Which people? The people who create things or the people who just consume things?
I realize that the consumers vastly outnumber the creative people, but that doesn't mean that it's a big win for society to write something into law that allows unlimited taking. It's also called "The Tyranny of the Majority."
Personally, I believe in freedom. People ought to be able to sell their wares in any way they want. If you don't like how they're offering it, don't buy it. If you don't like the license, don't buy it. If you don't like DRM, don't buy it. If you want the right to redistribute it any way you wish, only buy products with those rights.
The creator of something ought to be able to set the terms of his creation.
Maybe, but you're not the one who's been discriminated against, verbally abused, beaten up and sometimes even murdered in cold blood, so who are you to talk?
Oh? As a white guy, I can safely walk through a black gang neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles?
Oh wait, I actually WAS beaten up and ripped off in my supposedly safe neighborhood and it wasn't even South Central! I thought that since I'm white and heterosexual, I'm immune from all that!
Sheesh, grow up and quit being a whiny victim. EVERYONE is hated by some group for some irrational reason.
So what if I did use my creationist book for a report? Really? What would happen? The teacher would mark my paper as wrong. There ya go. Not exactly the end of civilization is it?
You know, kids go to school for a reason. Sure, you fail your report -- but in the bigger picture, you were failed to be educated. And that's the point. The teacher's job is to educate the kids. If the kids are failing, then the teacher is failing, and the school is failing.
But what if by reading wikipedia I found some leads to new and interesting facts that were outside the realm of my teachers materials (which are probably from the '70s)? Why would a school *ever* block students from seeking to learn from other sources?
Nothing is stopping a student from reading Wikipedia on their own time.
This is just another case of teachers being the controlling manipulative bastards they've always been.
Yep. Controlling manipulative bastards that have a job to do. And while I don't agree with the Wikipedia policy, at least the school is actively thinking about the best way to educate the kids.
Since when does that include blocking access to materials the school doesn't like or deem "good learning materials?" If I'm reading fiction in class should it be taken from me because it's full of nonsense?
Nice straw man. Nobody spoke of taking away some book you brought in to read as fiction.
A better example is a science teacher teaching evolution from a standard science book, and you decide you want to ignore the teacher's book and read your creationist book instead, and use that as the basis for your science papers. You can read whatever you want on your time, but when at school, you use the school's learning material.
Then sit back and wait. Wait for the students to put this together and realize that they don't have to put up with your censorship shit.
Um, I'm not in favor of this policy, but your post is just silly. Schools have a responsibility to educate the students, and part of the responsibility is providing good learning materials. The Internet is a cesspool of bad learning materials (not necessarily Wikipedia), so of course the school is concerned about what the students are exposed to while AT SCHOOL. I don't see the government breaking down the doors of student's home and seizing their computers because they don't like Wikipedia.
"It's for your own good." just doesn't suffice, in my opinion. Who's determining what's "my own good" again? Oh, you want to. Right.
Damn right. Until you're an adult, society and parents in various proportions WILL determine what's good for you. Can't wait until you're an adult? Impatience is a sign of immaturity.
It's called 'responsibility' and it comes with living so let the students have a helping of it.
It's called responsibility for adults. Kids have requirements that adults decide for them. Kids can certainly have input into the process, but adults make the ultimate decisions.
If you're advocating blocking Wikipedia in a serious manner, please do explain how you're going to--at the same time--teach the students about the rights they have. It will entertain me, the excuses that fascists come up with always have.
By your logic, telling a five-year-olds they can't eat candy for every meal is also being a fascist.
Maybe a power engineer can answer this... the obvious way to build a solar power plant is to take a whole slew of lenses and focus them on a water tank, and then turn a turbine. Given that heat -> power is a fairly mature technology, wouldn't that be more efficient than solar cells?
Instead, we put on a "shock and awe" light show, with the world shocked that we'd be so stupid as to assume the enemy would tremble, drop their weapons, and hide from our might.
