Guns are often used illegally, yet that is not their only use... nobody persecutes gun manufacturers
Where have you been? Brady bill, one month rule, waiting period, mandatory trigger lock, country-of-origin regulations on some components, many types totally outlawed, lawsuits brought by idiots and not thrown out by the judge, the list goes on...
Now, I'm not suggesting that we go back to the days of people walking into Virginia gun shops, buying 2 dozen cheap handguns and then driving them up 95 to be sold on the streets of NYC. However, the idea of a mandatory trigger lock is ridiculous. It's even more silly to sue the company because you were irresponsable enough to leave your gun lying around with your kids or because some other guy was evil enough to shoot you.
I think nonocephaly is incompatable with life, and likely to result in spontaneous miscarriage or a very limited life span.
That said, the medical effects of EM fields are an important consideration. I was really excited about working with 802.11x until somebody mentioned not to look at a high-gain antenna because it would "turn your corneas white like fried egg whites".
OTOH, if there are any real consequences from normal use of such technologies they are minute. I actually feel better about having the antenna on the roof than I do about having a cell phone right next to my head.
Perhaps these guys have been instructed that if they feel the need to "spill the beans" they should spill 3 or 4 phony beans along with the real ones. That way, our security has to track multiple potential threats. I'm sure nothing would please them more than to see us spend the time and money required to audit all of the Windows code.
Perhaps there is a rational way to tell which threats are real; some kind of "threat profiling".
I'm sitting here on a Windows box right now, and the very idea that Al Qaeda could get jobs at MS, hack the s@$%%$#%#%Die American Scum@$#@$@#$ is just ludicrous. I mean, learning how to fly a plane is one thing but !Q%#@$^%@#$^#$$The blood of the infidels will run red in the streets!%@#$%%#$%$%getting a CS degree, getting hired by MS, and then slipping all those hacks through the system? That strains my credulity.
...before some enterprising company ditches the satellites and offers drone shots with much higher resolution. The drone technology is nothing new. If the area is hostile, you can use tiny disposable drones
From a technical standpoint, none of this is very exciting. The only real limitation is what your government will allow you to sell to the general public. In some cases, the government will do it for you with a camera on a regular old plane.
Before you correct me, let me clarify myself yet again. Yes, I'm sure many Republicans voted for the DMCA and other "pro IP" bills. This is not classical Republican politics, it's special interest politics. They vote for that crap because, to put it bluntly, they are paid. I think I'm already on record as being opposed to such polarizing acts as the DMCA. In the long run they are actually anti-IP because they lend credance to the AIP movement. OK, no more Saturday night posts...
No. Unlike RMS, I have no desire to make publishing software under a particular license illegal just because I don't like the license. Let me clarify myself. Joe Blow kernel hacker doesn't threaten me, not at all. What threatens me is RMS's statement to the effect that he can't support the "right to release under any license" espoused by O'Reilly et. al.
When I speak of the Free Software movement, I am speaking of the radical element that has an agenda to make it illegal to write proprietary software, to wrest source code from Microsoft by government force, etc. OTOH, if the market determines that software should be free, I am just fine with that. The carriage analogy is a good one.
As for the PP not wanting to take away my rights, I doubt that he wouuld hesitate to vote for a representative who might sponsor a bill to regulate the software industry, with a long term view towards socializing it. This is what has me afraid, because the Republicans are way behind the curve on this one. Most of them don't even know what the FSF is. They need to be mobilized.
Fiat doesn't make it so. Sorry, but pick any economic theory you like; none of them say you "deserve" to get paid for your work. If I collect a bunch of sticks and buy a bunch of yarn and busy myself making god's eyes twelve hourse a day, do I "deserve" to get paid for it? Of course that's nonsense.
This isn't what the previous poster meant. What he meant is this: If I work 12 hours a day making god's eyes out of sticks and yarn, I have the right to sell them for $50/each. You have the right to either buy them or ignore them. In no way are your rights threatened by my activity.
