Really, so why doesn't the bank, museum, and the pentagon put everything out in the open? What about the secret service agents that protect the president.. why should it be a secret how they operate?
Yes, you are correct, obscurity is no longer a factor to someone who knows the workings. Just like the combination lock is no longer an obstacle to someone who knows the combination.. no security is unbreakable. If it were, obscurity would be pointless.. but as it's always a matter of time and effort, some obscurity cuts down on the number of attempts. The fewer people who know all the details, the less risk you are at. The more obscure something is, the fewer people learn all the details.
Security.. yeah... whee. We all know it's impossible to write secure software for windows, and that software for every other system is automatically secure, so why doesn't the government realize it?
If you were the government, and you wanted this developed, what would your requirements be?
- Works on every computer on earth? Unreasonable - Conforms to some HTML standard so it can be used on everything? What if that can't be done with the right functionality? - Works in Windows, Linux, and MacOS? Three times the coding, three times the chance of mistake. Choosing windows as a target for the first incarnation is realistic.
Because they can. Because someone else will, and then sue them. Because microsoft will sue them.
Because holding patents is unfortunately a very important thing for a technology company these days. All their competitors have huge profiles of patents, so must Apple.
The problem is not Apple patenting this, it's the fact that it can be patented in the first place.
Those 64 bit workstations from AMD and others are not usually considered PCs, they are considered workstations. I realize it's just language.. but if you want to pull the 64 bit card that way, you could buy a 64 bit sparc workstation years ago, before AMD was even thinking about it.
Sorry, but the same thing happens in Linux, or BSD, or anything else. If you want to run NT4, by all means, go ahead.. yes, it's EOL... then again, so is Linux kernel 1.0.
Okay, there might be a software availability issue.. but that was something that companies could sort out license wise long before the EOL date.
He kind of misses the fact that there is a market out there, and that, well, growing carrots on your own farm doesn't really help if there is NO MARKET for carrots.
Saying "Do not develop for proprietary platforms" is absurd, that's where the money is, that's what everyone uses at the moment.
In a good software product, the core elements will be portable, and moving to a new platform, if need be, will not be a problem... it's analogous to a sharecropper using his own techniques to grow food, which are only known to him, and also having his own, smaller farm on the side, as well as having a few leads on new land where people are encouraging him to come over and develop. His big sharecrop might not be great, but he has options.
Saying it is about OSS is rediculous.. if Linux for some reason ceases to be a desirable platform for people, your software business is in the same boat... your farm up and left.
There are many rasons to develop for OSS.. but this isn't one of them. Developing for Apple, or Microsoft, or anyone, yes, you have to worrk if that one vendor stops supporting development.. but to stop supporting developers on your OS is suicide.
No air control? Funny, I just fired up q3a, and had no problem changing direction of motion and orientation in mid air.
It's not blazing speeds in only straight lines, in fact, turning is PART of acquiring that blazing speed... a straight line is more of a series of curving hops that approximate an overall straight line.
about content ownership? With all these blog hosting services... do the licenses permit them to republish your information? What kind of information are they gathering out of all those blogs, neatly stored on their servers?
We freak out about the government wanting to pry into anything, yet we see no issue when the largest ISP on earth wants to encourage everyone to post their innermost thoughts online for all to see, to be forever archived by the googlebot?
That's the point.. the players demanded it, so it was kept. It started as a bug, now it's a feature.
It's ignorant for any creator to think he knows everything.. very often the success of a creation is much more than the creator intended, and peopel find new ways to use them. Why should video games be any different?
I do not dispute that there are behaviors in any game that are wrong, that destroy the game for everyone.. but they are not necessarily about bugs at all.
I do not believe developers understand the game better than anyone.. I've seen many a game where they players undestand the intricacies and quirks of the game far better than the developers do.. understanding comes through actual use, not design.
Spawncamping on the wrong map, though completely permitted and possible, simply ruins the game, there is no fun, for either side... especially if the spawns are placed in the wrong places. Does that make someone a sour player for doing it? In a way. Is it always bad? Certainly not.
There was a place in Urban Terror where you could die while flying, and the flag would go somewhere unreachable, then vanish from the game. Doing this ruins the game for everyone..
Sometimes perfectly normal behavior as far as game design goes ruin the game, and sometimes exploiting bugs makes the game more fun.. you just can't say.
If it really disturbs the balance in TF, and the players don't like it, then fine... I'm not really a TF player, and I don't want to dispute it.. I have no doubt it does ruin the game.
I was speaking more about whether or not the developers vision is what counts.
I've used many systems, and many package systems.. from old machines where there really was no concept of a package, to debian, with it's superb package management, and everything in between.
