Perhaps kangaroos can be considered "rats" under a legal definition... they certainly can cause problems down under. You know, kind of like the legal definition of "narcotics", or "rogue-state" -- it has no scientific or other bearing on reality.
Bacteria, engineered by the US Army to clean up oil spills, have infected a major oil deposit in Iraq. After being released in the War Against Evil (TM), the bacteria quickly spread out of control. Experts estimate that within two years, the bacteria will have infected oil wells throughout the middle east, consuming about half of the oil reserves in the region, or, in other words, 30% of the world's known oil reserves.
"...there is incredibly strong precedent for new copyright laws to apply to preexisting works -- in fact, sometimes even to works which were not eligible for any form of copyright at the time of their creation."
Which makes me wonder.... if the Supreme Court sided with the plaintiffs, wouldn't they be trying to abridge Congress' power in a way that is beyond their authority? Maybe, despite the reasons given for copyright in the constitution, the court sees Congress as having the prerogative to pass a law that affects the status of currently existing things that were produced in the past.
Does the constitution's preamble about encouraging The Arts and Sciences abridge Congress' domain?
I did a 4 year degree with the aim of working in the public sector. I worked in various government positions for a few years. Eventually, I left to get involved in the IT industry. I'm looking at small business as my focus. Here's why.
The people who work in the public sector are, by and large, INSANE. Part of it is just the fact that you're embedded in a large bureaucracy, and part is specific to government bureaucracy. A business has specific goals, and limited resources. They think about what they want to do and how to do it. My experience in government, however, is that the organization as a whole has no clear goals; but individuals do. So, your project might be driven by the politician's desire to look good, or by a senior manager's whim. I worked on a DB project that cost over $3 million before it ground to a halt. Watching that money get burned up for no good reason was the last straw for me.
I need to feel that my work has some meaning. That what I'm doing will produce tangible results. If this sounds like you, steer clear of the public sector!!
Smokers do not smoke to protest or express an idea,
When I smoke, it says to those around me: "Here is a guy who is calm, cool, and in control." When I smoke a cigar (occasionally), it says: "Here is a guy who knows what he wants, and gets it." and the side effects of smoking has legitimate harmful effects on bystanders.
My roommate quit smoking a while back. You should see the harmful side effects it's been having on bystanders!!
But, as a smoker, I must say that the most sensible comment on the issue I've heard to date is actually a/. sig(paraphrased):
"Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing area in a pool."
That's pretty much exactly why I quit and went into IT. But, then again, it's not just the governments that do this; almost any large bureaucracy can tend toward this.
Isn't that what we're really talking about here? Dealing with employment that turns people into widgets?
F'ing weird, or SCARY? This guy is tuned in/and/ turned on. A true profit. He has seen my innermost fears, and now he sticks out his lollypop-coloured tongue at them.
What can you do? Join them?
I think that made me want to get a job at IBM. Taking the 20 year view, there will be some exciting times ahead.
I'm glad that JWZ likes profiling, because there certainly is a lot of it out there! My video shop has a profile on me too: Tim (the video shop owner) often stops to talk to me as he's walking his dog up our street. He keeps his profile of me in his head, which is where I keep my profile of him! As for the execs in California/New York/Ft. Mead... I'd rather not have them profiling me.
Really, the problem isn't the profiling per se, but that it's done without my full knowledge of the extent and purpose. If Congress wants to do something useful, they should make that illegal, at least. I let Slashdot carry a profile on me... even though I've never met Rob or anyone else who has access to it (anyone!). But, it's my choice to do so. I trust slashdot (at least so far) to filter their news for me, but I don't want CNN or Micro$oft deciding which news I should see, because they have completely different purposes.
Oh, and albamuth says:
The young, hip adults designing advertisements aren't publishing propaganda for some ideological purpose; they're using their imagination and creativity to drive capitalism - that's their job.
Guess what? Capitalism is an ideology -- and it's not mine! You think that you and I are all immune to advertising. Consider that over 75% of drivers rate themselves as "above average"! Personally, I don't believe that a more efficient market is necessarily good for society. After all, everyone thought that the computer revolution would increase productivity so much that no one would have to work more than 30 hours a week; yet, we're all putting in 60 hours, and seem even worse off than before (unless you're a controlling shareholder).
I could go on, and on, but I'll leave it here: deception is bad.
I pity the PRC fool who tells his boss "hey, we should be checking all the vacation photos that leave the country!" He'll have a lot of boring work to do for the rest of his life!
