Re #3: I am using VNC to connect to my home computer right now, and sending and recieving e-mail through it. A little while ago, I clicked on a link in my e-mail and found myself surfing the web from my home computer from my office. For all I know, my wife could be playing games on that same computer as we speak. It's not an issue with my ISP - WTF do they think I'm doing with a/29 if not connecting multiple computers? - but it's a simple explanation anyone can use. Another scenario might be a multi-headed box, with one person logged in on one keyboard/mouse/monitor and another on the other set.
On the other hand, if someone was willing to set up a municiple ISP as a not-for-profit, they may be able to do well at it.
Caveat emptor. I live in a community with a local non-profit ISP. I want to love them, really I do. It's a great idea. Somehow, though, it's also the most expensive ISP in town for the services it offers. The rates look cheap until you look at what you're getting. I don't know why this would be the case, but it is. Until I knew why, I wouldn't try to set up a non-profit community ISP.
I've tried all sorts of file managers on all sorts of systems, and I find anything that doesn't display a file path or a folder tree confusing. The "spatial" file managers completely fail to convey the idea that one "open" folder may be *inside* another. A folder called "Amy" inside one named "family" is completely different from a folder called "Amy" inside one named "College friends", and if I blithely drop a copy of a letter I just wrote into one because it's open and the title bar says "Amy", I may never find it again.
I don't memorize file paths, either. I use tab completion to look around inside directories, and it's a fact that I can find a file whose name and location I don't know in my home directory faster with Bash than with any graphical file manager.
That said, I also find it easier to think about re-arranging files using a graphical manager - but not the "spatial" systems the author describes. Two windows, each with a pane for the folder tree and a pane for the selected folder's contents.
I don't own a home - I get home related junk mail. I don't have a baby - I get baby related junk mail. I have a degree - I get junk mail from third-rate schools.
Somehow, I don't think that the cost is making them target very carefully. Heck, I get more junk mail printed on paper and sent through the US postal service than I do at all dozen or so e-mail addresses, and that includes the ones published in WHOIS records for my domains.
I looked at Fairtunes a while ago. I liked the idea. However, there is one problem. If I use Fairtunes to pay the artists whose music I listen to, I am more or less admitting that I didn't obtain the music through legal channels. The bands might not care (Hole, to pick an extreme example), but their lables probably do. In fact, AFAIK, I have no music that is not legally obtained, but that's not going to save me from a costly bettle with record lables and scared ISPs if someone decides to use Fairtunes' records to track down 'pirates'.
I don't know anything about Dutch, but if you look at the names of the algorythm's creators, Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen, it appears that the name Rijndael is a loose combination of their surnames, not an actual Dutch word. If I'm not mistaken, the proposed pronunciations on the NIST web site are in fact proposed by the authors themselves for a word they invented. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I read exactly this in documentation on the NIST web site a month or more ago.
>>Intellectual-property owners don't have a
>>fundamental natural-law right to restrict the
>>copying of their intellectual property.
>
>and
>
>>There is no right to steal others' IP.
>
>Which is it?
Actually, there isn't a contradiction here, though it certainly is confusing. The orriginal poster is referring to a concept in the philosophy of law in which it is believed that there is a set of freedoms so fundamental that all people should enjoy them. Not everything one has a right to under this so-called "natural law" is necessarily reflected in human legal systems, and there isn't any guarantee that natural law addresses all subjects. The orriginal post is simply asserting that "rights" in this sense do not apply.
Another use often made of the word "rights" is to speak of freedoms fundamentally guaranteed by the constitution of a country, generally, at least in my experience, the US of A. ('course, that's where I live, and we *do* have a tendency to forget that the rest of the world exists.) In the US, there clearly *isn't* any right to intilectual property. The constitution simply permits congress to make such IP laws as it deems fit. Conversely, since the congress is allowed to make IP laws, there isn't any legal right, here, to use other peoples' IP.
There is also an important distinction to be made between ethical and economic justification of intilectual property. It seems clear to me that there is no economic justification - the marginal cost of a copy of a piece of software is entirely in the overhead of maintaining a high-bendwidth network. Once the bandwidth is there, it costs the same whether it is active or idly sending null-padded frames because you don't have anything to transfer.
