Remember: Your right to "free speech" does NOT come with a corresponding right to be heard.
What the article is saying -- and what it's hard to argue against in practical terms, rather than the abstract principle you're invoking -- is that we currently have the ability to publish affordably, and it's a good thing. If you assume that free speech is not only a *right*, but has *value* to society (if for no other reason than allowing good ideas and dialogue to emerge), it's easy to see we're in a positive state of affairs. Anybody with access to a computer and the ability to sign up for cheap hosting or a free blogger account can publish to a wide audience. This is a new and pretty fantastic state of affairs, and not only that, it's *fair*. The telcos aren't somehow getting ripped off in the status quo -- they set rates for providing bandwidth and are paid for it.
The telco proposal would not, as you point out, violate anyone's "right to free speech." It would, however, violate one principle on which the law is written: that not only should people be safe from redaction or retribution from their government for discussing ideas, a society that allows and cultivates free speech and exchange of ideas reaps benefits closed societies don't.
And whether the society becomes more closed by economic means or state authority doesn't make much difference.
no one will pay extra to use the web... we already have $30-$60 a month. paying more just means I'll cancel or find another service that charges a flat amount.
I'd rather quit using the internet before I subscribe to a stupid pay model like this.
And if the telcos are so concerned that they're not getting enough revenue from the traffic passing through their networks, I'd rather see them simply raise the rates for bandwidth in general, than hide the costs elsewhere.
It's better for me, specifically, because then I can *choose* whether I want to pay for that service.
It makes the market run more efficiently, too, because the information necessary to make that choice is more readily apparenty to consumers.
The only problem? The telcos probably gain a significant advantage by hiding the information, restricting choices, and creating arbitrary fee structures, than by playing in an efficient market.
Business-to-business purchases for the production of goods and services are not taxed.
Doomed. At least, doomed to be unfair, and possibly doomed to be ineffective.
Not only will take on an essentially regressive character by excluding business expenditures, it will quite likely fail to close loopholes unless trusts and other non-personal legal entities are banned or closely watched... by something resembling the IRS, which the tax purports to abolish.
Throw in taxation on business consumption, and it may not take on the imaginary ideal economic efficiency that market fundamentalists leave their teeth under their pillow for, but it would actually work better in the world in which we live.
The solution is to verify. Read other versions of the story. Yes, even check an outlet that you feel is a haven for those with a skewed and opposing political perspective.
What a load of liberal poppycock. Any good conservative is right, and knows when they're right. Considering multiple points of view is soooo San Francisco.
What the telcos are talking about is being able to charge people arbitrarily, by type of service and who's providing it.
If they're going to make the gas station analogy, they should carry it to its logical extension: why not have gas stations entering into "strategic partnerships" with Ford, so people who drive Chevys pay more? And have people who drive Toyotas pay even more -- after all, those are foreign cars. Why not let stations charge Democrats who drive Red cars more -- it is, after all, their business and their property, right? And seriously, why should UPS get away with paying the same price as anyone else for gasoline -- they're making a healthy profit off of their delivery business, after all, and there's no reason why our petroleum producers shouldn't have some of that cut, right?
I'd love to see oil execs trying that tack right now.
Understanding this is key. BNL is known for trying other tactics to *persuade* fans to buy their stuff, rather than retaliation via lawsuit, and it's exactly this distinction that much of the music industry seems to be missing at the moment.
1) There is no way in hell Microsoft would document their API to the level necessary to allow Apple to duplicate it.
If Wine doesn't need MS's blessing, why would Apple? Heck, Apple could probably port Wine, possibly with speed and style, seeing as how they're not at all amateurs when it comes to working with the Win32 API. They've got over a decade of experience not only working with Windows on their cross-platform Quicktime libraries -- which could almost be something you could build an application layer in themselves -- but also with targeting Cocoa (NextStep) applications to Windows using their dev tools (YellowBox).
Obviously these are different things than duplicating the Windows API. But they're the kind of thing that would bring you into intimate familiarity with how it works, and put you in a strong position to write some kind of replacement.
I still think Cringley's wrong. Not because Apple couldn't do it, but because virtualization is quite likely an easier route, and much less brittle. Or, for bonus points, they could release some funky desktop/window/shell dlls for Windows and add a few tweaks to the same for OS X which would allow people to run Windows virtualized, but with each app/window appearing to operate within OS X's windowing spaces/styles, sortof like how Apple's X11 server works now.
At any rate, someone will release a virtualization solution. People will be able to run Windows and the Mac OS simultaneously, likely better than they ever have before with the emulation solutions.
