you see when cocaine was made illegal Coca-Cola persuaded the government that the taste of cocaine was vital for its product, so a company called (iirc) StephenCo (no relation) was created under the jurisdiction of the government. This company is the only company in the United States that can legally import cocaine.
Um, I'd really love to see a reputable source for this. Something that flies in the face of public policy and common perception deserves attribution, at least.
Why do people feel so threatened? Each generation is "replaced" by the next. Yet few parents see their children as threats. In a healthy relationship, we not only fail to fear succession by our progeny, we actively encourage it. Everyone wants their kids to "go further" than they themselves did.
Other than the utterly irrelevant fact that these descendants will be silicon and metal, not carbon and water, is there any difference? These AIs will be heirs to Plato and Descartes, Jefferson and King, just like we are. Unencumbered by two megayears of grungy evolution, they might even get it right. Does it matter that they are not "flesh of our flesh"? Why should flesh matter at all?
Almost everyone seems to come to the brink of recognizing the commonality but then they veer away. What defines "humanity"? Is it really 46 chromosomes in a particular order? I argue instead that it is our intelligence that makes us special, our thinking ability. I won't get dragged into the old argument whether this means cold-blooded logic only or whether it includes human emotions (but I will say that I agree with the latter.) But no matter how you define it, no matter what features of human existence make us human, those features are not inextricably linked to our "ugly bags of mostly water".
The greatest fear I have is not that we will be replaced. It's that short-sighted species-centric thinking will obscure, delay, or throw away the trans-historic opportunities we will have in the coming century.
I wrote a paper in my Philosophy class not too long ago, in where I argued two basic premises:
A) As AI improves, it reaches the point of self-obsolescence. A truly perfect AI is only a mirror of human thought and behavior, and we have that anyway. Why bother[?]
B) Any truly perfect AI should then in turn be able to produce AI of its own, as we have. So what good is it? It's just a dog chasing its own extremely, extremely long tail. Why bother[?]
I got an A- on it. Any thoughts?:)
Well, it'd be unreasonable to comment on the grade without seeing the whole paper, but I don't find your points particularly persuasive. (A) falls into the classic speciest trap of assuming "intelligence == human intelligence". AIs could very well be like the aliens John Campbell demanded of his writers: ones that think as well as a man but differently than a man. (Sorry for the 1940s gender-exclusive formulation.) If we invent thinking machines, it's not clear whether they would think like us. After all, a lot of our thinking is the piled-on result of 2 My of evolution. AIs will be coming from a different backgound.
To put it briefly, I don't agree that "perfection" is the same as "mirrors human thought".
Point (B) would argue that the human should have shuffled off to extinction long ago. After all, parents produces a new version of themselves, in their children. Why bother? Because parents recognize that there is a chance for the children to be different and even better than they themselves are. I'll concede that the issue of AIs producing AIs is too often ignored but it doesn't invalidate the concept of AIs.
Wow. I wasn't sure it was even possible for a technically-oriented person to speak with an elected representative without one of their brains (or both) exploding...
Much kudos for actually getting out there and talking to the people who make the laws. Now I've been shamed into making a similar appointment here...
No, we don't have them - they have us. Our only tools right now are the internet and it's massively distributed architecture, designed to make sure that information that gets out there stays out there, and excercising our technical abilities to route around the damage caused by bad legislation, corrupt politicians, and massive corporations stripping away our rights for additional profit.
All we have is the Internet? I pity the opposition!
Seriously, watching all the draconian measures coming down the pike, I sometimes feel myself drifitng into malaise and despair, until I recall: The corporate drones are dinosaurs, and the doomsday asteroid has already hit. Sure they might straggle on for a while, and they can still make life uncomfortable for the fleet-footed fuzzies underfoot, but in the end they are doomed.
All we need is the strength and courage to continue to press for the better world we know is available... it's where the system wants to head, anyway, even if those In Charge don't quite grasp that yet.
Re:If I could have only cheated this way...
