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User: king+neckbeard

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Comments · 4,289

  1. I'm not sure if I want a government agency that is spying on my every move having an insurance policy on me, as that would give them motivation to kill me, and the NSA is certainly not 'ensuring' our safety either, as we would be safer if they didn't exist.

  2. You do realize it was controversial to execute the Rosenbergs, right? Executing Snowden is thus batshit insane by comparison.

  3. Re:Overwhelming evidence != no fair trial on Daniel Ellsberg: Snowden Would Not Get a Fair Trial – and Kerry Is Wrong · · Score: 2

    The bar for execution is set pretty high. The last parties to be executed gave the USSR nuclear secrets, and THAT was controversial, while Snowden might win a Nobel Peace Prize. If you think execution is appropriate, you are out of your mind.

  4. Re:For the last time, he is no hero on Daniel Ellsberg: Snowden Would Not Get a Fair Trial – and Kerry Is Wrong · · Score: 3, Informative

    There are processes in place to deal with law violations committed under the veil of state secrecy

    And we also know that those processes don't work, and that going through those processes poses a decent risk of termination or at least crippling your career advancement.

    Snowden did not lift a finger for even a moment to follow those processes, electing instead to break the law himself and go straight to the public.

    Except we have claims that he actually did go through a lot of those processes without success.

    The right to free speech does not include treason, which Snowden is guilty of, without a doubt.

    Treason is giving nuclear secrets to the USSR during the Cold War, not making the NSA look like assholes.

  5. Re:The people that invent things must be compensat on Study: Royalty Charges Almost On Par With Component Costs For Smartphones · · Score: 1

    You are apparently adopting a natural rights philosophy towards patents, that merely because someone invents something, they naturally have a right to control it like it was their physical property. Such a philosophy is incompatible with the US Constitution, under which patents are only justified as a means to an end for technological progress. I hold that this means does not actually further that end, and thus patents are not justified.

  6. Re:The people that invent things must be compensat on Study: Royalty Charges Almost On Par With Component Costs For Smartphones · · Score: 1

    So in your opinion, inventors do not deserve to be compensated for their contributions to society.

    No, Mr. Strawman. I believe that inventors should look to means other than legal monopolies if they wish to get paid for work they've done.

    This means you're either immoral... believing in theft... or stupid thinking you're not advocating stealing.

    I'm not advocating stealing. Patent infringement is not theft, never has been, and never will be. The mens rea of theft is intent for deprivation, but information is non-rival, sometimes even anti-rival, so ideas cannot be stolen, and it is not immoral to use that information. If there is any act that is immoral, it's forcing others to not be allowed to apply their knowledge.

  7. Re:The people that invent things must be compensat on Study: Royalty Charges Almost On Par With Component Costs For Smartphones · · Score: 1

    Property IS important because of the tragedy of the commons. The tragedy of the commons does not apply to the abstract, therefore the rationales for property do not apply to patents or copyright. I am strong advocate of property, which is why I oppose copyright and patents, as they undermine actual property rights. Patents are especially troublesome because provably independent work is not a defense against infringement.

  8. Pics or it didn't happen. on German Intelligence Agency Planning To Follow Big NSA Brother On Shoestring · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you are going to make the claim that terrorism happens on facebook and twitter, how about showing posts that this happens, because I have a hard time believing that anyone but the most incompetent terrorists would do so, and we can catch incompetent terrorists without sacrificing civil liberties.

  9. Re:The people that invent things must be compensat on Study: Royalty Charges Almost On Par With Component Costs For Smartphones · · Score: 1

    Its the same as a copyright in most cases.

    I am also opposed to copyright for similar reasons.

    That is an issue... and I'd be open to discussing resolutions to that. However, if you came up with the same invention a year later or two years later then its much more likely for me to conclude that you just copied his work and are now fraudulently claiming to have come up with it yourself.

    No, as the article I cited mentions, in most cases, the invention is re-invented independently.

    You seem to think you have a right to steal or believe that the system will still work if people don't get paid. This is obviously moronic

    No, I just think that patents are based upon fundamentally flawed reasoning. I am not advocating that we force people to work without getting paid. I am just asking that they find means of doing so other than legal monopolies, just like everyone else.