And if Cringley is basing his crazy spoutings on some rumors he's heard, I'd guess the Yellow Box resurrection rumor is more likely the underlying truth, and the full Windows API duplication is what's come out through a game of telephone. Resurrecting Yellow Box would be a good counterpunch to developers thinking of going Win-only when it comes to deployment on the Mac.
That could, of course, just be crazy speculation too.:) But at any rate, it's an interesting time. Whether or not Apple does any of these things, the reason they're subject to these wild rumors is because.... they could pull off this stuff. And given that they're recently known for a bunch of successes and some risky but interesting gambles (like the Intel switch), it's fun to think about it.
1) Convince me that global warming is happening 2) Convince me that it's due to human activity 3) Convince me that it *can* be 'solved' or at least reduced 4) Convince me that working to 'solve' it won't make things worse like it has in the past.
It's a fine list of prerequisites if all you're trying to do is establish academic proof, and you can act as a disinterested party with detached interest, or even for a small wager made between friends.
As a guide to deciding when to form public policy, it seems less wise. Yes, we *could* wait to bother with any attempt to try to reduce impacts until we fully understand the subject. For some potential outcomes, however, this is obviously going to be an unacceptable policy course.
When you're approaching something with powerful but uncertain consequences, you've several possible courses:
(1) Try to take only actions with small risks/consequences until you understand outcomes well enough to risk more. (2) Make sure you have the resources to absorb consequences or make large changes quickly as you come to understand things better. (3) Don't worry about the consequences until you have a full understanding.
Reducing impacts until we better understand the subject has disadvantages, of course, and in a situation where risks are small or correctable, it's often an inferior strategy. The larger the risks get, the more foolish strategy #3 looks.
And the parent poster's personal criterion for judging global warming work, more or less, as advocacy for position #3, which is one reason I find the justification problematic.
Can you believe it's 2006 and we still care about the near-high-school drop-outs who continue to question evolution?
As the article points out, near-high-school-dropouts aren't the only ones who have questions about evolution, and I'm not just talking about proponents of intelligent design.
But maybe it's not so much that we care about what those who "question evolution" think as that good science doesn't simply stick to whatever the prevalent dogma is. Maybe it's that good science continues to come up with and test hypothesis after hypothesis and continually refine its case.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with questioning evolution or even our current conception of how evolution works.
Steve Jobs has again stuck with closed architecture and total control.
I'm not sure the author understands either the iPod or the cell phone world. If anything, cell phones are more locked down and hobbled to the carrier's wills than the iPod is, and where the iPod is hobbled, the hacks seem easier to apply....
The original and valid purpose of a patent is to enable people who make investments in research to be compensated for the risk they take.
Not at all. That's the theoretical mechanism for the *actual* goal of patents: to provide for the progress in useful arts and sciences.
The profit motive can be a great incentive, but this is almost a poster child example of how easily it tends to distract people and make them confused about means and ends.
Would I take a paycut for more interesting work? Sure. Especially if it were interesting enough that the time that belonged to my employer felt like I were working on hobbies.
Would I dump an otherwise perfect job? Maybe not. Especially if that "otherwise perfect" meant that the pay was great, stress level was low, that more often than not, I found myself with a clear tast list or ahead of schedule at the end of the day, and it was easy to leave work at work after, say, a 7 1/2 hour day. A job like that supports an outside life full of personal interests rather well -- even, perhaps, systems/kernel hacking. It might have to be actively rotting my brain / corroding my soul to leave.
What I don't know if everybody has figured out yet is that web stats give them yet another metric by which to rank sites and pages. In fact, Nielson-like ratings -- so not only do they get another tool in their ranking toolbox, they also gain in their usefulness to potential advertisers.
Acquiring an analytics tool that they could data-mine was a very smart move.
"Minimum wage laws provably hurt the poor by giving them no entry level positions they are worthy of. You get paid less while learning, and as you prove your loyalty and your value, your wages go up. The minimum wage laws destroy the poor neighborhoods. If minimum wage was so great, why not make it $50 per hour?"
Poor argument. *Everyone* (well, almost everyone) knows that just because something is good doesn't necessarily mean more of it's better. A short list of substances one could ingest is sufficient to prove the point in abstract (chocolate, water, salt, penicillin...). But we could also go with a point all but the most market-drunk libertarian could appreciate. If markets are so great, why not use them to value human life? After all, what is human life but time, and what is time but money? And certainly, a criminal justice system based off paid hit-men could save a lot of time and money -- no more spending money on judges, lawyers, length court preceedings! It's pretty much who can pay the most hit men more! The market decides! Market market market market market market mush-ROOM mush-ROOM!