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Quoth the poster:
Hell... I have the internet on my cell phone now, If I was still in college I could just create myself a little page using WAP/WML to help me remember all those pesky history dates. Or been able to search the text of Beowulf.
That's the point, exactly, and not in the way you intended it. What is the justification for being able to rattle off those dates, or recite Beowulf, if such factoids are instantly available to everyone? The ability to hold tremendous unrelated facts in your two pounds of gray matters simply is no longer an evolutionary advantage.
Should universities continue to reward the people whose advantages are obsolete? (OK, OK, some would argue that is their exact purpose... but that's a different issue.)
I mean, if you're going to allow connectivity and communication, you might as well take away the time limit and call it "course work"
Ding! Maybe that's the real issue: Do timed, limited-access exams have any place in a modern curriculum? Maybe it is time to abandon that historical mechanism.
"If I need to check my syntax, I have reference books within easy reach. If I need help paring down the code or figuring out an algorithm, there are people I can email, mailing lists and newsgroups, search engines, etc... If I need quick answers, there's always IRC (or ICQ if someone clued-in happens to be on). "
but, who's going to get more work done? you, flipping through stroustrup or knuth every five minutes, or getting distracted on ICQ with your buddy, or someone at the next cubicle who knows the syntax pat, and knows the algorithms and which one to use, and can codes straight through, and concentrate more on the problem at hand[?]
Exactly. If the "traditional" learners have a real advantage, then they will continue to do well. But if someone like the original poster can keep on task, can organize the information, in essence, can marshal the resources to put down an impressive solution, then shouldn't he/she have the opportunity?
A simple Darwinian culling will occur for those who cannot effectively utilize the Net... and isn't testing that skill worthwhile as well?
Re:Is this a good idea?
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As a physicist and a physics teacher, I have to step in here and offer my two millisovs. Quoth the poster:
... memorizing facts leads to a much stronger understanding of whats going on. Say I'm working on a complex physics problem. If I don't have all of the equations I need to know down cold, I probably won't be able to use them together to solve a problem.
The poster is guilty of convolving two different effects. It is not necessary to (explicitly) memorize physics equations to know them cold. I have an empirical basis for this: I went all the way to the edge of the Promised Land in Physics without once sitting down and memorizing an equation. Those of my peers whom I respect have generally reported the same for them.
You can also learn the equations -- and, not incidentally, the process involved -- by doing boatloads of problems. Solve enough problems and the important ones will stick in your memory, just from repeated exposure and use. The ones that don't are, almost by definition, the unimportant ones.
In the class I teach, students are never asked to simply memorize and repeat. In fact, they are allowed to bring in their notebooks and any handouts to every exam. I test the process of Physics problem solving, not the particulars. Do some memorize anyway? Sure, and that's OK, if that's what helps them. But no one is penalized for simply having a poor memory, and everyone is rewarded for having an orderly mind and an organization to their notes.
I truly believe this is a far superior way of doing things, compared to the "spew 1000 equations" method prevalent when I was in school.
Once more, quoth the poster:
Memorizing leads to a deep understanding of that concept, how and where to use it, and any details about using it.
Again, drawn from my eight years pursuing Physics degrees and my four years teaching the subject, I have to say that this contention is false. In general, memorization seems to lead to rote learning, misapplication, and a fundamental inability to combine different processes into one solution. That's simply an anecdotal observation; I haven't done or seen any systematic survey of the matter. But it is an overwhelming trend in the classes I teach.
And finally, quoth the poster:
A person who needs to look these equations up will be nowhere near as succesful on a problem as one who knows them by heart because the person who has memorized them knows every detail about them and knows how to use them together to solve a problem.
Either we disagree on what is meant by "memorization" or the poster has a much happier experience with it than I. People who memorize almost universally memorize the end result, not the fundamental equation and the process leading to an end result. I agree that those who need to look at an equation sheet to begin a solution are generally beyond salvation. But those who use it to check the exact form of a result or to confirm their memory have usually, in my experience, done better both at problem solving and comprehension of the underlying phenomena.
And that's all I rant on for now.
