My personal view is that censorship of any form is wrong. It's far better to educate and let children (or anyone) choose for themselves than to attempt to regulate.
Part of educating your children is to expose them to the world as they are ready for it.
My 6-year-old is not ready to see Saving Private Ryan, and I will be censoring him with regard to that and many other movies for several years. As he matures, I will relax my restrictions, and provide as much guidance as I can. By the time my son is grown and on his own, I will have done my best to prepare him to make good adult decisions.
So parents, censor away! It is your right, and your obligation. Just remember you have a deadline for getting in all the education you can, after which your grown kids will be on their own.
Re:I'm very leery of this wrt Second Amendment rig
on
Hacking Biology
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· Score: 2
get a bazooka, silly yank. drive over'em in your little M1A tank. whatever. just keep your barbarism that side of the pond. Because that's how most european countries view your stance on guns. You probably also don't like the police wearing bullet-proof vests, or driving cars faster than your 4WD gasguzzling SUV (which you probably never even USE off the road..) As for natural, god-given right to guns.. well.. ever seen jesus sporting an AK47?
First, I hope you realize the the original "pro-gun" poster was clearly trolling, and does not represent the average supporter of the right to keep and bear arms in the USA.
Come to think of it, I guess you are trolling too, so I shouldn't be answering...but I can't resist.;-)
Anyway, if you think that being willing to use force to defend innocent life is barbaric, I pity you. Human beings have a natural (or God-given, if that is how you look at it) right to life. The right to life implies a right to defend that life. The right to defend life implies the right to possess effective tools for defense. Firearms are very effective tools for personal defense.
BTW, police wearing bullet-proof vests is very cool. I have four cops in the family. I want them to have the best chance possible to stay alive. I also don't mind them having fast cars, as long as they use good judgement when deciding to continue a high-speed chase. (I don't own an SUV, but am considering buying one, if only to piss off the Sierra Club!)
Finally, with regard to your dim view of us yanks: Bite me.
Especially for older children, it's not a settled question whether you have a moral right to control what they see, or whether anybody should help you out with that.
I claim both are very settled.
I have a moral right to control what my kids see, because I have a moral obligation to raise and educate them until they reach adulthood. Now I, and any smart parent, will allow my kids more and more control over what they do and see as they get older. By the time they are almost ready to move out on their own, but still living under my benevolent dictatorship, they will be making almost all their own decisions. In this way, I will do my best to equip them to deal with the world.
Perhaps you could argue that some people should help me out in parenting my children (neighbors and relatives come to mind). However, under no circumstances should anyone be forced to help me out, by paying taxes to provide me with filtering software. (Be aware that this is from the guy that thinks others should not be paying taxes to pay for my kids' schooling, either.)
Even if you do have such a right, the software doesn't work, and the state shouldn't be encouraging people to sell snake oil.
How right you are! Parents, put that computer in a common area, not up in the kids' room. Use it with your kids. When they do use it on their own, make a point to come by and see what they are doing.
Agreed, knowing more than one language is a boon, and we silly Americans often forget that.
However, teach a child to read and write in his own language, and he will be equipped to study other languages just as he is equipped to study anything else.
Languages are different in that if a young child is lucky enough to be around people who converse in more than one languages, he will pick them up as he learns to talk.
Nicely said, except for one thing that caught my attention...
Why do people get killed for their Nikes? Because the killers saw the marketing and *had* to have the trainers.
No, no, NO!
People get killed for their Nikes because there exist animals who have no respect for human life. Those animals exist in large part because they were not given moral training.
I don't like marketers either, but you can't hang every evil in the world on them.
But they've done little to eradicate illiteracy or poverty, or alter education for most students.
Why would Katz or anyone else expect the net to do so?
The foundation of education is reading, writing, clear thinking, and basic mathematics. All other education can be built on that foundation.