Oh. Maybe there are several reasons that wouldn't work. And maybe, just maybe, people who like the idea of the minimum wage also don't think that something as extreme as $50 an hour is a good idea either. Just enough to live on if you're sharing living expenses with three or four other people who also have minimum wage jobs. That should be good.
Minimum wage is essentially a way of prohibiting business models that can't pay their employees more than a certain amount. And any business that doesn't have a model that can pay their employees the afforementioned standard I mentioned -- especially while returning profits to its owners -- isn't one that should be competing for ideaspace or resources with those that can.
"I'll accept that, but I would love a way to "opt out." Hell, I'd hang a huge sign on my car, drive on private roads only, never walk into a public school or public library, and get permanently tattooed so I never collect a dime from social security, medicare or any of those organizations. I'd love to get out of the 50% tax rate that I (and all of you) pay for a nanny state."
I'd love to see people try this. But no cheating! You can't hire or engage in commerce with people who haven't opted out. You see, their activities are partially supported by those pesky public funds, and unless you're willing to compensate the system that provides that support -- privatize profits, socialize costs. perhaps directly, by paying them more personally in your dealings, so they can opt out too -- you're engaging in the lovely passtime of privatizing profits, socializing costs.
Do your suppliers hire employees who use public transportation? Utilize shippers who drive on public roads? Then *you* benefit from lower costs to your suppliers in getting those resources, which of course, they pass on to you, right?
Of course, it's possible that without any of the tax burden currently imposed, they'd be more than willing to do that. But you would lose some important things now given to publically funded activities: low barriers to participation, unified rather than duplicated efforts, long-term value outlook, and probably more. Market forces under such conditions could actually become more arbitrary, rather than less, and less guided by civic interest or social controls.
I'm not arguing for socialism, unless you really believe that public libraries and roads are socialism, and I suppose since I'm arguing with a libertarian I should consider that as a possibility. So maybe the better way of saying it is to state the obvious: just like civic institutions aren't perfect, and not every problem can be well-solved by the state, there's nothing magical about markets that make them a panacea either, despite their suitability for many things. In all likelihood, the best society possible is going to be arrived at by a combination of civic methods and market methods.
"Proper tort laws are what would regulate grocery stores in a free-er market. "
Why, tort law. That almost sounds like... regulation.
But not quite, because in order for it to reach effectiveness in real life instead of imaginary libertarian crack-pipe magic-land, someone would have to be spending time checking the food quality. It'd have to be someone trustworthy and beholden to consumer interests. Probably not going to happen for free, since it is going to be at least a semi-skilled process. And since it's not a public funded entity, it's either got to be a non-profit NGO or a for-profit business.
And, oh yes, once they found a problem, they'd have to have the resources to litigate (and preferably win, if they have a good case) against even large, well-funded entities whose only social and moral imperative is to win (because anything else would be a problem for returning money to the shareholders).
I suppose it's possible something like this could spring up as a non-profit, but it would look an awful lot like a government regulatory agency, and it would have to have some impressively succesful fundraising that can skirt the tragedy of the commons, or it just disappears. And I suppose it's possible that it could spring up as a for-profit, but then we not only introduce the probability they could just be bought off, but we add the overhead of shareholder returns to the expenses involved in the upkeep, probably making it more expensive than a tax-funded organization.
A state-run solution is, of course, imperfect as well. But it's got the virtue that it's possible to keep it funded by mandate and we can clean out conflicts of interest the same way we clean out any other civic institution.
"I've said from the beginning that DNS is a government mechanism for censorship -- it was, it is and it will continue to be. The typical authoritarian response (from slashdotters no less) is that other countries can run their own DNS TLD's, but this will just lead to multiple censors, not real freedom."
There are probably a half a dozen ways in which DNS isn't anywhere near the weak point you suggest. For one thing, DNS only gives an authoritarian thug marginal censorship abilities beyond what you'd otherwise have. Either a site is hosted in an AT's jurisdiction or it's not. If it is, well, the AT can take it down by leaning on the ISP, DNS or no. If it's not... the AT *could* always exercise their authority to remove the DNS entry, but you know, that's only if the site in question happens to have a tld under the AT's authority. With dozens of others to choose from, it's really not a big issue. Now, a smart AT could force their ISPs to block specific IPs, but that's not really a problem with DNS, now, is it?
And to some extent, the search engines already have introduced a solution to DNS: search itself. You don't have to remember a URL, just a sequence of appropriate keywords. It doesn't work for every situation, but if you've got something important enough, having it up at http://66.35.250.150/ with a couple of people linking to you will make it accesible.