The ethical argument is less clear to me. Certainly, people who contribute new ideas, tools, and art deserve to be compensated for their efforts, if for no other reason that we'd all rather have them spend their time benefiting society that way than just trying to keep bread on the table. On the other hand, derivative works are the essence of progress. If it weren't for derivative works bulding upon eachother over the centuries, we'd still be a race of hunter-getherers, and probably not even much good at that. It seems to me immoral to refuse others permission to create coppies of my contributions to society and to create their own derivative works. For that reason, I license any code I write under the GPL unless otherwise compelled by someone who is paying me to write the code. Even then, I try. Personally, I think I should be paid for the effort of creating the software, not for the number of coppies of it that get made.
Despite the orriginal poster's claim that freedom of expression is entirely separate, I must disagree. Any technological solution to copy protection, were it to exist, would also have the effect of restricting the same data copying and transmission technologies that are essential for free speech to be effective.
I don't pirate software. I don't have any music on my computer that I believe to be illegal. I do have mp3s of a large segment of my own CD collection, which I find useful despite the fact that sitting here at my computer I am not ten feet from a 160-watt stereo with a 3-cd changer, and I only use them in ways that I believe to be legal under fair use. I would nonetheless be quite upset if I were unable to make those coppies to my hard drive, which enable me, among other things, to put together my own playlists with more freedom than the 3-disc carosel allows and to listen to my music collection in a friend's room across campus without having to cary the crates full of disks over first.
I just called CRC to complain about this move. After moving through a couple levels of management, I was assured that MathWorld's absence is only temporary, and that the issues will be resolved within a couple of weeks. If enough of us complain, CRC may feel more pressure to be reasonable.
I encourage others to call, too. The phone number above is toll-free in the US, and if we slashdot their phones with complaints, maybe the company will learn something. I know that CRC has spent many dollars of postage advertising to me by direct mail this semester, and I suspect I'm not alone amongst Slashdot readers. Let's politely raise their awareness that such things are a bad idea.
Remember, the person you are talking to did not personally decide to sue Eric/Wolfram. Be nice, and they'll be more willing to complain to higher-level managers for you;)
other phone numbers for CRC:
US/Canada: 1(800)272-7737
Europe, Middle East, and Africa: 44-1462-488900
India, Asia, South America, and Australia: (561)994-0555
And let's not forget that Gnutella allows all kinds of information to be spread across the Internet. Not only illegal MP3s, but other illegal and immoral content - pornography, terrorist manifestos, race-hate propaganda and anti-Christian bigotry. How are we supposed to eradicate these blights when they are available over a distributed network of servers which is practically impossible to shut down? -Anonymous Coward
I would like to point out that such "immoral content" is also often protected free speech, at least in the US. Whether AC lives there, or in another nation with reasonable protections for speech, or someplace completely different, the principles remain true. I'm no more thrilled than the next person by bigotry, hate propaganda, terrorism, or porn. However, like many people, I place a high value on my freedom to speak, and I recognize that I only have such a freedom when it is granted to those who may disagree with me. More than likely, Anonymous Coward and I disagree on a great many things. Quite possibly, I think many of AC's positions are dangerous or immoral, because like most people we probably have different value systems. Despite any such disagreement, I would be willing to defend AC's right to give voice to his positions.
If AC wishes to "eradicate these blights", then the best weapon at his disposal is, quite simply, to exercise his freedom of speech against them. Hate won't go away just because we forbid people to speak of it, but if we can show that the hate is unfounded we might get somewhere. Christians, or other groups, aren't going to make the rest of us like them any better by telling us we can't express opinions and beliefs that they may find immoral, though they might convince us we were wrong if they argued well. (No, I don't dislike Christians. In fact, some of my best friends feel called to the ministry in Christian denominations.) Terrorists aren't going to go away because they can't speak. The nature of terrorism creates an audience for what the terrorists have to say. Content that is already illegal is just that - already illegal.
To my eye, Gnutella is nothing more or less than a tool to facilitate the exercise of two cherished American freedoms - the right to free speech, and the right to free assembly. All the more so precisely because it allows the transfer of more than just one type of data. Such software enables people to describe what they are offering to say to the world, and to find other people who have something to say which interests them. It then creates a channel over which two parties can communicate, and exchanges information that both parties have expressed a desire to exchange. If that communication is illegal in content, it is no more the fault of the tool than it would be the fault of my computer if I were to post a libelous web site. We do not forbid pen and paper, nor the printing press, simply because they can serve as a vehicle libel, plagiarism, harassment, criminal threatening, conspiracy, or a host of other undesirable or immoral activities. Neither should we forbid the use or creation of other communications technologies simply because they can be put to illegal uses. If Gnutella is designed to give me a printing press that nobody can dismantle or take away, so much the better.