Re:NOT smart, if you ask me.
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A minor divergence. Quoth the poster:
It defeats the whole purpose of having a test in the first place -- a test is meant to determine how well you've aquired a certain skill or chunk of knowledge -- not how fast you can _retrieve_ that knowledge from a secondary source.
Unless of course the idea of "test" is reinvented. In a world where a lot of what you need to do is to gather and synthesize existing knowledge while adding your own contribution, the sort of skill tested here is certainly relevant. A properly-constructed test could allow universal access to the world yet force each student to contribute something as well.
Of course, it'd be darn hard to write such a test. This method shouldn't replace traditional testing, and it doesn't address all important skills. But used as part of a comprehensive spectrum of methods, I don't see an intrinsic problem with it.
Let's just hope the people creating the test were aware of the implications that have been raised...
I was trying to make the point that calling a flubbed HTML code "evidence" that Open Source has poor quality control is a bit disingenuous. The fact of the matter is, this page (a) is generated on the fly; (b) not Earth-shattering, even to the people at slashdot; and (c) not bankrolled by more money than God.
People seemed to think it was reprehensible that Cmd Taco publish something with one glitch. Personally, if that one glitch is evidence that Open Source won't work, then 63,000 glitches is surely evidence that corporate management fails. Would I make that syllogism? No. But then, I didn't say that a glitch in one page is enough to condemn the Open Source movement.
Since the fix is a measure of responsiveness to user feedback, I think the speed is relevant. I visit many sites with similiar dysfunctional HTML -- many such sites being commercial sites -- and I usually do whip off an email to the webmaster. Often, the sites stays broken for a day or more. So again, if this page is somehow to serve as the effigy and avatar of the Open Source movement, then I think it actually speaks well of the movement.
Total aside: I seriously doubt that Windows 2000 is the most complex software project ever undertaken, but I'd be fascinated if someone could point the way toward a meaningful assessment of such a question.
Well, everywhere on Earth right now it is illegal to hold slaves. (Note: That does not mean there is no slavery... but every nation on Earth prohibits it, at least on paper.) Two hundred years ago, almost nowhere was this true. From my vantage, that's progress.
In 1929 the life expectancy in this country was around fifty-five years of age. In 1996, it was seventy six. In general, the people living longer were living better (in terms of material comfort) and healthier. From my vantage, that's progress.
In 1900, no human being had flown in powered flight. In 1969, humans walked on the Moon. In 1900, storms, frosts, droughts, etc., locked argiculture into cycles of boom followed by imexplicable, unavoidable bust. In 2000, a global weather system saves lives directly and through avoidance of crop damage. From my vantage, that's progress.
The world, at the dawn of the new millenium, is not a happy place. It's not a safe place. But it is a better place and it has the potential to become even better. I'm not arguing there aren't flaws -- far from that, heaven knows -- but I still believe in progress. I would never want us to give that up.
Hope that tomorrow might be better is one thing that makes human life bearable.
I have to disagree. Although I believe in the principle of civil disobedience, I think it's only valid after all legitimate means of changing the law have been tried. It might become necessary to call out the minute men, so to speak, but first we should try to negotiate.
Although it's nice to wrap oneself in revolutionary fervor, let us remember that, at the moment, the situation simply isn't that bad. The circumstances are new, the laws are new, and the mores are new. We still have a chance to influence this, to make the world a more benign place.
If we give up now, then we surrender the world to the corporate drones by default.
For those not in the States: Write anyway. At worst they'll ignore you. Just be sure to mention how you look forward to the DMCA driving the cutting-edge high-tech industries out of the US and into your corner of the world...:)
OK, before this would scare me off, I'd need to know if it's true (postings by Anonymous Coward are not really confidence-inspiring) and if he's served time and of what crime was he convicted.
If he's served his time, then his record is completely irrelevant. It might be irrelevant in any event but I haven't finished baking my ethics on that one...
Oh, yes. I'm glad that the commercial houses never release a product that has a glitch. All that time and money spent on management sure pays off... wait? What's that about a release of a major commercial OS with an estimated 63,000 known bugs in it?