I suppose a really oppresive AT would probably do something like block whole TLDs, and cooperate with Google or Yahoo to filter out undesirables, and filter out blocks of IP addresses, but again, by this point, we're well beyond problems with DNS having much to do with the issue. IP addresses and willingness of private entities to collude with state entities (regulation statutes or not) are the bigger fish to fry.
"Regulation does not help the needy or the poor. It does not help those who can not do something for themselves. Regulation does not make a safer or better product, and it does not create a cheaper marketplace."
Why is it that market fundamentalists are so quick to see the (true) positive effects of profit incentives, and so impossibly blind to the negative effects? What exactly is going to increase, say, the makers of Vioxx, to be more forthcoming about information about their product if the FDA goes away?
If you really want liberty, you have power checking power. That *includes* checks on private power, as well as checks within a public system.
"We see much more of this loneliness now. It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest. Back where people were so spread out in western Oregon and Idaho and Montana and the Dakotas you'd think the loneliness would have been greater, but we didn't see it so much.
The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance, and in Montana and Idaho the physical distances are big but the psychic distances between people are small, and here it's reversed....There's this primary America of freeways and jet flights and TV and movie spectaculars. And people caught up in this primary America seem to go through huge portions of their lives without much consciousness of what's immediately around them. The media have convinced them that what's right around them is unimportant. And that's why they're lonely. You see it in their faces. First the little flicker of searching, and then when they look at you, you're just a kind of an object. You don't count. You're not what they're looking for. You're not on TV.
But in the secondary America we've been through, of back roads, and Chinaman's ditches, and Appaloosa horses, and sweeping mountain ranges, and meditative thoughts, and kids with pinecones and bumblebees and open sky above us mile after mile after mile, all through that, what was real, what was around us dominated. And so there wasn't much feeling of loneliness. That's the way it must have been a hundred or two hundred years ago. Hardly any people and hardly any loneliness. I'm undoubtedly over-generalizing, but if the proper qualifications were introduced it would be true.
Technology is blamed for a lot of this loneliness, since the loneliness is certainly associated with the newer technological devices...TV, jets, freeways and so on...but I hope it's been made plain that the real evil isn't the objects of technology but the tendency of technology to isolate people into lonely attitudes of objectivity. It's the objectivity, the dualistic way of looking at things underlying technology, that produces the evil."
-- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig, Ch 29 (online here)
First off, where did you find this entry? I don't see a title containing the words Digital or Content anywhere here...
Second:
"I have said repeatedly that any legislation affecting the ability of consumers to use content must be carefully balanced to respect consumer expectations and rights and, of course, fair use."
Does he really know what he's talking about? How can he not realize that if you outlaw devices except those that follow instructions from content owners, you've effectively eliminated any use except those they decide to give you -- fair or not?
Has he really though through the implications for independent journalism? If you can put an analog signal in a broadcast, speech, performance, that dictates its disposition/distribution, you've effectively ended independent journalism that uses direct A/V sources. Bush messes up in a speech? Sorry, you *can't* rebroadcast it -- hell, you might not be allowed to record it. The only version that will exist and be distributed will be the official version.
"many - many - artists have come directly to me saying that piracy is threatening their ability to make a living. "
Who? How many? Can we really trust decisions in a matter of policy like this to secondhand anecdotal estimates? Make your case, but do it openly and preferably with some references to some analyses that looks harder than that. As the Representative himself stated, there are also many, many artists who don't feel like piracy is a particularly big problem. I'd be interested to know why he's choosing to listen to those who do feel threatened by piracy.
Giving content providers ultimate control is the wrong place to fight this for anyone who can think through the issue and genuinely cares about liberties. If the Representative can't see this, he'll have a hard time convincing me he's not deficient in at least one of the two areas. I'd love to be able to see his responses, thoough.
If I recall correctly, The Day After Tomorrow was essentially an extremely sexed up version of scenarios written by the DOD based on climate change research that predicted this kind of oceanic current shift was possible.
This doesn't mean cities are going to flash-freeze and Jake Glyenhall is going to be attacked by wolves while trapped in New York. But if true, it does lend some support to certain predictions regarding climate change,
The idea was to use technology to make contracts self-enforcing. Like many of Nick's ideas, he was and is way ahead of his time. These kinds of things are inevitable.
I hope not.
If I read Lessig correctly, the problem with this is now people can enforce via mechanism provisions that the law might not allow them to enforce.
There's a reason security systems are generally not allowed to injure intruders. There's a reason we get upset at the DMCA essentially killing fair use.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember: Your right to "free speech" does NOT come with a corresponding right to be heard.