And, oddly enough, the net is not needed, or even particularly helpful, in teaching the foundation. Instead, what is needed are some books, writing materials, and a motivated teacher who knows how to read, write, think, and do math. (I don't necessarily mean teacher as in a school, but rather one who teaches in whatever context.)
Give a kid the foundation, along with some moral guidance, and you will have done the best you can to equip him to avoid poverty and ignorance for the rest of his life.
That's the sad part, and a fundamental weakness of democracy. As I mentioned elsewhere in the post, that is why we have a Constitution. To bad so many parts of it are ignored.
America is not no more democratic than Germany's $FASCIST$ was. America/Americans better wake up to realize they are living in (presently) a corporate state. P-L-U-T-O-C-R-A-C-Y - look it up.
I really couldn't care less about democracy for its own sake. In fact, it is overrated, and most probably not stable over the long run. But I care about it as one means to preserve liberty. (And yes I know what a plutocracy is.)
The elections are a pagent of money and 30 second soundbits, the president now calls American Citizens 'consumers', and no one questions that 'lobbying' & 'campaign contributions' literally buy/write legislation. The only 'entities' that can participate in American 'democracy' are corporate deep-pockets.
Just because many voters are foolish and easily swayed by money and sound bites doesn't mean we don't have any democracy. If you are smart enough to ignore sound bites and vote sensibly, then others ought to be too. Maybe if they are not, they deserve what they get? (Sheesh, that was a bit cynical even for me.)
But democratic processes are not good enough to ensure liberty.
That is why we have a Constitution. I am much more concerned about the wholesale ignoring of that document than I am about the failures of democracy.
Frankly: When given the choice between Modern America(TM) and the cultures you described - I might think twice about a couple of the other options... (both Russia & China before the burgoise took control from the People (again) as has happened in America).
Either you misunderstood me, I misunderstand this comment, or you are seriously wrong. Those monsters of the 20th century were evil on a scale that makes today's world leaders look like kindergarteners. Would you seriously consider trading places with one of the millions of people they killed? Were those killed members of the "People" those mean old bourgeoisie took control from?
I hate to sound jingoistic, but nobody is chaining you down here, dude. Go where you can be happy, and my sincere best wishes to you! But notice that the USA doesn't have to put up walls to keep people in.
I was drafting my own response, but yours says everything I would have said.
I will add that as a young adult I wrote such a "temper tantrum" letter to a former employer. I didn't use profanity, but the letter did show a lack of maturity and judgement. I still am a bit embarrassed by it.
...because it has a monopoly on "legitimized" force.
Read some history and get a clue, dude. Have you missed the discussion of what various "states" have done under the direction of such as Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and "that guy whose name I won't mention because it will cause the S/N ratio to go to zero?"
We are very lucky to live in a country where the State still mostly is answerable to the people. It isn't always this way, and it may not always be this way in the US. The last thing we should do is push our State further into the business of individuals.
First, as this was a private school, the family apparently chose it. If there were serious problems with the environment, then they should have switched schools.
The article says,
Personally, I think a school's job is to teach not just the three R's, but also participation as a citizen in our Republic. That may be more important. For a school to teach freedom as a dry document while crushing student dissent is a waste.
Fine. Then find school that has similar values.
Second, when my kids get old enough to publish a web site, I will be reviewing it. They certainly will not be allowed to do something foolish like put up a site at www.myschoolisfscked.net. Against the First Amendment, you say? Bzzt. Wrongo, Buffalo Bob. My household is a benevolent dictatorship, not a constitutional republic.
The article says,
Rules like theirs are great for raising robots. But anyone who's going to make a difference in this world is going to have to be comfortable with laughing at authority.
And anyone who is going to be taken seriously needs to learn when and how to question authority appropriately and effectively. 10 years from now will this kid make a stupid mistake like calling his employer a fsckhead in a resignation letter? These parent need to teach some life lessons.