At this point, you are going to counter me with the "software is different" argument, but we both know it doesn't wash. In both cases the physical material involved (sticks and yarn or CD's and cardboard) is minimal. The labor and time is the primary component of the product.
When you give proprietary software the "boot", you are essentially barging into my house and saying what I can do with my sticks and yarn, and dictating how I relate to my neighbors.
That is why proprietary software has, and must continue to maintain its right to exist. It is also why the Free Software movement is possibly the greatest threat to liberty in the new century.
My, what responses I got. They were all pretty much along the lines of "these kids are so smart because they got into top schools and they crack". Of course it takes a kind of "intelligence" to crack things, but I must reiterate that this does not make them the best and the brightest.
They fail to see the forest for the trees. What truly useful inventions could such genius produce? Maybe they could have been like Dean Kamen, producing medical devices and earning enough money to sink it into pie in the sky scooter projects. Maybe they could be "cracking" the human genome for cancer cures. Maybe a lot of things I can't even imagine. We will never know. They were too busy ripping into other people's work.
Intelligence is only part of being "best and brightest". These kids are like burly men with big hammers. Instead of using their hammers to pound nails, they use them to smash Windows. When you look at these people, and multiply their "best" factor by their "brightest" factor, the product is futility.
Warez kids are the best and the brightest?! Please explain. My notion of "best and brightest" doesn't associate itself with people who produce nothing, steal from those who do, and get caught doing it. This seems more like evolution in action to me.
Give me a break; this is complete and utter overreaction. The government should kick in doors and confiscate computers over violating COPYRIGHT law?
Yes. Yes they should. This is how ALL the laws are enforced. Me personally, I don't like the Social Security system. I can invest the money much better than the government does, but if I figured out some way to finagle them out of 1000 FICA payments, you know what they would do? They'd bust down my door.
Law enforcement agencies should coordinate raids on an INTERNATIONAL scale?
There's more than meets the eye here. Counterfeit merchandise (not just software but also other stuff like videos, designer clothing, etc.) is a known source of funding for... wait for it... terrorism.
Sorry I don't have the link handy, but there was a big article in the dead tree edition of the Washington Post about this. It should be archived on their website somewhere.
Personally, I don't like to use pirated software, something which my friends consider odd. Yes, it is wrong, but despite what the corporate flacks say, it's not the same as stealing.
Now, perhaps casual copying between friends is not as bad as using mass-produced knock offs, but even if you really weren't going to buy the package there is an important principle involved. Allowing such activity contributes to an environment where breaking the law is considered acceptable. Like it or not, society has established rules. There are mechanisms in our society to change the rules (activism, etc.) but if you choose the route of civil disobedience you have to live with the consequence. History will reveal you to be either a hero or a crackpot. This is pretty much how it's always been, and I don't see it changing anytime soon.
This is one question, with multiple parts. Some of your defenders have asserted that you are only opposed to Intellectual Property in the hands of corporations. Is this true? Do you favor strong protection for IP produced by individuals as opposed to corporations, or are you opposed to strong IP protection generally?
Also, many people in the AIP movement frequently cite the fact that IP has not been historicly enshrined as a "natural right". However, isn't this just an academic question, important only for lawyers when formulating the basis of the law? After all, we have rights to our physical property, but that doesn't bar the government from confiscating it when such confiscation is deemed to have an overwhelming public benefit. In light of that, why do so many people in the AIP movement feel motivated to make it a point that IP is not a "natural right". My own view on this is that it is simply a rhetorical technique designed to nudge people towards the AIP movement's point of view, but I'd be interested in your take on this.
Finally, what say you to the irony of the fact that if I OCR your book and post it on line I'll get in trouble?
Then we in the US can say "why don't we all get free software like they do" and the retort will be "why don't we want to raise taxes 3%".
Then we can say "the poor in the US have no software" and the retort will be "yes, but all the real innovations take place here".
In other word, it'll be just like the health care debate, only a lot less important. I just hope Al Gore doesn't get into office and get persuaded by Tipper to attempt nationalizing the software industry and giving everybody a "Free Software Card". I'll never forget that... I swear, seeing Bill Clinton hold up that card on national TV was one of the scariest things I've witnessed as an American--much scarier than being attacked by a terrorist because when your own government starts attacking you with that much SOCIALISM you can kiss the Republic good-bye.