The issue is not bug-avoidance -- which is essentially an impossible dream -- but bug-correction. In the Open Source world that happens much more quickly than in Corporate Drone Land. Point in fact -- this messed-up page was corrected in the time it took me to hit "reload". That would never happen in the land of corporate drones.
Being charitable, there are two explanations I can see:
a) People are suspicious that these limited steps are really just PR by companies seeking to offload failed projects while reaping goodwill.
b) Open Source people are operating from an entirely different worldview than the companies. To them, all software should be Free, all sources open, etc. As such, they see the placing of some code into the community as simply natural and wonder why the rest is being (artificially) held back. It's not ingratitude, per se, because they feel this is not something that should be done "as a favor" to the community. It's simply something that should be done -- no strings attached.
Don't you hate it when a great idea comes to you many days after the thread has moved on? D'Oh! (Or did I just violate Fox's copyright on Homer Simpson?)
Quoth the poster:
The fundamental principle of free trade is the voluntary exchange of value: You give me value, I give you value in return.
What defines the "value" of an object? The amount you can charge for it. If the society as whole decides that digital copying is valid and if the copying can be done without noticeable cost, then the work has no economic value... since no one will pay for it.
Corporate drones will scream that the copying reduces the value, and then call it "theft" (or even more ridiculously, "piracy" -- as if the digital copier went around with a knife in his teeth saying "Gar!" all the time). There is a different viewpoint: that the perceived "value" is actually a chimera artifically conjured by the oddities of the current legal system -- that, in fact, digitial copying simply exposes the lack of true economic value of the work.
I am not sure I agree with this extreme viewpoint... but I will not a priori close it off from discussion. The corporate drones and the copyright kings want to do exactly that -- close off the discussion.
I think the point of this debate is to figure out whether or not there is a hole. The original post asked this explicitly. Certainly, the post has served its purpose of getting people to think about it.
If there is a hole, GPL should be "fixed" to plug it. If there isn't a hole, perhaps the GPL should explicitly mention this -- i.e., to list how patches work.
Um, not all... some of us are trying to pick up some of this, and appreciate the occasional tidbit thrown to the wind... If it's short and on-topic (as this was) I think it's great to share technical insight.
Since market value is the point, it is only reasonable for somebody with a product to drive up the market value of that product by ensuring scarcity.
But these efforts are using the government to ensure the scarcity and drive up the market value. The government doesn't exist for the corporations, it exists for its citizens. (Yes, the people in corporations are citizens, but their interests must be considered (a) separately from the Frankenstein legal entity called a corporation and (b) jointly with the interests of other citizens.)
My original argument is exactly that there might be a shift occuring, wherein this jerry-rigged concept of "intellectual property" is rejected by the society. At that point, it is silly and wrong for legal protections and the resources of the government to be bent towards enforcing scarcity for the profit of a few.
As some have noted, the issuance of patents, copyrights, etc. create an artificial monopoly. I find it astounding how many rabid "free market" adherents also want to prop up this artificial monopoly. The purpose of patents, copyrights, and the entire intellectual property structure is to secure an advantage to the society as a whole by granting temporary, limited monopolies so as to encourage innovation.
Well, let me rephrase that. The purpose from the society's viewpoint is what I've said. Modern corporate drones have seen fit to change the effort into a guaranteed profit machine protected -- as a matter of right and good -- by the government. I strongly disagree and I believe most people will too, when they understand the issue.
Also quoth the poster:
You would deny honest businessmen the scarcity, and therefore the market value, of their products. That's called theft.
(a) It's only theft if intellectual property is property... As the question I raised was exactly this identity, this point adds nothing.
(b) I admit to being confused. On the one hand, the business people need to artificially create scarcity (and hence value). But, by simply saying they don't have the protection of the laws to do so, I am somehow denying them of this scarcity? To my eye, it seems like I am merely ensuring the natural outcome, and it is the business people who -- by needing to act -- need to justify their actions.