The ultimate value of the war is certainly debatable, but the above is disengenuous. Shock and awe was not intended to deter terrorists, but to cause the Iraqi army to drop their weapons and surrender, which it did. Lest you forget, the war against the old Iraq regime was won handily. It's the different civil war that we're in the middle of that's difficult to win.
Yeah, we're looking real powerful when the citizens we're "protecting" hold rallies demanding that we leave, when an entire region believes that we acted purely out of greed over Iraq's oil and/or from a sense of "imperial" expansionism, and when we lose a dozen or so highly trained and equiped soldiers a day to car bombs with little to nothing to show for it.i>
All of that is debatable, but ultimately irrelevent to the question of whether countries will think twice about harboring terrorists, which we know they do.
I don't know how to quantify it, but you better believe blowing up two countries had a MAJOR effect on other countries that thought about harboring terrorists. I agree that tracing money is important -- but it's also important to send a clear signal that any country that provides aid and support to terrorists is in for a heap o' trouble.
You name it, everything brought to you in the way of rule by crisis and fear thereof is a an evil lie and myth wrapped in convenient facts and seasoned with half-truths from someone else's point of view.
I agree with much of what you're saying (though, not nearly as apocolyptically), but this is where you go wrong. A group of crazy SOBs really did ram some airplanes into office towers, the pentagon, and probably the White House, if things hadn't gone wrong. And they'd do it every frickin' day if they could.
Just because the government uses fear to manipulate people doesn't mean there aren't really things out there to fear, and it doesn't mean that there really aren't things out there that need to be fought against.
Your post is a good example of why the "slipper slope" is NEVER a good argument. Government power ebbs and flows all the time, and has throughout history. You think the FBI today has power? The FBI is a shell of its former self of the 50s and 60s.
You think there are restrictions on freedom? Take a look at the laws that were passed during WW/II (illegal to own gold, Japanese concentration camps, etc). Hell, we had price controls in the 70s! By a republican!
People always think modern life has never been worse. Modern life is so much better than it used to be that it's laughable about what people complain about.
The sad truth is that the world just doesn't have much use for calculators, any more. The world is too busy worrying about who the Next Top Model is.
Yeah, I remember the Golden Era that was the 70s and 80s. All the cool people would whip out their calculators periodically and do some quick computations. Then we'd relax and watch all that stimulating television like Three's Company and Miami Vice. When we'd really want to get crazy, we'd calculate WHILE we watched Happy Days!
Getting stuck on a plane near someone who won't shut up on the phone is MUCH MUCH worse due to the duration and the captive audience. For that reason I hope cell phones are never allowed (and if they are it should be a cell phone only section kept reasonable sound proof from the rest of the plane).
What's the difference betweent talking on the phone and talking to someone's friend next to them? Should all talking be banned as well?
You didn't REALLY mean to say outright that I and the several good developers I have worked with in the past only care about writing Microsoft knockoffs in our spare time, or that we are idiots who don't really understand the concept of community software. You must have been saying something else.
That wasn't going "over the top", that was an out and out psychotic event. I mean, I know it's not news that Theo has a few social limitations, but -- wow. If someone ever wants to demonstrate what Theo is all about, just point them over to that thread. It's never been so clear that Theo is mentally unbalanced.
And I'm not saying this to be "mean", only that I hope someone in his life eventually convinces him to get him help.
What this thread is about is that the author of the GPL's driver, Michael Buesch, didn't even attempt to handle this civilly, you know like chatting it through on IRC, or sending off a few private emails.
That seems to be Theo's deflection mechanism as well. I have one question: Why?
Sheesh, if I got that email, I'd apologize, thank them for the offer to use their code, and move on. Here's a good rule for life: if you would be embarrassed by what you're doing being publicized, maybe you shouldn't be doing it.
I see absolutely no reason why there should be some obligation by the injured party that they communicate by email.
