefore, I am tossing it out into the slashdot community. Let's get a logo out there that people see on every other web page they visit. Then maybe the powers that be will start taking notice.
Poland was an independent nation with a substandard military force that could not stand up to the overwhelming force of the German military. A more appropriate response would be "German Jews fight back with handguns as German soldiers attempt to pack them into cargo trains and ship them off to concentration camps to be gassed." One of the first things that Hitler did was to confiscate private guns.
But we _do not_ make it illegal for people to discuss kiddie porn.
So, do you actually have evidence to back up this claim. Charging a company with using slave labor (as opposed to simply paying rediculously low wages) is a pretty serious charge. Slave labor is illegal in almost every country in the world, and against all kinds of international law. Even China won't admit to actually using slave labor, and iirc it is technically illegal even there. I seriously doubt that Lucent Technologies actually had their shareholders vote on whether or not to continue using slave labor (and if they did, I'd be really surprised if it went through). If you do have evidence, please provide a link. I'm sure there are lots of people here on slashdot who'd really like to see that. If you don't have evidence, please stop slandering innocent corporations simply to make a point.
Right now, telephone calls can be traced. Everyone knows that and few people have a major problem with the fact. The reason, of course, is that phone calls have never been anonymous, and so people got used to the idea. At the same time, however, the government cannot legally listen to those conversations, or even peruse the list of people you called without a court order. I think the same thing can be applied to the internet. A protocol in which people are not able to spoof ip's would be a good thing, as long as a persons privacy is legally respected. The FBI should not be able to legally watch all packets that cross the internet for something they find suspicious. They should also not be able to keep an archive of all of the information that gets transfered on the internet. With proper warrants, though, the technology should be there to allow the tracing of a packet back to its source.