Any time you mess with the natural operation of things, you have to be careful. You sure as heck should be ready to justify by clear and consistent social benefit any exceptions for which you clamor.
Open Standards. Open Source. Open Minds. The Revolution will be Intercast.
The issue is, are we attacking someone's "property"? Are digital recordings property? There is, I personally believe, a massive paradigm shift (ugh) happening, wherein the very definition of "property" is changing in people's minds. Perhaps, a generation down the line (or two) people will look back and be amazed that anyone seriously embraced the concept of "intellectual property".
As has been pointed out, by Stallman et al, "intellectual property" differs from real property in that my use of an idea (or a digital recording, or a piece of software) does not necessarily preclude your simultaneous use of the idea, song, etc. An idea, once released, is not a scarce resource -- and so it does not fit the "property" model.
Should people be able to make money off of their creative pursuits? I certainly believe so. Should the model for making money be some kludged, ad-hoc, and unwieldy attempt to cut-and-past laws for physical property into virtual space? Not at all. I don't know how an artist can make money on the Net -- but the current method is not a long-term viable one, no matter how many people turn blue screaming "Property violation! Property violation!"
I contend that "intellectual property" has always had this tension implicit in it. Now the Internet has made it impossible to gloss over them.
As a historical parallel, consider the modern corporation. Prior to the rise of the corporation, anyone running a business was held personally and completely responsible for it. Say you ran a shipping company whose ship went down. Action could be brought against not just the holdings of the company, but against your personal wealth -- and the wealth of any investors in the company.
This scared off investors -- the only sin recognized in early 21st century America -- and so, our history books tell us, this was a Bad Thing. In response, things like the limited liability partnership and the modern corporation were put into place, so the vast engine of commericialism could be unleashed.
Don't you think back then that people who had succeeded with the old model, in the old circumstances, cried "foul!" and screamed that people were taking away their rights to recoup lost investments. Of course they did. SO what? The social understanding of liability was changed becasuse it was recognized that the old model was limiting and out-moded.
Sort of like the situation we find ourselves in today, regarding "intellectual property".
Open Standards. Open Source. Open Minds. The Revolution will be Intercast!
You seem to be missing the point. The purpose of deCSS was to watch DVDs on a Linux computer. It doesn't help anyone copy the DVD -- you can do a bit-by-bit copy for that, and your copy would be a perfectly playable DVD. The issue here is, who gets to decide what media you use? Does control rest with the RIAA or MPAA? If they haven't bothered to write DVD players for Linux, is that a defensible (or defendable) decision? The driver that runs your CD program -- that takes bytes from the disc and converts them into code that the computer can play -- does the same thing that deCSS does. Of course it's a different system, since they store data in different formats. But the job is the same and the purpose is the same. The fact of the matter is, the RIAA is simply steamed that they let CDs slip by. If they could have, they'd have restricted this too. Wholesale violation of copyright is a legitimate concern. But a compulsive need to control access to and playback of this content is not.
At last, someone mentions the thing that struck me right away! Why spend 100 M$ replicating a system that already works (more or less) and that provides important socialization experience? Instead, provide a forum for quality "lifetime learning". Let's face it -- most people in or near their college years are going to have to continue learning forever. Gone are the days wherein you got your degree and launched on a ballistic course through a career.
It'd be great to see someone dealing with the dark, silent void that happens after graduation.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do people feel so threatened? Each generation is "replaced" by the next. Yet few parents see their children as threats. In a healthy relationship, we not only fail to fear succession by our progeny, we actively encourage it. Everyone wants their kids to "go further" than they themselves did.
Other than the utterly irrelevant fact that these descendants will be silicon and metal, not carbon and water, is there any difference? These AIs will be heirs to Plato and Descartes, Jefferson and King, just like we are. Unencumbered by two megayears of grungy evolution, they might even get it right. Does it matter that they are not "flesh of our flesh"? Why should flesh matter at all?