What the article is saying -- and what it's hard to argue against in practical terms, rather than the abstract principle you're invoking -- is that we currently have the ability to publish affordably, and it's a good thing. If you assume that free speech is not only a *right*, but has *value* to society (if for no other reason than allowing good ideas and dialogue to emerge), it's easy to see we're in a positive state of affairs. Anybody with access to a computer and the ability to sign up for cheap hosting or a free blogger account can publish to a wide audience. This is a new and pretty fantastic state of affairs, and not only that, it's *fair*. The telcos aren't somehow getting ripped off in the status quo -- they set rates for providing bandwidth and are paid for it.
The telco proposal would not, as you point out, violate anyone's "right to free speech." It would, however, violate one principle on which the law is written: that not only should people be safe from redaction or retribution from their government for discussing ideas, a society that allows and cultivates free speech and exchange of ideas reaps benefits closed societies don't.
And whether the society becomes more closed by economic means or state authority doesn't make much difference.
You have to raise the price of housing...
Well, that's going swimmingly....
no one will pay extra to use the web... we already have $30-$60 a month. paying more just means I'll cancel or find another service that charges a flat amount.
I'd rather quit using the internet before I subscribe to a stupid pay model like this.
And if the telcos are so concerned that they're not getting enough revenue from the traffic passing through their networks, I'd rather see them simply raise the rates for bandwidth in general, than hide the costs elsewhere.
It's better for me, specifically, because then I can *choose* whether I want to pay for that service.
It makes the market run more efficiently, too, because the information necessary to make that choice is more readily apparenty to consumers.
The only problem? The telcos probably gain a significant advantage by hiding the information, restricting choices, and creating arbitrary fee structures, than by playing in an efficient market.
Business-to-business purchases for the production of goods and services are not taxed.
Doomed. At least, doomed to be unfair, and possibly doomed to be ineffective.
Not only will take on an essentially regressive character by excluding business expenditures, it will quite likely fail to close loopholes unless trusts and other non-personal legal entities are banned or closely watched... by something resembling the IRS, which the tax purports to abolish.
Throw in taxation on business consumption, and it may not take on the imaginary ideal economic efficiency that market fundamentalists leave their teeth under their pillow for, but it would actually work better in the world in which we live.
The solution is to verify. Read other versions of the story. Yes, even check an outlet that you feel is a haven for those with a skewed and opposing political perspective.
What a load of liberal poppycock. Any good conservative is right, and knows when they're right. Considering multiple points of view is soooo San Francisco.
What the telcos are talking about is being able to charge people arbitrarily, by type of service and who's providing it.
If they're going to make the gas station analogy, they should carry it to its logical extension: why not have gas stations entering into "strategic partnerships" with Ford, so people who drive Chevys pay more? And have people who drive Toyotas pay even more -- after all, those are foreign cars. Why not let stations charge Democrats who drive Red cars more -- it is, after all, their business and their property, right? And seriously, why should UPS get away with paying the same price as anyone else for gasoline -- they're making a healthy profit off of their delivery business, after all, and there's no reason why our petroleum producers shouldn't have some of that cut, right?
I'd love to see oil execs trying that tack right now.
Understanding this is key. BNL is known for trying other tactics to *persuade* fans to buy their stuff, rather than retaliation via lawsuit, and it's exactly this distinction that much of the music industry seems to be missing at the moment.
1) There is no way in hell Microsoft would document their API to the level necessary to allow Apple to duplicate it.
:) But at any rate, it's an interesting time. Whether or not Apple does any of these things, the reason they're subject to these wild rumors is because.... they could pull off this stuff. And given that they're recently known for a bunch of successes and some risky but interesting gambles (like the Intel switch), it's fun to think about it.
If Wine doesn't need MS's blessing, why would Apple? Heck, Apple could probably port Wine, possibly with speed and style, seeing as how they're not at all amateurs when it comes to working with the Win32 API. They've got over a decade of experience not only working with Windows on their cross-platform Quicktime libraries -- which could almost be something you could build an application layer in themselves -- but also with targeting Cocoa (NextStep) applications to Windows using their dev tools (YellowBox).
Obviously these are different things than duplicating the Windows API. But they're the kind of thing that would bring you into intimate familiarity with how it works, and put you in a strong position to write some kind of replacement.
I still think Cringley's wrong. Not because Apple couldn't do it, but because virtualization is quite likely an easier route, and much less brittle. Or, for bonus points, they could release some funky desktop/window/shell dlls for Windows and add a few tweaks to the same for OS X which would allow people to run Windows virtualized, but with each app/window appearing to operate within OS X's windowing spaces/styles, sortof like how Apple's X11 server works now.
At any rate, someone will release a virtualization solution. People will be able to run Windows and the Mac OS simultaneously, likely better than they ever have before with the emulation solutions.