  10. Re:The people that invent things must be compensat on Study: Royalty Charges Almost On Par With Component Costs For Smartphones · · Score: 1

    If you support contractual law, then you support patients.

    Not at all. Patents are coercive, not consensual. If you had contracted with me, I would owe you something, but you contracted with my government.

    However, inventors have a right to be compensated for their work.

    No they don't, not even in the patent system. If you invent something that's useless, you will receive no money. Furthermore, it is not compensation, as it the money you make has no connection to the amount of work you did, and there is no actual per use cost of using an idea. Compensation requires that I give up something. If I work an 8 hour day, I lose 8 hours of my life and a certain amount of energy. If I sell my car, I no longer have that car. Furthermore, you are making an enormous philosophical error. The patent system does not exist for the purpose of inventors, but rather, the public good. I hold that said deal cannot be worthwhile because it is based upon faulty, archaic economic principles So, even if the patent system is a boon to inventors (although I hold that it is not in the general case), it has no justification without a public benefit.

    Your notion that people will work without being paid is again... unforgivably naive.

    Can you please stop putting words in my mouth. That I don't hold that a coercive medieval economic tool that was slightly converted for a nominally benevolent purpose is justified doesn't mean that I expect people to work without being paid on any regular basis. The free as in freedom market gets better results, and even if it didn't, direct subsidies are a more efficient tool.

  11. Re:The people that invent things must be compensat on Study: Royalty Charges Almost On Par With Component Costs For Smartphones · · Score: 1

    If you do work without negotiating a contract for compensation, that's your fault. Nobody is forcing you to work, and if you don't want to invent in a society without patents, you are welcome to sit on your useless ass while the rest of us actually get things done.

  12. Re:Increased resistance, just not the right kind. on Imparting Malware Resistance With a Randomizing Compiler · · Score: 1
    If it's randomized at load time, how would it be advantageous over ASLR?

    Shared libraries are evil from a security context

    I've heard that said on multiple occasions, but I haven't seen much to back it up. I suspect that even if there are theoretical advantages, in practice, it's worse security. Out of date software remains one of. if not the biggest source of vulnerabilities. If multiple instances of the same library need to be updated, the likelihood that at least one of them will go unupdated is a great deal more than the likelihood that a shared one wouldn't. This applies to both the user and the dev, multiplying the problem.

  13. Re:The people that invent things must be compensat on Study: Royalty Charges Almost On Par With Component Costs For Smartphones · · Score: 1

    I'm not saying that everyone works for free. Not having patents doesn't mean that everyone works for free, just that everyone is free to work.

  14. Re:the obesity smoking gun on The Light Might Make You Heavy · · Score: 1

    The real problem is that we treat dieting as a witch hunt instead of an incredibly complex process dependent on more factors than even a dedicated personal dietitian and personal trainer can fully address. The 'war against X' is a big problem, but the solution isn't to hunt another witch, it's to change our paradigm about diets.

  15. Re:The people that invent things must be compensat on Study: Royalty Charges Almost On Par With Component Costs For Smartphones · · Score: 1

    No, I'm assuming that independent invention is the norm, most patented inventions are incremental changes from the prior art, and the only exceptions are almost universally accidents that there is no way to incentivize.

    Mark Lemly covered this quite well: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...

  16. Re:Increased resistance, just not the right kind. on Imparting Malware Resistance With a Randomizing Compiler · · Score: 1

    Since the details of the technique are not all that clear, it's hard to say what it would and wouldn't protect against. If the behavior of the software is less predictable beyond the level of compiling it yourself, the economic damage of new bugs cropping up would be greater than the current economic damage of malware.

    You are missing why it's a boon to trojans. I can confirm that my software is legit by using a hash. If it doesn't match the hash, I know it's likely a trojan.