...staying up late, only to have it cloud up half an hour before the event, I won't bother staying up for any more meteor showers. If I just happen to get lucky, roll over in bed and see the proper time on the clock; then so be it.
Yep, I can see that. But, how is this any different from 30-50 politicians convincing the government to finance the infrastructure? Well, for one, if the government had built it, all the taxpayers would have gotten screwed. This way, only people who participated in the market got screwed. And, IMHO this is fair because people participated by choice, knowing there was a risk of getting screwed (and also a chance of making out like bandits along with the rest of them).
So, what it all comes down to is that the market is similar to the government starting a lottery to fund something, except that the market taxes people in a progressive manner. By progressive I mean that the wealthy tend to pay a greater share of the tax. So, and this will be hard for many hardcore Leftists to swallow, the capitalist system is more socially responsable than the socialist sytem, at least in this regard.
There's only so much thermal shielding you can put in a projectile-- and the impetus for the projectile is to maximize the payload.
Perhaps they will come up with a missile that has just enough payload to take out a laser installation. The missile might use an ablative coating or something, and of course it would be too heavy for general-purpose use but once you've taken out the defense you can just go back to using regular missiles.
Even in that case though the lasers are useful: they forced the enemy to spend time and resources developing, acquiring and deploying yet another specialized weapons system.
Was the cloud unusually bright? I've heard that sometimes that happens because the "cloud" is way up in the stratosphere where direct sunlight is still visible. I've never witnessed a launch, but I had the privelege to witness a sunset landing where the shuttle became visible as a bright white speck while making an approach turn. Then of course there was the CLAP! CLAP! double-sonic boom and the approach was close enough so that you could clearly see the windows of the shuttle. If you have the opportunity to witness a landing, don't sell it short. It was one of the highlights not only of my visit to KSC, but of my whole FLA vacation. Then again, I wonder if they will be allowing people that close to landings for a while.
Not that the Russians aren't creative, but I hope we see some new procedures written as opposed to relying too much on creative solutions. I hope the checklist for the Russian undocking procedure now includes "check to make sure that no residual bits are stuck to the lock, and if they are, schedule EVA for removal of said bits before next docking".
Actually, it satisfies me quite nicely. It was just that your original language strongly resembled that used by the far Left. I think we can all sign on to the idea that when an individual knowingly commits a criminal act, that individual should be held accountable. In practice, the mere existance of a political movement aiming to compel CEOs and board members to accept such responsability could have a stronger impact than you believe (imagine suits thinking to themselves that it might happen, so they had better get used to it), but that's just my opinion.
If you don't understand that this has already happened, I'm sorry for you. Precisely because the majority of the US has been SOLD (or as you say "bought in" but the truth is SOLD, as in sold a bill of goods) on the ownership of stock as the key to their future, instead of on the collective national "ownership" of the instruments of wealth production as a key to their retirement, the country is highly "bought in" to a system and can't afford to change it, or challenge it. Hell, I can't afford to challenge it either... my retirement is tied up in the stock market too. My retirement assets (such as they are) are tied up in companies that buy and sell intellectual property, and I'm dependent on the corporate system as much as the next guy.
OK, when you start mentioning "collective national 'ownership'" it sends up a red flag (no pun intended). That's the dictionary definition of socialism, and history has proven it to work no better than the current system with regards to the defense of individual rights, economic prosperity, or any other measure of success.
Slashdot Mirror
Guns are often used illegally, yet that is not their only use... nobody persecutes gun manufacturers
Where have you been? Brady bill, one month rule, waiting period, mandatory trigger lock, country-of-origin regulations on some components, many types totally outlawed, lawsuits brought by idiots and not thrown out by the judge, the list goes on...
