Define "family unsafe". For whose family? Should they be forced to censor all pictures of women in shorts because a conservative Muslim family would find it unsafe? If not, why should they have to censor "fuck" because a conservative Christian finds it unsafe?
Personally I find the existence of these warnings more offensive than any of the content they are hiding. They should be censored!
I mean, yes, if censorship exists at all, I'd rather have this happen than the government doing it,
Oh, no. I have to disagree. As Chomsky says, the government is potentially democratic, corporations are pure tyrannies. If I have a problem with the FCC censoring someone, at least I can pressure my representatives to change the policy. With Google, I have no sway at all. I don't even know who I would complain to.
Economic power is political power. When we limit the power of government, private power fills in that void unless we limit that too. We haven't gotten that far yet, but we need to if we are ever going to be free people again.
It sometimes seems that scientists (esp. in the life-sciences) forget that it can be a combinations of the above together with the special magic ingredient called "Luck" (or bad luck).
Don't mistake the simplifications of journalists for a lack of understanding on the part of scientists. *Everyone* working on cancer knows that it is a multifactorial disease process.
It's messed up that the EFF thinks that it's not okay to sue thousands of people at once.
It is messed up to sue thousands of people at once. If you need to sue thousands of people, do it one at a time. Each act of copying is a separate tort, and each defendant deserves their own day in court.
Procrastination arises from your mental extrapolation of how long a certain task will do and how many other small sub-tasks it will include. This line of thinking is most likely to overwhelm you and stop you right in you tracks("well, just look how much there's still to do, i'd rather do it later, when i am not as busy"). This is, at least for me, is the source of laziness.
Interesting, but that's not consistent with my experience. I'm a lot more likely to procrastinate when I have less work to do, because there's plenty of time to do it. I let the work pile up until there's enough work to fill the time left, then I go at it. Of course, due to Hofstadter's law, this never ends well.
I don't. I suggest geeks buy what they like and wives deal with it. Geeks are good mates, and good women know that and know that tinkering is part of the deal.
Who is the musical artist going to charge for his time and services?
His audience.
If he's getting only "time and services" why bother being creative, just play the sheet music put in front of him.
To draw better audiences.
Who is the movie director going to charge for "time and services"?
Theaters, who get their money from audiences.
The only way to remove copyright and not destroy the creative process is for a few altruists to pay the artist out of their own pocket and then donate the work to everyone else.
Or for many self interested individuals to make small donations to fund quality work. Or for an artist to make a work and hold parts of it for "ransom". Or other ways that haven't yet been thought of. But you're thinking of alternatives now, that's good.
Of course it may happen that some works are just not economically viable under such a system. That's OK. It should not be the job of the government to prop up failing business models. Besides, I'm sure that just as many new and different works would become economically viable. Having more lower budget works targeted towards people who are passionate about that work is much preferable to high budget mass market pablum, IMO.
The labor put into creating the book has value, the copies of the PDF do not. Basic economics, if marginal cost is zero then supply is infinite and price is zero. The scarce quantity here is your labor.
Why would anybody go through the trouble and expense to create quality movies, tv, music, books, software etc if it's legal to just take the end product without paying? Sure, some people will pay out of principle, but if it's perfectly legal most people will just take it. Without funding, I'm sure there will still be hobby projects, but nothing on the scale we currently enjoy.
People who desire such works will continue to pay for them. If there aren't enough people willing to pay, some things won't get created. And that's OK. If people aren't willing to pay for it, then they don't value it highly, so it's no loss if it's not created.
To effectively prevent piracy the penalty has to be such that PenaltyAmount * ProbabilityOfGettingCaught > SavingsByPirating. Right now the chance of getting caught is quite low, so the fine has to be quite high.
See, this is the problem. Any sane system of justice has the concept of proportionality. i.e. the punishment must fit the crime. In the Judeo-Christian ethic, it's expressed as "an eye for an eye". If you start taking a head for an eye, you degrade respect for the entire system of justice. That hurts everyone.
Perhaps the problem is actually that the *IAA isn't suing enough people. If ProbabilityOfGettingCaught was close to 1, the PenaltyAmount could be quite close to the actual value of the item pirated
The only way to approach a 1:1 chance of getting caught is to track every single bit of data that goes over the network. This would be worse from a civil rights perspective (4th amendment) that we'd be better off just banning computers entirely. Either way, without computers, or burdened with an incredibly costly surveillance infrastructure we'd be at a significant economic disadvantage.
I also don't think it's that contentious to claim that parts of our economy are dependent on copyright law.
Yes, parts of our economy are based on valueless commodities. To claim that that's a good thing, should continue, and should be propped up by the government damn well ought to be contentious.
