I like the game and will buy it... but I agree that the lag/player-killer combo sucks. This is especially frustrating because of two things - 1) the pks ambush you at the waypoint - the lag as the new data loads leaves you staring at a blank screen and listening to yourself get sliced up, even by a wimpy pk. If you go after your body instead of just getting it in town in a new game, and they kill you again (now that you have no armor or weapons), you drop everything and they run off with the goods. I lost a perfect rudy sword and a perfect skull helm this way (though no big deal since the chars are getting wiped). I won't be going back after my body in the same game any more. ( char name grimthork )
You certainly would have an argument that you've established the common law requirements for trademark if you have used the address in interstate commerce... so register the URL as your Mark and you may be able to prevent another's use while this all gets worked out in court - hopefully to the logical conclusion that the domain is property as described in our original contracts. I need to go back and look at the language again to really feel safe, though.
Unfortunately I think anyone who purchases under the revisions is screwed, so go to a competitor.
Interesting that this applies only to for-profit sites... the requirements for trademark anticipate money changing hands by virtue of the accumulated good-will in the Mark. The arguments for personal sites and such might be better made under personality rights - identity control. Hmmmm.
This is great... too bad it is such a struggle to get any of the information and resources accumulated with our tax dollars. Clearly there are sometimes national security interests to protect, but the degree to which the government slaps on the "classified" stamp is pathetic. Most of the concerns on/. about the govt.'s relationship to information center on the flow from the people to the govt - so seldom do we see examples of the equally important issue of openning up the government to scrutiny. It is vital to a democracy that we not only have access to resources such as these, but have access to ALL government information, so that we the people can hold the state accountable for all of its actions.
Hate to burst the bubbles out there, but try to remember that, unlike the abusive patent system we have evolved in the last few years, the concept helps the small guy market his ideas without getting crushed by the superior resources of the big guy.
Simple logic - Inventors have idea, Mega-Smarmy has cash. If I get patent protection, then at least in theory they have a window in which to develop a business shielded from the crushing overfunded predatory practices of MS.
Without patent protection, MS uses its cash to market everyone else's ideas without limit, and I gets nada.
Though the article concerns itself with commercial interests motivating this kind of tracking, and I acknowledge that Uncle Moneybags is more likely to strip away our last illusions of privacy than Big Brother, I think it important to point out that this is the logical result of massive DoS attacks as well as targeted cracks.
The Infospace is fundamentally vulnerable, and the more we come to depend on it for vital activities the more that vulnerability becomes a threat to which the citizenry demands a response. The day that Yahoo, Ebay and friends went down, everyone heard the "shot heard round the world" that was the hope of privacy and anonymity on the Internet summoning upon itself the attacks of every government.
It was inevitable. Given the ease with which any 15-year-old script kiddie can disrupt the resources of others, imagine the damage that could be caused by a determined and professional team of terrorists, extortionists and thieves.
No, I don't believe in security through obscurity, so what I see right now is a race - can we make the web secure through technology, or will it become the stomping ground of manditory constant government surveillance?
Under the plan in the article there is an opt-out potential - pay more to use an ISP that doesn't pimp out its users. Somehow I don't think the NSA has such an opt-out provision in Echelon, much less on the internet.
Since you brought up seti-at-home, what's kind of results have they been getting? Their own list of top hits is here:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/stats/gaussians.htm l
But what does that mean? How do these compare with the famous "Wow!" signal? I realize that they could just be an unfortunately sweep over a telco or broadcast source... that's why they stopped listing the top powers.
Microtransactions, privacy and the porn biz.
on
RMS On eBooks
·
· Score: 1
While we may in the minority on slashdot in believing that an artist or author should be able to charge for their work, microtransactions seems the best solution to the issue. I think you are wrong, however, that microtransactions are far off. Like so many other areas of the internet economy, internet porn sites have already made small credit-card transactions ubiquitous.
I think the greater challenge is two-fold, and subject to far greater skepticism in this forum.
1) Technological protections against violation of the transactional system - copy protection.
2) Privacy and anonymity in both the financial transaction and the IP license.
Leave it to those who slam the idea of intellectual property as at all legitimate to attack the first point. Maybe this forum has something positive to say about the second. I think this is a possible use for dual-key encryption systems as are already being discussed. Whether the license clearinghouse would be centralized or distributed will be determined by the security of the system, and the results will determine whether it will lead to a greater or lesser democratization of publication. Also subject to question is whether either type of entity will ensure the consumer's privacy, or whether they will attempt to double their money through direct marketing and consumer DB sales. Perhaps market pressure will punish those who pimp out their users, and those who respect privacy will gain market-share. Finally, will an individual's IP license portfolio ( all the IP to which they have purchased a right to listen, view, read, feel, smell, neural upload or otherwise experience or use) be subject to government subpeona, be used for high-school misfit profiling, be part of the employee background check, etc.?