The best indictment that they'll ever get by reading/. is (Customs Official): "hey, are you the same dunbar who went to u. of wisc? Well, go home! We don't want your subversive types in these parts."
Why am I telling you all this? I strongly suspect that if I knew your political ideology I'd strongly disagree with it, and I doubt you would care too much for what I think. The reason I'm telling you all this is that I think the key to Chinese political progress is the development of "civil society" and anything that makes exchanging ideas in China easier (even slightly) is a good thing.
Here, here! We all disagree... it's inevitable. The beauty of/. is that we can all exchange ideas and help one another out, if we choose. This, to me, is human progress. Even better, when we can listen to things without voices, this is natural progress.
Censorship is the ultimate form of oppression!
Having never been to china or iran, I don't know how much worse things are there than here, but, hey, we've got plenty of censorship issues here in the Western world to keep us busy.... let's support these struggles on all fronts!
After all, has anyone ever thought of a better answer to the question "why are we here" than "to grow by sharing ideas with one another?"
Your point is well taken. You may wish to visit http://www.dhmo.org for more on the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide. However, radiation does cause genetic damage. Even at low levels, the damage is cumulative, so that, over a lifetime, and through multiple sources of exposure, the small incremental risks can add up to a high likelyhood of a health impact. Voluntary exposure to risks are the easiest exposures to control. By the way, nobody has yet figured out whether the electromagnetic field generated by cell phones actually poses a risk. Credible sources have conflicting views. The world health organization has recently initiated a ten year prospective study of the issue, and this should be the most robust study to date. Back to your original question, who stands to benefit from this info? Anyone who cares to take the time to understand the issue, and make a decision for theirself. Information wants to be free!! Right?
To me, it seems clear that, if a protocol provides for "transparent" transfer of personal data, then thousands or more users will end up giving out info that they wouldn't have, if they had known the data was being given. This is simple -- imagine a business person who suddenly finds out that their personal cell phone number is on their business card, which they've given to hundreds of people who were only meant to have the office number. So, that, for me, is the crux of the problem. Go ahead and argue whether P3P is really a security concern; I'm assuming that it is. Given that this is a security concern, I have two points about what freedoms we can exercise to avoid harm, if P3P is accepted as a standard. 1. A good number of people who've posted comments have said "No problem, I'll just provide false info!" That may be legal now, but it's unlikely to be legal in five years. Suggesting that you're going to write a program to autogenerate false ID's (is cool, but) might be considered "conspiracy to commit fraud" or something like that. 2. People have also defended P3P on the basis that users have the "freedom to choose what sites to visit" and "content providers have the right to demand info for access." Well, this is about as true as the assumption that price is purely the outcome of an infinite number of market players influencing supply and demand (i.e. sounds nice in theory, but 99% of the time, it's just not true). Another example: here in Canada, we have, in our blessed "free market", the ability to "choose" among 6 banks. They all have pretty much the same policy: "If you aren't investing tens of thousands in mutual funds and RRSP's, bend over and give me your wallet." Oh, but I have a choice, right? If I think it's unfair that all 6 banks will charge me when I ask for my money back (when I deposited it, I gave it to them to invest while I wasn't using it), then I can choose not to have a bank account. Which means choosing to not be able to pay my hydro bill (they only accept cheques or direct debit), which means choosing not to have heating in my house. Now, I know this might sound like I'm getting off topic, but the point is, that this freedom to choose, or freedom to be denied access to a site, is a myth. It might hold in some cases, but not in others. What happens when UUNet (which owns the backbone to most of Canada's internet) decides to demand full P3P disclosure as a condition of using their service? I just find a "competing" internet backbone, right? Or move to Jekyll Island, right?
All the posts above make some good points, but the topic is being discussed as if the question is "How much should a software firm focus on Quality Assurance?" I'd rather get all philosophical and open up a broader question: "What does it take to get people/organizations to produce quality work?"
I think all the open-sourcers(?) know that, despite all the argument over tangible benefits of open source development (in software or civil engineering), one thing that is guaranteed by this system is a true, deep-seated interest, maybe even passion, for the work that is being done. The profit motive puts the actual product way lower on the worker's priority list: after the paycheck, the career advancement, etc.
If you ask me, M$ software (to keep slagging on the obvious target) is comparable to those cheap plastic toys that are produced on the wings of a new fad. The idea for the product starts in the marketing department, with the hope of riding the wave of some new fad. The product needs only to be as good as it takes to convince people to buy it: there's no committment to the longer-term. Now, when a civil engineer designs a bridge, I'd bet that s/he has a vision somewhere in the mind of people viewing that bridge fifty years from now and going "Now that's a good bridge!" GPL+(value-added-services) is one way to provide a "niche" in the economy for people who are motivated by their visions. But, as we've all heard, everyone must be a salesman in the 21st C. This is how we survive in the "dog-eat-dog" world.