Re:Backdoor challenge for you hackers...
on
NSA Linux In Depth
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· Score: 2
I remember laughing my butt off when I first heard of Thompson's hack. It truly was a thing of beauty.
However, it does not qualify as "hiding an Easter Egg in open source" because it depends on compiling the source with a compromised compiler. The source for the NSA kernel can be compiled with compilers not supplied by the NSA. Unless of course the NSA has been hacking all our compilers for years... *chucka* *chucka* (That is the sound of black helicopters for all you that are conspiracy impaired.)
Backdoor challenge for you hackers...
on
NSA Linux In Depth
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· Score: 5
Sure you can look at this post and claim its a conspiracy of some sort to point out these findings, but lets take a look at how many 1k bytes of code could be inserted throughout the SE Linux OS to have them somewhere down the line be combined in order for the NSA to open a backdoor of some sort.
It seems to me that this would be double-damned hard in an open source system. I was just going to flame you as promoting an inferior conspiracy theory...but instead...
How would all you clever hackers out there hide a function in an open source system in a way that it can escape detection even if all the source is read? (Let's call the function an Easter Egg, rather than a back door, because I don't want to encourage anything evil.;-)
I started down a couple of thought paths, and stopped because they both sounded lame to me. I keep coming up against the problem of getting the source to encode something fishy, without having it smell! Obfuscation is problemmatic, because in my mind it would raise red flags, especially in NSA code.
Why do people feel the need to explain themselves when they do not immediately satisfy the whim of someone who rings their phone or sends them email?
When I get back to someone, I just say "Hi, I'm returning your call." I don't feel the need to explain why they got my voicemail, because I am not obligated to pick up the phone whenever it rings.
I guess I am pretty lucky in the workpace. I have told our CEO when he knocked on my door that I was in the middle of a design discussion, and could I catch him in his office in a little while? I can do that because he understands I have tasks to do, and wants me to do them effectively. Others' mileage may vary.
I didn't live in a trailer, but grew up in a house next door to a trailer park.
K-Mart is fine by me. I have relatives with cars up on blocks in their yards.
I don't much like Brittany Spears, but Patty Loveless takes my breath away.
On the other hand, I have a couple of CS graduate degrees, and became a Usenet reader in September, 1989, so perhaps I have left my low-class roots behind?
Anyway, quit your damned elitist whining. Look around the net a bit to find a group that shares your sensibilities. If you can't find one, whip one up! Then you can moderate out the rubes and keep the conversation up to your high standards. There is plenty of bandwidth for us all.
By the way, I've noticed that special interests can still result in the caliber of exchange you want. If you are into something like antique radios or Middle English literature, I'll bet you can find newsgroups/mailing lists/web sites galore that have high signal-to-noise ratio.
It has always been my theory that there are exactly twelve Star Trek plots, that just get recombined over and over again. I have never written down the definitive list of a dozen.
Anyone care to give it a shot? Trekker bragging rights to the best list.
How about these suggestions to get you started?
Speedbump in space interacts with warp drive to alter people/loop time/threaten universe/whatever.
(From another poster) Super-powerful being screws with the Starfleet folk, but doesn't just snuff them. (Q, Veger, Organians, etc.)
Transporter splits person/cures disease/causes orgasm/whatever. (BTW, why do they ever walk to the transporter room?)
Bill: Well, Andy, I think we have pushed office and internet applications about as far as they need to go. From now on, we'll just fix bugs and work on operating systems stability.
Andy: Ok, Bill. Then we'll stop developing faster processors. Instead, we will work on pushing down the prices of machines with the same performance.
Bill: Yup. That seems the thing to do.
Andy: (Rocking slowly.) Yup.
Bill: Andy, what about games?
Andy: Just a few kids play those. No money in it.
Andy: Bill, do you think there might still be another "next big thing" out there? Do you think you might be able to invent the next Visicalc?
Bill: Huh? Invent? You let me know if someone does, and then I'll embrace it...