Bad science when good science available...
on
Battlefield Earth
·
· Score: 1
Along these lines, here's something that bugged me about everyone's favorite movie-length music video, the Matrix - why use the battery/energy-source explanation for keeping humans around when laying on the table is a better explanation - using humans as nodes in a distributed computing net? And maybe a half-assed gesture to obeying Asimov's laws of robotics - farming humans isn't hurting humans (hehehehe). And that's not even starting in on the silliness that the AIs have to follow the physical laws inside the Matrix at all.
I guess my point is that for most people, bad science doesn't affect their impression of a movie. In Star Wars or B-Star Galactica, didn't the cool doppler-shifting whine of the fighters sweeping past give you goosebumps? Alien had it right - in space not only can no one hear you scream, no one hears anything!
A rabidly environmentalist friend back in college used this trick to protest the old type of spam, business reply cards littering the landscape:
1) Box up a cement-block.
2) Tape the "postage paid" business reply card to the box.
3) Laugh it up as you imagine the postage bill.
I guess the digital equivalent would be a DoS attack... which I DO NOT support (indeed my visceral reaction to that event calls to mind the caning of that delinquent in Singapore a few years ago). Kind of makes me think about the contradictions in my value system.
Interesting point - but not an argument to grab our ankles and take what's coming. A few years ago there was a study in which more than half of those polled identified "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" as part of the Bill of Rights, and half of the real BoR as part of either Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto.
Still, are you willing to accept the lowest common denominator as politically inevitable?
Like Adlai Stevenson said - "In a democracy, people tend to get the government they deserve."
Or P.T. Barnum - "No one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the average American."
Many (far from all) of the states have privacy protection built into their contitutions. The federal government does not. Every federal right to privacy has been judicially inferred from other rights (4th, 5th, 1st A.s in that order), and the current S.Ct. is ruled by conservatives who fundamentally disagree with that inference. In Novemebr we will pick the president who will choose the next 3 S.Ct. justices. If it is George Bush, your right to privacy will be revoked as "liberal judicial activism." If it is Gore, his administration will likely be just as intrusive, but the S.Ct. will be returned to the center and may provide some protection.
The only long term solution that would protect privacy from renewed attacks every four years, is a constitutional amendment.
We've got two contradictory values going in the recent conversations - The Bill Joy, et-al warnings about knowledge-enabled weapons a la "White Plague", PERHAPS controllable only by a draconian loss of privacy, and the habit of the government to use that intrusion to decide what we read, who we diddle, what we smoke, and all kinds of other bs.
I am starting to be convinced that 1) we can't control the unibomer's viral-pathologist copycats without giving the government powers that 2) the Ned Flanders/Pat Robertsons/George Bushs will use to crush the freedom that makes life worthwhile, totally convinced that they are doing it "for the children."
Too many shades of grey for my pea-brain on a slothful Friday afternoon. Maybe a solution to all these issues will occur to a slashdoter late tonight, after enough free beer.
For starters, I am not for complete gun control. But the old Swiss myth is not what you want to rely on. They are assigned the weapon for the period of compulsory reservist duty, then the weapon is turned back in to the government. I don't know the actual statistics on personal ownership, but the old "rabbit in every pot, and SAS in every closet" is nowhere near reality.
This is a question I have been thinking about since law school... not just for true AI, but even for simple genetic algorythms. In essence, AI creates IP (lets say a better turbine design) - under patent law the inventor is the inventor regardless of a "shop-rights" contract. The company may own the IP, but the inventor is still the AI. My patent professor's unsatisfying answer is that the first human to perceive the innovation would be the inventor under current law, even if it happens to be the janitor cleaning the monitor at night.
Here's why it is important... if as I propose the AI is acknowledged as the inventor, with an implicit transfer of patent ownership to the AI's trainer/owner/designer, then we have acknowledged that an AI has constitutional rights, which would need legal standing to be protected, which would drift into constitutional "personhood".... you can follow the bouncing ball from there.
Not that I think this is proper yet... from a practical stance constitutional rights for AI would interrupt experimentation in the field... but an interesting legal fiction that may lead to fundamental reevaluation of "personhood."
