I gotta ask. How many copies of XP do you think will be sold upon release? I know, a hell of a lot more than would be sold without release, but can we be sure that the public is so enamored with XP?
This will serve to determine who is really in charge - if anyone - of the so-called 'Linux Community'. Remember, you are the ones who are in charge of the information flow. It's been freed by your internet.
Inasmuch as the GPL linux model is a refutation of standard corporate practices, isn't it fitting that you all take a stand against an obviously heinous one, that of astroturfing?
By doing this you will send a message that - in the GPL/Gnu-Linux world, quality and integrity ARE synonymous with success, and traitors to that notion shall pay the penalty.
The penalty is as old as human recorded history: transgressors of the code will be shunned by the community and ostracized for their misdeeds.
One must believe that such lofty notions as free and responsible speech can prevail in the face of bottom-line control-freak adversaries; and one must have the courage to pick up the gauntlet when it is clear that the challenge has been put to them.
Never mind that this will or will not be newsworthy; hell, if Sklyarov wasn't newsworthy, what could possibly rate on the evening news. Oh, that's right: Chandra Levy gets 10 minutes every night. Never mind if anyone notices but you, the Linux loyal, but have this event serve to bring you closer to the center of your philosophy and not factionalize you. There should not be a philosophical wedge, here. No sane proponent of the GPL, aware of the evils inherent in the current alternative, would ever believe that astroturfing has its place in a free and responsible society.
Ya know, that is insightful (+1!) for sure in that you are asking a good question, but I think that the answer is 'no', erm, 'yes', I mean it's great advertising, but this is the best way to get advertising, by word of mouth, albeit electronic. The seller of the merchandise, if he be a member of the community knows that just linking the site on this forum ain't gonna get the sale. No, here he has to earn it. The product will be scrutinized by this community.
And if geekdom fashion sheepology holds water, only one solution will prevail, and all the geeks will choose that one (looks like cargo pants are winning at the moment, but I like the vest concept)...
...of course, the cargo pants are in the lead primarily because it was the first (real) post...
Ya know, I read Thoreau's treatise on Civil Disobedience last night, and he actually mentions corporations. Here is the quote:
It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation on conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.
In ca. 1974, the foundation of journalistic integrity began eroding as the Newsdesks of the big three factored ratings into their determination of what is and what is not newsworthy. But something is not important just because people watch it! Some things stand apart from marketing concerns, and an honest news reporter would know that.
Just because you worked for CBS, a company that sold out just like the rest, doesn't give you the authority to blame the American people for your bosses' decision to turn What is Important into What Sells.
I'm sorry, but when it comes to news, Screw Ratings, Man. Have some integrity. If your company had kept its integrity, such things as the DMCA, SDMI, and the plight of Mitnick would have been reported a long time ago.
Not for gratuitous points, but Thank God for this forum, the only place I know of to get some honest reporting and opinions! Um, other than the other/code sites, that is...
I have come to believe this about 'content providers', the media in general as a business since about 1980 when News and Sports became entertainment vying for ratings, and advertisers on Madison Avenue in particular:
They must maintain control over the flow and content of reality as we perceive it because it is the way to control and manipulate behaviour. The thought of a truly free-thinking mass enjoying free discourse of ideas and free expression is anathema to 'them' (Yes, Them).
Now, in the present, now that the ways and means of production and distribution of information (i.e., what the media once owned exclusively) is available to all, to the People, They need control. How do they obtain control? By vilifying an entire sector of society, pointing out the dangers of allowing 'Hackers' unfettered sovereignty, and locking up - er, literally - access to the information flow as if that were the only solution to reduce the anxieties of a mind-numbed and brainwashed populace.
Ya know, I used to feel somewhat paranoid about this, and I Know I Sound paranoid. But repeated excesses of those in power have only served to reinforce my belief in the complete loss of self-autonomy and sovereignty of the Human Spirit in America.
And what have we gained from this? We have preserved the profitiability of a few hundred corporations.
Not directed at you in particular, but let me just say this:
"God, sometimes I wish analogies could be lameness-filtered."
There. Nothing personal. However, I have determined that analogies get it wrong in this forum, more often than not.
Here is the point that your analogy misses, and a very important point at that, to quote:
The relevant protection for copyrighted material becomes as the technology says, not as copyright law requires.
What Lessig is saying is that lawmakers have allowed the industry to write law... with regular books the copyright is the sole protection, but with e-books the industry is entitled to protection beyond what an ordinary "copyright 1994 Random Books, Inc, All Rights Reserved yadayadayada" provides; it is entitled to provide an electronic adjunct that becomes protected under the law in a way unprecedented in American legal history.
What Congress has done is given legislative authority away to big corps* and relegated themselves to irrelevance, i.e., the original copyright laws are no longer needed. Not only that, but they have delegated to law enforcement a basically insurmountable task: to prosecute each and every electronic transgression, no matter how small, in a way never intended by the original copyright law! The courts should/would be awash in a great and diverse array of cases, each with its own unique conundrum, if the DMCA holds. In fact, Metallica did point out the absurdity of trying to enforce such laws when they essentially sued all Napster users. The other side of that coin is that computers make such prosecution easier: a simple summons in your email in-box should suffice. Maybe someday, like the whole photo radar brand of violation of our Bill of Rights, such emails Will constitute proper law enforcement procedure.
So tell me, what has happened in the past when unenforceable and unjust laws went on the books? Is it then not our civic duty to take a stand against it, however we must sacrifice?
I understand that analogies can sometimes help, but they often warp the main thrust of the issue, and definitely have a tendency to understate the finer points. I agree with your stance and support your opinion (as all good./ers will), but an education about the DMCA until we all understand it as well as we understand the GPL (I love explaining that to cowworkers!) necessitates a proper approach. Sorry, the lock analogy just don't get it here, and it is my contention that there is NO analogy that will fit, as there are no analogies in many of these issues that we discuss because of the high-tech and highly complex nature of these issues.
*- ya know, it doesn't Have to be read as "big bad powerful corps with senators in their pockets", but tell me, who else but them will be able to sic the FBI hounds on guys like Skly? The DMCA is for corps only, not for regular folks, but you knew that already, don't you?
