Sort of hard to tell given that we haven't been shown the evidence.
This really tells us absolutely nothing but NPR was just reporting that the father of the kid has been arrested too. Apparently on an unrelated charge: the phone was bugged because of mafia_boy and during the surveillance they heard the father planning an assault on a "business colleague"!
Sure, I agree with the idea of making up my own mind, but in the process of doing that it is useful to find out what others think. RMS is someone who has spent a good deal of time thinking about this stuff and has, dare I say it, some pretty neat ideas. I want what I produce to be acceptable to the Free Software and Open Source community and I know that Tcl/Tk was not listed in the OSS acceptable licenses page. Given that other stuff has been sorted out (like Qt) I am wondering what the current status with Tcl/Tk is.
This is bound to start a flamewar of some sort, but it's a question that I've wondered about for a while and the nifty GUI to this inspires it: I've found that Tcl/Tk is great for whipping up interfaces to C code but I remember that there were a lot of hard words spoken about the licensing by RMS. Is there still considered to be a problem with this for Free projects? If so then what other routes do people take for easily-portable GUI'ed software? Python+mxWindows? Qt? Gtk? I don't really like the last two options because of what I perceive as the amount of work involved in becoming familiar with them, but perhaps I'm wrong?
<offtopic> Also, does anyone know how to get around the size limit using etags? </offtopic >
And what makes you think the US is a rich society or that joss was suggesting it was one of them?
Well, I was going for more obvious indices of "richness", using money as a correlate of possession of things, which is a correlate of power. But I'm prepared to look at the others to see how they measure up. Is the statement `don't have to work because rich' true in the following senses:
The richness-as-culture hypothesis can be dismissed by considering that there is no measure of this except predjudice (or judgement if you prefer) and that there are thus many societies whose members struggle for life daily and have a "rich" culture. Despite your scorn for "the American public" an intelligent observer would be able to discern richness of culture. Are you perchance British?
The richness-as-technology hypothesis would be true. However, technology is synonymous, or at least dependent on material/monetary richness as discussed above. Therefore this does not refer to a society that is not the U.S. or one of it's E.U. vassals.
The richness-as-any-number-of-"rich's" can similarly be examined and I think for any one of these found either to apply to the U.S. or to be false.
Now I don't like to spoil a wonderful story, but obviously you haven't lived in a 3rd world country.
I admit that to be true
Nobody in the U.S. is living in fear of starvation. (well, perhaps some illegal immigrants, but obviously there are special factors at work there)
First, I said hungry not starving. There's a difference. However, even given this I think I could push the definition of starvation to include malnutrition. This affects especially children and impairs growth and development especially learning. This was recognised in the late '60's and gave rise to the "Head start" programs of free food in schools in deprived areas because it was recognized that children were being affected by it. The program was cut under Nixon and then re-introduced later and is still in effect. The rise of tuberculosis in some of the poorest neighbourhoods is thought to be due to a combination of malnutrition and other factors. There is a problem with hunger in this country.
Even if you have no income whatsoever, there's lots of charity, lots of land on which to grow crops, lots of animals, birds, and suchlike to eat, and lots of supermarkets and restaurants to steal from. Nobody in the U.S. is gonna starve!
True about the supermarkets to steal from - in fact there's even food in prisons. Not true about the land. Have you ever tried to grow food in the city? That's where a large number of the poor are. For that matter have you tried to grow food on someone else's land? With regard to the idea that no-one in the U.S. is going to starve, some did in the 30's.
I guess it depends on your definition of what a disaster is, but I would consider that wandering about too poor to buy food and having as one's options to steal and go to prison or to be hungry as a disaster. Obviously you are more sanguine about it than I am.
Employability doing what? Oh wait, I know the answer: writing closed source software.
So, all the people that work for RedHat, Debian, Corel etc are writing closed source software? Slashdot perchance is "closed source"?
Even if you were correct about this there is not an immediate win on your part. I'm not that worried if there is a certain amount of closed source software and it provides employment for people that are thus able to spend "spare" time on Free Software development.
I have to laugh every time I see someone bring up people in third world counries who are "beaten, murdered and raped", as if somehow the abolotion of IP laws will make any difference to those people. Yes, there are serious human rights and poverty problems in the world. Bringing it up in a discussion of open source software is about as relevant as saying "do it for the children" though.
I too roll on the floor gasping with laughter, but for a different reasons than you: First, what's under discussion is the series of responses written by Pollack. In this and in some of the succeeding discussion threads his ideas about how systems such as "Fascism and Communism" which are not part of some sort of "free-market" paradigm end up in people getting rooked are discussed. The question asked by Hobbex especially asked him whether or not there should be an ethical dimension to his IP ideas. He (Pollack) brought it up. Second, the abolition of IP would make a huge difference for these people. These states are poor because their elites are selling the resources for bargain-basement prices to us. The populations that are forced by the military (another point explicitly brought up by the interviewee) to acquiesce to the elite's "ownership" or "possession" of these resources. Even if they were to continue to be worked by their bosses they would be better off if those bosses flouted, for instance, IP laws regulating the production of drugs in those countries. There are many cheap to manufacture but expensive to license solutions to medical problems that beset the Third World. It has _everything_ to do with IP. Thirdly, as long as there is oppression in the world and a determination of what happens by the greedy and the powerful you can forget any happy mediums. The decisions about what systems we have are not determined by rationality of any sort other than the simple logic that those in power are going to try and maintain it. As long as you ignore that and refuse to see that the misery of other people is integral to that system then you are ignoring the root problem. Such idle philosophizing about "free-markets" ignores reality and focusses myopically on your own local problems. Sometimes it can be self-interested to ensure that others are treated fairly. If congress succeeds in allowing the 850,000 "IT professionals" to immigrate from the countries where they have poorer societies than here then your "closed source" employment will suddenly seem to have a global dimension to it.