You can compile it here, or export the source and have someone compile it overseas, but you cannot export the compiled program - that is the govt.'s argument. here's a twist - can you bundle a comiler and installer so that to the end user the compiler just looks like an installer?
It looks like the govt deems the critical threshold to be compiled code: "Though deciding that the printed book chapter containing encryption code could be exported, the Export Administration stated that export of the book in electronic form would require a license if the text contained 5D002 software"
This case has simply been remanded for further proceedings. While you might like the idea that the court has declared that code can be speech, and that does have far-reaching ramifications, the critical issues have been returned to the lower court, which has been instructed in exactly how to rule for the government under current 1st amendment law:
"We recognize that national security interests can outweigh the interests of protected speech and require the regulation of speech. In the present case, the record does not resolve whether the exercise of presidential power in furtherance of national security interests should overrule the interests in allowing the free exchange of encryption source code."
It is a very high standard - but the national security exception to the 1st amendment is used as an example of limits in every 1stA. case - usually referring to the unlawful publication of troop movements in wartime. The government need not change their argument to shove this puppy way up into the dark, sticky recesses of national security.
Most large libraries have a quick binding machine to put together a year's worth of periodicals - not pretty, but functional. I used to rebind deteriorating paperbacks that way - the plastic cover has glue down the spine - the machine heats the glue and clamps the pages nice and tight - and there you have it - rebound for about $.10 worth of plastic and glue.... I'm sure a friendly librarian would do it for you.
Very good points - it seems that the arguments become generally about the IP for which we are purchasing a single, transferrable performance license. What media is the initial transfer mechanism is irrelevant - we shouldn't have one set of rights for DVD and another for VHS, right? Certainly this can be contractually differentiated, and that is their legal ground - but should it be? In broadcast cases the consumer won - that's why you can time-shift broadcast viewing by taping a show and watching it later. Remember that this was all litigated prior - NFL, etc was not all all happy with the widespread use of videotape. But broadcast has a much harder time attaching an adhesion contract to their product, which is easy with a DVD or CD - so they had no choice but accept the common law and FCC regs. A seller of a DVD can attach just about any contractual terms they want... and when a whole industry forms ranks and a united front, their is no bargaining over the terms of that contract. Just spewing thoughts...
Not the sharpest tack in the corkboard, are ya?
on
'Battling Censorware'
·
· Score: 1
So your argument is that if you buy a copy of Cryptonomicon, it is yours, right, you can copy it, chop it up, edit it, rewrite it, and distribute it w/o reference to Stephenson? Your point reduces the legitimate arguments to absurdity. We are arguing over fair use - it is fair use to play a DVD on a linux system, in my humble opinion. Having people arguing to completely undermine all IP law prevents reasonable incremental change. It is not all or nothing - we need to, with clear heads, make our points and hold the ground we can.
Notice how every example you stated was of the Catholic Church as patron? The patronage system did allow artists to work, but the artist's work was dictated by the agenda of the patron. Is this a bad thing? I don't know. But it does tell me that there are many forms of expression that are unlikely to attract a patron with the resources to give the artist the means and freedom to work.
In a way, all commercial sale of art ( including performance licensing) is distributed patronage. A million individuals might pay $10 each to support an artist, acting as patrons or consumers - same thing. Or one person may pay $1 million. Which is more likely to result in a greater variety of expression?
I went to law school out of frustration that critical decisions of technology policy were being made by luddites and morons. The discussions here on Slashdot are often better reasoned than those in my law classes (though that's a few years back.)
Though you may wish it for job security, limiting legal and policy discussions to attorneys is absurd, and reverses the intent of the implied constitutional imperitive that a lawyerly class never seize control of the system by making it impervious to the common citizen.
More lawyers should be participating on slashdot - to learn instead of dictate ill-thought legalisms. No one is foolish enough to take patent advice from slashdot - ut it is a perfect place to discuss what the patent system SHOULD be.
They have been talking about a settlement that does not include structural remedies, or cultural changes. All this leaves is open source, in which MS would keep the trademarks, siphoning off the best ideas from the open source movement for their "official" windows. What would be the best response from the open source community? Ignore them, or rape the code?
A college friend got a job this way from Geology - for his masters he wrote a program to create 3d fractal landscapes from data, and got hired to do background scenes on Mars for Total Recall. I have no idea where it went from there - hope he stayed in the fun stuff.
If everybody went nuts over Cassini having 80 pounds or so of plutonium, can you imagine the spectacle of a vehicle spitting nuclear bombs out its ass?