Yes, but all this presupposes that you will be allowed to transfer the digital copy to, say, a CD once you download it. As it stands right now (correct me if I'm wrong), it is illegal, or it will soon be technologically prevented, to make a CD containing your favorite songs. Even though Mac ads in Wired and elsewhere show hip youngsters doing it.
Once again, so I am clear (as I am certainly not clear about this!):
Is it legal to burn a CD of your favorite songs via ripping them from your CD and writing them to another? If it is legal, how far away are we from the realization of the SDMI (RIAA wet) 'dream' of encrypted music that won't rip or burn?
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. It bears repeating...
When your children are born, it is time to take active responsibility in the raising, training, and education of the child. You start by never exposing them to the television for at least the first 6-8 years of their life. That means that it is never on, ideally never seen (hidden in a deep, dark corner of the den somewhere), and rarely discussed. This is the primary step in keeping the dangerous influences of the outside world from them. You are their outside world; they never go to daycare, because one parent is always there with them; they never see videos, instead you read them classic and/or wholesome children's stories. At first, they don't even have other children to play with. This is not because you are cruel, this is because unless you can trust that the parent of the other kid has the same values as you, you will keep control of your child's environment. When the outside world does enter into their little world, you will be there to help them interpret and process the information. You read stories, scary and otherwise, to them, enriching their imaginations without bombarding their little brains with seizure-inducing flashing images. You indoctrinate them and inculcate them with your beliefs and values. And you don't let them down in this; you prepare them for the world.
This is your Big Chance to influence them. Don't blow it. After age 8 or 9 they begin to explore, but you have already started them on the path by training them in how to think. Believe me, this sort of brainwashing is wonderful when administered by a caring parent! As opposed to whatever random messages they will get from the media.
By the time they have reached the age of 12 or so, you have basically done all you can, and your failings and successes will be measured constantly as you watch them and their behavior.
Now, I'm not saying that I know everything about raising children, nor am I here to condemn those who think differently. What I am saying is that if you love your children you will keep the evil influences from their early lives and replace them with positive influences (it's amazing how good classical can sound versus, say, Metallica, when a little toddler is crawling the floor in front of the speaker).
I never, never, never worry about what my children download or look at on the internet. I have surreptitiously looked in the Netscape cache from time to time, and I have found the occasional questionable site, but I think that a certain curiosity is fine; however, to replace the ideal of sex within a loving relationship with Springer-like titillation is foolhardy. The thing I told my kids when they got older and I lost total control of their lives is "You may find yourself doing wrong in your life from time to time, but I have given you the knowledge to Know when you are doing wrong, so you will at least be aware of yourself."
So I don't need no ex-QB, bible-thumping, how-many-dollars-didja-get-from-Disney-types Senator protecting my children. I'm right there protecting them myself, thank you. Get your mitts offa My Peer2Peer...
The boycott, involving a simple refusal to upgrade to Windows XP, would probably have a great effect on what really bothers me, and that is MS foray into.NET. I think the Senator is talking about stuff like this, Windows Media Player 8, Windows Movie Maker, and Digital Photo Support...
Here is some good "white-hat" FUD from zdnet (whom I always thought was somewhat of a lackey for MS, being descended from PC Magazine, but yay for them for speaking truth). A quote: Among the new features: an Internet firewall, an integrated media player with CD-burning and DVD-playback features, remote access tools, moviemaking and photo-editing software, wireless capabilities, broadband networking and Internet messaging.
The long list of new features potentially puts an even longer list of companies in Microsoft's crosshairs, including Adobe Systems, Apple Computer, AOL Time Warner, Corel, InterVideo, MGI, Netopia, Network Ice, RealNetworks, Roxio, Ulead, Zone Labs, Symantec and as many as 20 other companies.
Oh, and the article reminded me that XP seeks to reduce the quality of MP3's in half (how do they do that? I mean, isn't Winamp Winamp?), and that DVD's won't work with MS Media Player alone.
So, yah, boycott by not upgrading. I read somewhere that people are afraid to buy new boxen because they feel they will lose half their data and capabilities in the transition. Maybe they should be afraid to lose half their identity, their privacy, their rights, and quite possibly their mind (er, BSOD reference here) by upgrading themselves into the.NET empire.
When I read James Clavell's novel Shogun I was impressed by one of the opening scenes (if not The...)wherein the Samurai of the village called a meeting of the village people for some forgotten reason. Basically, one of the villagers tittered or shifted, in essence 'disrespected' the Samurai - did something he didn't take kindly to. The swiftness with which the head of the transgressor hit the ground was impressive.
It was then that I contemplated how power shifts in societies. You KNOW no feudal serf in 15th century Japan is gonna drive his rickshaw past a village shoji with his boombox blaring!
But, alas, we have allowed our social sanctions to be usurped in the interests of an egalitarian society. Please don't blame Liberals exclusively for this! Blame us all.
The Samurai was righteous and held Ultimate Power; who holds that sort of power today? Ummm, maybe the Mafia, maybe gangbangers, but not righteous people. That's for sure. But inasmuch as power can corrupt, and since we don't have samurai who adhere to a strict code of honor perhaps noone here in today's society Should have the power to behead willful transgressors...
No, it isn't really useless. Um, ok, it is useless.
But it's interesting to the inquisitive mind. I recall getting Encyclopedia Brittanica reports (buying a set of encyclopediae entitled you to five of these reports a year) on why water flows anti-clockwise in the Northern hemisphere and clockwise in the South. There were all sorts of papers on this.
And once you understand this new phenomenon, you can apply it in weird ways, kind of like the frisbee. Although, you could argue that the frisbee was invented without a rigorous application of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics), and so something that applied 'shower theory' wouldn't have needed an understanding to make something that used it.
Scientists do experiments on this stuff all the time, but it isn't frivolous, it's Science!!!
I wasn't presuming to put forth a moral or legal argument, but an economic one. It is of course, illegal to counterfeit money, but the copyright laws are simple artifices of government meant to preserve the integrity of written works so that the interests of Science and Industry were preserved. One is currency, the other consists of ideas. There was a terrific article that I can't find that argued for abolishment of copyrights, leaving the protection of the information to contracts instead. It led me to think about the basics of copyright protection, and yes, I, too, came to the conclusion that sometimes enforcing them does more harm than good.