Here's what I'd like: a system where everyone's basic survival needs are met, and beyond that, people are rewarded proportionately to their contribution to society.
I'd have to agree that that was a fair vision. So how do you intend to get that?
This post is going to come off as negative, but I actually agree with a lot of what you say, especially about the tired old left/right canard with regard to Free Software. It's not really useful to think about it in those terms. I also totally agree with your point about status being tradeable. However......
, some socialist countries have laws that make it illegal for someone to do a job unless they are a member of the relevent union. These laws exist to maintain wage levels for people in those industries.
Countries like the U.S. for example?
In richer societies, people don't work in order to survive,
Not true. To take the U.S again there are many millions of people that barely get enough to eat. This is why there are programs in schools to feed children for free. They're hungry. Their families live very close to the edge of disaster and work to survive.
Is it because a mercedes is so much more comfortable and faster than a Pinto - of course not, it's because of the status driving a mercedes confers on him.
Actually they are a hell of a lot more comfortable.
Once material necessities are satisified, you might think people would relax more, but they don't because status is a primary motivator.
While not disputing that status is indeed a potent motivator I think that most of us also have a realization that we live by fucking others over. We see the poor people, we hear about them, we demonize them as being stupid and irresponsible and not having good "family values". We feel guilty about them. They're always there in the backs of our heads. We don't want to be like them. So climb, climb, climb the ladder! Get a good retirement fund so that after a long life of hard work you won't end up dependent on a society that has about as much heart as a wolf.
Something that any person can replicate for $0 cost can not be owned. It is not Property.
This certainly seemed to be a point that he wanted to ignore in the last question. He seems to be calling for an acceptance of ideas becoming a form of currency and then pointing out that
Unlimited replication of currency just doesn't work, any more than two copies of William Shatner.
which only makes sense if you accept that it is the ideas themselves that are traded as "things".
I was disturbed at his belittling of the success of the Free Software movement. I don't think that I agree that people that release their work to the community through the GPL get nothing in return as he claims. He attempts to dismiss what they get as being purely egoboo/recognition, but that sort of recognition translates into employability! It seems as though he doesn't appreciate this.
I was also a little disturbed at his comment that
The only essential different between a rich and poor person is what the bank computers and the registrar of deeds say it is, backed by military force
, which when coupled with an attack on Fascism and Communism:
Ordinary people are "dispossessed" of their property, which ends up, not surprisingly in the pockets of the promoters of the simple philosophy.
makes me wonder that he can't see the links in what he is talking about. It seems like the sort of muddle-headed thinking that could only come from someone in the cosy confines of academia. Military force is used now and has always been used in the past to enforce the _possession_ of things by a small number of people. This "right" of _possession_ is enforced by the military over the right of life, liberty and happiness. That's what's happening in Chiapas now and in many other places around the world where ordinary, decent, intelligent, hardworking humans are beaten, murdered and raped to keep them producing cheap raw goods for export so that our ordinary decent people will work for less so that the uncivilized and barbarous "middle class" can pontificate about perfect free-markets.
The lumping of Fascism and Communism together is the sort of unthinking hyperbole that has abounded in this country from all those who would claim that they are more reasonable than either of these bogeys - one of which is created and supported by this country in the Third World and the other that is suppressed and maligned by a political system who's major achievement is placing an ozone depleting SUV under the bottom of every MIT academic.
I have to laugh every time I spot old debating tricks like claiming that one occupies the middle ground and wishing that others would "compromise" to one's position
I stake the middle ground. Both the "right" copyright publishers who make currency loss through expiring keys and forced upgrades, and the "left" copyright violators who duplicate currency, will be welcome at my table when they see the light.
AOL has no presence in Europe. Nor will it ever have one. So I guess we don't have to be afraid about that (yet).
Bzzzt! AOL Europe is going strong and the Bertelsmann merger makes this worse! Check out this story from the Guardian: AOL/Bertelsman . You should be worrying already.... the americans are coming!
I don't buy this for a second. How many sources of media and news did people then have compared to now? I would argue that they have _many_ more now.,
Pretty hard to prove this one way or another. There were initially a lot of small, local town newspapers not controlled by Hearst. There were many more independent publishers of books at that time. Now a vast majority of stuff is published by subsidiary companies of Bertelsmann (now a subsidiary of AOL). I don't know if you appreciate the scale of it, but publishers like Random House are part of the Bertelsmann group.
Here's a question: Did TW ever try and influence how _you_ wrote your articles? Just because AOL owns CNN doesn't mean they can dictate what the reporters say and do, for the most part. I would argue that the integrity of Wolf Blitzer, Christian Amanpour, etc. will not be changed, and that if some corporation tried to control how they did their job they would scream bloody murder[...]If I don't like the way CNN is reporting, I'll change the channel. I guarantee you that CNN and NBC/CBS/ABC/etc. aren't all conspiring with AOL.