Isn't this just a teensy bit arrogant? Or have I been sucked in by a troll with a +1 bonus?
First of all, what you just described is most definately not developing software. Most of today's self-proclaimed "programmers" would be totally lost without MS Visual Studio holding their hands. Writing a cross compiler using existing code requires only the most rudimentary understanding of the methodology and processes required to programme a computer.
Sure, there are tools like Yacc and Lex that would make this job easier, but writing a compiler, cross- or not, is not trivial. And it requires a knowledge of the target instruction set. From the rest of your post, I would think that part would turn you on.
This disturbing trend has been compounded by the existance of so-called "object-oriented" and "visual" programming applications. Simply cutting and pasting snippets of someone elses code or attaching pre-written libraries to one's code is more akin to a "connect the dots" game or weaving pieces of pre-fabricated cloth together to form a quilt. There are very few of us who remember writing 8088 assembler code or writing programs on hundreds of punch cards.
Ever hear of "standing on the shoulders of giants?" (Maybe this metaphor is not quite as apt for software as science...but you get the idea.) Not all of us want to write yet another memory allocator or device driver, especially in assembler. A lot of the good (and bad;-) software out there today just would not happen without high-level languages. As for just pasting in snippets of other folks code, you vastly underestimate the difficulty of really effective code reuse.
Oh, and by the way, I did my time writing 6502 assembler and using punch cards.
Most of today's programmers would be completely lost without their watered down "programming" languages.
You are absolutely right that many software developers would not do the work if they had to use only assembly language. So what? Many farmers would not farm if they had to walk behind a single-blade plow pulled by a mule.
High-level languages and tools are not "watered down." The good ones allow us to develop software that would not otherwise exist.
So, have fun hacking away in assembler. I agree it can be a hoot. But get down off that high horse when it comes to programming languages. Either that, or quit using that browser to post to Slashdot...I'll bet money it is not written in assembler.
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.
Yes, I understand the difference between natural and legal rights. However, I am not much interested in legal rights, except to make them match natural rights as closely as possible. What I am trying to get at is the ethical justification for IP laws. I am fiercely anti-utilitarian, so I couldn't care less about economic arguments for IP laws. They are either ethically justified on the basis of rights and obligations, or they are not.
Any law that enforces a legal right that is not a natural right is an unethical law.
Any law that actively abridges a natural right is an unethical law.
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.
To me, "how we'd rather have them spend their time" is not a compelling argument. Either those authors have a right to control the particular bit sequences they introduce to the world, or they don't. What result we want is irrelevant.
I'm trying, in my own mind, to get to the heart of the rights, if any, involved here. It seems to me that the act of distributing bits may be an action that negates any right to restrict those bits. If a person builds a widget, places it in the middle of a busy street, and walks away, I would argue that he doesn't have much to complain about if someone else comes along, picks it up, and uses it as he sees fit. In the world of bits, this seems even more compelling, because a person can build a widget of information (program, song, movie, etc.) lay it down out in the street, and still keep it for himself.
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? I'm not trolling, but honestly trying to work this out in my own mind. I am not sure I think anyone has an ethical (as opposed to legal) right to restrict what bits someone else copies around.
I am leaning toward the position that "intellectual property" cannot be ethically justified, because the mere copying of bits has no direct effect on the original author of those bits. I am leaning toward the position that if I have a stream of bits I don't want copied around, then I need to keep them secret.
In the software world, that could be accomplished by running an ASP rather than selling software copies. Or, software authors could use individual nondisclosure agreements with users (properly agreed to before opening the shrinkwrap, of course). But note that this last could only hold the discloser responsible for the software being revealed...receivers of the copy who did not agree to the NDA would be under no obligation not to use or copy the software.
Notice that this would also undercut the GNU license, since if one doesn't have the right to restrict how bits he has authored are copied, then he can't enforce the GNU restrictions.