Almost everyone seems to come to the brink of recognizing the commonality but then they veer away. What defines "humanity"? Is it really 46 chromosomes in a particular order? I argue instead that it is our intelligence that makes us special, our thinking ability. I won't get dragged into the old argument whether this means cold-blooded logic only or whether it includes human emotions (but I will say that I agree with the latter.) But no matter how you define it, no matter what features of human existence make us human, those features are not inextricably linked to our "ugly bags of mostly water".
The greatest fear I have is not that we will be replaced. It's that short-sighted species-centric thinking will obscure, delay, or throw away the trans-historic opportunities we will have in the coming century.
To put it briefly, I don't agree that "perfection" is the same as "mirrors human thought".
Point (B) would argue that the human should have shuffled off to extinction long ago. After all, parents produces a new version of themselves, in their children. Why bother? Because parents recognize that there is a chance for the children to be different and even better than they themselves are. I'll concede that the issue of AIs producing AIs is too often ignored but it doesn't invalidate the concept of AIs.
Usenet is centralized? I'm not being sarcastic -- this contradicts what I thought I knew... Oh, well, un-learn a new thing every day, that's me.
Much kudos for actually getting out there and talking to the people who make the laws. Now I've been shamed into making a similar appointment here...
Seriously, watching all the draconian measures coming down the pike, I sometimes feel myself drifitng into malaise and despair, until I recall: The corporate drones are dinosaurs, and the doomsday asteroid has already hit. Sure they might straggle on for a while, and they can still make life uncomfortable for the fleet-footed fuzzies underfoot, but in the end they are doomed.
All we need is the strength and courage to continue to press for the better world we know is available ... it's where the system wants to head, anyway, even if those In Charge don't quite grasp that yet.
Should universities continue to reward the people whose advantages are obsolete? (OK, OK, some would argue that is their exact purpose ... but that's a different issue.)
A simple Darwinian culling will occur for those who cannot effectively utilize the Net ... and isn't testing that skill worthwhile as well?
You can also learn the equations -- and, not incidentally, the process involved -- by doing boatloads of problems. Solve enough problems and the important ones will stick in your memory, just from repeated exposure and use. The ones that don't are, almost by definition, the unimportant ones.
In the class I teach, students are never asked to simply memorize and repeat. In fact, they are allowed to bring in their notebooks and any handouts to every exam. I test the process of Physics problem solving, not the particulars. Do some memorize anyway? Sure, and that's OK, if that's what helps them. But no one is penalized for simply having a poor memory, and everyone is rewarded for having an orderly mind and an organization to their notes.
I truly believe this is a far superior way of doing things, compared to the "spew 1000 equations" method prevalent when I was in school.
Once more, quoth the poster:
Again, drawn from my eight years pursuing Physics degrees and my four years teaching the subject, I have to say that this contention is false. In general, memorization seems to lead to rote learning, misapplication, and a fundamental inability to combine different processes into one solution. That's simply an anecdotal observation; I haven't done or seen any systematic survey of the matter. But it is an overwhelming trend in the classes I teach.And finally, quoth the poster:
Either we disagree on what is meant by "memorization" or the poster has a much happier experience with it than I. People who memorize almost universally memorize the end result, not the fundamental equation and the process leading to an end result. I agree that those who need to look at an equation sheet to begin a solution are generally beyond salvation. But those who use it to check the exact form of a result or to confirm their memory have usually, in my experience, done better both at problem solving and comprehension of the underlying phenomena.And that's all I rant on for now.
Of course, it'd be darn hard to write such a test. This method shouldn't replace traditional testing, and it doesn't address all important skills. But used as part of a comprehensive spectrum of methods, I don't see an intrinsic problem with it.
Let's just hope the people creating the test were aware of the implications that have been raised...
I was trying to make the point that calling a flubbed HTML code "evidence" that Open Source has poor quality control is a bit disingenuous. The fact of the matter is, this page (a) is generated on the fly; (b) not Earth-shattering, even to the people at slashdot; and (c) not bankrolled by more money than God.