Anyway, your analogy presupposes that money is equal to ideas, which doesn't hold water.
I know an inventor and he cannot patent an item and bring it to the market. He must patent it and then present it to Coleco or Milton Bradley or Siemens, because if he tried to enter the market, he would be copied immediately, the ways and means of production - and distribution! - being owned by the big boys.
The company id exploited this early on by providing free downloads of Doom demos over BBSes back in the day. The computer did a complete end-around on the s/w companies of the day and foreshadowed Napster. This created a new 'ways and means' mechanism.
By the way, companies like Disney, in the words of Eisner, want to make stealing content off the web like stealing an apple off a cart. You could do it, but it would be wrong, and if you got caught, life might be unpleasant for, oh, an hour. But what Eisner and fellow cronies don't want is Everybody taking all kinds of stuff all day thinking there is nothing wrong with that.
The fact that a lot of people were doing it is two-fold:
1) They wanted free Britney so they were perfectly willing to subjugate their sense of propriety to get it; and
2) they harbor resentment and a Machiavellian attitude toward companies as per my discussion above.
Finally, and I suppose this doesn't matter, but I sure miss Napster. I never tried to dl one single song that you could get on an existing CD - bandwidth is precious to me, a modem user - but I got about 500 bootleg recordings of live stuff. How enriching was that! To think that all those rare recordings that I might otherwise never have heard could be mine, all mine for free!
No. I don't think people generally want to take from artists, but they don't seem to mind getting what they can from 'the man'. When did this seem acceptable? At what point did a schism between people and corporations occur? I think it is borne from the abrogation of a social contract between corps and people. Once they were perceived to act in their most craven interests to the detriment of people, people turned on them. What the hell, Welcome to the Machine. I don't think corporations know how to restore people's faith in them; in any case it would be bad business. The best way to regain power, for the people, is to undermine that profit-driven system. It is an anti-capitalist concept, but it is not necessarily evil, though it may be a serious threat to the status-quo. For instance, the rise of communism was at least partially a result of the fears of Eastern Europeans about capitalists. If you read Das Kapital you will learn that the persuasive argument of Marx centered on stories of sweatshops and usury and indenture: basically human misery at the hands of capitalists. Only the sound of lady garment workers hitting the sidewalks reached the government's ears. My point is that people perceive corporations as being craven, self-interested, and dangerous, no matter how many "People Do" ads we see.
So we feel justified, nay, in fact Glorified! when we beat the system and stick it to The Man. Tell me: why is Courtney Love suing the RIAA? Why did Pearl Jam try, unsuccessfully, to stop Tickemaster's monopoly on concerts ticket sales?
What true artist who hasn't lost his soul to the capitalist ideal wouldn't attack the current system?
Here, I want you to read what Robert Fripp of King Crimson has to say: Go Here. And then try to understand why we believe that once the distributor is out of the picture, then the artists will be better off than ever.
The reason is, to use Marx's words, that the distributor once possessed the "Ways and Means of Production", whereas in this day and age we all possess them, on our desktops. So the threshhold should have come down. But corps somehow convinced our elected officials to be their personal pit-bull lapdogs. I hope that it is a case of a desperate and futile trying to hold back the floodgates that will soon prove too time- and energy- consuming for our government to continue to fight, but, when I realize that this generation has allowed for more of their rights to be taken away than any other, I have less hope for the outcome. People are losing power daily.
I remember when this Napster thing was in it's infancy, before the dotcom gold rush, the attitude here at/. was one of hubris: "Those idiots can't figure this internet thing out like we can and we can always remain a step ahead of them." But I suspect that that attitude has been mollified somewhat, as the descending team of lawyers, entrepreneurs, con artists, and newbie hackers without a code, without loaylty to an ideal, took the net and re-made it into something I frankly should have, but didn't anticipate: a cultural wasteland as vapid as a TV with a mouse attached.
Well, heh, it's not all that bad just yet; the net is a great source of raw information, but I don't like the trend I'm seeing...
I think they should lose in court if they can't say they Warned him - at least once. Otherwise, a company - or a government! - can make you liable for all sorts of rules that they make and simply do not promulgate. Any court in the land ought to throw this out; and if they do not (I hope to hear updates on this, yeah, even here in./), then people should riot in the streets, um, I mean write a letter to maybe a judge or their Mom or something, you know, take like, a stand.
Not only that, but in the geological time scales under consideration (100kiloyrs) one must also consider that large-scale climate changes may occur. The state of Nevada could become much, much wetter (20 inches h2o/yr easily), and this could have drastic consequences.
Another big issue in the design of the plant is retreivability for that reason.
If we had only considered all these questions fifty years ago, we would have at least known the total cost of all this 'clean' power. But I'm afraid these problems were all dismissed as solvable. While they may be solvable technically, they are apparently not solvable politically, since each and every leader has found it expedient to ultimately sit on his hands and do nothing to break the logjam. Remember "Don't Mess with Texas"? If I were a Texan, I wouldn't be proud of that too, too much. Another act of cowardice is when govt officials foisted it on Nevada. Wait, relative to all the other behaviors in this mess, that might be a relative act of courage! At least they made a decision to drill a 5-mile main access tunnel there, even if it's called the "Exploratory Studies Facility". It's like saying, "Well, if we were - and I'm not saying we are! - going to dig an underground facility - not that that would happen here! - wellll, it might look something like this which this isn't so don't think we're actually going to really build anything here we're just exploring (paynoattention totheman behindthecurtain)... that sort of thing...
I only know what engineers were saying at the meeting. I agree that the containerization of rad material is extensive. I didn't do the analysis myself, but you will find that the problem is sufficient that there are rad hazard handling provisions (containment buildings, washing houses, etc...) in the plans where there previously were none. That is, and I am talking about the design of transportation canisters here, not fuel rod delivery cans, they expect some of the trucks to arrive dirty, and they are planning for it. This came as quite a surprise to a number of interested parties.
That being said, there is always another analysis out there that says that this isn't a problem, something along the lines of what you are saying. It's another reason I would not believe analysis from anyone other than a disinterested party. Advocacy has a way of clouding your thinking.