I still think it's just stupid not to work on a first-generation product now, and at the same time, work on making the stuff more efficient. We need this tech and we need it TODAY.
Personally, I'm a fan of direct matter-to-energy conversion. That would solve all our energy problems, once and for all. We need that tech and we need it TODAY! Why does someone give me a first-generation product now?
For those of you keeping count, that's reason 2.02x10^63 + 1 to dislike Cuban.
Anyone high-profile who expresses opinions is going to be hated by half the people. I respect the fact that he doesn't care what you think to muzzle himself, unlike most people. Also unlike most people, he can actually back up what he thinks with reasoning. One can certainly disagree with his conclusions, but at least it's thought out.
The officials are elected to represent the will of the people.
Wrong! And this is one the great fallacies of modern democracy that would make particularly the U.S. a better place if people understood this.
We elect officials to represent *the people*, NOT the *will* of the people. The idea is to have people in government figure out the best solution to whatever problem, not stick their finger in the wind. Take the interstate highway system, as an example. If that was put to the vote back in the 50s, it probably would've gone down in flames because of all the eminent domain that was necessary. Yet, there's no doubt that it was needed, and public officials knew that it was needed in the long term.
And besides, what the hell IS the "will" of the people? How can you know what that is? Polls? They suffer from well-known question bias, telephone bias, schedule bias, etc, etc. Direct votes? Better, but still suffer from well-known financing bias. Any side a politician takes, the other side is going to accuse them of not "listening to the people". The best we can hope for is for a politician to completely ignore the people, and do what he/she thinks is best.
"Is there even a point to voting any more if the will of the people can so easily be subverted by two people?"
I suspect this will be an unpopular opinion, but... SCREW the will of the people!
(in most cases)
The point of electing representatives is to make complex decisions that otherwise couldn't be made by an uninformed electorate that doesn't have sufficient time to be come educated on every issue. Now, this is not specific to this particular issue, but to issues in general. Generally speaking, direct democracy to decide various issues is a bad idea.
On the other hand, here in California, we do have the referendum system, which I actually do support. Sometimes we do need a direct vote of the people to make law. But that doesn't mean that elected reps should automatically roll over to the will of the people, if it's clear the people were not sufficiently educated. That's what they're there for.
If the people think the elected reps are wrong, they can vote them out in the next election.
MS starting giving away their browser to compete for Netscapes, whose browser was NOT FREE.
I think you are misremembering (not a criticism, thinks were fast and furious back then). Netscape would allow you to give them money if you really wanted to, but it was also a free download, and was also bundled everywhere. Netscape was definitely using the "give away the product and make up the difference in volume" Internet model.
Both browsers were a piece of crap then, but the is irrelevant to the discussion.
No, Netscape really was a buggy piece of crap. Remember, Netscape had an enormous lead over IE... in the 90s of percent. Everyone switched because IE was so much better, especially when it came to speed.
Using you monopoly power to destroy a competitor is illegal.
And yet, Opera does OK in this IE-dominated world. Netscape died because their product sucked, and they were also trying to take advantage of a non-natural market. It was like trying to sell TCP/IP stacks on top of windows. Those companies used to exist, by the way. They don't anymore, and no one cries for them because Microsoft started "bundling" TCP/IP as part of the operating system. Same with the browser -- A browser is a natural utility of an operating system these days.
The Americans also ruled that MS used unfair practices...
The US ruled Microsoft was "mean" to Netscape by giving away their browser to compete with Netscape's browser -- that Netscape also gave away. Never mind that the Netscape browser was a horrible piece of trash.
Meanwhile, no one in the modern world thinks a modern computer shouldn't have a browser, and it's a recognized standard part of any operating system -- and Microsoft was right all along.
Slashdot Mirror
The political process working for the people?
Which people? The people who create things or the people who just consume things?
I realize that the consumers vastly outnumber the creative people, but that doesn't mean that it's a big win for society to write something into law that allows unlimited taking. It's also called "The Tyranny of the Majority."