And if Cringley is basing his crazy spoutings on some rumors he's heard, I'd guess the Yellow Box resurrection rumor is more likely the underlying truth, and the full Windows API duplication is what's come out through a game of telephone. Resurrecting Yellow Box would be a good counterpunch to developers thinking of going Win-only when it comes to deployment on the Mac.
That could, of course, just be crazy speculation too.
1) Convince me that global warming is happening
2) Convince me that it's due to human activity
3) Convince me that it *can* be 'solved' or at least reduced
4) Convince me that working to 'solve' it won't make things worse like it has in the past.
It's a fine list of prerequisites if all you're trying to do is establish academic proof, and you can act as a disinterested party with detached interest, or even for a small wager made between friends.
As a guide to deciding when to form public policy, it seems less wise. Yes, we *could* wait to bother with any attempt to try to reduce impacts until we fully understand the subject. For some potential outcomes, however, this is obviously going to be an unacceptable policy course.
When you're approaching something with powerful but uncertain consequences, you've several possible courses:
(1) Try to take only actions with small risks/consequences until you understand outcomes well enough to risk more.
(2) Make sure you have the resources to absorb consequences or make large changes quickly as you come to understand things better.
(3) Don't worry about the consequences until you have a full understanding.
Reducing impacts until we better understand the subject has disadvantages, of course, and in a situation where risks are small or correctable, it's often an inferior strategy. The larger the risks get, the more foolish strategy #3 looks.
And the parent poster's personal criterion for judging global warming work, more or less, as advocacy for position #3, which is one reason I find the justification problematic.
Can you believe it's 2006 and we still care about the near-high-school drop-outs who continue to question evolution?
As the article points out, near-high-school-dropouts aren't the only ones who have questions about evolution, and I'm not just talking about proponents of intelligent design.
But maybe it's not so much that we care about what those who "question evolution" think as that good science doesn't simply stick to whatever the prevalent dogma is. Maybe it's that good science continues to come up with and test hypothesis after hypothesis and continually refine its case.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with questioning evolution or even our current conception of how evolution works.
Steve Jobs has again stuck with closed architecture and total control.
I'm not sure the author understands either the iPod or the cell phone world. If anything, cell phones are more locked down and hobbled to the carrier's wills than the iPod is, and where the iPod is hobbled, the hacks seem easier to apply....
The original and valid purpose of a patent is to enable people who make investments in research to be compensated for the risk they take.
Not at all. That's the theoretical mechanism for the *actual* goal of patents: to provide for the progress in useful arts and sciences.
The profit motive can be a great incentive, but this is almost a poster child example of how easily it tends to distract people and make them confused about means and ends.
Would I take a paycut for more interesting work? Sure. Especially if it were interesting enough that the time that belonged to my employer felt like I were working on hobbies.
Would I dump an otherwise perfect job? Maybe not. Especially if that "otherwise perfect" meant that the pay was great, stress level was low, that more often than not, I found myself with a clear tast list or ahead of schedule at the end of the day, and it was easy to leave work at work after, say, a 7 1/2 hour day. A job like that supports an outside life full of personal interests rather well -- even, perhaps, systems/kernel hacking. It might have to be actively rotting my brain / corroding my soul to leave.
I believe DirectPointe does something like this by installing remote management utilities for windows.
What I don't know if everybody has figured out yet is that web stats give them yet another metric by which to rank sites and pages. In fact, Nielson-like ratings -- so not only do they get another tool in their ranking toolbox, they also gain in their usefulness to potential advertisers.
Acquiring an analytics tool that they could data-mine was a very smart move.
"Minimum wage laws provably hurt the poor by giving them no entry level positions they are worthy of. You get paid less while learning, and as you prove your loyalty and your value, your wages go up. The minimum wage laws destroy the poor neighborhoods. If minimum wage was so great, why not make it $50 per hour?"
Poor argument. *Everyone* (well, almost everyone) knows that just because something is good doesn't necessarily mean more of it's better. A short list of substances one could ingest is sufficient to prove the point in abstract (chocolate, water, salt, penicillin...). But we could also go with a point all but the most market-drunk libertarian could appreciate. If markets are so great, why not use them to value human life? After all, what is human life but time, and what is time but money? And certainly, a criminal justice system based off paid hit-men could save a lot of time and money -- no more spending money on judges, lawyers, length court preceedings! It's pretty much who can pay the most hit men more! The market decides! Market market market market market market mush-ROOM mush-ROOM!
Oh. Maybe there are several reasons that wouldn't work. And maybe, just maybe, people who like the idea of the minimum wage also don't think that something as extreme as $50 an hour is a good idea either. Just enough to live on if you're sharing living expenses with three or four other people who also have minimum wage jobs. That should be good.