Now, I'm not suggesting that we go back to the days of people walking into Virginia gun shops, buying 2 dozen cheap handguns and then driving them up 95 to be sold on the streets of NYC. However, the idea of a mandatory trigger lock is ridiculous. It's even more silly to sue the company because you were irresponsable enough to leave your gun lying around with your kids or because some other guy was evil enough to shoot you.
I think nonocephaly is incompatable with life, and likely to result in spontaneous miscarriage or a very limited life span.
That said, the medical effects of EM fields are an important consideration. I was really excited about working with 802.11x until somebody mentioned not to look at a high-gain antenna because it would "turn your corneas white like fried egg whites".
OTOH, if there are any real consequences from normal use of such technologies they are minute. I actually feel better about having the antenna on the roof than I do about having a cell phone right next to my head.
Guess you can sell DRAM for a hundred bucks a gigabyte, but you can't make a living at it yet."
Give the DRAM away for free, and sell support for it.
Perhaps these guys have been instructed that if they feel the need to "spill the beans" they should spill 3 or 4 phony beans along with the real ones. That way, our security has to track multiple potential threats. I'm sure nothing would please them more than to see us spend the time and money required to audit all of the Windows code.
Perhaps there is a rational way to tell which threats are real; some kind of "threat profiling".
I'm sitting here on a Windows box right now, and the very idea that Al Qaeda could get jobs at MS, hack the s@$%%$#%#%Die American Scum@$#@$@#$ is just ludicrous. I mean, learning how to fly a plane is one thing but !Q%#@$^%@#$^#$$The blood of the infidels will run red in the streets!%@#$%%#$%$%getting a CS degree, getting hired by MS, and then slipping all those hacks through the system? That strains my credulity.
...before some enterprising company ditches the satellites and offers drone shots with much higher resolution. The drone technology is nothing new. If the area is hostile, you can use tiny disposable drones
From a technical standpoint, none of this is very exciting. The only real limitation is what your government will allow you to sell to the general public. In some cases, the government will do it for you with a camera on a regular old plane.
Of course, the other issue is privacy...
Before you correct me, let me clarify myself yet again. Yes, I'm sure many Republicans voted for the DMCA and other "pro IP" bills. This is not classical Republican politics, it's special interest politics. They vote for that crap because, to put it bluntly, they are paid. I think I'm already on record as being opposed to such polarizing acts as the DMCA. In the long run they are actually anti-IP because they lend credance to the AIP movement. OK, no more Saturday night posts...
No. Unlike RMS, I have no desire to make publishing software under a particular license illegal just because I don't like the license. Let me clarify myself. Joe Blow kernel hacker doesn't threaten me, not at all. What threatens me is RMS's statement to the effect that he can't support the "right to release under any license" espoused by O'Reilly et. al.
When I speak of the Free Software movement, I am speaking of the radical element that has an agenda to make it illegal to write proprietary software, to wrest source code from Microsoft by government force, etc. OTOH, if the market determines that software should be free, I am just fine with that. The carriage analogy is a good one.
As for the PP not wanting to take away my rights, I doubt that he wouuld hesitate to vote for a representative who might sponsor a bill to regulate the software industry, with a long term view towards socializing it. This is what has me afraid, because the Republicans are way behind the curve on this one. Most of them don't even know what the FSF is. They need to be mobilized.
Fiat doesn't make it so. Sorry, but pick any economic theory you like; none of them say you "deserve" to get paid for your work. If I collect a bunch of sticks and buy a bunch of yarn and busy myself making god's eyes twelve hourse a day, do I "deserve" to get paid for it? Of course that's nonsense.
This isn't what the previous poster meant. What he meant is this: If I work 12 hours a day making god's eyes out of sticks and yarn, I have the right to sell them for $50/each. You have the right to either buy them or ignore them. In no way are your rights threatened by my activity.
At this point, you are going to counter me with the "software is different" argument, but we both know it doesn't wash. In both cases the physical material involved (sticks and yarn or CD's and cardboard) is minimal. The labor and time is the primary component of the product.
When you give proprietary software the "boot", you are essentially barging into my house and saying what I can do with my sticks and yarn, and dictating how I relate to my neighbors.