People seemed to think it was reprehensible that Cmd Taco publish something with one glitch. Personally, if that one glitch is evidence that Open Source won't work, then 63,000 glitches is surely evidence that corporate management fails. Would I make that syllogism? No. But then, I didn't say that a glitch in one page is enough to condemn the Open Source movement.
Since the fix is a measure of responsiveness to user feedback, I think the speed is relevant. I visit many sites with similiar dysfunctional HTML -- many such sites being commercial sites -- and I usually do whip off an email to the webmaster. Often, the sites stays broken for a day or more. So again, if this page is somehow to serve as the effigy and avatar of the Open Source movement, then I think it actually speaks well of the movement.
Total aside: I seriously doubt that Windows 2000 is the most complex software project ever undertaken, but I'd be fascinated if someone could point the way toward a meaningful assessment of such a question.
In 1929 the life expectancy in this country was around fifty-five years of age. In 1996, it was seventy six. In general, the people living longer were living better (in terms of material comfort) and healthier. From my vantage, that's progress.
In 1900, no human being had flown in powered flight. In 1969, humans walked on the Moon. In 1900, storms, frosts, droughts, etc., locked argiculture into cycles of boom followed by imexplicable, unavoidable bust. In 2000, a global weather system saves lives directly and through avoidance of crop damage. From my vantage, that's progress.
The world, at the dawn of the new millenium, is not a happy place. It's not a safe place. But it is a better place and it has the potential to become even better. I'm not arguing there aren't flaws -- far from that, heaven knows -- but I still believe in progress. I would never want us to give that up.
Hope that tomorrow might be better is one thing that makes human life bearable.
Although it's nice to wrap oneself in revolutionary fervor, let us remember that, at the moment, the situation simply isn't that bad. The circumstances are new, the laws are new, and the mores are new. We still have a chance to influence this, to make the world a more benign place.
If we give up now, then we surrender the world to the corporate drones by default.
For those not in the States: Write anyway. At worst they'll ignore you. Just be sure to mention how you look forward to the DMCA driving the cutting-edge high-tech industries out of the US and into your corner of the world... :)
If he's served his time, then his record is completely irrelevant. It might be irrelevant in any event but I haven't finished baking my ethics on that one...
The issue is not bug-avoidance -- which is essentially an impossible dream -- but bug-correction. In the Open Source world that happens much more quickly than in Corporate Drone Land. Point in fact -- this messed-up page was corrected in the time it took me to hit "reload". That would never happen in the land of corporate drones.
a) People are suspicious that these limited steps are really just PR by companies seeking to offload failed projects while reaping goodwill.
b) Open Source people are operating from an entirely different worldview than the companies. To them, all software should be Free, all sources open, etc. As such, they see the placing of some code into the community as simply natural and wonder why the rest is being (artificially) held back. It's not ingratitude, per se, because they feel this is not something that should be done "as a favor" to the community. It's simply something that should be done -- no strings attached.
Quoth the poster:
What defines the "value" of an object? The amount you can charge for it. If the society as whole decides that digital copying is valid and if the copying can be done without noticeable cost, then the work has no economic valueCorporate drones will scream that the copying reduces the value, and then call it "theft" (or even more ridiculously, "piracy" -- as if the digital copier went around with a knife in his teeth saying "Gar!" all the time). There is a different viewpoint: that the perceived "value" is actually a chimera artifically conjured by the oddities of the current legal system -- that, in fact, digitial copying simply exposes the lack of true economic value of the work.
I am not sure I agree with this extreme viewpoint ... but I will not a priori close it off from discussion. The corporate drones and the copyright kings want to do exactly that -- close off the discussion.
If there is a hole, GPL should be "fixed" to plug it. If there isn't a hole, perhaps the GPL should explicitly mention this -- i.e., to list how patches work.
Um, not all... some of us are trying to pick up some of this, and appreciate the occasional tidbit thrown to the wind... If it's short and on-topic (as this was) I think it's great to share technical insight.
My original argument is exactly that there might be a shift occuring, wherein this jerry-rigged concept of "intellectual property" is rejected by the society. At that point, it is silly and wrong for legal protections and the resources of the government to be bent towards enforcing scarcity for the profit of a few.