Now, I realize that I've been going off on tangents, but I guess the main thing is: this isn't a question about programming, or, hell, even strictly about business models. It's about how we relate to each other, and about what motivates us to do the things we do. Open source programmers are accomplishing two things at once: they're creating cool, cheap software, and they're changing the whole logic of group decision making. The result: a superior product at a competitive price.
mfinke wrote: But who would really want that? Aside from someone who can't plug in their keyboard and mouse correctly on the third try.
I just had to reply to this one. I have a lot of respect for programmers in general, and/.ers in particular, even the ones I disagree with in their point of view. (Yes, I am not a programmer; now you know!) Having said this, I think that the above point of view severely limits many creative and beneficial ideas from ever "making it" (which is, in the end, what we're talking about, right?)
[On my soapbox now] You know what? There are thousands, millions -- billions! -- of people who could not plug a keyboard into a computer if they tried. They would sooner go down the street and pay $5/hr for a pre-set-up system. But, you know what else? what they lack in mechanical/technical/computing knowledge, they more than make up for in other areas. Sure, your distro of Linux may be easier to install and customize than Windoze, but most people I know haven't and wouldn't dare try installing _any_ software on their system, they don't even know their OS from their http client. I don't think that they should be expected to. One example (and it's true!): I know a doctor who has saved many lives, and I've had to give him tech support many times. When he says "Make it work," I make it work! I don't expect him to ever learn the difference between parallel and SCSI, because he's already got enough in his head.
Failure to appreciate that fact creates, in a word, alienation. Not just alienation of the one luddite from the techno-community, but alienation of many people from many other people. i.e. The reverse happens when programmers are treated as geeks by the more "artsy" or what have you. Ever hang out with a group of linguists? I have. I love them, but damn, their conversations can be intimidating if you don't know the jargon.
Now, [still on soapbox] I'm not saying that programmers should dumb-down Unix so that it does the hamsterdance all day and crashes when you try to crunch some numbers. I'm just saying that many computer users, many people, don't have the same set of skills that you do, and we'd all be better off to keep this in mind. In the end, who are you designing the product for? Who are you trying to speak to? Who are you trying to connect with?
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps kangaroos can be considered "rats" under a legal definition... they certainly can cause problems down under. You know, kind of like the legal definition of "narcotics", or "rogue-state" -- it has no scientific or other bearing on reality.
In today's news....
Bacteria, engineered by the US Army to clean up oil spills, have infected a major oil deposit in Iraq. After being released in the War Against Evil (TM), the bacteria quickly spread out of control. Experts estimate that within two years, the bacteria will have infected oil wells throughout the middle east, consuming about half of the oil reserves in the region, or, in other words, 30% of the world's known oil reserves.
Which makes me wonder.... if the Supreme Court sided with the plaintiffs, wouldn't they be trying to abridge Congress' power in a way that is beyond their authority? Maybe, despite the reasons given for copyright in the constitution, the court sees Congress as having the prerogative to pass a law that affects the status of currently existing things that were produced in the past.
Does the constitution's preamble about encouraging The Arts and Sciences abridge Congress' domain?
I did a 4 year degree with the aim of working in the public sector. I worked in various government positions for a few years. Eventually, I left to get involved in the IT industry. I'm looking at small business as my focus. Here's why.
The people who work in the public sector are, by and large, INSANE. Part of it is just the fact that you're embedded in a large bureaucracy, and part is specific to government bureaucracy. A business has specific goals, and limited resources. They think about what they want to do and how to do it. My experience in government, however, is that the organization as a whole has no clear goals; but individuals do. So, your project might be driven by the politician's desire to look good, or by a senior manager's whim. I worked on a DB project that cost over $3 million before it ground to a halt. Watching that money get burned up for no good reason was the last straw for me.
I need to feel that my work has some meaning. That what I'm doing will produce tangible results. If this sounds like you, steer clear of the public sector!!
Sad, but true in my experience.
Smokers do not smoke to protest or express an idea,
When I smoke, it says to those around me: "Here is a guy who is calm, cool, and in control." When I smoke a cigar (occasionally), it says: "Here is a guy who knows what he wants, and gets it."
and the side effects of smoking has legitimate harmful effects on bystanders.
My roommate quit smoking a while back. You should see the harmful side effects it's been having on bystanders!!