Slashdot Mirror
Re #3: I am using VNC to connect to my home computer right now, and sending and recieving e-mail through it. A little while ago, I clicked on a link in my e-mail and found myself surfing the web from my home computer from my office. For all I know, my wife could be playing games on that same computer as we speak. It's not an issue with my ISP - WTF do they think I'm doing with a /29 if not connecting multiple computers? - but it's a simple explanation anyone can use. Another scenario might be a multi-headed box, with one person logged in on one keyboard/mouse/monitor and another on the other set.
Caveat emptor. I live in a community with a local non-profit ISP. I want to love them, really I do. It's a great idea. Somehow, though, it's also the most expensive ISP in town for the services it offers. The rates look cheap until you look at what you're getting. I don't know why this would be the case, but it is. Until I knew why, I wouldn't try to set up a non-profit community ISP.
I've tried all sorts of file managers on all sorts of systems, and I find anything that doesn't display a file path or a folder tree confusing. The "spatial" file managers completely fail to convey the idea that one "open" folder may be *inside* another. A folder called "Amy" inside one named "family" is completely different from a folder called "Amy" inside one named "College friends", and if I blithely drop a copy of a letter I just wrote into one because it's open and the title bar says "Amy", I may never find it again.
I don't memorize file paths, either. I use tab completion to look around inside directories, and it's a fact that I can find a file whose name and location I don't know in my home directory faster with Bash than with any graphical file manager.
That said, I also find it easier to think about re-arranging files using a graphical manager - but not the "spatial" systems the author describes. Two windows, each with a pane for the folder tree and a pane for the selected folder's contents.
I don't own a home - I get home related junk mail.
I don't have a baby - I get baby related junk mail.
I have a degree - I get junk mail from third-rate schools.
Somehow, I don't think that the cost is making them target very carefully. Heck, I get more junk mail printed on paper and sent through the US postal service than I do at all dozen or so e-mail addresses, and that includes the ones published in WHOIS records for my domains.
I guess the GSM phone I use every day in the US midwest must be "only intend it for the European/Asian markets" as well. How odd.
I looked at Fairtunes a while ago. I liked the idea. However, there is one problem. If I use Fairtunes to pay the artists whose music I listen to, I am more or less admitting that I didn't obtain the music through legal channels. The bands might not care (Hole, to pick an extreme example), but their lables probably do. In fact, AFAIK, I have no music that is not legally obtained, but that's not going to save me from a costly bettle with record lables and scared ISPs if someone decides to use Fairtunes' records to track down 'pirates'.
I don't know anything about Dutch, but if you look at the names of the algorythm's creators, Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen, it appears that the name Rijndael is a loose combination of their surnames, not an actual Dutch word. If I'm not mistaken, the proposed pronunciations on the NIST web site are in fact proposed by the authors themselves for a word they invented. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I read exactly this in documentation on the NIST web site a month or more ago.
>>Intellectual-property owners don't have a
>>fundamental natural-law right to restrict the
>>copying of their intellectual property.
>
>and
>
>>There is no right to steal others' IP.
>
>Which is it?
Actually, there isn't a contradiction here, though it certainly is confusing. The orriginal poster is referring to a concept in the philosophy of law in which it is believed that there is a set of freedoms so fundamental that all people should enjoy them. Not everything one has a right to under this so-called "natural law" is necessarily reflected in human legal systems, and there isn't any guarantee that natural law addresses all subjects. The orriginal post is simply asserting that "rights" in this sense do not apply.
Another use often made of the word "rights" is to speak of freedoms fundamentally guaranteed by the constitution of a country, generally, at least in my experience, the US of A. ('course, that's where I live, and we *do* have a tendency to forget that the rest of the world exists.) In the US, there clearly *isn't* any right to intilectual property. The constitution simply permits congress to make such IP laws as it deems fit. Conversely, since the congress is allowed to make IP laws, there isn't any legal right, here, to use other peoples' IP.
There is also an important distinction to be made between ethical and economic justification of intilectual property. It seems clear to me that there is no economic justification - the marginal cost of a copy of a piece of software is entirely in the overhead of maintaining a high-bendwidth network. Once the bandwidth is there, it costs the same whether it is active or idly sending null-padded frames because you don't have anything to transfer.
The ethical argument is less clear to me. Certainly, people who contribute new ideas, tools, and art deserve to be compensated for their efforts, if for no other reason that we'd all rather have them spend their time benefiting society that way than just trying to keep bread on the table. On the other hand, derivative works are the essence of progress. If it weren't for derivative works bulding upon eachother over the centuries, we'd still be a race of hunter-getherers, and probably not even much good at that. It seems to me immoral to refuse others permission to create coppies of my contributions to society and to create their own derivative works. For that reason, I license any code I write under the GPL unless otherwise compelled by someone who is paying me to write the code. Even then, I try. Personally, I think I should be paid for the effort of creating the software, not for the number of coppies of it that get made.