Most people are at least partially aware of the subtle pressure of not criticizing your boss, plus once you've talked yourself into working for some company you either reach a mental accomodation with that (read become compromised) or else you never saw anything wrong with them in the first place. And who wants to destroy the company that's providing their salary? It's a self regulating system. The other alternative is that you're very unhappy in your job and eventually leave it and do something else.
You seem to be arguing both that reporters are never inhibited about being critical about their own employers and that there are alternatives anyway.
The last point seems to ignore that there is at the least a gradual building of a behemoth that did not exist before. You are being carefree about the fact that this new diverse territory is being steadily coalesced into a single entity. I worry about this because I think it should be possible that the middle-of-the-road, straight-white, family-values, McDonald's-munchin', Disney-lovin' AOL users may occasionally once in a blue moon want to think about something outside the bounds of his/her usual life. I want there to be alternatives for that person to look at. But if the AOL search-engines and filters decide that/. is a site that caters to commie-linux-faggots and is blocked then they won't get to find it. They'll find the Reformed Baptist Ministry of Sacred Truth portal to WindowsChoices instead (5% of banner revenue contributed automatically to the Bush 2005 Campaign for A Better America).
I don't know how to take your guarantee. I don't believe that conspiracies are the only way of control being imposed. There can be tacit agreement between people with similar interests. They may bicker among each other fighting to be top of their own group. But ultimately they act in concert against those outside that group. Look at the example of Stephen Dunifer (sp?) with the micro-radio movement (Radio Free Berkeley) and the unified front presented against him by the commercial radio stations.
If I had the points I'd give them to ya! However, the revolution wasn't just the big names that we're all taught to revere. First, as you yourself point out there must have been enough popular support to raise armies. Second, it seems that most revolutions do have a nucleus which is needed to get things going. Great post.
It's something that worries the hell out of me. The types of society that I think would be nice all involve the principle of people being able to make their own informed decisions. For a society to be able to invest the resources so that everyone has a reasonable picture of the world which is clouded only by their own personality, temperament and individuality requires a fair deal of wealth. There are some that argue that the ancient Greek "democracies" couldn't have existed without slaves : in order to provide the small number of citizens with enough time to devote to intense political wrangling and philosophical debate. All that should have changed with the introduction of machinery (it's interesting to look at predictions from the turn of the century which assumed that mechanization would yield leisure - G.B.Shaw for one thought that we would be able to get by on a 4-hour work day!), but if we keep insisting on increasing production of possibly non-important consumer items and allow the accumulation of leisure and wealth and power in the hands of a few as a _fundamental_ part of the system then it's hard to see how we can have a functioning democracy. Bleargh! I feel distraught thinking about this sort of thing.
Excellent point. Revolutions usually seem to be initiated by a few people. It's as though others don't believe that change is possible until they see something concrete. I'm interested in the Franklin day planners. What the hell were those? B.t.w. as far as being a social miscreant goes Thomas Paine is right up there, a persona non grata in Britain _and_ revolutionary France
Ireland - 25 years of 'struggle' no change, everybody (including bomb-dodging Londoners) miserable. 1 ceasefire and things start happening yet people seem to forget that and talk about resuming violence, in this case it really _didn't_ do anything.. and as I said it did nothing for a quarter century
Let's not forget Ireland, 1916. Several hundred years of "liberals" bemoaning the "Irish problem" and working within the law - among them the Home Rule League, Daniel "The Liberator" O'Connell, the Land League, all the Irish Whig MP's in the British Parliament. A lot of trying to convince vested interests to change by the rules, a lot of failure. Then the Phoenix Club, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Citizen's Army and revolution, several years of guerrilla action initiated by several hundred law-breakers - the result? Freedom from the imperialist yoke. The reason that the North is still a problem is that the sectarian, nationalist elements of the IRA gained the upper hand over the socialists. There was then no chance for forging an alliance with the equally oppressed Protestant working class. In fact during the strikes in the shipyards in the 20's there were alliances between workers from both backgrounds which were quickly suppressed by the Unionist bosses using religion to drive a wedge.
Poll tax - ignored by many people, eventually got dumped as it was impossible to enforce and looked like an election loser (however many people just didn't pay anything and simply saw it as an excuse to avoid paying taxes, my folks paid the previous tax rate + inflation and got ignored because they'd paid _something_)
So here people broke the law by not paying the tax, organized their neighbourhoods so that bailiffs were physically repulsed when they appeared, co-ordinated with each other in mass non-payment to swamp the courts. These things are all civil disobedience, _breaking_the_law_. People didn't ignore it as an excuse not to pay taxes, they point of not paying it was not paying it!
I think that both of your examples are strong evidence against what you argue for!
The general public is not yet well aware of the direction in which forces like DMCA, UCITA, et. al. are going.
True.
Americans have a high tolerance for civil disobedience and mischief-makers if it appears they are working for some general good.
Not necessarily true. I think that there is not a hell of a lot of evidence to support this. I think this is a pretty conservative country. This is because of the point that you make about public not being aware of the issues. A widespread ignorance about governance, history and sociology means that people have no mental tools to evaluate these problems. A society without educated citizens is a society that is manipulable by those that run the media. And, like you say it is more important that we get the word out to the common man. Without him, we lose the fight. But we have to get the word out to him about all the other issues that lead us to the conclusion that censorship is bad. That's a relatively large ideological background that has to be communicated. Meanwhile a lot of people are just struggling to live.