But, as a smoker, I must say that the most sensible comment on the issue I've heard to date is actually a
"Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing area in a pool."
Too true.
You must work for the government, right?
That's pretty much exactly why I quit and went into IT. But, then again, it's not just the governments that do this; almost any large bureaucracy can tend toward this.
Isn't that what we're really talking about here? Dealing with employment that turns people into widgets?
This one had me in awe: Newer York, New York After the Great Blaze of 2015, Manhattan went green - thanks to Bill Gates and bambootekture.
By Michael McDonough (as told to Bruce Sterling).
This is a tag-team battle-royale of the imagination!!
Well,
/and/ turned on. A true profit. He has seen my innermost fears, and now he sticks out his lollypop-coloured tongue at them.
F'ing weird, or SCARY? This guy is tuned in
What can you do? Join them?
I think that made me want to get a job at IBM. Taking the 20 year view, there will be some exciting times ahead.
I'm glad that JWZ likes profiling, because there certainly is a lot of it out there! My video shop has a profile on me too: Tim (the video shop owner) often stops to talk to me as he's walking his dog up our street. He keeps his profile of me in his head, which is where I keep my profile of him! As for the execs in California/New York/Ft. Mead... I'd rather not have them profiling me.
Really, the problem isn't the profiling per se, but that it's done without my full knowledge of the extent and purpose. If Congress wants to do something useful, they should make that illegal, at least. I let Slashdot carry a profile on me... even though I've never met Rob or anyone else who has access to it (anyone!). But, it's my choice to do so. I trust slashdot (at least so far) to filter their news for me, but I don't want CNN or Micro$oft deciding which news I should see, because they have completely different purposes.
Oh, and albamuth says:
Guess what? Capitalism is an ideology -- and it's not mine! You think that you and I are all immune to advertising. Consider that over 75% of drivers rate themselves as "above average"! Personally, I don't believe that a more efficient market is necessarily good for society. After all, everyone thought that the computer revolution would increase productivity so much that no one would have to work more than 30 hours a week; yet, we're all putting in 60 hours, and seem even worse off than before (unless you're a controlling shareholder).I could go on, and on, but I'll leave it here: deception is bad.
I pity the PRC fool who tells his boss "hey, we should be checking all the vacation photos that leave the country!" He'll have a lot of boring work to do for the rest of his life!
The best indictment that they'll ever get by reading /. is (Customs Official): "hey, are you the same dunbar who went to u. of wisc? Well, go home! We don't want your subversive types in these parts."
chenyu wrote:
Here, here! We all disagree... it's inevitable. The beauty of /. is that we can all exchange ideas and help one another out, if we choose. This, to me, is human progress. Even better, when we can listen to things without voices, this is natural progress.
Censorship is the ultimate form of oppression!
Having never been to china or iran, I don't know how much worse things are there than here, but, hey, we've got plenty of censorship issues here in the Western world to keep us busy.... let's support these struggles on all fronts!
After all, has anyone ever thought of a better answer to the question "why are we here" than "to grow by sharing ideas with one another?"
My two cents,
by Col. Klync
Your point is well taken. You may wish to visit http://www.dhmo.org for more on the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide.
However, radiation does cause genetic damage. Even at low levels, the damage is cumulative, so that, over a lifetime, and through multiple sources of exposure, the small incremental risks can add up to a high likelyhood of a health impact. Voluntary exposure to risks are the easiest exposures to control.
By the way, nobody has yet figured out whether the electromagnetic field generated by cell phones actually poses a risk. Credible sources have conflicting views. The world health organization has recently initiated a ten year prospective study of the issue, and this should be the most robust study to date.
Back to your original question, who stands to benefit from this info? Anyone who cares to take the time to understand the issue, and make a decision for theirself. Information wants to be free!! Right?