The only conclusion I've come to is this: The package format itself isnt' so important.. what matters is the whole system approach to packaging and distribution.
Take Debian. Everyone agrees, I think, that the debian package format, and apt, together make for a great system.. but that's because of the method of package distribution and tracking, not the packaging system itself.. that and the fact that it's fairly universal in the debian world. Several apt repositories make up basically all software available for debian... and it's a lot. SO the overall experience is "Great package management". It's not just about the format, but the people.. people know what's in the standard packages, and can refer back and forth to them, checking for compatability and whatnot. The overall appraoch to package management is what rocks.. not the binary format.
Look at OSX.. they have fink. Fink, if you don't know, is basically apt-get for OSX. Works fine, no problem... except, it puts stuff in it's own folder (/sw) and it doesn't necessairly know about apple stuff already installed.. it only tracks stuff that is in the fink repositories. In other words.. it's useful, but it doesn't have the feel of a really great package system.. because the system itself isn't based on it.
People say "ports rocks" in bsd land... but why? Becasue it's superior? No.. just because it's a big collection of useful stuff that handles dependencies well. The actual package management system is extremely basic. But the system is more or less based on it, so it works very, very well.
Redhat.. is kind of a mess. Is it because rpm sucks? Heck no.. it's just because, well, the overall approach wasn't right.
OSX.. (yeah okay I'm a mac fiend now.. I admit it.). What package management? Apps tend to be one single file, which is a package containing all the bits and pieces. No real package management system to see what's installed or not.. and who needs it.. you can just go to the Apps folder and toss stuff in the trash to get rid of it. The system was designed to work that way. so it works really well. You don't say "Gee I wish the system tracked apps" because it's so very simple to get rid of them, and to ferret out any pieces they may have left behind, which is rare..
So overall... the complexity of the package management isn't as important as everyone sticking together on how things are going to be installed and removed. If everything works the same way, it doesn't really matter how sophisticated it is.
In quake3, you can also do this. Look up "strafejumping" and "circlejumping" , you'll find plenty of references to it.
You don't notice it in q3a as much because, well, the maps are smaller, and already fast paced, and there aren't as many places in the stock maps where it's really useful. In some mods, like Urban Terror, it's a godsend.
You "bunnyhop" as you call it, and strafe.. and also turn a bit during each hop.. once you get the feel of it, you can fly after 2 or 3 hops. Fire up urban terror, then go find some of the Urban Terror "Jump" videos that were done.. you'll see people making manoevers that, although difficult to perform, and require lots of practice, will drop your jaw.
The effect is not enough that you can outrun weapons... but it is pronounced enough that, if we had a race, and you don't have the hang of it, I can blow you away with ease. Two hops and I'm just plain gone. Combined with other weapons and mods and falling and whatnot, like if you hit it off of an already accelerated motions, the effect is that much more pronounced.
The effect is not gone at all, it still exists in the q3 engine.
the thing is, many of us players LIKE those quirks of the game physics. They are available to everyone, and are universal, and you know, many great games were greater than their creators intended due to things they didn't plan. Not necessarily outright bugs.. but some quirk of the physics.
It was cool, in quake, to be able to play for a long time, then start to discover that once you had your movement skills down really solid, you could actually do some fantastic things.
So.. if the original designer didn't intend it, fine.. but if you want to call it cheating... that all depends on what your view of a game is.
I, for one, don't view a game as JUST what the creator intended.. I view it on it's own, in it's entirety, and how it interacts with me. Just because the creator of some computer design didn't mean for it to be used in guided missiles, does that mean it's use as such is a bug? no.
Motion bugs are one of those things that tend to enhance games, and lend to the illusion that there is always more to learn. They don't destroy the game.
I say go with it.
Sure, some bugs destroy the game.. letting one player crash a multiplayer game, for instance... but if you are the kind of game player who insists on researching what the "intent" was, and following that alone.. you don't push the boundaries, and you probably didn't like The Matrix.
I'm not saying all bugs are good.. certainly, someone who ruins the game for everyone is not a good citizen... but, as far as quake engine motion quirks... I don't think you are a real quake player if you don't LOVE those.
the language things is very true. You don't think industrial robots are programmed in C, do you? Yes, the operating systems on some of the controllers might be.. but when it comes to coding the actual behavior, it's done in one of several languages that would probably not be well suited to operating system design.
You have a good point there... when it comes to the actual legalese, you need to spell out some situations where you can see it being misapplied and say that things are specifically okay.
I realize you can't draw a firm line... I'm going on common sense here.