Despite the orriginal poster's claim that freedom of expression is entirely separate, I must disagree. Any technological solution to copy protection, were it to exist, would also have the effect of restricting the same data copying and transmission technologies that are essential for free speech to be effective.
I don't pirate software. I don't have any music on my computer that I believe to be illegal. I do have mp3s of a large segment of my own CD collection, which I find useful despite the fact that sitting here at my computer I am not ten feet from a 160-watt stereo with a 3-cd changer, and I only use them in ways that I believe to be legal under fair use. I would nonetheless be quite upset if I were unable to make those coppies to my hard drive, which enable me, among other things, to put together my own playlists with more freedom than the 3-disc carosel allows and to listen to my music collection in a friend's room across campus without having to cary the crates full of disks over first.
I just called CRC to complain about this move. After moving through a couple levels of management, I was assured that MathWorld's absence is only temporary, and that the issues will be resolved within a couple of weeks. If enough of us complain, CRC may feel more pressure to be reasonable. I encourage others to call, too. The phone number above is toll-free in the US, and if we slashdot their phones with complaints, maybe the company will learn something. I know that CRC has spent many dollars of postage advertising to me by direct mail this semester, and I suspect I'm not alone amongst Slashdot readers. Let's politely raise their awareness that such things are a bad idea. Remember, the person you are talking to did not personally decide to sue Eric/Wolfram. Be nice, and they'll be more willing to complain to higher-level managers for you ;)
other phone numbers for CRC:
US/Canada: 1(800)272-7737
Europe, Middle East, and Africa: 44-1462-488900
India, Asia, South America, and Australia: (561)994-0555
And let's not forget that Gnutella allows all kinds of information to be spread across the Internet. Not only illegal MP3s, but other illegal and immoral content - pornography, terrorist manifestos, race-hate propaganda and anti-Christian bigotry. How are we supposed to eradicate these blights when they are available over a distributed network of servers which is practically impossible to shut down?
-Anonymous Coward
I would like to point out that such "immoral content" is also often protected free speech, at least in the US. Whether AC lives there, or in another nation with reasonable protections for speech, or someplace completely different, the principles remain true. I'm no more thrilled than the next person by bigotry, hate propaganda, terrorism, or porn. However, like many people, I place a high value on my freedom to speak, and I recognize that I only have such a freedom when it is granted to those who may disagree with me. More than likely, Anonymous Coward and I disagree on a great many things. Quite possibly, I think many of AC's positions are dangerous or immoral, because like most people we probably have different value systems. Despite any such disagreement, I would be willing to defend AC's right to give voice to his positions.
If AC wishes to "eradicate these blights", then the best weapon at his disposal is, quite simply, to exercise his freedom of speech against them. Hate won't go away just because we forbid people to speak of it, but if we can show that the hate is unfounded we might get somewhere. Christians, or other groups, aren't going to make the rest of us like them any better by telling us we can't express opinions and beliefs that they may find immoral, though they might convince us we were wrong if they argued well. (No, I don't dislike Christians. In fact, some of my best friends feel called to the ministry in Christian denominations.) Terrorists aren't going to go away because they can't speak. The nature of terrorism creates an audience for what the terrorists have to say. Content that is already illegal is just that - already illegal.
To my eye, Gnutella is nothing more or less than a tool to facilitate the exercise of two cherished American freedoms - the right to free speech, and the right to free assembly. All the more so precisely because it allows the transfer of more than just one type of data. Such software enables people to describe what they are offering to say to the world, and to find other people who have something to say which interests them. It then creates a channel over which two parties can communicate, and exchanges information that both parties have expressed a desire to exchange. If that communication is illegal in content, it is no more the fault of the tool than it would be the fault of my computer if I were to post a libelous web site. We do not forbid pen and paper, nor the printing press, simply because they can serve as a vehicle libel, plagiarism, harassment, criminal threatening, conspiracy, or a host of other undesirable or immoral activities. Neither should we forbid the use or creation of other communications technologies simply because they can be put to illegal uses. If Gnutella is designed to give me a printing press that nobody can dismantle or take away, so much the better.
-Andrew C. Dingman
http://dingman.student.earlham.edu/
e-mail: above-URL/?page=contact
"They that give up liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"
-Benjamin Franklin