I make a living writing software, and I like the idea of authors, artists, etc. being able to make money from their creations. Someone out there give me a solid ethical justification for intellectual property restrictions, please.
If you go to the Nano-PC link mentioned in the submission, you see that Caldera Linux is the "standard" and that putting Windoze on it costs extra. That's close enough to a "Linux box" for me.
Besides, whether it's a Linux box or not, it still looks like something I'd like to find under my Christmas tree!
Send your kids to a private school (or even home school them if you are up to it), and you can have more influence over what their education is "designed to produce."
This is another sign of the era of the usefulness of public schools coming to an end.
"Ordinary law abiding citizens" dramatically increase the chance of killing someone in their home if they own a gun.
This looks suspiciously like an adaptation of the bogus, but often repeated "A gun in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a family member than an intruder" statistic. Look here for some explanation and rebuttal. I suggest reading some of the arguments for and against the utility of owning firearms, and possibly reconsidering your position. The link above from the Cato Institute is obviously pro-gun-ownership. The NRA and Handgun Control, Inc. are good jumping off points for many other sites, both pro and anti.
Most people are unlikely to go out of their way to buy a handgun, but if it is readily available then they may well do so.
I don't know about most, but certainly 10s of millions of people in the US already own handguns. And guess what? The Brady Law, when in effect, applied to them as well as to people who did not own handguns! What possible good could a waiting period (beyond what is required for a criminal check) do in those cases?
The very phrasing of your comment shows that you view a waiting period as a way to discourage the lawful ownership of a handgun, rather than as a means of doing a legitimate criminal check, or as a (dubious) means of stopping "crimes of passion."
Slashdot Mirror
My 6-year-old is not ready to see Saving Private Ryan, and I will be censoring him with regard to that and many other movies for several years. As he matures, I will relax my restrictions, and provide as much guidance as I can. By the time my son is grown and on his own, I will have done my best to prepare him to make good adult decisions.
So parents, censor away! It is your right, and your obligation. Just remember you have a deadline for getting in all the education you can, after which your grown kids will be on their own.
Come to think of it, I guess you are trolling too, so I shouldn't be answering...but I can't resist. ;-)
Anyway, if you think that being willing to use force to defend innocent life is barbaric, I pity you. Human beings have a natural (or God-given, if that is how you look at it) right to life. The right to life implies a right to defend that life. The right to defend life implies the right to possess effective tools for defense. Firearms are very effective tools for personal defense.
BTW, police wearing bullet-proof vests is very cool. I have four cops in the family. I want them to have the best chance possible to stay alive. I also don't mind them having fast cars, as long as they use good judgement when deciding to continue a high-speed chase. (I don't own an SUV, but am considering buying one, if only to piss off the Sierra Club!)
Finally, with regard to your dim view of us yanks: Bite me.
I have a moral right to control what my kids see, because I have a moral obligation to raise and educate them until they reach adulthood. Now I, and any smart parent, will allow my kids more and more control over what they do and see as they get older. By the time they are almost ready to move out on their own, but still living under my benevolent dictatorship, they will be making almost all their own decisions. In this way, I will do my best to equip them to deal with the world.
Perhaps you could argue that some people should help me out in parenting my children (neighbors and relatives come to mind). However, under no circumstances should anyone be forced to help me out, by paying taxes to provide me with filtering software. (Be aware that this is from the guy that thinks others should not be paying taxes to pay for my kids' schooling, either.)
How right you are! Parents, put that computer in a common area, not up in the kids' room. Use it with your kids. When they do use it on their own, make a point to come by and see what they are doing.However, teach a child to read and write in his own language, and he will be equipped to study other languages just as he is equipped to study anything else.
Languages are different in that if a young child is lucky enough to be around people who converse in more than one languages, he will pick them up as he learns to talk.
People get killed for their Nikes because there exist animals who have no respect for human life. Those animals exist in large part because they were not given moral training.