Personally, I believe in freedom. People ought to be able to sell their wares in any way they want. If you don't like how they're offering it, don't buy it. If you don't like the license, don't buy it. If you don't like DRM, don't buy it. If you want the right to redistribute it any way you wish, only buy products with those rights.
The creator of something ought to be able to set the terms of his creation.
Maybe, but you're not the one who's been discriminated against, verbally abused, beaten up and sometimes even murdered in cold blood, so who are you to talk?
Oh? As a white guy, I can safely walk through a black gang neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles?
Oh wait, I actually WAS beaten up and ripped off in my supposedly safe neighborhood and it wasn't even South Central! I thought that since I'm white and heterosexual, I'm immune from all that!
Sheesh, grow up and quit being a whiny victim. EVERYONE is hated by some group for some irrational reason.
So what if I did use my creationist book for a report? Really? What would happen? The teacher would mark my paper as wrong. There ya go. Not exactly the end of civilization is it?
You know, kids go to school for a reason. Sure, you fail your report -- but in the bigger picture, you were failed to be educated. And that's the point. The teacher's job is to educate the kids. If the kids are failing, then the teacher is failing, and the school is failing.
But what if by reading wikipedia I found some leads to new and interesting facts that were outside the realm of my teachers materials (which are probably from the '70s)? Why would a school *ever* block students from seeking to learn from other sources?
Nothing is stopping a student from reading Wikipedia on their own time.
This is just another case of teachers being the controlling manipulative bastards they've always been.
Yep. Controlling manipulative bastards that have a job to do. And while I don't agree with the Wikipedia policy, at least the school is actively thinking about the best way to educate the kids.
Since when does that include blocking access to materials the school doesn't like or deem "good learning materials?" If I'm reading fiction in class should it be taken from me because it's full of nonsense?
Nice straw man. Nobody spoke of taking away some book you brought in to read as fiction.
A better example is a science teacher teaching evolution from a standard science book, and you decide you want to ignore the teacher's book and read your creationist book instead, and use that as the basis for your science papers. You can read whatever you want on your time, but when at school, you use the school's learning material.
Then sit back and wait. Wait for the students to put this together and realize that they don't have to put up with your censorship shit.
Um, I'm not in favor of this policy, but your post is just silly. Schools have a responsibility to educate the students, and part of the responsibility is providing good learning materials. The Internet is a cesspool of bad learning materials (not necessarily Wikipedia), so of course the school is concerned about what the students are exposed to while AT SCHOOL. I don't see the government breaking down the doors of student's home and seizing their computers because they don't like Wikipedia.
"It's for your own good." just doesn't suffice, in my opinion. Who's determining what's "my own good" again? Oh, you want to. Right.
Damn right. Until you're an adult, society and parents in various proportions WILL determine what's good for you. Can't wait until you're an adult? Impatience is a sign of immaturity.
It's called 'responsibility' and it comes with living so let the students have a helping of it.
It's called responsibility for adults. Kids have requirements that adults decide for them. Kids can certainly have input into the process, but adults make the ultimate decisions.
If you're advocating blocking Wikipedia in a serious manner, please do explain how you're going to--at the same time--teach the students about the rights they have. It will entertain me, the excuses that fascists come up with always have.
By your logic, telling a five-year-olds they can't eat candy for every meal is also being a fascist.
Maybe a power engineer can answer this... the obvious way to build a solar power plant is to take a whole slew of lenses and focus them on a water tank, and then turn a turbine. Given that heat -> power is a fairly mature technology, wouldn't that be more efficient than solar cells?
Instead, we put on a "shock and awe" light show, with the world shocked that we'd be so stupid as to assume the enemy would tremble, drop their weapons, and hide from our might.
The ultimate value of the war is certainly debatable, but the above is disengenuous. Shock and awe was not intended to deter terrorists, but to cause the Iraqi army to drop their weapons and surrender, which it did. Lest you forget, the war against the old Iraq regime was won handily. It's the different civil war that we're in the middle of that's difficult to win.