Minimum wage is essentially a way of prohibiting business models that can't pay their employees more than a certain amount. And any business that doesn't have a model that can pay their employees the afforementioned standard I mentioned -- especially while returning profits to its owners -- isn't one that should be competing for ideaspace or resources with those that can.
"I'll accept that, but I would love a way to "opt out." Hell, I'd hang a huge sign on my car, drive on private roads only, never walk into a public school or public library, and get permanently tattooed so I never collect a dime from social security, medicare or any of those organizations. I'd love to get out of the 50% tax rate that I (and all of you) pay for a nanny state."
I'd love to see people try this. But no cheating! You can't hire or engage in commerce with people who haven't opted out. You see, their activities are partially supported by those pesky public funds, and unless you're willing to compensate the system that provides that support -- privatize profits, socialize costs. perhaps directly, by paying them more personally in your dealings, so they can opt out too -- you're engaging in the lovely passtime of privatizing profits, socializing costs.
Do your suppliers hire employees who use public transportation? Utilize shippers who drive on public roads? Then *you* benefit from lower costs to your suppliers in getting those resources, which of course, they pass on to you, right?
Of course, it's possible that without any of the tax burden currently imposed, they'd be more than willing to do that. But you would lose some important things now given to publically funded activities: low barriers to participation, unified rather than duplicated efforts, long-term value outlook, and probably more. Market forces under such conditions could actually become more arbitrary, rather than less, and less guided by civic interest or social controls.
I'm not arguing for socialism, unless you really believe that public libraries and roads are socialism, and I suppose since I'm arguing with a libertarian I should consider that as a possibility. So maybe the better way of saying it is to state the obvious: just like civic institutions aren't perfect, and not every problem can be well-solved by the state, there's nothing magical about markets that make them a panacea either, despite their suitability for many things. In all likelihood, the best society possible is going to be arrived at by a combination of civic methods and market methods.
"Proper tort laws are what would regulate grocery stores in a free-er market. "
Why, tort law. That almost sounds like... regulation.
But not quite, because in order for it to reach effectiveness in real life instead of imaginary libertarian crack-pipe magic-land, someone would have to be spending time checking the food quality. It'd have to be someone trustworthy and beholden to consumer interests. Probably not going to happen for free, since it is going to be at least a semi-skilled process. And since it's not a public funded entity, it's either got to be a non-profit NGO or a for-profit business.
And, oh yes, once they found a problem, they'd have to have the resources to litigate (and preferably win, if they have a good case) against even large, well-funded entities whose only social and moral imperative is to win (because anything else would be a problem for returning money to the shareholders).
I suppose it's possible something like this could spring up as a non-profit, but it would look an awful lot like a government regulatory agency, and it would have to have some impressively succesful fundraising that can skirt the tragedy of the commons, or it just disappears. And I suppose it's possible that it could spring up as a for-profit, but then we not only introduce the probability they could just be bought off, but we add the overhead of shareholder returns to the expenses involved in the upkeep, probably making it more expensive than a tax-funded organization.
A state-run solution is, of course, imperfect as well. But it's got the virtue that it's possible to keep it funded by mandate and we can clean out conflicts of interest the same way we clean out any other civic institution.
"I've said from the beginning that DNS is a government mechanism for censorship -- it was, it is and it will continue to be. The typical authoritarian response (from slashdotters no less) is that other countries can run their own DNS TLD's, but this will just lead to multiple censors, not real freedom."
There are probably a half a dozen ways in which DNS isn't anywhere near the weak point you suggest. For one thing, DNS only gives an authoritarian thug marginal censorship abilities beyond what you'd otherwise have. Either a site is hosted in an AT's jurisdiction or it's not. If it is, well, the AT can take it down by leaning on the ISP, DNS or no. If it's not... the AT *could* always exercise their authority to remove the DNS entry, but you know, that's only if the site in question happens to have a tld under the AT's authority. With dozens of others to choose from, it's really not a big issue. Now, a smart AT could force their ISPs to block specific IPs, but that's not really a problem with DNS, now, is it?
And to some extent, the search engines already have introduced a solution to DNS: search itself. You don't have to remember a URL, just a sequence of appropriate keywords. It doesn't work for every situation, but if you've got something important enough, having it up at http://66.35.250.150/ with a couple of people linking to you will make it accesible.
I suppose a really oppresive AT would probably do something like block whole TLDs, and cooperate with Google or Yahoo to filter out undesirables, and filter out blocks of IP addresses, but again, by this point, we're well beyond problems with DNS having much to do with the issue. IP addresses and willingness of private entities to collude with state entities (regulation statutes or not) are the bigger fish to fry.