For example, here is something from the good folks at Nevada. Again, I take no side, here, guy. But I emphatically do want the Right Thing to happen. It may not be in the best interests of Clark County, it may not be in the best interests of Duke Engineering (or Framatome or whomever), but it will be the best path to take for the nation. And neither power companies nor hysterical zealots are the proper arbiters of that decision. Don't you agree?
Well, name-calling indicates a weak argument. I think you made my point about how duped we were by power companies. While nuclear waste storage containers can be made such that the possibilities of accidental release are fairly remote (they do tests on the containers like simulate locomotive ramming and rolling down a hillside to spec requirements), it has been estimated that about 6% of all containers, whether delivered over road or rail, will exhibit 'weeping', or a detectable radioactive emission on the exterior of the package through diffusion. That was the main concern, last time I worked on it.
Another point you make for me: how hysteria can be transmitted from one impassioned but relatively uninformed citizen to another.
As an example, let's look at the massive NIMBY effect, as it pertains to nuclear storage in Nevada. The near-violent opposition to building Yucca Mountain is a result of how the public perceives risk. A few factors play into risk. Whether or not the individual has control over risk is an important factor - e.g., cigarettes and driving are dangerous but we can elect to do them or not, but air pollution is out of our control and therefore more scary. How well the mechanism is understood, how simple the danger is can change our perception. The toxic effects of nuclear materials are exotic and subtle, while, say, getting hit by a foul ball at a baseball game is fairly straightforward.
The problem with anything nuclear is that it is exotic and high-tech, not wholly under control, the effects are unknown, and the public must place most of its trust in officials who have been duplicitous in the past.
Now my point: nuclear storage must be accomplished. I suggest that, before you condemn the 'green freaks' for lowering the profit margins of a few energy companies, you consider what it is they were 'howling' about. Lobbyists who were salivating over the prospect of a country run on 'clean' nuclear fuel all these years never revealed the massive challenges of waste storage, and this generation must live with their legacy: hundreds of temporary storage pools dotting the countryside, each nearing the end of their design life.
Now, even though NASA has much more credibility (even though it's eroding) with the public, the public is not about to take the risk of launching nuclear payloads and/or stages.
Besides, even if the probability of nuclear debris being scattered over the Eastern seaboard is e-6, isn't that sufficient to not embark on such a foolhardy venture, which in fact it would be under that statistical estimate, due to the fact that the dangers are so great?
Ya know, it kind of irks me when people trash environmentally-sensitive citizens. We are not all Druids, but we expect to be able to put our trust in our leaders that such matters will be managed with some of the same concerns for the country and our health that we have. We generally have no position of advocacy (i.e., we don't profit directly from these projects), and I doubt that the threat of rolling blackouts is enough to make us roll over and cry 'Uncle'. It's just more important than that. I would rather freeze in the dark than glow in it (both analogies are extreme, heh).
Likewise (to stay On-Topic), taking the risk of sending nuclear materials on a trajectory whose Instantaneous Impact Point (IPP) crosses the entire right coast, or even anywhere on this planet does not seem to weigh in enough to tip the scales. Now if we needed nuclear rockets to save some of the inhabitants of the planet due to the fact that this planet is so crapped up that it can no longer sustain life, then sure, do whatever it takes to send the telephone sanitizers skyward.
From a programming perspective, I didn't like the fact that he was homicidically dangerous. I mean, by the time kids are that age, they are sensitive to a siblings drowning death throes, if not completely aware that 'Mommy wouldn't approve of me killing my brother.' And then toward the end when he was walking amongst all his 'clones' (an excellent, eerie scene reminiscent of the Shining kitchen scenes, and not the Jurassic Park kitchen scenes, btw), um, just before that he gets into a rage and beheads one of them??? I agree: Isaac Asimov should have showed up in a cops uniform and written David a ticket for violating some principle of the Robots Creed. That would have been a funny scene...
Somehow I blame Michael Chricton for that space-time continuum drivel, with his quantum-foam explanations in Timeline. Not to ascribe that explanation specifically to a borrowed Chrichton (sp!?!) line, but I think Spielberg has a capacity for rip-off genius rivalled only by the Beatles. This isn't a bad thing, but you get the feeling that many of his ideas are already floating out there in the collective unconscious in a way that you would never get that feeling for, say, a David Lynch movie. Or a Kubrick movie, for that matter.
I have to reply to your post because that is EXACTLY what I was thinking as I walked out of the movie, and it was gonna be my post.
*spoiler warning*
Also, I couldn't help but think that Spielberg was helping out his gay wispy friends at the end there who were on the unemployment line after Close Encounters. It was kind of a re-hash.
My other take was that many of the scenes that would have reminded you of 2001 were probably more Spielberg trying to imitate Kubrick than Kubrick himself. I don't think Kubrick duplicates his works very often: he is - to me - pretty unique from movie to movie. And 2001 had as much of Clarke in it as Kubrick; a beautiful collaborative effort, that. But I saw a bit of The Shining in the movie, and that felt more derivative of what Kubrick would have done.
Kubrick makes movies, Spielberg makes money. heh, not entirely, but mostly...
It helps on a Monday morning to log in with a little soul on your fingertips.
Oh, and if it's too short? Just add bbboy ("baby baby baby oooh yeah") or some other Plantism.
This way, I could remember the pw 'cuz I only had to remember the song. When people asked me which song it was, I'd reply by singing "...a three hour tour..." It was the Song that became Ultra Super Double Top Secret!
How many times have you seen a little sunburst on the upper right corner with the words NEW! IMPROVED!! in it? These sorts of label mods seem to happen all the time. Hell, on a box of cereal the labels seem to change weekly.
So all of a sudden it's too expensive to put a label on the package that says "NOW WITH FISH GENES!" on the side of your box of Wheaties? I don't get it...
Slashdot Mirror
I gotta ask. How many copies of XP do you think will be sold upon release? I know, a hell of a lot more than would be sold without release, but can we be sure that the public is so enamored with XP?
This will serve to determine who is really in charge - if anyone - of the so-called 'Linux Community'. Remember, you are the ones who are in charge of the information flow. It's been freed by your internet.
Inasmuch as the GPL linux model is a refutation of standard corporate practices, isn't it fitting that you all take a stand against an obviously heinous one, that of astroturfing?