Yeah, we're looking real powerful when the citizens we're "protecting" hold rallies demanding that we leave, when an entire region believes that we acted purely out of greed over Iraq's oil and/or from a sense of "imperial" expansionism, and when we lose a dozen or so highly trained and equiped soldiers a day to car bombs with little to nothing to show for it.i>
All of that is debatable, but ultimately irrelevent to the question of whether countries will think twice about harboring terrorists, which we know they do.
B) Blowing up two countries?
I don't know how to quantify it, but you better believe blowing up two countries had a MAJOR effect on other countries that thought about harboring terrorists. I agree that tracing money is important -- but it's also important to send a clear signal that any country that provides aid and support to terrorists is in for a heap o' trouble.
You name it, everything brought to you in the way of rule by crisis and fear thereof is a an evil lie and myth wrapped in convenient facts and seasoned with half-truths from someone else's point of view.
I agree with much of what you're saying (though, not nearly as apocolyptically), but this is where you go wrong. A group of crazy SOBs really did ram some airplanes into office towers, the pentagon, and probably the White House, if things hadn't gone wrong. And they'd do it every frickin' day if they could.
Just because the government uses fear to manipulate people doesn't mean there aren't really things out there to fear, and it doesn't mean that there really aren't things out there that need to be fought against.
But have you given thought to the slippery slope?
Your post is a good example of why the "slipper slope" is NEVER a good argument. Government power ebbs and flows all the time, and has throughout history. You think the FBI today has power? The FBI is a shell of its former self of the 50s and 60s.
You think there are restrictions on freedom? Take a look at the laws that were passed during WW/II (illegal to own gold, Japanese concentration camps, etc). Hell, we had price controls in the 70s! By a republican!
People always think modern life has never been worse. Modern life is so much better than it used to be that it's laughable about what people complain about.
The sad truth is that the world just doesn't have much use for calculators, any more. The world is too busy worrying about who the Next Top Model is.
Yeah, I remember the Golden Era that was the 70s and 80s. All the cool people would whip out their calculators periodically and do some quick computations. Then we'd relax and watch all that stimulating television like Three's Company and Miami Vice. When we'd really want to get crazy, we'd calculate WHILE we watched Happy Days!
-sniff- The good ol' days.
Getting stuck on a plane near someone who won't shut up on the phone is MUCH MUCH worse due to the duration and the captive audience. For that reason I hope cell phones are never allowed (and if they are it should be a cell phone only section kept reasonable sound proof from the rest of the plane).
What's the difference betweent talking on the phone and talking to someone's friend next to them? Should all talking be banned as well?
You didn't REALLY mean to say outright that I and the several good developers I have worked with in the past only care about writing Microsoft knockoffs in our spare time, or that we are idiots who don't really understand the concept of community software. You must have been saying something else.
Theo, is that you?
That wasn't going "over the top", that was an out and out psychotic event. I mean, I know it's not news that Theo has a few social limitations, but -- wow. If someone ever wants to demonstrate what Theo is all about, just point them over to that thread. It's never been so clear that Theo is mentally unbalanced.
And I'm not saying this to be "mean", only that I hope someone in his life eventually convinces him to get him help.
What this thread is about is that the author of the GPL's driver, Michael Buesch, didn't even attempt to handle this civilly, you know like chatting it through on IRC, or sending off a few private emails.
That seems to be Theo's deflection mechanism as well. I have one question: Why?
Sheesh, if I got that email, I'd apologize, thank them for the offer to use their code, and move on. Here's a good rule for life: if you would be embarrassed by what you're doing being publicized, maybe you shouldn't be doing it.
I see absolutely no reason why there should be some obligation by the injured party that they communicate by email.
I still think it's just stupid not to work on a first-generation product now, and at the same time, work on making the stuff more efficient. We need this tech and we need it TODAY.