"Regulation does not help the needy or the poor. It does not help those who can not do something for themselves. Regulation does not make a safer or better product, and it does not create a cheaper marketplace."
Why is it that market fundamentalists are so quick to see the (true) positive effects of profit incentives, and so impossibly blind to the negative effects? What exactly is going to increase, say, the makers of Vioxx, to be more forthcoming about information about their product if the FDA goes away?
If you really want liberty, you have power checking power. That *includes* checks on private power, as well as checks within a public system.
So, now I can get a blue screen of death while stuck in traffic on the 405
Even if your car won't move, you probably won't notice for a few hours.
"We see much more of this loneliness now. It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest. Back where people were so spread out in western Oregon and Idaho and Montana and the Dakotas you'd think the loneliness would have been greater, but we didn't see it so much.
...There's this primary America of freeways and jet flights and TV and movie spectaculars. And people caught up in this primary America seem to go through huge portions of their lives without much consciousness of what's immediately around them. The media have convinced them that what's right around them is unimportant. And that's why they're lonely. You see it in their faces. First the little flicker of searching, and then when they look at you, you're just a kind of an object. You don't count. You're not what they're looking for. You're not on TV.
The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance, and in Montana and Idaho the physical distances are big but the psychic distances between people are small, and here it's reversed.
But in the secondary America we've been through, of back roads, and Chinaman's ditches, and Appaloosa horses, and sweeping mountain ranges, and meditative thoughts, and kids with pinecones and bumblebees and open sky above us mile after mile after mile, all through that, what was real, what was around us dominated. And so there wasn't much feeling of loneliness. That's the way it must have been a hundred or two hundred years ago. Hardly any people and hardly any loneliness. I'm undoubtedly over-generalizing, but if the proper qualifications were introduced it would be true.
Technology is blamed for a lot of this loneliness, since the loneliness is certainly associated with the newer technological devices...TV, jets, freeways and so on...but I hope it's been made plain that the real evil isn't the objects of technology but the tendency of technology to isolate people into lonely attitudes of objectivity. It's the objectivity, the dualistic way of looking at things underlying technology, that produces the evil."
-- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig, Ch 29 (online here)
First off, where did you find this entry? I don't see a title containing the words Digital or Content anywhere here...
Second:
"I have said repeatedly that any legislation affecting the ability of consumers to use content must be carefully balanced to respect consumer expectations and rights and, of course, fair use."
Does he really know what he's talking about? How can he not realize that if you outlaw devices except those that follow instructions from content owners, you've effectively eliminated any use except those they decide to give you -- fair or not?
Has he really though through the implications for independent journalism? If you can put an analog signal in a broadcast, speech, performance, that dictates its disposition/distribution, you've effectively ended independent journalism that uses direct A/V sources. Bush messes up in a speech? Sorry, you *can't* rebroadcast it -- hell, you might not be allowed to record it. The only version that will exist and be distributed will be the official version.
"many - many - artists have come directly to me saying that piracy is threatening their ability to make a living. "
Who? How many? Can we really trust decisions in a matter of policy like this to secondhand anecdotal estimates? Make your case, but do it openly and preferably with some references to some analyses that looks harder than that. As the Representative himself stated, there are also many, many artists who don't feel like piracy is a particularly big problem. I'd be interested to know why he's choosing to listen to those who do feel threatened by piracy.
Giving content providers ultimate control is the wrong place to fight this for anyone who can think through the issue and genuinely cares about liberties. If the Representative can't see this, he'll have a hard time convincing me he's not deficient in at least one of the two areas. I'd love to be able to see his responses, thoough.
that they're not going to make a server-side, AJAX-based Google Browser? I was so waiting for that...
You jest, but something like this used to exist. Unfortunately, not even a domain name seems to remain for Orangatango...
If I recall correctly, The Day After Tomorrow was essentially an extremely sexed up version of scenarios written by the DOD based on climate change research that predicted this kind of oceanic current shift was possible.
This doesn't mean cities are going to flash-freeze and Jake Glyenhall is going to be attacked by wolves while trapped in New York. But if true, it does lend some support to certain predictions regarding climate change,
The idea was to use technology to make contracts self-enforcing. Like many of Nick's ideas, he was and is way ahead of his time. These kinds of things are inevitable.
I hope not.
If I read Lessig correctly, the problem with this is now people can enforce via mechanism provisions that the law might not allow them to enforce.
There's a reason security systems are generally not allowed to injure intruders. There's a reason we get upset at the DMCA essentially killing fair use.