By doing this you will send a message that - in the GPL/Gnu-Linux world, quality and integrity ARE synonymous with success, and traitors to that notion shall pay the penalty.
The penalty is as old as human recorded history: transgressors of the code will be shunned by the community and ostracized for their misdeeds.
One must believe that such lofty notions as free and responsible speech can prevail in the face of bottom-line control-freak adversaries; and one must have the courage to pick up the gauntlet when it is clear that the challenge has been put to them.
Never mind that this will or will not be newsworthy; hell, if Sklyarov wasn't newsworthy, what could possibly rate on the evening news. Oh, that's right: Chandra Levy gets 10 minutes every night. Never mind if anyone notices but you, the Linux loyal, but have this event serve to bring you closer to the center of your philosophy and not factionalize you. There should not be a philosophical wedge, here. No sane proponent of the GPL, aware of the evils inherent in the current alternative, would ever believe that astroturfing has its place in a free and responsible society.
Ya know, that is insightful (+1!) for sure in that you are asking a good question, but I think that the answer is 'no', erm, 'yes', I mean it's great advertising, but this is the best way to get advertising, by word of mouth, albeit electronic. The seller of the merchandise, if he be a member of the community knows that just linking the site on this forum ain't gonna get the sale. No, here he has to earn it. The product will be scrutinized by this community.
And if geekdom fashion sheepology holds water, only one solution will prevail, and all the geeks will choose that one (looks like cargo pants are winning at the moment, but I like the vest concept)...
...of course, the cargo pants are in the lead primarily because it was the first (real) post...
Ya know, I read Thoreau's treatise on Civil Disobedience last night, and he actually mentions corporations. Here is the quote:
/code sites, that is...
It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation on conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.
In ca. 1974, the foundation of journalistic integrity began eroding as the Newsdesks of the big three factored ratings into their determination of what is and what is not newsworthy. But something is not important just because people watch it! Some things stand apart from marketing concerns, and an honest news reporter would know that.
Just because you worked for CBS, a company that sold out just like the rest, doesn't give you the authority to blame the American people for your bosses' decision to turn What is Important into What Sells.
I'm sorry, but when it comes to news, Screw Ratings, Man. Have some integrity. If your company had kept its integrity, such things as the DMCA, SDMI, and the plight of Mitnick would have been reported a long time ago.
Not for gratuitous points, but Thank God for this forum, the only place I know of to get some honest reporting and opinions! Um, other than the other
I have come to believe this about 'content providers', the media in general as a business since about 1980 when News and Sports became entertainment vying for ratings, and advertisers on Madison Avenue in particular:
They must maintain control over the flow and content of reality as we perceive it because it is the way to control and manipulate behaviour. The thought of a truly free-thinking mass enjoying free discourse of ideas and free expression is anathema to 'them' (Yes, Them).
Now, in the present, now that the ways and means of production and distribution of information (i.e., what the media once owned exclusively) is available to all, to the People, They need control. How do they obtain control? By vilifying an entire sector of society, pointing out the dangers of allowing 'Hackers' unfettered sovereignty, and locking up - er, literally - access to the information flow as if that were the only solution to reduce the anxieties of a mind-numbed and brainwashed populace.
Ya know, I used to feel somewhat paranoid about this, and I Know I Sound paranoid. But repeated excesses of those in power have only served to reinforce my belief in the complete loss of self-autonomy and sovereignty of the Human Spirit in America.
And what have we gained from this? We have preserved the profitiability of a few hundred corporations.
I don't think that's a fair trade.
Not directed at you in particular, but let me just say this:
./ers will), but an education about the DMCA until we all understand it as well as we understand the GPL (I love explaining that to cowworkers!) necessitates a proper approach. Sorry, the lock analogy just don't get it here, and it is my contention that there is NO analogy that will fit, as there are no analogies in many of these issues that we discuss because of the high-tech and highly complex nature of these issues.
"God, sometimes I wish analogies could be lameness-filtered."
There. Nothing personal. However, I have determined that analogies get it wrong in this forum, more often than not.
Here is the point that your analogy misses, and a very important point at that, to quote:
The relevant protection for copyrighted material becomes as the technology says, not as copyright law requires.
What Lessig is saying is that lawmakers have allowed the industry to write law... with regular books the copyright is the sole protection, but with e-books the industry is entitled to protection beyond what an ordinary "copyright 1994 Random Books, Inc, All Rights Reserved yadayadayada" provides; it is entitled to provide an electronic adjunct that becomes protected under the law in a way unprecedented in American legal history.
What Congress has done is given legislative authority away to big corps* and relegated themselves to irrelevance, i.e., the original copyright laws are no longer needed. Not only that, but they have delegated to law enforcement a basically insurmountable task: to prosecute each and every electronic transgression, no matter how small, in a way never intended by the original copyright law! The courts should/would be awash in a great and diverse array of cases, each with its own unique conundrum, if the DMCA holds. In fact, Metallica did point out the absurdity of trying to enforce such laws when they essentially sued all Napster users. The other side of that coin is that computers make such prosecution easier: a simple summons in your email in-box should suffice. Maybe someday, like the whole photo radar brand of violation of our Bill of Rights, such emails Will constitute proper law enforcement procedure.
So tell me, what has happened in the past when unenforceable and unjust laws went on the books? Is it then not our civic duty to take a stand against it, however we must sacrifice?
I understand that analogies can sometimes help, but they often warp the main thrust of the issue, and definitely have a tendency to understate the finer points. I agree with your stance and support your opinion (as all good
*- ya know, it doesn't Have to be read as "big bad powerful corps with senators in their pockets", but tell me, who else but them will be able to sic the FBI hounds on guys like Skly? The DMCA is for corps only, not for regular folks, but you knew that already, don't you?
Yes, but all this presupposes that you will be allowed to transfer the digital copy to, say, a CD once you download it. As it stands right now (correct me if I'm wrong), it is illegal, or it will soon be technologically prevented, to make a CD containing your favorite songs. Even though Mac ads in Wired and elsewhere show hip youngsters doing it.