As an "anarchist", he is obviously going to be anti-regulations, and so his stance that today's DeCSS authors are tomorrow's heroes is little short of ridiculous.
So if a "vegetarian" were to enter a debate over whether or not to eat meat and praised people that had found a way to avoid eating meat as heroes, that would be ridiculous? You seem to misunderstand that the classification of anyone as a hero is a subjective thing and he is merely expressing the opinion that these are people that he admires
They're not heroes, they're just in way over their heads after having done something before thinking of the consequences.
A little patronizing that. How do you know that they haven't made a principled and thoughtful decision to do this?
And look at Matthew Skala. Yeah sure he broke Cyberpatrol's encrypted site list, but he's certainly no "hero" - he caved in as soon as Mattel threatened him with a lawsuit.
That would seem to indicate a rational, thoughtful desire on his part not to become a martyr. He's already done a lot to admire, he's raised the issue, made it public and shown us the threat.
And the point is that even if these people were to become tomorrow's heroes, at the moment they are still breaking the law, and as such should expect to face the consequences. Sure the law isn't perfect, but breaking it to point this out is just childish and immature. Change in the law itself needs to be enacted within the law, otherwise it is little more than throwing tantrums, something which/.ers seem to be quite good at recently.
Tell it to the people that founded this country on the basis of a tax-revolt, tell it to Gandhi, tell it to Martin Luther King, tell it to Nelson Mandela, tell it to the German underground resistance during WW2, tell it to anyone that's ever done anything to bring about change.
Your diatribe about Stallman descends into the merely personal. No one is really evaluating him as a hero or otherwise on the basis of his arrogance or the colour of his socks or anything other than the fact that he had a idea that involved change to the way things are and tried to implement it.
Yeah, I've heard a lot of creepy neighbourhood watch stories. I hate the idea of casual surveillance being easier - it should be something that people are afraid of. Part of the great thing about the net to date has been the anonymity but as this is something that big business and government doesn't want it's under attack. I wonder was Stephenson trying to be provocative? I agree with his dystopian perspective on large corporations and their being a threat as much if not more than government, but I really don't like the idea that he reportedly expressed.
I'll admit part of your propositions. But you are not addressing the point as to whether Cubans would suffer more if Castro and the revolution had not triumphed. Most likely they would be in a state of slavery similar to that experienced by the vast majority of the Third World. They'd be working and dying to produce cheap produce to keep the slaves of this country happy. In other words they'd be in the same situation most Cubans were in before they revolted and sent the mafia back to the U.S.
No, you misunderstood me. I was using N for neo-nazi not Numbskull!!! Ha what a laughable misunderstanding! Naturally as you are numbskull you didn't understand the clearly stated parts of my post that said that I liked Tolkein. Similarly you failed to understand that my worries about the movie are due to the fact that I don't necessarily want my own images to be replaced with other peoples images.My, you sure are an idiot.:-)
The fact that this surveillance exists and has for a long time ws brought home to many in Britain and Ireland during the IRA's c.1994 bombing campaign that target the financial districts of London. In the wake of the largest of these bombings it turned out that the police had lots of videotape of men that they suspected were the bombers. They got this from ordinary store surveillance cameras that are installed for the purpose of minimizing shop-lifting. Apparently there were so many of these cameras that they were able to identify a large number of people. There were several hundred of people checked and eliminated from their enquiries. This is the amount of surveillance that exists without a concerted, co-ordinated effort being made. Disturbed? I sure am. I'm not sure that Stephenson had thought very deeply about it.
While Tolkien steadfastly denied any metaphor for WWII politics, many scholars tied the Shire to England, the Elves to France, Mordor to Germany, Saruman's Orthanc to Japan, and the Rohirrim/Gondor pair as USA's two-fronted war.
May be a bit off topic, but I've heard that LOTR is a favorite read among neonazis. Probably a result of the very clear differences between wrong and right, good and bad etc... It might also have to do with the obvious skin colour of elves and orcs, but I've never asked a neonazi...
IANAN but I can see that there are certainly elements that might appeal. I always found it interesting that Tolkein and C.S.Lewis had free, white, wild Northern and Western kingdoms that were under attack from the South and the East. In LOTR there are cruel Haradrim with dark skins and oliphaunts who are a mixture of harsh noble cruelty and corrupt evil. There are the swart Southerners that have been interbred by Saruman with orcs to make slant-eyed half-men such as Bill Ferny's friends or the Isengard servants. In Lewis's work there are the Calormen to the south who have curved swords and eat oil on their bread instead of good honest English butter. The orcs in LOTR always have scimitars too instead of decent upright straight swords.
I think that this "foreigness" is a quick way to feel that the other group is not human. That supposedly is what racists and neo-nazis are all about - emphasizing difference. Tolkein was doing it for dramatic effect, utilizing something that really was probably quite common, a feeling that "Foreigners are fiends and abroad is unutterably bloody" and that "The wogs begin at Calais" [quotes from one of Nancy Mitford's characters.
All that said I still find those writers (especially Tolkein, he's not as in-your-face-Xtian as Lewis and his world has a much greater depth not matched by any other fantasy author) amazing.
I am torn about whether or not to see the movie though. I am afraid that its images will pollute the private ones that I have....what to do what to do!
Slashdot Mirror
This really tells us absolutely nothing but NPR was just reporting that the father of the kid has been arrested too. Apparently on an unrelated charge: the phone was bugged because of mafia_boy and during the surveillance they heard the father planning an assault on a "business colleague"!