You're right - maybe you could get the masses to accept it as interplanetary - but no way as a lift vehicle.
Slashdot Mirror
I like the game and will buy it... but I agree that the lag/player-killer combo sucks. This is especially frustrating because of two things - 1) the pks ambush you at the waypoint - the lag as the new data loads leaves you staring at a blank screen and listening to yourself get sliced up, even by a wimpy pk. If you go after your body instead of just getting it in town in a new game, and they kill you again (now that you have no armor or weapons), you drop everything and they run off with the goods. I lost a perfect rudy sword and a perfect skull helm this way (though no big deal since the chars are getting wiped). I won't be going back after my body in the same game any more. ( char name grimthork )
You certainly would have an argument that you've established the common law requirements for trademark if you have used the address in interstate commerce... so register the URL as your Mark and you may be able to prevent another's use while this all gets worked out in court - hopefully to the logical conclusion that the domain is property as described in our original contracts. I need to go back and look at the language again to really feel safe, though.
Unfortunately I think anyone who purchases under the revisions is screwed, so go to a competitor.
Interesting that this applies only to for-profit sites... the requirements for trademark anticipate money changing hands by virtue of the accumulated good-will in the Mark. The arguments for personal sites and such might be better made under personality rights - identity control. Hmmmm.
This is great... too bad it is such a struggle to get any of the information and resources accumulated with our tax dollars. Clearly there are sometimes national security interests to protect, but the degree to which the government slaps on the "classified" stamp is pathetic. Most of the concerns on /. about the govt.'s relationship to information center on the flow from the people to the govt - so seldom do we see examples of the equally important issue of openning up the government to scrutiny. It is vital to a democracy that we not only have access to resources such as these, but have access to ALL government information, so that we the people can hold the state accountable for all of its actions.
Hate to burst the bubbles out there, but try to remember that, unlike the abusive patent system we have evolved in the last few years, the concept helps the small guy market his ideas without getting crushed by the superior resources of the big guy.
Simple logic - Inventors have idea, Mega-Smarmy has cash. If I get patent protection, then at least in theory they have a window in which to develop a business shielded from the crushing overfunded predatory practices of MS.
Without patent protection, MS uses its cash to market everyone else's ideas without limit, and I gets nada.
Though the article concerns itself with commercial interests motivating this kind of tracking, and I acknowledge that Uncle Moneybags is more likely to strip away our last illusions of privacy than Big Brother, I think it important to point out that this is the logical result of massive DoS attacks as well as targeted cracks.
The Infospace is fundamentally vulnerable, and the more we come to depend on it for vital activities the more that vulnerability becomes a threat to which the citizenry demands a response. The day that Yahoo, Ebay and friends went down, everyone heard the "shot heard round the world" that was the hope of privacy and anonymity on the Internet summoning upon itself the attacks of every government.
It was inevitable. Given the ease with which any 15-year-old script kiddie can disrupt the resources of others, imagine the damage that could be caused by a determined and professional team of terrorists, extortionists and thieves.
No, I don't believe in security through obscurity, so what I see right now is a race - can we make the web secure through technology, or will it become the stomping ground of manditory constant government surveillance?
Under the plan in the article there is an opt-out potential - pay more to use an ISP that doesn't pimp out its users. Somehow I don't think the NSA has such an opt-out provision in Echelon, much less on the internet.
Since you brought up seti-at-home, what's kind of results have they been getting? Their own list of top hits is here:
m l
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/stats/gaussians.ht
But what does that mean? How do these compare with the famous "Wow!" signal? I realize that they could just be an unfortunately sweep over a telco or broadcast source... that's why they stopped listing the top powers.
While we may in the minority on slashdot in believing that an artist or author should be able to charge for their work, microtransactions seems the best solution to the issue. I think you are wrong, however, that microtransactions are far off. Like so many other areas of the internet economy, internet porn sites have already made small credit-card transactions ubiquitous.
I think the greater challenge is two-fold, and subject to far greater skepticism in this forum.
1) Technological protections against violation of the transactional system - copy protection.
2) Privacy and anonymity in both the financial transaction and the IP license.