Once again, so I am clear (as I am certainly not clear about this!):
Is it legal to burn a CD of your favorite songs via ripping them from your CD and writing them to another? If it is legal, how far away are we from the realization of the SDMI (RIAA wet) 'dream' of encrypted music that won't rip or burn?
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. It bears repeating...
When your children are born, it is time to take active responsibility in the raising, training, and education of the child. You start by never exposing them to the television for at least the first 6-8 years of their life. That means that it is never on, ideally never seen (hidden in a deep, dark corner of the den somewhere), and rarely discussed. This is the primary step in keeping the dangerous influences of the outside world from them. You are their outside world; they never go to daycare, because one parent is always there with them; they never see videos, instead you read them classic and/or wholesome children's stories. At first, they don't even have other children to play with. This is not because you are cruel, this is because unless you can trust that the parent of the other kid has the same values as you, you will keep control of your child's environment. When the outside world does enter into their little world, you will be there to help them interpret and process the information. You read stories, scary and otherwise, to them, enriching their imaginations without bombarding their little brains with seizure-inducing flashing images. You indoctrinate them and inculcate them with your beliefs and values. And you don't let them down in this; you prepare them for the world.
This is your Big Chance to influence them. Don't blow it. After age 8 or 9 they begin to explore, but you have already started them on the path by training them in how to think. Believe me, this sort of brainwashing is wonderful when administered by a caring parent! As opposed to whatever random messages they will get from the media.
By the time they have reached the age of 12 or so, you have basically done all you can, and your failings and successes will be measured constantly as you watch them and their behavior.
Now, I'm not saying that I know everything about raising children, nor am I here to condemn those who think differently. What I am saying is that if you love your children you will keep the evil influences from their early lives and replace them with positive influences (it's amazing how good classical can sound versus, say, Metallica, when a little toddler is crawling the floor in front of the speaker).
I never, never, never worry about what my children download or look at on the internet. I have surreptitiously looked in the Netscape cache from time to time, and I have found the occasional questionable site, but I think that a certain curiosity is fine; however, to replace the ideal of sex within a loving relationship with Springer-like titillation is foolhardy. The thing I told my kids when they got older and I lost total control of their lives is "You may find yourself doing wrong in your life from time to time, but I have given you the knowledge to Know when you are doing wrong, so you will at least be aware of yourself."
So I don't need no ex-QB, bible-thumping, how-many-dollars-didja-get-from-Disney-types Senator protecting my children. I'm right there protecting them myself, thank you. Get your mitts offa My Peer2Peer...
The boycott, involving a simple refusal to upgrade to Windows XP, would probably have a great effect on what really bothers me, and that is MS foray into .NET. I think the Senator is talking about stuff like this, Windows Media Player 8, Windows Movie Maker, and Digital Photo Support...
.NET empire.
Here is some good "white-hat" FUD from zdnet (whom I always thought was somewhat of a lackey for MS, being descended from PC Magazine, but yay for them for speaking truth). A quote: Among the new features: an Internet firewall, an integrated media player with CD-burning and DVD-playback features, remote access tools, moviemaking and photo-editing software, wireless capabilities, broadband networking and Internet messaging.
The long list of new features potentially puts an even longer list of companies in Microsoft's crosshairs, including Adobe Systems, Apple Computer, AOL Time Warner, Corel, InterVideo, MGI, Netopia, Network Ice, RealNetworks, Roxio, Ulead, Zone Labs, Symantec and as many as 20 other companies.
Oh, and the article reminded me that XP seeks to reduce the quality of MP3's in half (how do they do that? I mean, isn't Winamp Winamp?), and that DVD's won't work with MS Media Player alone.
So, yah, boycott by not upgrading. I read somewhere that people are afraid to buy new boxen because they feel they will lose half their data and capabilities in the transition. Maybe they should be afraid to lose half their identity, their privacy, their rights, and quite possibly their mind (er, BSOD reference here) by upgrading themselves into the
When I read James Clavell's novel Shogun I was impressed by one of the opening scenes (if not The...)wherein the Samurai of the village called a meeting of the village people for some forgotten reason. Basically, one of the villagers tittered or shifted, in essence 'disrespected' the Samurai - did something he didn't take kindly to. The swiftness with which the head of the transgressor hit the ground was impressive.
It was then that I contemplated how power shifts in societies. You KNOW no feudal serf in 15th century Japan is gonna drive his rickshaw past a village shoji with his boombox blaring!
But, alas, we have allowed our social sanctions to be usurped in the interests of an egalitarian society. Please don't blame Liberals exclusively for this! Blame us all.
The Samurai was righteous and held Ultimate Power; who holds that sort of power today? Ummm, maybe the Mafia, maybe gangbangers, but not righteous people. That's for sure. But inasmuch as power can corrupt, and since we don't have samurai who adhere to a strict code of honor perhaps noone here in today's society Should have the power to behead willful transgressors...
No, it isn't really useless. Um, ok, it is useless.
But it's interesting to the inquisitive mind. I recall getting Encyclopedia Brittanica reports (buying a set of encyclopediae entitled you to five of these reports a year) on why water flows anti-clockwise in the Northern hemisphere and clockwise in the South. There were all sorts of papers on this.
And once you understand this new phenomenon, you can apply it in weird ways, kind of like the frisbee. Although, you could argue that the frisbee was invented without a rigorous application of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics), and so something that applied 'shower theory' wouldn't have needed an understanding to make something that used it.
Scientists do experiments on this stuff all the time, but it isn't frivolous, it's Science!!!
I wasn't presuming to put forth a moral or legal argument, but an economic one. It is of course, illegal to counterfeit money, but the copyright laws are simple artifices of government meant to preserve the integrity of written works so that the interests of Science and Industry were preserved. One is currency, the other consists of ideas. There was a terrific article that I can't find that argued for abolishment of copyrights, leaving the protection of the information to contracts instead. It led me to think about the basics of copyright protection, and yes, I, too, came to the conclusion that sometimes enforcing them does more harm than good.
Anyway, your analogy presupposes that money is equal to ideas, which doesn't hold water.
I know an inventor and he cannot patent an item and bring it to the market. He must patent it and then present it to Coleco or Milton Bradley or Siemens, because if he tried to enter the market, he would be copied immediately, the ways and means of production - and distribution! - being owned by the big boys.