Very useful, thanks. I guess as my main interest is in Tk this might present me with a few more options. Thanks.
IIRC there was a less than 100,000 lines limit for cs. Do you know if this is a problem still?
Sure, I agree with the idea of making up my own mind, but in the process of doing that it is useful to find out what others think. RMS is someone who has spent a good deal of time thinking about this stuff and has, dare I say it, some pretty neat ideas. I want what I produce to be acceptable to the Free Software and Open Source community and I know that Tcl/Tk was not listed in the OSS acceptable licenses page. Given that other stuff has been sorted out (like Qt) I am wondering what the current status with Tcl/Tk is.
What's wrong with LClint?
This is bound to start a flamewar of some sort, but it's a question that I've wondered about for a while and the nifty GUI to this inspires it: I've found that Tcl/Tk is great for whipping up interfaces to C code but I remember that there were a lot of hard words spoken about the licensing by RMS. Is there still considered to be a problem with this for Free projects? If so then what other routes do people take for easily-portable GUI'ed software? Python+mxWindows? Qt? Gtk? I don't really like the last two options because of what I perceive as the amount of work involved in becoming familiar with them, but perhaps I'm wrong?
<offtopic> Also, does anyone know how to get around the size limit using etags? < /offtopic >
<patience type="saintly">
And what makes you think the US is a rich society or that joss was suggesting it was one of them?
Well, I was going for more obvious indices of "richness", using money as a correlate of possession of things, which is a correlate of power. But I'm prepared to look at the others to see how they measure up. Is the statement `don't have to work because rich' true in the following senses:
The richness-as-culture hypothesis can be dismissed by considering that there is no measure of this except predjudice (or judgement if you prefer) and that there are thus many societies whose members struggle for life daily and have a "rich" culture. Despite your scorn for "the American public" an intelligent observer would be able to discern richness of culture. Are you perchance British?
The richness-as-technology hypothesis would be true. However, technology is synonymous, or at least dependent on material/monetary richness as discussed above. Therefore this does not refer to a society that is not the U.S. or one of it's E.U. vassals.
The richness-as-any-number-of-"rich's" can similarly be examined and I think for any one of these found either to apply to the U.S. or to be false.
</patience>
Now I don't like to spoil a wonderful story, but obviously you haven't lived in a 3rd world country.
I admit that to be true
Nobody in the U.S. is living in fear of starvation. (well, perhaps some illegal immigrants, but obviously there are special factors at work there)
First, I said hungry not starving. There's a difference. However, even given this I think I could push the definition of starvation to include malnutrition. This affects especially children and impairs growth and development especially learning. This was recognised in the late '60's and gave rise to the "Head start" programs of free food in schools in deprived areas because it was recognized that children were being affected by it. The program was cut under Nixon and then re-introduced later and is still in effect. The rise of tuberculosis in some of the poorest neighbourhoods is thought to be due to a combination of malnutrition and other factors. There is a problem with hunger in this country.
Even if you have no income whatsoever, there's lots of charity, lots of land on which to grow crops, lots of animals, birds, and suchlike to eat, and lots of supermarkets and restaurants to steal from. Nobody in the U.S. is gonna starve!
True about the supermarkets to steal from - in fact there's even food in prisons. Not true about the land. Have you ever tried to grow food in the city? That's where a large number of the poor are. For that matter have you tried to grow food on someone else's land? With regard to the idea that no-one in the U.S. is going to starve, some did in the 30's.
I guess it depends on your definition of what a disaster is, but I would consider that wandering about too poor to buy food and having as one's options to steal and go to prison or to be hungry as a disaster. Obviously you are more sanguine about it than I am.
Employability doing what? Oh wait, I know the answer: writing closed source software.
So, all the people that work for RedHat, Debian, Corel etc are writing closed source software? Slashdot perchance is "closed source"?
Even if you were correct about this there is not an immediate win on your part. I'm not that worried if there is a certain amount of closed source software and it provides employment for people that are thus able to spend "spare" time on Free Software development.
I have to laugh every time I see someone bring up people in third world counries who are "beaten, murdered and raped", as if somehow the abolotion of IP laws will make any difference to those people. Yes, there are serious human rights and poverty problems in the world. Bringing it up in a discussion of open source software is about as relevant as saying "do it for the children" though.
I too roll on the floor gasping with laughter, but for a different reasons than you: First, what's under discussion is the series of responses written by Pollack. In this and in some of the succeeding discussion threads his ideas about how systems such as "Fascism and Communism" which are not part of some sort of "free-market" paradigm end up in people getting rooked are discussed. The question asked by Hobbex especially asked him whether or not there should be an ethical dimension to his IP ideas. He (Pollack) brought it up. Second, the abolition of IP would make a huge difference for these people. These states are poor because their elites are selling the resources for bargain-basement prices to us. The populations that are forced by the military (another point explicitly brought up by the interviewee) to acquiesce to the elite's "ownership" or "possession" of these resources. Even if they were to continue to be worked by their bosses they would be better off if those bosses flouted, for instance, IP laws regulating the production of drugs in those countries. There are many cheap to manufacture but expensive to license solutions to medical problems that beset the Third World. It has _everything_ to do with IP. Thirdly, as long as there is oppression in the world and a determination of what happens by the greedy and the powerful you can forget any happy mediums. The decisions about what systems we have are not determined by rationality of any sort other than the simple logic that those in power are going to try and maintain it. As long as you ignore that and refuse to see that the misery of other people is integral to that system then you are ignoring the root problem. Such idle philosophizing about "free-markets" ignores reality and focusses myopically on your own local problems. Sometimes it can be self-interested to ensure that others are treated fairly. If congress succeeds in allowing the 850,000 "IT professionals" to immigrate from the countries where they have poorer societies than here then your "closed source" employment will suddenly seem to have a global dimension to it.Here's what I'd like: a system where everyone's basic survival needs are met, and beyond that, people are rewarded proportionately to their contribution to society.