No, it doesn't. Copyright is government interference in an otherwise free market. Removing copyright would allow market forces to set the actual value for copies of items (zero) and cause people to charge for their time and services which have real value. Pretty simple economics.
Those who do know what they're doing don't need an anti-virus. If you're not running executables from just anywhere, use a 3rd party PDF viewer, browse with no-script, and are safely behind a firewall, there's very little chance of getting infected.
The problem is that nobody can make a decent desktop. For every thing you find that is broken in KDE or GNOME or XFCE, I can point to things that are broken in Windows or OS X. The only way to have a decent usability experience on any platform is to use the shell.
I'm looking for a logical argument starting from a premise like "all men are created equal" end ending with the "right to control your information".
But I can do a proof by negation pretty easily to show that the "right to control your information" leads to contridictions. Assume that there is such a right as a premise. Suppose that we meet at a club and I get your phone number. For whatever reason in the future, you decide to exercise your "right to control your information" and force me to delete your information. How can you ensure that I have done so? The only way to do that is to look through all my information, which violates *my* right to control *my* information. Therefore a right to control ones information leads to contradictions, so it cannot be a right. QED
Worst case scenario we should be able to run an X server on top of Wayland. Much the same way Cygwin X runs on Windows or X11.app on OS X. Then X clients can talk to the X server over the network, and the local X server can speak directly to the graphics hardware.
Parliamentarian William Pitt wrote, "The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow though it; the storms may enter; the rain may enter -- but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement."
Privacy in your own home is a pretty obvious right, but this is rather different. This is the "King" entering other people's "cottages" and forcing them to relinquish their papers.
I totally get that Europeans value privacy and seek to promote it through regulation. What I don't understand is how this is a "right". Rights are derived from first principles, not enacted on an as needed basis. What is the philosophical underpinning of this "right" to privacy?
What about doing abstract art in something like MetaPost? It's mostly geared towards generating figures, but there's no reason it couldn't be used for vector art. You only have to have enough muscle control to enter ASCII, let the computer do the drawing for you.
This isn't even jury nullification. Jury nullification is when jurors refuse to apply a valid law because it is unjust. Whether just or unjust, an unconstitutional law is not a law at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Awesome. So I don't even need a laptop to benefit.
Wait until you get a job and see what level your coworkers are at.
Define "family unsafe". For whose family? Should they be forced to censor all pictures of women in shorts because a conservative Muslim family would find it unsafe? If not, why should they have to censor "fuck" because a conservative Christian finds it unsafe?
Personally I find the existence of these warnings more offensive than any of the content they are hiding. They should be censored!
I mean, yes, if censorship exists at all, I'd rather have this happen than the government doing it,
Oh, no. I have to disagree. As Chomsky says, the government is potentially democratic, corporations are pure tyrannies. If I have a problem with the FCC censoring someone, at least I can pressure my representatives to change the policy. With Google, I have no sway at all. I don't even know who I would complain to.
Economic power is political power. When we limit the power of government, private power fills in that void unless we limit that too. We haven't gotten that far yet, but we need to if we are ever going to be free people again.
It sometimes seems that scientists (esp. in the life-sciences) forget that it can be a combinations of the above together with the special magic ingredient called "Luck" (or bad luck).
Don't mistake the simplifications of journalists for a lack of understanding on the part of scientists. *Everyone* working on cancer knows that it is a multifactorial disease process.
It's messed up that the EFF thinks that it's not okay to sue thousands of people at once.
It is messed up to sue thousands of people at once. If you need to sue thousands of people, do it one at a time. Each act of copying is a separate tort, and each defendant deserves their own day in court.
Procrastination arises from your mental extrapolation of how long a certain task will do and how many other small sub-tasks it will include. This line of thinking is most likely to overwhelm you and stop you right in you tracks("well, just look how much there's still to do, i'd rather do it later, when i am not as busy"). This is, at least for me, is the source of laziness.
Interesting, but that's not consistent with my experience. I'm a lot more likely to procrastinate when I have less work to do, because there's plenty of time to do it. I let the work pile up until there's enough work to fill the time left, then I go at it. Of course, due to Hofstadter's law, this never ends well.
Good. Don't justify their fears by acting like a thug.
I don't. I suggest geeks buy what they like and wives deal with it. Geeks are good mates, and good women know that and know that tinkering is part of the deal.
Not if you charge for your labor.
Who is the musical artist going to charge for his time and services?
His audience.
If he's getting only "time and services" why bother being creative, just play the sheet music put in front of him.
To draw better audiences.
Who is the movie director going to charge for "time and services"?
Theaters, who get their money from audiences.
The only way to remove copyright and not destroy the creative process is for a few altruists to pay the artist out of their own pocket and then donate the work to everyone else.