That is why proprietary software has, and must continue to maintain its right to exist. It is also why the Free Software movement is possibly the greatest threat to liberty in the new century.
By this line of reasoning, every crack smoker downtown is the best and brightest, since I don't approve of crack smoking.
Does anyone else feel immoral browsing the web with an Internet Explorer USER_AGENT?
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Cu rr entVersion\Internet Settings]
"User Agent"="Mozilla/Church Lady 3.01"
Would that make you morally superior?
My, what responses I got. They were all pretty much along the lines of "these kids are so smart because they got into top schools and they crack". Of course it takes a kind of "intelligence" to crack things, but I must reiterate that this does not make them the best and the brightest.
They fail to see the forest for the trees. What truly useful inventions could such genius produce? Maybe they could have been like Dean Kamen, producing medical devices and earning enough money to sink it into pie in the sky scooter projects. Maybe they could be "cracking" the human genome for cancer cures. Maybe a lot of things I can't even imagine. We will never know. They were too busy ripping into other people's work.
Intelligence is only part of being "best and brightest". These kids are like burly men with big hammers. Instead of using their hammers to pound nails, they use them to smash Windows. When you look at these people, and multiply their "best" factor by their "brightest" factor, the product is futility.
Warez kids are the best and the brightest?! Please explain. My notion of "best and brightest" doesn't associate itself with people who produce nothing, steal from those who do, and get caught doing it. This seems more like evolution in action to me.
and he's certainly not afraid to speak his mind.
He certainly isn't afraid to write long-winded anesthesia documents, which makes him eminantly qualified to be a government regulator.
The only question I have is "How does it feel to be the beurocratic hack that every member of the smear campaign against Microsoft was hoping for?"
Of course, somehow I don't expect he'll be answering that question.
Transmetazone should answer a lot of your questions.
Give me a break; this is complete and utter overreaction. The government should kick in doors and confiscate computers over violating COPYRIGHT law?
Yes. Yes they should. This is how ALL the laws are enforced. Me personally, I don't like the Social Security system. I can invest the money much better than the government does, but if I figured out some way to finagle them out of 1000 FICA payments, you know what they would do? They'd bust down my door.
Law enforcement agencies should coordinate raids on an INTERNATIONAL scale?
There's more than meets the eye here. Counterfeit merchandise (not just software but also other stuff like videos, designer clothing, etc.) is a known source of funding for... wait for it... terrorism.
Sorry I don't have the link handy, but there was a big article in the dead tree edition of the Washington Post about this. It should be archived on their website somewhere.
Personally, I don't like to use pirated software, something which my friends consider odd. Yes, it is wrong, but despite what the corporate flacks say, it's not the same as stealing.
Now, perhaps casual copying between friends is not as bad as using mass-produced knock offs, but even if you really weren't going to buy the package there is an important principle involved. Allowing such activity contributes to an environment where breaking the law is considered acceptable. Like it or not, society has established rules. There are mechanisms in our society to change the rules (activism, etc.) but if you choose the route of civil disobedience you have to live with the consequence. History will reveal you to be either a hero or a crackpot. This is pretty much how it's always been, and I don't see it changing anytime soon.
This is one question, with multiple parts. Some of your defenders have asserted that you are only opposed to Intellectual Property in the hands of corporations. Is this true? Do you favor strong protection for IP produced by individuals as opposed to corporations, or are you opposed to strong IP protection generally?
Also, many people in the AIP movement frequently cite the fact that IP has not been historicly enshrined as a "natural right". However, isn't this just an academic question, important only for lawyers when formulating the basis of the law? After all, we have rights to our physical property, but that doesn't bar the government from confiscating it when such confiscation is deemed to have an overwhelming public benefit. In light of that, why do so many people in the AIP movement feel motivated to make it a point that IP is not a "natural right". My own view on this is that it is simply a rhetorical technique designed to nudge people towards the AIP movement's point of view, but I'd be interested in your take on this.
Finally, what say you to the irony of the fact that if I OCR your book and post it on line I'll get in trouble?