I'd have to agree that that was a fair vision. So how do you intend to get that?
Good points and questions. It would be nice if we could have a second round of questioning of interviewees that have been interesting.
This post is going to come off as negative, but I actually agree with a lot of what you say, especially about the tired old left/right canard with regard to Free Software. It's not really useful to think about it in those terms. I also totally agree with your point about status being tradeable. However......
, some socialist countries have laws that make it illegal for someone to do a job unless they are a member of the relevent union. These laws exist to maintain wage levels for people in those industries.
Countries like the U.S. for example?
In richer societies, people don't work in order to survive,
Not true. To take the U.S again there are many millions of people that barely get enough to eat. This is why there are programs in schools to feed children for free. They're hungry. Their families live very close to the edge of disaster and work to survive.Is it because a mercedes is so much more comfortable and faster than a Pinto - of course not, it's because of the status driving a mercedes confers on him.
Actually they are a hell of a lot more comfortable.
Once material necessities are satisified, you might think people would relax more, but they don't because status is a primary motivator.
While not disputing that status is indeed a potent motivator I think that most of us also have a realization that we live by fucking others over. We see the poor people, we hear about them, we demonize them as being stupid and irresponsible and not having good "family values". We feel guilty about them. They're always there in the backs of our heads. We don't want to be like them. So climb, climb, climb the ladder! Get a good retirement fund so that after a long life of hard work you won't end up dependent on a society that has about as much heart as a wolf.
Something that any person can replicate for $0 cost can not be owned. It is not Property.
This certainly seemed to be a point that he wanted to ignore in the last question. He seems to be calling for an acceptance of ideas becoming a form of currency and then pointing out that
Unlimited replication of currency just doesn't work, any more than two copies of William Shatner.
which only makes sense if you accept that it is the ideas themselves that are traded as "things".
I was disturbed at his belittling of the success of the Free Software movement. I don't think that I agree that people that release their work to the community through the GPL get nothing in return as he claims. He attempts to dismiss what they get as being purely egoboo/recognition, but that sort of recognition translates into employability! It seems as though he doesn't appreciate this.
I was also a little disturbed at his comment that
The only essential different between a rich and poor person is what the bank computers and the registrar of deeds say it is, backed by military force
, which when coupled with an attack on Fascism and Communism:
Ordinary people are "dispossessed" of their property, which ends up, not surprisingly in the pockets of the promoters of the simple philosophy.
makes me wonder that he can't see the links in what he is talking about. It seems like the sort of muddle-headed thinking that could only come from someone in the cosy confines of academia. Military force is used now and has always been used in the past to enforce the _possession_ of things by a small number of people. This "right" of _possession_ is enforced by the military over the right of life, liberty and happiness. That's what's happening in Chiapas now and in many other places around the world where ordinary, decent, intelligent, hardworking humans are beaten, murdered and raped to keep them producing cheap raw goods for export so that our ordinary decent people will work for less so that the uncivilized and barbarous "middle class" can pontificate about perfect free-markets.
The lumping of Fascism and Communism together is the sort of unthinking hyperbole that has abounded in this country from all those who would claim that they are more reasonable than either of these bogeys - one of which is created and supported by this country in the Third World and the other that is suppressed and maligned by a political system who's major achievement is placing an ozone depleting SUV under the bottom of every MIT academic.
I have to laugh every time I spot old debating tricks like claiming that one occupies the middle ground and wishing that others would "compromise" to one's position
I stake the middle ground. Both the "right" copyright publishers who make currency loss through expiring keys and forced upgrades, and the "left" copyright violators who duplicate currency, will be welcome at my table when they see the light.
AOL has no presence in Europe. Nor will it ever have one. So I guess we don't have to be afraid about that (yet).
Bzzzt! AOL Europe is going strong and the Bertelsmann merger makes this worse! Check out this story from the Guardian: AOL/Bertelsman . You should be worrying already .... the americans are coming!
I don't buy this for a second. How many sources of media and news did people then have compared to now? I would argue that they have _many_ more now. ,
Pretty hard to prove this one way or another. There were initially a lot of small, local town newspapers not controlled by Hearst. There were many more independent publishers of books at that time. Now a vast majority of stuff is published by subsidiary companies of Bertelsmann (now a subsidiary of AOL). I don't know if you appreciate the scale of it, but publishers like Random House are part of the Bertelsmann group.
Here's a question: Did TW ever try and influence how _you_ wrote your articles? Just because AOL owns CNN doesn't mean they can dictate what the reporters say and do, for the most part. I would argue that the integrity of Wolf Blitzer, Christian Amanpour, etc. will not be changed, and that if some corporation tried to control how they did their job they would scream bloody murder[...]If I don't like the way CNN is reporting, I'll change the channel. I guarantee you that CNN and NBC/CBS/ABC/etc. aren't all conspiring with AOL.