I don't like marketers either, but you can't hang every evil in the world on them.
The foundation of education is reading, writing, clear thinking, and basic mathematics. All other education can be built on that foundation.
And, oddly enough, the net is not needed, or even particularly helpful, in teaching the foundation. Instead, what is needed are some books, writing materials, and a motivated teacher who knows how to read, write, think, and do math. (I don't necessarily mean teacher as in a school, but rather one who teaches in whatever context.)
Give a kid the foundation, along with some moral guidance, and you will have done the best you can to equip him to avoid poverty and ignorance for the rest of his life.
That's the sad part, and a fundamental weakness of democracy. As I mentioned elsewhere in the post, that is why we have a Constitution. To bad so many parts of it are ignored.
But democratic processes are not good enough to ensure liberty. That is why we have a Constitution. I am much more concerned about the wholesale ignoring of that document than I am about the failures of democracy.
Either you misunderstood me, I misunderstand this comment, or you are seriously wrong. Those monsters of the 20th century were evil on a scale that makes today's world leaders look like kindergarteners. Would you seriously consider trading places with one of the millions of people they killed? Were those killed members of the "People" those mean old bourgeoisie took control from?I hate to sound jingoistic, but nobody is chaining you down here, dude. Go where you can be happy, and my sincere best wishes to you! But notice that the USA doesn't have to put up walls to keep people in.
I will add that as a young adult I wrote such a "temper tantrum" letter to a former employer. I didn't use profanity, but the letter did show a lack of maturity and judgement. I still am a bit embarrassed by it.
Read some history and get a clue, dude. Have you missed the discussion of what various "states" have done under the direction of such as Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and "that guy whose name I won't mention because it will cause the S/N ratio to go to zero?"
We are very lucky to live in a country where the State still mostly is answerable to the people. It isn't always this way, and it may not always be this way in the US. The last thing we should do is push our State further into the business of individuals.
First, as this was a private school, the family apparently chose it. If there were serious problems with the environment, then they should have switched schools.
The article says,
Fine. Then find school that has similar values.Second, when my kids get old enough to publish a web site, I will be reviewing it. They certainly will not be allowed to do something foolish like put up a site at www.myschoolisfscked.net. Against the First Amendment, you say? Bzzt. Wrongo, Buffalo Bob. My household is a benevolent dictatorship, not a constitutional republic.
The article says,
And anyone who is going to be taken seriously needs to learn when and how to question authority appropriately and effectively. 10 years from now will this kid make a stupid mistake like calling his employer a fsckhead in a resignation letter? These parent need to teach some life lessons.However, it does not qualify as "hiding an Easter Egg in open source" because it depends on compiling the source with a compromised compiler. The source for the NSA kernel can be compiled with compilers not supplied by the NSA. Unless of course the NSA has been hacking all our compilers for years... *chucka* *chucka* (That is the sound of black helicopters for all you that are conspiracy impaired.)
How would all you clever hackers out there hide a function in an open source system in a way that it can escape detection even if all the source is read? (Let's call the function an Easter Egg, rather than a back door, because I don't want to encourage anything evil. ;-)
I started down a couple of thought paths, and stopped because they both sounded lame to me. I keep coming up against the problem of getting the source to encode something fishy, without having it smell! Obfuscation is problemmatic, because in my mind it would raise red flags, especially in NSA code.
When I get back to someone, I just say "Hi, I'm returning your call." I don't feel the need to explain why they got my voicemail, because I am not obligated to pick up the phone whenever it rings.
I guess I am pretty lucky in the workpace. I have told our CEO when he knocked on my door that I was in the middle of a design discussion, and could I catch him in his office in a little while? I can do that because he understands I have tasks to do, and wants me to do them effectively. Others' mileage may vary.
On the other hand, I have a couple of CS graduate degrees, and became a Usenet reader in September, 1989, so perhaps I have left my low-class roots behind?