Then we in the US can say "why don't we all get free software like they do" and the retort will be "why don't we want to raise taxes 3%".
Then we can say "the poor in the US have no software" and the retort will be "yes, but all the real innovations take place here".
In other word, it'll be just like the health care debate, only a lot less important. I just hope Al Gore doesn't get into office and get persuaded by Tipper to attempt nationalizing the software industry and giving everybody a "Free Software Card". I'll never forget that... I swear, seeing Bill Clinton hold up that card on national TV was one of the scariest things I've witnessed as an American--much scarier than being attacked by a terrorist because when your own government starts attacking you with that much SOCIALISM you can kiss the Republic good-bye.
...staying up late, only to have it cloud up half an hour before the event, I won't bother staying up for any more meteor showers. If I just happen to get lucky, roll over in bed and see the proper time on the clock; then so be it.
Yep, I can see that. But, how is this any different from 30-50 politicians convincing the government to finance the infrastructure? Well, for one, if the government had built it, all the taxpayers would have gotten screwed. This way, only people who participated in the market got screwed. And, IMHO this is fair because people participated by choice, knowing there was a risk of getting screwed (and also a chance of making out like bandits along with the rest of them).
So, what it all comes down to is that the market is similar to the government starting a lottery to fund something, except that the market taxes people in a progressive manner. By progressive I mean that the wealthy tend to pay a greater share of the tax. So, and this will be hard for many hardcore Leftists to swallow, the capitalist system is more socially responsable than the socialist sytem, at least in this regard.
There's only so much thermal shielding you can put in a projectile-- and the impetus for the projectile is to maximize the payload.
Perhaps they will come up with a missile that has just enough payload to take out a laser installation. The missile might use an ablative coating or something, and of course it would be too heavy for general-purpose use but once you've taken out the defense you can just go back to using regular missiles.
Even in that case though the lasers are useful: they forced the enemy to spend time and resources developing, acquiring and deploying yet another specialized weapons system.
Was the cloud unusually bright? I've heard that sometimes that happens because the "cloud" is way up in the stratosphere where direct sunlight is still visible. I've never witnessed a launch, but I had the privelege to witness a sunset landing where the shuttle became visible as a bright white speck while making an approach turn. Then of course there was the CLAP! CLAP! double-sonic boom and the approach was close enough so that you could clearly see the windows of the shuttle. If you have the opportunity to witness a landing, don't sell it short. It was one of the highlights not only of my visit to KSC, but of my whole FLA vacation. Then again, I wonder if they will be allowing people that close to landings for a while.
Not that the Russians aren't creative, but I hope we see some new procedures written as opposed to relying too much on creative solutions. I hope the checklist for the Russian undocking procedure now includes "check to make sure that no residual bits are stuck to the lock, and if they are, schedule EVA for removal of said bits before next docking".
Actually, it satisfies me quite nicely. It was just that your original language strongly resembled that used by the far Left. I think we can all sign on to the idea that when an individual knowingly commits a criminal act, that individual should be held accountable. In practice, the mere existance of a political movement aiming to compel CEOs and board members to accept such responsability could have a stronger impact than you believe (imagine suits thinking to themselves that it might happen, so they had better get used to it), but that's just my opinion.
If you don't understand that this has already happened, I'm sorry for you. Precisely because the majority of the US has been SOLD (or as you say "bought in" but the truth is SOLD, as in sold a bill of goods) on the ownership of stock as the key to their future, instead of on the collective national "ownership" of the instruments of wealth production as a key to their retirement, the country is highly "bought in" to a system and can't afford to change it, or challenge it. Hell, I can't afford to challenge it either... my retirement is tied up in the stock market too. My retirement assets (such as they are) are tied up in companies that buy and sell intellectual property, and I'm dependent on the corporate system as much as the next guy.
OK, when you start mentioning "collective national 'ownership'" it sends up a red flag (no pun intended). That's the dictionary definition of socialism, and history has proven it to work no better than the current system with regards to the defense of individual rights, economic prosperity, or any other measure of success.