Do I think I should be a criminal for giving my buddy a copy of some new music I want him to check out? No Do I think I should be criminal for putting up a site and offering entire albums for download, and effectively distributing thousands of copies to strangers? Yes
I'm not saying it's about "market value". I don't believe specifying a right to any market value should be part of any copyright law, it's too subjective, and there are too many other factors to take into account.
All I'm saying is, we can all sort of agree that some thinigs should be okay, and some things are not okay.. but we haven't yet come up with a set of rules or language that works.
We can say
1) Abolish copyright - okay, that works, I admit it. We no longer have a fuzzy area. 2) Draft draconian laws, make it based solely on the right to copy, in any form. Have down to the wire DRM, including cached copies, etcetera. Make any attempt at any kind of circumvention for any reason totally illegal, blah blah... this is a departure from the original purpose of copyright, and is more about "market value" and absolute control.
As we can all see those two options are unreasonable, what's the third? Has anyone yet suggested a way that we can retain copyright, and also allow people to copy things? where do we draw the line, and what, exactly, does that line mean?
If I'm write software/ book / music/ whatever.. I don't really care if little johnny gives a copy to his best friend. I do care if little johnny gives it to everyone on earth, and my rights as a copyright holder are basically useless. Where do I draw the line, though? I really don't know.
Previous to the digital age, that line was really about finances.. if the copyright holder found a large enough infringement that was actually costing them significant funds, they'd jump on it.. they didn't really give a hoot if some student made a photocopy of a couple pages of a book, or a kid copied some stuff for school, or the odd poor kid got a photocopied book... so while many things were technically illegal, nobody cared. The problem now is mass distribution and one copy are about the same cost and difficulty.
If you run a stopsign placing your vehicle where it's not supposed to be, and I run into you, being where I *am* supposed to be according to the rules of the road we all agree to adhere to, I am not "involved in a crime". The crime was when you ran the light. The part where I smash into you is called an accident.
You are saying IF we can explain deviant behavior, even in part... but we CAN, it's not some fantasy... we know nature and nurture causes of many types of violent personalities. We know that some types of behavior are linked genetically. We also know that none of these elimenate people's free will.. people can still get to know themselves and find ways to exist in society.
If we take someone who we know is violent, and we accept that it's in a large degree, say, due to their upbringing as a young child, and genetic predisposition... we can say "Yes, we understnad that you have a tendency to be violent, and that it's harder for you to control rage than for the average person." We can understand, and society should provide mechanisms to help that person live a normal life and coexist with others, if that's their wish. If, for whatever reason they can't get along.. what do we do? We don't just say "Oh well, it's okay to beat the shit out of people because it's genetic".. that's absurd... and won't happen.
Yeah, we are seeing more and more court cases where someone's upbringing or genetics are used as a defence against their actions.. but those should really only come into play when it comes to sentencing, or preferably in the future, treatment, or both.
I do see where you are going with it. Even now people are not responsible, and like to blame everything on something external.. it seems like it's a vicious cycle.. everyone is always blaming someone else, so that means everyone is always getting blamed for something, so they need excuses, etcetera. If people would just admit that accidents happen, shit happens, and that they were wrong once in a while, the world would be a better place.
Whoever said people are not responsible for what they do? Nobody said free will wasn't part of the factor, as a society, we find punishment for crimes to be the way we want to deal with those who break our rules.
And.. news flash... we DO know a great deal about the causes, biochemical and otherwise, of violent tendencies, and so on.. and we don't use them as an excuse for crimes. Yes, some lawyers try.. but saying that in one respect we understand the cause of something does not alleviate someone from responsibility for themselves.
And truthfully... do you think punishment is the solution for crimes? If we actually, in some magical land, KNEW the root cause of everything, that would also imply we could prevent or control what happens to a degree we woudn't NEED to punish people, because there would be no crime.. or if there were crime, we would simply take the person and reprogram them. But we aren't there, and nobody's saying we're going to be, either.
All I was saying is that psychological definitions often are taken out of context by joe average.. they see "Paranoia" and think "Oh great, now they think I'm paranoid" when really, they are just words in the doctor's vocabulary for dealing with human behavior.
I agree, blaming things on medical conditions, as is increasinglly common, is a bad thing, and we turn to drugs and other treatments far too easily.. but is it wrong to explain to someone why they are the way they are? the mistake is telling them the drugs are the only cure.
If someone had explained to me at a younger age that my brain chemistry was slightly differnet than others, and that it caused me to have a shorter attention span, and that I'd have to consider concentration a very important thing to work on... I would have DONE it. Instead, they just bitched at me like I was a misbehaved kid... but hey the work was easy, so who cares. What's better, for the kid to understand that he DOES have a handicap, in a manner of speaking, something he has to deal with.. or to stand there and call him lazy or irresponsible. You tell me.