To me, it seems clear that, if a protocol provides for "transparent" transfer of personal data, then thousands or more users will end up giving out info that they wouldn't have, if they had known the data was being given. This is simple -- imagine a business person who suddenly finds out that their personal cell phone number is on their business card, which they've given to hundreds of people who were only meant to have the office number. So, that, for me, is the crux of the problem. Go ahead and argue whether P3P is really a security concern; I'm assuming that it is. Given that this is a security concern, I have two points about what freedoms we can exercise to avoid harm, if P3P is accepted as a standard. 1. A good number of people who've posted comments have said "No problem, I'll just provide false info!" That may be legal now, but it's unlikely to be legal in five years. Suggesting that you're going to write a program to autogenerate false ID's (is cool, but) might be considered "conspiracy to commit fraud" or something like that. 2. People have also defended P3P on the basis that users have the "freedom to choose what sites to visit" and "content providers have the right to demand info for access." Well, this is about as true as the assumption that price is purely the outcome of an infinite number of market players influencing supply and demand (i.e. sounds nice in theory, but 99% of the time, it's just not true). Another example: here in Canada, we have, in our blessed "free market", the ability to "choose" among 6 banks. They all have pretty much the same policy: "If you aren't investing tens of thousands in mutual funds and RRSP's, bend over and give me your wallet." Oh, but I have a choice, right? If I think it's unfair that all 6 banks will charge me when I ask for my money back (when I deposited it, I gave it to them to invest while I wasn't using it), then I can choose not to have a bank account. Which means choosing to not be able to pay my hydro bill (they only accept cheques or direct debit), which means choosing not to have heating in my house. Now, I know this might sound like I'm getting off topic, but the point is, that this freedom to choose, or freedom to be denied access to a site, is a myth. It might hold in some cases, but not in others. What happens when UUNet (which owns the backbone to most of Canada's internet) decides to demand full P3P disclosure as a condition of using their service? I just find a "competing" internet backbone, right? Or move to Jekyll Island, right?
All the posts above make some good points, but the topic is being discussed as if the question is "How much should a software firm focus on Quality Assurance?" I'd rather get all philosophical and open up a broader question: "What does it take to get people/organizations to produce quality work?"
I think all the open-sourcers(?) know that, despite all the argument over tangible benefits of open source development (in software or civil engineering), one thing that is guaranteed by this system is a true, deep-seated interest, maybe even passion, for the work that is being done. The profit motive puts the actual product way lower on the worker's priority list: after the paycheck, the career advancement, etc.
If you ask me, M$ software (to keep slagging on the obvious target) is comparable to those cheap plastic toys that are produced on the wings of a new fad. The idea for the product starts in the marketing department, with the hope of riding the wave of some new fad. The product needs only to be as good as it takes to convince people to buy it: there's no committment to the longer-term. Now, when a civil engineer designs a bridge, I'd bet that s/he has a vision somewhere in the mind of people viewing that bridge fifty years from now and going "Now that's a good bridge!" GPL+(value-added-services) is one way to provide a "niche" in the economy for people who are motivated by their visions. But, as we've all heard, everyone must be a salesman in the 21st C. This is how we survive in the "dog-eat-dog" world.
Now, I realize that I've been going off on tangents, but I guess the main thing is: this isn't a question about programming, or, hell, even strictly about business models. It's about how we relate to each other, and about what motivates us to do the things we do. Open source programmers are accomplishing two things at once: they're creating cool, cheap software, and they're changing the whole logic of group decision making. The result: a superior product at a competitive price.
mfinke wrote: But who would really want that? Aside from someone who can't plug in their keyboard and mouse correctly on the third try.
/.ers in particular, even the ones I disagree with in their point of view. (Yes, I am not a programmer; now you know!) Having said this, I think that the above point of view severely limits many creative and beneficial ideas from ever "making it" (which is, in the end, what we're talking about, right?)
I just had to reply to this one. I have a lot of respect for programmers in general, and
[On my soapbox now] You know what? There are thousands, millions -- billions! -- of people who could not plug a keyboard into a computer if they tried. They would sooner go down the street and pay $5/hr for a pre-set-up system. But, you know what else? what they lack in mechanical/technical/computing knowledge, they more than make up for in other areas. Sure, your distro of Linux may be easier to install and customize than Windoze, but most people I know haven't and wouldn't dare try installing _any_ software on their system, they don't even know their OS from their http client. I don't think that they should be expected to. One example (and it's true!): I know a doctor who has saved many lives, and I've had to give him tech support many times. When he says "Make it work," I make it work! I don't expect him to ever learn the difference between parallel and SCSI, because he's already got enough in his head.
Failure to appreciate that fact creates, in a word, alienation. Not just alienation of the one luddite from the techno-community, but alienation of many people from many other people. i.e. The reverse happens when programmers are treated as geeks by the more "artsy" or what have you. Ever hang out with a group of linguists? I have. I love them, but damn, their conversations can be intimidating if you don't know the jargon.
Now, [still on soapbox] I'm not saying that programmers should dumb-down Unix so that it does the hamsterdance all day and crashes when you try to crunch some numbers. I'm just saying that many computer users, many people, don't have the same set of skills that you do, and we'd all be better off to keep this in mind. In the end, who are you designing the product for? Who are you trying to speak to? Who are you trying to connect with?