Most people are at least partially aware of the subtle pressure of not criticizing your boss, plus once you've talked yourself into working for some company you either reach a mental accomodation with that (read become compromised) or else you never saw anything wrong with them in the first place. And who wants to destroy the company that's providing their salary? It's a self regulating system. The other alternative is that you're very unhappy in your job and eventually leave it and do something else.
You seem to be arguing both that reporters are never inhibited about being critical about their own employers and that there are alternatives anyway.
The last point seems to ignore that there is at the least a gradual building of a behemoth that did not exist before. You are being carefree about the fact that this new diverse territory is being steadily coalesced into a single entity. I worry about this because I think it should be possible that the middle-of-the-road, straight-white, family-values, McDonald's-munchin', Disney-lovin' AOL users may occasionally once in a blue moon want to think about something outside the bounds of his/her usual life. I want there to be alternatives for that person to look at. But if the AOL search-engines and filters decide that /. is a site that caters to commie-linux-faggots and is blocked then they won't get to find it. They'll find the Reformed Baptist Ministry of Sacred Truth portal to WindowsChoices instead (5% of banner revenue contributed automatically to the Bush 2005 Campaign for A Better America).
I don't know how to take your guarantee. I don't believe that conspiracies are the only way of control being imposed. There can be tacit agreement between people with similar interests. They may bicker among each other fighting to be top of their own group. But ultimately they act in concert against those outside that group. Look at the example of Stephen Dunifer (sp?) with the micro-radio movement (Radio Free Berkeley) and the unified front presented against him by the commercial radio stations.
If I had the points I'd give them to ya!
However, the revolution wasn't just the big names that we're all taught to revere. First, as you yourself point out there must have been enough popular support to raise armies. Second, it seems that most revolutions do have a nucleus which is needed to get things going. Great post.
It's something that worries the hell out of me. The types of society that I think would be nice all involve the principle of people being able to make their own informed decisions. For a society to be able to invest the resources so that everyone has a reasonable picture of the world which is clouded only by their own personality, temperament and individuality requires a fair deal of wealth. There are some that argue that the ancient Greek "democracies" couldn't have existed without slaves : in order to provide the small number of citizens with enough time to devote to intense political wrangling and philosophical debate. All that should have changed with the introduction of machinery (it's interesting to look at predictions from the turn of the century which assumed that mechanization would yield leisure - G.B.Shaw for one thought that we would be able to get by on a 4-hour work day!), but if we keep insisting on increasing production of possibly non-important consumer items and allow the accumulation of leisure and wealth and power in the hands of a few as a _fundamental_ part of the system then it's hard to see how we can have a functioning democracy. Bleargh! I feel distraught thinking about this sort of thing.
Excellent point. Revolutions usually seem to be initiated by a few people. It's as though others don't believe that change is possible until they see something concrete.
I'm interested in the Franklin day planners. What the hell were those?
B.t.w. as far as being a social miscreant goes Thomas Paine is right up there, a persona non grata in Britain _and_ revolutionary France
Ireland - 25 years of 'struggle' no change, everybody (including bomb-dodging Londoners) miserable. 1 ceasefire and things start happening yet people seem to forget that and talk about resuming violence, in this case it really _didn't_ do anything.. and as I said it did nothing for a quarter century
Let's not forget Ireland, 1916. Several hundred years of "liberals" bemoaning the "Irish problem" and working within the law - among them the Home Rule League, Daniel "The Liberator" O'Connell, the Land League, all the Irish Whig MP's in the British Parliament. A lot of trying to convince vested interests to change by the rules, a lot of failure. Then the Phoenix Club, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Citizen's Army and revolution, several years of guerrilla action initiated by several hundred law-breakers - the result? Freedom from the imperialist yoke. The reason that the North is still a problem is that the sectarian, nationalist elements of the IRA gained the upper hand over the socialists. There was then no chance for forging an alliance with the equally oppressed Protestant working class. In fact during the strikes in the shipyards in the 20's there were alliances between workers from both backgrounds which were quickly suppressed by the Unionist bosses using religion to drive a wedge.
Poll tax - ignored by many people, eventually got dumped as it was impossible to enforce and looked like an election loser (however many people just didn't pay anything and simply saw it as an excuse to avoid paying taxes, my folks paid the previous tax rate + inflation and got ignored because they'd paid _something_)
So here people broke the law by not paying the tax, organized their neighbourhoods so that bailiffs were physically repulsed when they appeared, co-ordinated with each other in mass non-payment to swamp the courts. These things are all civil disobedience, _breaking_the_law_. People didn't ignore it as an excuse not to pay taxes, they point of not paying it was not paying it!
I think that both of your examples are strong evidence against what you argue for!
The general public is not yet well aware of the direction in which forces like DMCA, UCITA, et. al. are going.
True.
Americans have a high tolerance for civil disobedience and mischief-makers if it appears they are working for some general good.
Not necessarily true. I think that there is not a hell of a lot of evidence to support this. I think this is a pretty conservative country. This is because of the point that you make about public not being aware of the issues. A widespread ignorance about governance, history and sociology means that people have no mental tools to evaluate these problems. A society without educated citizens is a society that is manipulable by those that run the media. And, like you say it is more important that we get the word out to the common man. Without him, we lose the fight. But we have to get the word out to him about all the other issues that lead us to the conclusion that censorship is bad. That's a relatively large ideological background that has to be communicated. Meanwhile a lot of people are just struggling to live.