  17. Re:The people that invent things must be compensat on Study: Royalty Charges Almost On Par With Component Costs For Smartphones · · Score: 1

    No, it can be proven. People invented things when there were no patents and when trade secrets were not able to be effectively given. Your claim is that people don't invest time in new things if they know it will be used against them. There are countless examples, and one of the best ones is the polio vaccine. It was one of the greatest accomplishments of humanity, and those behind it purposefully didn't patent it because they found it unethical to do so.

  18. Re:The people that invent things must be compensat on Study: Royalty Charges Almost On Par With Component Costs For Smartphones · · Score: 1

    Even if you have perfect secrecy, it does nothing if someone else independently invents the same thing in a similar timeframe. That is actually the norm, even for something as complicated as calculus, and that was in a world far less than flat than ours today. Most patents are for things where it took more effort to write up the patent than to actually invent the subject matter. So, not only is there no chance of keeping it secret in most cases, it's not even worth the effort of attempting to do so.

  19. Re:The people that invent things must be compensat on Study: Royalty Charges Almost On Par With Component Costs For Smartphones · · Score: 1

    Secrets weren't kept all that well even by guilds, and getting rid of patents would only serve to accelerate the growth, because innovation happens when ideas have sex and reproduce, and patents are a form of birth control.

  20. Re:The people that invent things must be compensat on Study: Royalty Charges Almost On Par With Component Costs For Smartphones · · Score: 1

    If you could keep it a secret, you'd be a moron to get a patent. Also, outside of a few industries, you get LESS useful information from most patents than having someone with at least moderately related knowledge on the subject looking at it for five minutes.

  21. Re:Shoulders of giants on Study: Royalty Charges Almost On Par With Component Costs For Smartphones · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You do realize that 'standing on the shoulder of giants' is far more of an anti-patent notion than a pro-patent one, right?

  22. Re:so apple and samsung should just research it al on Study: Royalty Charges Almost On Par With Component Costs For Smartphones · · Score: 2

    CSIRO didn't invent most of wifi, and the Fraunhofer Society didn't invent mp3 alone.

  23. Increased resistance, just not the right kind. on Imparting Malware Resistance With a Randomizing Compiler · · Score: 2

    This technique would probably be more effective for making detection resistant malware than protecting against malware. The software would still function almost the same, so if it is still interacted with in the same manner, it could still be vulnerable to the same exploit. It also makes it much more difficult to verify the software is valid, meaning that it actually INCREASES the risk factor for malware on account of being a perfect recipe for trojans.

    The real solution to the problem he is trying to solve is not having a monoculture. This does nothing to solve it. If you have different code bases for operating systems, browsers, etc., the ability to infect all of them may be hampered. That's the same advantage of humans and dogs and snakes not being susceptible to the same pathogens. His form of diversty is more of an environmental one, so it's like different potatoes in a bag looking different despite the fact that they are almost certainly clones of each other. That does nothing against a blight.

  24. Re:Misinformation? on Mutant Registration vs. Vaccine Registration · · Score: 1

    I didn't bring anecdotal evidence. The vast majority of people catch chickenpox and are not seriously harmed. There are further complications sometimes, but they have a low incidence, and the cases that do appear often have other contributing factors, such as the kid that had been receiving cancer treatment.

    Also, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that I'm opposed to chickenpox vaccination. I just think that, overall, it's a low priority in regards to public health. Existing culture results in high herd immunity, and the effects are typically mild. Eradication of polio is something I would deem necessary. It was once a major killer, and we are on the verge of eradication. I don't think chickenpox is anywhere near that stage.

    In your family's case, it's probably a good idea to have any new kids in your family vaccinated, as it appears you have a fairly roughly family history with it, and immune responses are largely genetic. Likewise, it's probably a pretty high priority for others with elevated risk factors.

  25. Re:Misinformation? on Mutant Registration vs. Vaccine Registration · · Score: 1

    No, it is true. Basically 100% of people get chickenpox and the number of people that have serious complications during childhood is very low. For crying out loud, there was a social norm of pox parties that was more or less very low tech vaccination. Yes, for adults and infants, it can be a serious concern, but as a childhood disease, it's typically quite mild. The social concern for vaccination is herd immunity (unless eradication is a possibility), and we have good herd immunity.