Anyway, quit your damned elitist whining. Look around the net a bit to find a group that shares your sensibilities. If you can't find one, whip one up! Then you can moderate out the rubes and keep the conversation up to your high standards. There is plenty of bandwidth for us all.
By the way, I've noticed that special interests can still result in the caliber of exchange you want. If you are into something like antique radios or Middle English literature, I'll bet you can find newsgroups/mailing lists/web sites galore that have high signal-to-noise ratio.
Anyone care to give it a shot? Trekker bragging rights to the best list.
How about these suggestions to get you started?
Bill: Well, Andy, I think we have pushed office and internet applications about as far as they need to go. From now on, we'll just fix bugs and work on operating systems stability.
Andy: Ok, Bill. Then we'll stop developing faster processors. Instead, we will work on pushing down the prices of machines with the same performance.
Bill: Yup. That seems the thing to do.
Andy: (Rocking slowly.) Yup.
Bill: Andy, what about games?
Andy: Just a few kids play those. No money in it.
Andy: Bill, do you think there might still be another "next big thing" out there? Do you think you might be able to invent the next Visicalc?
Bill: Huh? Invent? You let me know if someone does, and then I'll embrace it...
Andy: Oh, ok. (Sighs.)
Fadeout.
Oh, and by the way, I did my time writing 6502 assembler and using punch cards.
You are absolutely right that many software developers would not do the work if they had to use only assembly language. So what? Many farmers would not farm if they had to walk behind a single-blade plow pulled by a mule.High-level languages and tools are not "watered down." The good ones allow us to develop software that would not otherwise exist.
So, have fun hacking away in assembler. I agree it can be a hoot. But get down off that high horse when it comes to programming languages. Either that, or quit using that browser to post to Slashdot...I'll bet money it is not written in assembler.
Any law that enforces a legal right that is not a natural right is an unethical law.
Any law that actively abridges a natural right is an unethical law.
To me, "how we'd rather have them spend their time" is not a compelling argument. Either those authors have a right to control the particular bit sequences they introduce to the world, or they don't. What result we want is irrelevant.I'm trying, in my own mind, to get to the heart of the rights, if any, involved here. It seems to me that the act of distributing bits may be an action that negates any right to restrict those bits. If a person builds a widget, places it in the middle of a busy street, and walks away, I would argue that he doesn't have much to complain about if someone else comes along, picks it up, and uses it as he sees fit. In the world of bits, this seems even more compelling, because a person can build a widget of information (program, song, movie, etc.) lay it down out in the street, and still keep it for himself.
Before purchase is what I really meant...but the word shrinkwrap gets used so much in that discussion that i used it without thinking.
I am leaning toward the position that "intellectual property" cannot be ethically justified, because the mere copying of bits has no direct effect on the original author of those bits. I am leaning toward the position that if I have a stream of bits I don't want copied around, then I need to keep them secret.
In the software world, that could be accomplished by running an ASP rather than selling software copies. Or, software authors could use individual nondisclosure agreements with users (properly agreed to before opening the shrinkwrap, of course). But note that this last could only hold the discloser responsible for the software being revealed...receivers of the copy who did not agree to the NDA would be under no obligation not to use or copy the software.
Notice that this would also undercut the GNU license, since if one doesn't have the right to restrict how bits he has authored are copied, then he can't enforce the GNU restrictions.
I make a living writing software, and I like the idea of authors, artists, etc. being able to make money from their creations. Someone out there give me a solid ethical justification for intellectual property restrictions, please.
Besides, whether it's a Linux box or not, it still looks like something I'd like to find under my Christmas tree!
This is another sign of the era of the usefulness of public schools coming to an end.
The very phrasing of your comment shows that you view a waiting period as a way to discourage the lawful ownership of a handgun, rather than as a means of doing a legitimate criminal check, or as a (dubious) means of stopping "crimes of passion."