Leave it to those who slam the idea of intellectual property as at all legitimate to attack the first point. Maybe this forum has something positive to say about the second. I think this is a possible use for dual-key encryption systems as are already being discussed. Whether the license clearinghouse would be centralized or distributed will be determined by the security of the system, and the results will determine whether it will lead to a greater or lesser democratization of publication. Also subject to question is whether either type of entity will ensure the consumer's privacy, or whether they will attempt to double their money through direct marketing and consumer DB sales. Perhaps market pressure will punish those who pimp out their users, and those who respect privacy will gain market-share. Finally, will an individual's IP license portfolio ( all the IP to which they have purchased a right to listen, view, read, feel, smell, neural upload or otherwise experience or use) be subject to government subpeona, be used for high-school misfit profiling, be part of the employee background check, etc.?
Along these lines, here's something that bugged me about everyone's favorite movie-length music video, the Matrix - why use the battery/energy-source explanation for keeping humans around when laying on the table is a better explanation - using humans as nodes in a distributed computing net? And maybe a half-assed gesture to obeying Asimov's laws of robotics - farming humans isn't hurting humans (hehehehe). And that's not even starting in on the silliness that the AIs have to follow the physical laws inside the Matrix at all.
I guess my point is that for most people, bad science doesn't affect their impression of a movie. In Star Wars or B-Star Galactica, didn't the cool doppler-shifting whine of the fighters sweeping past give you goosebumps? Alien had it right - in space not only can no one hear you scream, no one hears anything!
A rabidly environmentalist friend back in college used this trick to protest the old type of spam, business reply cards littering the landscape:
1) Box up a cement-block.
2) Tape the "postage paid" business reply card to the box.
3) Laugh it up as you imagine the postage bill.
I guess the digital equivalent would be a DoS attack... which I DO NOT support (indeed my visceral reaction to that event calls to mind the caning of that delinquent in Singapore a few years ago). Kind of makes me think about the contradictions in my value system.
Interesting point - but not an argument to grab our ankles and take what's coming. A few years ago there was a study in which more than half of those polled identified "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" as part of the Bill of Rights, and half of the real BoR as part of either Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto.
Still, are you willing to accept the lowest common denominator as politically inevitable?
Like Adlai Stevenson said - "In a democracy, people tend to get the government they deserve."
Or P.T. Barnum - "No one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the average American."
Many (far from all) of the states have privacy protection built into their contitutions. The federal government does not. Every federal right to privacy has been judicially inferred from other rights (4th, 5th, 1st A.s in that order), and the current S.Ct. is ruled by conservatives who fundamentally disagree with that inference. In Novemebr we will pick the president who will choose the next 3 S.Ct. justices. If it is George Bush, your right to privacy will be revoked as "liberal judicial activism." If it is Gore, his administration will likely be just as intrusive, but the S.Ct. will be returned to the center and may provide some protection.
;-)
The only long term solution that would protect privacy from renewed attacks every four years, is a constitutional amendment.
Oh yea, and the Crypt
We've got two contradictory values going in the recent conversations - The Bill Joy, et-al warnings about knowledge-enabled weapons a la "White Plague", PERHAPS controllable only by a draconian loss of privacy, and the habit of the government to use that intrusion to decide what we read, who we diddle, what we smoke, and all kinds of other bs.
I am starting to be convinced that 1) we can't control the unibomer's viral-pathologist copycats without giving the government powers that 2) the Ned Flanders/Pat Robertsons/George Bushs will use to crush the freedom that makes life worthwhile, totally convinced that they are doing it "for the children."
Too many shades of grey for my pea-brain on a slothful Friday afternoon. Maybe a solution to all these issues will occur to a slashdoter late tonight, after enough free beer.
For starters, I am not for complete gun control. But the old Swiss myth is not what you want to rely on. They are assigned the weapon for the period of compulsory reservist duty, then the weapon is turned back in to the government. I don't know the actual statistics on personal ownership, but the old "rabbit in every pot, and SAS in every closet" is nowhere near reality.
This is a question I have been thinking about since law school... not just for true AI, but even for simple genetic algorythms. In essence, AI creates IP (lets say a better turbine design) - under patent law the inventor is the inventor regardless of a "shop-rights" contract. The company may own the IP, but the inventor is still the AI. My patent professor's unsatisfying answer is that the first human to perceive the innovation would be the inventor under current law, even if it happens to be the janitor cleaning the monitor at night.
Here's why it is important... if as I propose the AI is acknowledged as the inventor, with an implicit transfer of patent ownership to the AI's trainer/owner/designer, then we have acknowledged that an AI has constitutional rights, which would need legal standing to be protected, which would drift into constitutional "personhood".... you can follow the bouncing ball from there.
Not that I think this is proper yet... from a practical stance constitutional rights for AI would interrupt experimentation in the field... but an interesting legal fiction that may lead to fundamental reevaluation of "personhood."