As an "anarchist", he is obviously going to be anti-regulations, and so his stance that today's DeCSS authors are tomorrow's heroes is little short of ridiculous.
So if a "vegetarian" were to enter a debate over whether or not to eat meat and praised people that had found a way to avoid eating meat as heroes, that would be ridiculous? You seem to misunderstand that the classification of anyone as a hero is a subjective thing and he is merely expressing the opinion that these are people that he admiresThey're not heroes, they're just in way over their heads after having done something before thinking of the consequences.
A little patronizing that. How do you know that they haven't made a principled and thoughtful decision to do this?
And look at Matthew Skala. Yeah sure he broke Cyberpatrol's encrypted site list, but he's certainly no "hero" - he caved in as soon as Mattel threatened him with a lawsuit.
That would seem to indicate a rational, thoughtful desire on his part not to become a martyr. He's already done a lot to admire, he's raised the issue, made it public and shown us the threat.
And the point is that even if these people were to become tomorrow's heroes, at the moment they are still breaking the law, and as such should expect to face the consequences. Sure the law isn't perfect, but breaking it to point this out is just childish and immature. Change in the law itself needs to be enacted within the law, otherwise it is little more than throwing tantrums, something which /.ers seem to be quite good at recently.
Tell it to the people that founded this country on the basis of a tax-revolt, tell it to Gandhi, tell it to Martin Luther King, tell it to Nelson Mandela, tell it to the German underground resistance during WW2, tell it to anyone that's ever done anything to bring about change.
Your diatribe about Stallman descends into the merely personal. No one is really evaluating him as a hero or otherwise on the basis of his arrogance or the colour of his socks or anything other than the fact that he had a idea that involved change to the way things are and tried to implement it.
Yeah, I've heard a lot of creepy neighbourhood watch stories. I hate the idea of casual surveillance being easier - it should be something that people are afraid of. Part of the great thing about the net to date has been the anonymity but as this is something that big business and government doesn't want it's under attack. I wonder was Stephenson trying to be provocative? I agree with his dystopian perspective on large corporations and their being a threat as much if not more than government, but I really don't like the idea that he reportedly expressed.
I'll admit part of your propositions. But you are not addressing the point as to whether Cubans would suffer more if Castro and the revolution had not triumphed. Most likely they would be in a state of slavery similar to that experienced by the vast majority of the Third World. They'd be working and dying to produce cheap produce to keep the slaves of this country happy. In other words they'd be in the same situation most Cubans were in before they revolted and sent the mafia back to the U.S.
Well, IAAN, and I think it's just peachy keen
No, you misunderstood me. I was using N for neo-nazi not Numbskull!!! Ha what a laughable misunderstanding! Naturally as you are numbskull you didn't understand the clearly stated parts of my post that said that I liked Tolkein. Similarly you failed to understand that my worries about the movie are due to the fact that I don't necessarily want my own images to be replaced with other peoples images.My, you sure are an idiot. :-)
The fact that this surveillance exists and has for a long time ws brought home to many in Britain and Ireland during the IRA's c.1994 bombing campaign that target the financial districts of London. In the wake of the largest of these bombings it turned out that the police had lots of videotape of men that they suspected were the bombers. They got this from ordinary store surveillance cameras that are installed for the purpose of minimizing shop-lifting. Apparently there were so many of these cameras that they were able to identify a large number of people. There were several hundred of people checked and eliminated from their enquiries. This is the amount of surveillance that exists without a concerted, co-ordinated effort being made. Disturbed? I sure am. I'm not sure that Stephenson had thought very deeply about it.
While Tolkien steadfastly denied any metaphor for WWII politics, many scholars tied the Shire to England, the Elves to France, Mordor to Germany, Saruman's Orthanc to Japan, and the Rohirrim/Gondor pair as USA's two-fronted war.
May be a bit off topic, but I've heard that LOTR is a favorite read among neonazis. Probably a result of the very clear differences between wrong and right, good and bad etc... It might also have to do with the obvious skin colour of elves and orcs, but I've never asked a neonazi...
IANAN but I can see that there are certainly elements that might appeal. I always found it interesting that Tolkein and C.S.Lewis had free, white, wild Northern and Western kingdoms that were under attack from the South and the East. In LOTR there are cruel Haradrim with dark skins and oliphaunts who are a mixture of harsh noble cruelty and corrupt evil. There are the swart Southerners that have been interbred by Saruman with orcs to make slant-eyed half-men such as Bill Ferny's friends or the Isengard servants. In Lewis's work there are the Calormen to the south who have curved swords and eat oil on their bread instead of good honest English butter. The orcs in LOTR always have scimitars too instead of decent upright straight swords.
I think that this "foreigness" is a quick way to feel that the other group is not human. That supposedly is what racists and neo-nazis are all about - emphasizing difference. Tolkein was doing it for dramatic effect, utilizing something that really was probably quite common, a feeling that "Foreigners are fiends and abroad is unutterably bloody" and that "The wogs begin at Calais" [quotes from one of Nancy Mitford's characters.
All that said I still find those writers (especially Tolkein, he's not as in-your-face-Xtian as Lewis and his world has a much greater depth not matched by any other fantasy author) amazing.
I am torn about whether or not to see the movie though. I am afraid that its images will pollute the private ones that I have....what to do what to do!