Or for many self interested individuals to make small donations to fund quality work. Or for an artist to make a work and hold parts of it for "ransom". Or other ways that haven't yet been thought of. But you're thinking of alternatives now, that's good.
Of course it may happen that some works are just not economically viable under such a system. That's OK. It should not be the job of the government to prop up failing business models. Besides, I'm sure that just as many new and different works would become economically viable. Having more lower budget works targeted towards people who are passionate about that work is much preferable to high budget mass market pablum, IMO.
The labor put into creating the book has value, the copies of the PDF do not. Basic economics, if marginal cost is zero then supply is infinite and price is zero. The scarce quantity here is your labor.
Why would anybody go through the trouble and expense to create quality movies, tv, music, books, software etc if it's legal to just take the end product without paying? Sure, some people will pay out of principle, but if it's perfectly legal most people will just take it. Without funding, I'm sure there will still be hobby projects, but nothing on the scale we currently enjoy.
People who desire such works will continue to pay for them. If there aren't enough people willing to pay, some things won't get created. And that's OK. If people aren't willing to pay for it, then they don't value it highly, so it's no loss if it's not created.
To effectively prevent piracy the penalty has to be such that PenaltyAmount * ProbabilityOfGettingCaught > SavingsByPirating. Right now the chance of getting caught is quite low, so the fine has to be quite high.
See, this is the problem. Any sane system of justice has the concept of proportionality. i.e. the punishment must fit the crime. In the Judeo-Christian ethic, it's expressed as "an eye for an eye". If you start taking a head for an eye, you degrade respect for the entire system of justice. That hurts everyone.
Perhaps the problem is actually that the *IAA isn't suing enough people. If ProbabilityOfGettingCaught was close to 1, the PenaltyAmount could be quite close to the actual value of the item pirated
The only way to approach a 1:1 chance of getting caught is to track every single bit of data that goes over the network. This would be worse from a civil rights perspective (4th amendment) that we'd be better off just banning computers entirely. Either way, without computers, or burdened with an incredibly costly surveillance infrastructure we'd be at a significant economic disadvantage.
I also don't think it's that contentious to claim that parts of our economy are dependent on copyright law.
Yes, parts of our economy are based on valueless commodities. To claim that that's a good thing, should continue, and should be propped up by the government damn well ought to be contentious.
No, it doesn't. Copyright is government interference in an otherwise free market. Removing copyright would allow market forces to set the actual value for copies of items (zero) and cause people to charge for their time and services which have real value. Pretty simple economics.
Those who do know what they're doing don't need an anti-virus. If you're not running executables from just anywhere, use a 3rd party PDF viewer, browse with no-script, and are safely behind a firewall, there's very little chance of getting infected.
Man, you geeks need to stop worrying about wife acceptance factor and make your wives start worrying about geek acceptance factor.
The problem is that nobody can make a decent desktop. For every thing you find that is broken in KDE or GNOME or XFCE, I can point to things that are broken in Windows or OS X. The only way to have a decent usability experience on any platform is to use the shell.
I'm looking for a logical argument starting from a premise like "all men are created equal" end ending with the "right to control your information".
But I can do a proof by negation pretty easily to show that the "right to control your information" leads to contridictions. Assume that there is such a right as a premise. Suppose that we meet at a club and I get your phone number. For whatever reason in the future, you decide to exercise your "right to control your information" and force me to delete your information. How can you ensure that I have done so? The only way to do that is to look through all my information, which violates *my* right to control *my* information. Therefore a right to control ones information leads to contradictions, so it cannot be a right. QED
The lack of responsiveness is due to the fat toolkits people use. Moving to Wayland won't fix GTK or QT.
Worst case scenario we should be able to run an X server on top of Wayland. Much the same way Cygwin X runs on Windows or X11.app on OS X. Then X clients can talk to the X server over the network, and the local X server can speak directly to the graphics hardware.
Parliamentarian William Pitt wrote, "The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow though it; the storms may enter; the rain may enter -- but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement."
Privacy in your own home is a pretty obvious right, but this is rather different. This is the "King" entering other people's "cottages" and forcing them to relinquish their papers.
I totally get that Europeans value privacy and seek to promote it through regulation. What I don't understand is how this is a "right". Rights are derived from first principles, not enacted on an as needed basis. What is the philosophical underpinning of this "right" to privacy?
What about doing abstract art in something like MetaPost? It's mostly geared towards generating figures, but there's no reason it couldn't be used for vector art. You only have to have enough muscle control to enter ASCII, let the computer do the drawing for you.
This isn't even jury nullification. Jury nullification is when jurors refuse to apply a valid law because it is unjust. Whether just or unjust, an unconstitutional law is not a law at all.