Personally, I'm a fan of direct matter-to-energy conversion. That would solve all our energy problems, once and for all. We need that tech and we need it TODAY! Why does someone give me a first-generation product now?
It must be a conspiracy by Evil Big Oil(tm).
Damn, you beat me to it. I think we need a "meddlingkids" tag. :)
For those of you keeping count, that's reason 2.02x10^63 + 1 to dislike Cuban.
Anyone high-profile who expresses opinions is going to be hated by half the people. I respect the fact that he doesn't care what you think to muzzle himself, unlike most people. Also unlike most people, he can actually back up what he thinks with reasoning. One can certainly disagree with his conclusions, but at least it's thought out.
Well, if REM says so, then it must be a good thing. That really helped me solidify my stance.
I'm waiting until the Pet Shop Boys weigh in.
I'm curious what you mean by this. Care to elaborate?
Here was a recent discussion. Let me know if you have anything to add...
The officials are elected to represent the will of the people.
Wrong! And this is one the great fallacies of modern democracy that would make particularly the U.S. a better place if people understood this.
We elect officials to represent *the people*, NOT the *will* of the people. The idea is to have people in government figure out the best solution to whatever problem, not stick their finger in the wind. Take the interstate highway system, as an example. If that was put to the vote back in the 50s, it probably would've gone down in flames because of all the eminent domain that was necessary. Yet, there's no doubt that it was needed, and public officials knew that it was needed in the long term.
And besides, what the hell IS the "will" of the people? How can you know what that is? Polls? They suffer from well-known question bias, telephone bias, schedule bias, etc, etc. Direct votes? Better, but still suffer from well-known financing bias. Any side a politician takes, the other side is going to accuse them of not "listening to the people". The best we can hope for is for a politician to completely ignore the people, and do what he/she thinks is best.
"Is there even a point to voting any more if the will of the people can so easily be subverted by two people?"
I suspect this will be an unpopular opinion, but... SCREW the will of the people!
(in most cases)
The point of electing representatives is to make complex decisions that otherwise couldn't be made by an uninformed electorate that doesn't have sufficient time to be come educated on every issue. Now, this is not specific to this particular issue, but to issues in general. Generally speaking, direct democracy to decide various issues is a bad idea.
On the other hand, here in California, we do have the referendum system, which I actually do support. Sometimes we do need a direct vote of the people to make law. But that doesn't mean that elected reps should automatically roll over to the will of the people, if it's clear the people were not sufficiently educated. That's what they're there for.
If the people think the elected reps are wrong, they can vote them out in the next election.
MS starting giving away their browser to compete for Netscapes, whose browser was NOT FREE.
I think you are misremembering (not a criticism, thinks were fast and furious back then). Netscape would allow you to give them money if you really wanted to, but it was also a free download, and was also bundled everywhere. Netscape was definitely using the "give away the product and make up the difference in volume" Internet model.
Both browsers were a piece of crap then, but the is irrelevant to the discussion.
No, Netscape really was a buggy piece of crap. Remember, Netscape had an enormous lead over IE... in the 90s of percent. Everyone switched because IE was so much better, especially when it came to speed.
Using you monopoly power to destroy a competitor is illegal.
And yet, Opera does OK in this IE-dominated world. Netscape died because their product sucked, and they were also trying to take advantage of a non-natural market. It was like trying to sell TCP/IP stacks on top of windows. Those companies used to exist, by the way. They don't anymore, and no one cries for them because Microsoft started "bundling" TCP/IP as part of the operating system. Same with the browser -- A browser is a natural utility of an operating system these days.
The Americans also ruled that MS used unfair practices...
The US ruled Microsoft was "mean" to Netscape by giving away their browser to compete with Netscape's browser -- that Netscape also gave away. Never mind that the Netscape browser was a horrible piece of trash.
Meanwhile, no one in the modern world thinks a modern computer shouldn't have a browser, and it's a recognized standard part of any operating system -- and Microsoft was right all along.