You can compile it here, or export the source and have someone compile it overseas, but you cannot export the compiled program - that is the govt.'s argument. here's a twist - can you bundle a comiler and installer so that to the end user the compiler just looks like an installer?
It looks like the govt deems the critical threshold to be compiled code: "Though deciding that the printed book chapter containing encryption code could be exported, the Export Administration stated that export of the book in electronic form would require a license if the text contained 5D002 software"
This case has simply been remanded for further proceedings. While you might like the idea that the court has declared that code can be speech, and that does have far-reaching ramifications, the critical issues have been returned to the lower court, which has been instructed in exactly how to rule for the government under current 1st amendment law:
"We recognize that national security interests can outweigh the interests of protected speech and require the regulation of speech. In the present case, the record does not resolve whether the exercise of presidential power in furtherance of national security interests should overrule the interests in allowing the free exchange of encryption source code."
It is a very high standard - but the national security exception to the 1st amendment is used as an example of limits in every 1stA. case - usually referring to the unlawful publication of troop movements in wartime. The government need not change their argument to shove this puppy way up into the dark, sticky recesses of national security.
Most large libraries have a quick binding machine to put together a year's worth of periodicals - not pretty, but functional. I used to rebind deteriorating paperbacks that way - the plastic cover has glue down the spine - the machine heats the glue and clamps the pages nice and tight - and there you have it - rebound for about $.10 worth of plastic and glue.... I'm sure a friendly librarian would do it for you.
Very good points - it seems that the arguments become generally about the IP for which we are purchasing a single, transferrable performance license. What media is the initial transfer mechanism is irrelevant - we shouldn't have one set of rights for DVD and another for VHS, right? Certainly this can be contractually differentiated, and that is their legal ground - but should it be? In broadcast cases the consumer won - that's why you can time-shift broadcast viewing by taping a show and watching it later. Remember that this was all litigated prior - NFL, etc was not all all happy with the widespread use of videotape. But broadcast has a much harder time attaching an adhesion contract to their product, which is easy with a DVD or CD - so they had no choice but accept the common law and FCC regs. A seller of a DVD can attach just about any contractual terms they want... and when a whole industry forms ranks and a united front, their is no bargaining over the terms of that contract. Just spewing thoughts...
So your argument is that if you buy a copy of Cryptonomicon, it is yours, right, you can copy it, chop it up, edit it, rewrite it, and distribute it w/o reference to Stephenson? Your point reduces the legitimate arguments to absurdity. We are arguing over fair use - it is fair use to play a DVD on a linux system, in my humble opinion. Having people arguing to completely undermine all IP law prevents reasonable incremental change. It is not all or nothing - we need to, with clear heads, make our points and hold the ground we can.
Notice how every example you stated was of the Catholic Church as patron? The patronage system did allow artists to work, but the artist's work was dictated by the agenda of the patron. Is this a bad thing? I don't know. But it does tell me that there are many forms of expression that are unlikely to attract a patron with the resources to give the artist the means and freedom to work.
In a way, all commercial sale of art ( including performance licensing) is distributed patronage. A million individuals might pay $10 each to support an artist, acting as patrons or consumers - same thing. Or one person may pay $1 million. Which is more likely to result in a greater variety of expression?
I went to law school out of frustration that critical decisions of technology policy were being made by luddites and morons. The discussions here on Slashdot are often better reasoned than those in my law classes (though that's a few years back.)
Though you may wish it for job security, limiting legal and policy discussions to attorneys is absurd, and reverses the intent of the implied constitutional imperitive that a lawyerly class never seize control of the system by making it impervious to the common citizen.
More lawyers should be participating on slashdot - to learn instead of dictate ill-thought legalisms. No one is foolish enough to take patent advice from slashdot - ut it is a perfect place to discuss what the patent system SHOULD be.
They have been talking about a settlement that does not include structural remedies, or cultural changes. All this leaves is open source, in which MS would keep the trademarks, siphoning off the best ideas from the open source movement for their "official" windows. What would be the best response from the open source community? Ignore them, or rape the code?
A college friend got a job this way from Geology - for his masters he wrote a program to create 3d fractal landscapes from data, and got hired to do background scenes on Mars for Total Recall. I have no idea where it went from there - hope he stayed in the fun stuff.
If everybody went nuts over Cassini having 80 pounds or so of plutonium, can you imagine the spectacle of a vehicle spitting nuclear bombs out its ass?
You're right - maybe you could get the masses to accept it as interplanetary - but no way as a lift vehicle.