The company id exploited this early on by providing free downloads of Doom demos over BBSes back in the day. The computer did a complete end-around on the s/w companies of the day and foreshadowed Napster. This created a new 'ways and means' mechanism.
By the way, companies like Disney, in the words of Eisner, want to make stealing content off the web like stealing an apple off a cart. You could do it, but it would be wrong, and if you got caught, life might be unpleasant for, oh, an hour. But what Eisner and fellow cronies don't want is Everybody taking all kinds of stuff all day thinking there is nothing wrong with that.
The fact that a lot of people were doing it is two-fold:
1) They wanted free Britney so they were perfectly willing to subjugate their sense of propriety to get it; and
2) they harbor resentment and a Machiavellian attitude toward companies as per my discussion above.
Finally, and I suppose this doesn't matter, but I sure miss Napster. I never tried to dl one single song that you could get on an existing CD - bandwidth is precious to me, a modem user - but I got about 500 bootleg recordings of live stuff. How enriching was that! To think that all those rare recordings that I might otherwise never have heard could be mine, all mine for free!
heh, don't two wrongs make a right?
No. I don't think people generally want to take from artists, but they don't seem to mind getting what they can from 'the man'. When did this seem acceptable? At what point did a schism between people and corporations occur? I think it is borne from the abrogation of a social contract between corps and people. Once they were perceived to act in their most craven interests to the detriment of people, people turned on them. What the hell, Welcome to the Machine. I don't think corporations know how to restore people's faith in them; in any case it would be bad business. The best way to regain power, for the people, is to undermine that profit-driven system. It is an anti-capitalist concept, but it is not necessarily evil, though it may be a serious threat to the status-quo. For instance, the rise of communism was at least partially a result of the fears of Eastern Europeans about capitalists. If you read Das Kapital you will learn that the persuasive argument of Marx centered on stories of sweatshops and usury and indenture: basically human misery at the hands of capitalists. Only the sound of lady garment workers hitting the sidewalks reached the government's ears. My point is that people perceive corporations as being craven, self-interested, and dangerous, no matter how many "People Do" ads we see.
/. was one of hubris: "Those idiots can't figure this internet thing out like we can and we can always remain a step ahead of them." But I suspect that that attitude has been mollified somewhat, as the descending team of lawyers, entrepreneurs, con artists, and newbie hackers without a code, without loaylty to an ideal, took the net and re-made it into something I frankly should have, but didn't anticipate: a cultural wasteland as vapid as a TV with a mouse attached.
So we feel justified, nay, in fact Glorified! when we beat the system and stick it to The Man. Tell me: why is Courtney Love suing the RIAA? Why did Pearl Jam try, unsuccessfully, to stop Tickemaster's monopoly on concerts ticket sales?
What true artist who hasn't lost his soul to the capitalist ideal wouldn't attack the current system?
Here, I want you to read what Robert Fripp of King Crimson has to say: Go Here. And then try to understand why we believe that once the distributor is out of the picture, then the artists will be better off than ever.
The reason is, to use Marx's words, that the distributor once possessed the "Ways and Means of Production", whereas in this day and age we all possess them, on our desktops. So the threshhold should have come down. But corps somehow convinced our elected officials to be their personal pit-bull lapdogs. I hope that it is a case of a desperate and futile trying to hold back the floodgates that will soon prove too time- and energy- consuming for our government to continue to fight, but, when I realize that this generation has allowed for more of their rights to be taken away than any other, I have less hope for the outcome. People are losing power daily.
I remember when this Napster thing was in it's infancy, before the dotcom gold rush, the attitude here at
Well, heh, it's not all that bad just yet; the net is a great source of raw information, but I don't like the trend I'm seeing...
I'm sorry, but
Who did he harm?
I think that the punishment should fit the crime. Give him 30 days at the most, man... be reasonable.
"In the real world..." You only sack and sue because you are allowed to. I just don't see the great harm, here...
My 2p...
./), then people should riot in the streets, um, I mean write a letter to maybe a judge or their Mom or something, you know, take like, a stand.
I think they should lose in court if they can't say they Warned him - at least once. Otherwise, a company - or a government! - can make you liable for all sorts of rules that they make and simply do not promulgate. Any court in the land ought to throw this out; and if they do not (I hope to hear updates on this, yeah, even here in
Good God, look at the time.
Not only that, but in the geological time scales under consideration (100kiloyrs) one must also consider that large-scale climate changes may occur. The state of Nevada could become much, much wetter (20 inches h2o/yr easily), and this could have drastic consequences.
Another big issue in the design of the plant is retreivability for that reason.
If we had only considered all these questions fifty years ago, we would have at least known the total cost of all this 'clean' power. But I'm afraid these problems were all dismissed as solvable. While they may be solvable technically, they are apparently not solvable politically, since each and every leader has found it expedient to ultimately sit on his hands and do nothing to break the logjam. Remember "Don't Mess with Texas"? If I were a Texan, I wouldn't be proud of that too, too much. Another act of cowardice is when govt officials foisted it on Nevada. Wait, relative to all the other behaviors in this mess, that might be a relative act of courage! At least they made a decision to drill a 5-mile main access tunnel there, even if it's called the "Exploratory Studies Facility". It's like saying, "Well, if we were - and I'm not saying we are! - going to dig an underground facility - not that that would happen here! - wellll, it might look something like this which this isn't so don't think we're actually going to really build anything here we're just exploring (paynoattention totheman behindthecurtain)... that sort of thing...
I only know what engineers were saying at the meeting. I agree that the containerization of rad material is extensive. I didn't do the analysis myself, but you will find that the problem is sufficient that there are rad hazard handling provisions (containment buildings, washing houses, etc...) in the plans where there previously were none. That is, and I am talking about the design of transportation canisters here, not fuel rod delivery cans, they expect some of the trucks to arrive dirty, and they are planning for it. This came as quite a surprise to a number of interested parties.
That being said, there is always another analysis out there that says that this isn't a problem, something along the lines of what you are saying. It's another reason I would not believe analysis from anyone other than a disinterested party. Advocacy has a way of clouding your thinking.