As some have noted, the issuance of patents, copyrights, etc. create an artificial monopoly. I find it astounding how many rabid "free market" adherents also want to prop up this artificial monopoly. The purpose of patents, copyrights, and the entire intellectual property structure is to secure an advantage to the society as a whole by granting temporary, limited monopolies so as to encourage innovation.
Well, let me rephrase that. The purpose from the society's viewpoint is what I've said. Modern corporate drones have seen fit to change the effort into a guaranteed profit machine protected -- as a matter of right and good -- by the government. I strongly disagree and I believe most people will too, when they understand the issue.
Also quoth the poster:
(a) It's only theft if intellectual property is property(b) I admit to being confused. On the one hand, the business people need to artificially create scarcity (and hence value). But, by simply saying they don't have the protection of the laws to do so, I am somehow denying them of this scarcity? To my eye, it seems like I am merely ensuring the natural outcome, and it is the business people who -- by needing to act -- need to justify their actions.
Any time you mess with the natural operation of things, you have to be careful. You sure as heck should be ready to justify by clear and consistent social benefit any exceptions for which you clamor.
Open Standards. Open Source. Open Minds. The Revolution will be Intercast.
The issue is, are we attacking someone's "property"? Are digital recordings property? There is, I personally believe, a massive paradigm shift (ugh) happening, wherein the very definition of "property" is changing in people's minds. Perhaps, a generation down the line (or two) people will look back and be amazed that anyone seriously embraced the concept of "intellectual property".
As has been pointed out, by Stallman et al, "intellectual property" differs from real property in that my use of an idea (or a digital recording, or a piece of software) does not necessarily preclude your simultaneous use of the idea, song, etc. An idea, once released, is not a scarce resource -- and so it does not fit the "property" model.
Should people be able to make money off of their creative pursuits? I certainly believe so. Should the model for making money be some kludged, ad-hoc, and unwieldy attempt to cut-and-past laws for physical property into virtual space? Not at all. I don't know how an artist can make money on the Net -- but the current method is not a long-term viable one, no matter how many people turn blue screaming "Property violation! Property violation!"
I contend that "intellectual property" has always had this tension implicit in it. Now the Internet has made it impossible to gloss over them.
As a historical parallel, consider the modern corporation. Prior to the rise of the corporation, anyone running a business was held personally and completely responsible for it. Say you ran a shipping company whose ship went down. Action could be brought against not just the holdings of the company, but against your personal wealth -- and the wealth of any investors in the company.
This scared off investors -- the only sin recognized in early 21st century America -- and so, our history books tell us, this was a Bad Thing. In response, things like the limited liability partnership and the modern corporation were put into place, so the vast engine of commericialism could be unleashed.
Don't you think back then that people who had succeeded with the old model, in the old circumstances, cried "foul!" and screamed that people were taking away their rights to recoup lost investments. Of course they did. SO what? The social understanding of liability was changed becasuse it was recognized that the old model was limiting and out-moded.
Sort of like the situation we find ourselves in today, regarding "intellectual property".
Open Standards. Open Source. Open Minds. The Revolution will be Intercast!
You seem to be missing the point. The purpose of deCSS was to watch DVDs on a Linux computer. It doesn't help anyone copy the DVD -- you can do a bit-by-bit copy for that, and your copy would be a perfectly playable DVD. The issue here is, who gets to decide what media you use? Does control rest with the RIAA or MPAA? If they haven't bothered to write DVD players for Linux, is that a defensible (or defendable) decision? The driver that runs your CD program -- that takes bytes from the disc and converts them into code that the computer can play -- does the same thing that deCSS does. Of course it's a different system, since they store data in different formats. But the job is the same and the purpose is the same. The fact of the matter is, the RIAA is simply steamed that they let CDs slip by. If they could have, they'd have restricted this too. Wholesale violation of copyright is a legitimate concern. But a compulsive need to control access to and playback of this content is not.
It'd be great to see someone dealing with the dark, silent void that happens after graduation.