For example, here is something from the good folks at Nevada. Again, I take no side, here, guy. But I emphatically do want the Right Thing to happen. It may not be in the best interests of Clark County, it may not be in the best interests of Duke Engineering (or Framatome or whomever), but it will be the best path to take for the nation. And neither power companies nor hysterical zealots are the proper arbiters of that decision. Don't you agree?
Well, name-calling indicates a weak argument. I think you made my point about how duped we were by power companies. While nuclear waste storage containers can be made such that the possibilities of accidental release are fairly remote (they do tests on the containers like simulate locomotive ramming and rolling down a hillside to spec requirements), it has been estimated that about 6% of all containers, whether delivered over road or rail, will exhibit 'weeping', or a detectable radioactive emission on the exterior of the package through diffusion. That was the main concern, last time I worked on it.
Another point you make for me: how hysteria can be transmitted from one impassioned but relatively uninformed citizen to another.
As an example, let's look at the massive NIMBY effect, as it pertains to nuclear storage in Nevada. The near-violent opposition to building Yucca Mountain is a result of how the public perceives risk. A few factors play into risk. Whether or not the individual has control over risk is an important factor - e.g., cigarettes and driving are dangerous but we can elect to do them or not, but air pollution is out of our control and therefore more scary. How well the mechanism is understood, how simple the danger is can change our perception. The toxic effects of nuclear materials are exotic and subtle, while, say, getting hit by a foul ball at a baseball game is fairly straightforward.
The problem with anything nuclear is that it is exotic and high-tech, not wholly under control, the effects are unknown, and the public must place most of its trust in officials who have been duplicitous in the past.
Now my point: nuclear storage must be accomplished. I suggest that, before you condemn the 'green freaks' for lowering the profit margins of a few energy companies, you consider what it is they were 'howling' about. Lobbyists who were salivating over the prospect of a country run on 'clean' nuclear fuel all these years never revealed the massive challenges of waste storage, and this generation must live with their legacy: hundreds of temporary storage pools dotting the countryside, each nearing the end of their design life.
Now, even though NASA has much more credibility (even though it's eroding) with the public, the public is not about to take the risk of launching nuclear payloads and/or stages.
Besides, even if the probability of nuclear debris being scattered over the Eastern seaboard is e-6, isn't that sufficient to not embark on such a foolhardy venture, which in fact it would be under that statistical estimate, due to the fact that the dangers are so great?
Ya know, it kind of irks me when people trash environmentally-sensitive citizens. We are not all Druids, but we expect to be able to put our trust in our leaders that such matters will be managed with some of the same concerns for the country and our health that we have. We generally have no position of advocacy (i.e., we don't profit directly from these projects), and I doubt that the threat of rolling blackouts is enough to make us roll over and cry 'Uncle'. It's just more important than that. I would rather freeze in the dark than glow in it (both analogies are extreme, heh).
Likewise (to stay On-Topic), taking the risk of sending nuclear materials on a trajectory whose Instantaneous Impact Point (IPP) crosses the entire right coast, or even anywhere on this planet does not seem to weigh in enough to tip the scales. Now if we needed nuclear rockets to save some of the inhabitants of the planet due to the fact that this planet is so crapped up that it can no longer sustain life, then sure, do whatever it takes to send the telephone sanitizers skyward.
From a programming perspective, I didn't like the fact that he was homicidically dangerous. I mean, by the time kids are that age, they are sensitive to a siblings drowning death throes, if not completely aware that 'Mommy wouldn't approve of me killing my brother.' And then toward the end when he was walking amongst all his 'clones' (an excellent, eerie scene reminiscent of the Shining kitchen scenes, and not the Jurassic Park kitchen scenes, btw), um, just before that he gets into a rage and beheads one of them??? I agree: Isaac Asimov should have showed up in a cops uniform and written David a ticket for violating some principle of the Robots Creed. That would have been a funny scene...
Somehow I blame Michael Chricton for that space-time continuum drivel, with his quantum-foam explanations in Timeline. Not to ascribe that explanation specifically to a borrowed Chrichton (sp!?!) line, but I think Spielberg has a capacity for rip-off genius rivalled only by the Beatles. This isn't a bad thing, but you get the feeling that many of his ideas are already floating out there in the collective unconscious in a way that you would never get that feeling for, say, a David Lynch movie. Or a Kubrick movie, for that matter.
I have to reply to your post because that is EXACTLY what I was thinking as I walked out of the movie, and it was gonna be my post.
*spoiler warning*
Also, I couldn't help but think that Spielberg was helping out his gay wispy friends at the end there who were on the unemployment line after Close Encounters. It was kind of a re-hash.
My other take was that many of the scenes that would have reminded you of 2001 were probably more Spielberg trying to imitate Kubrick than Kubrick himself. I don't think Kubrick duplicates his works very often: he is - to me - pretty unique from movie to movie. And 2001 had as much of Clarke in it as Kubrick; a beautiful collaborative effort, that. But I saw a bit of The Shining in the movie, and that felt more derivative of what Kubrick would have done.
Kubrick makes movies, Spielberg makes money. heh, not entirely, but mostly...
When my sysadmin would change pass words every thirty days, I used to do acronyms of songs - er, dinosaur songs at that.
Here, guess this Led Zep tune and win a prize.
wfsteen
kmlad
idttr
irbtbtbof
idwicb
cilybhily
lglg
bbsiblyy
iatliatl
lmwmoy
etttm
tydmng
...
etc...
(Since I've Been Loving You)
It helps on a Monday morning to log in with a little soul on your fingertips.
Oh, and if it's too short? Just add bbboy ("baby baby baby oooh yeah") or some other Plantism.
This way, I could remember the pw 'cuz I only had to remember the song. When people asked me which song it was, I'd reply by singing "...a three hour tour..." It was the Song that became Ultra Super Double Top Secret!
I would contend that it is not for you to decide what is and is not reasonable for another to base his decision on.
Well, now I get confused.
How many times have you seen a little sunburst on the upper right corner with the words NEW! IMPROVED!! in it? These sorts of label mods seem to happen all the time. Hell, on a box of cereal the labels seem to change weekly.
So all of a sudden it's too expensive to put a label on the package that says "NOW WITH FISH GENES!" on the side of your box of Wheaties? I don't get it...