You are not entitled to anyhting if you do not leave a forwarding address; however, it is still a crime for the current occupant to open mail addressed to you personally.
Again, I'm not disputing the technical nature of it. I'm not even saying they can't RECEIVE the mail...
If the new occupant has the same name, then obviously I can't have an issue with him opening my mail, as he has no way to tell it's not for him. If, however, he discovers after opening and reading it that it's mine, and not his, for sure, and publishes it anyway, THEN I have a problem with it. It's bad manners.
I'm not stupid, I realize this is not about the US. Notice I ended with saying it was morally wrong? I suppose I use the word "Federal crime" to point out that certain things are most definately, for a good reason, illegal.
The point that there is no actual envelope to open is a valid one... however..
So they read it. Fine. Found it wasn't for them. But then.. publishing it once you realize it's not? It's ethically wrong.
What happens when you let a domain expire, and someone sends you a letter, some long lost person, and it's private, just for you.. and the new owners publish it, and it hurts you financially, or personally.. you won' feel the same way. People ought to have respect for privacy, regardless of what the law says.
I'm talking more about morals and ethics than I am about laws... just because it's not illegal doesn't make it morally right. The opposite,,of course, is also true.
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Really, so why doesn't the bank, museum, and the pentagon put everything out in the open? What about the secret service agents that protect the president.. why should it be a secret how they operate?
Yes, you are correct, obscurity is no longer a factor to someone who knows the workings. Just like the combination lock is no longer an obstacle to someone who knows the combination.. no security is unbreakable. If it were, obscurity would be pointless.. but as it's always a matter of time and effort, some obscurity cuts down on the number of attempts. The fewer people who know all the details, the less risk you are at. The more obscure something is, the fewer people learn all the details.
Security.. yeah... whee. We all know it's impossible to write secure software for windows, and that software for every other system is automatically secure, so why doesn't the government realize it?
If you were the government, and you wanted this developed, what would your requirements be?
- Works on every computer on earth? Unreasonable
- Conforms to some HTML standard so it can be used on everything? What if that can't be done with the right functionality?
- Works in Windows, Linux, and MacOS? Three times the coding, three times the chance of mistake. Choosing windows as a target for the first incarnation is realistic.
You are changing the subject.
This is about developers, not end users.
The end user is free to stick with what they had before, and use whichever product they want.
Because they can.
Because someone else will, and then sue them.
Because microsoft will sue them.
Because holding patents is unfortunately a very important thing for a technology company these days. All their competitors have huge profiles of patents, so must Apple.
The problem is not Apple patenting this, it's the fact that it can be patented in the first place.
Those 64 bit workstations from AMD and others are not usually considered PCs, they are considered workstations.
I realize it's just language.. but if you want to pull the 64 bit card that way, you could buy a 64 bit sparc workstation years ago, before AMD was even thinking about it.
Almost perfect/ CDS have *absolute* channel separation. It doesn't get more perfect.
You mean like how if anyone has a good piece of software out there, the linux world makes one for free and it ends up in a major linux distribution?
Sorry, but the same thing happens in Linux, or BSD, or anything else.
If you want to run NT4, by all means, go ahead.. yes, it's EOL... then again, so is Linux kernel 1.0.
Okay, there might be a software availability issue.. but that was something that companies could sort out license wise long before the EOL date.
He kind of misses the fact that there is a market out there, and that, well, growing carrots on your own farm doesn't really help if there is NO MARKET for carrots.
Saying "Do not develop for proprietary platforms" is absurd, that's where the money is, that's what everyone uses at the moment.
In a good software product, the core elements will be portable, and moving to a new platform, if need be, will not be a problem...
it's analogous to a sharecropper using his own techniques to grow food, which are only known to him, and also having his own, smaller farm on the side, as well as having a few leads on new land where people are encouraging him to come over and develop. His big sharecrop might not be great, but he has options.
Saying it is about OSS is rediculous.. if Linux for some reason ceases to be a desirable platform for people, your software business is in the same boat... your farm up and left.
There are many rasons to develop for OSS.. but this isn't one of them. Developing for Apple, or Microsoft, or anyone, yes, you have to worrk if that one vendor stops supporting development.. but to stop supporting developers on your OS is suicide.
No air control? Funny, I just fired up q3a, and had no problem changing direction of motion and orientation in mid air.
It's not blazing speeds in only straight lines, in fact, turning is PART of acquiring that blazing speed... a straight line is more of a series of curving hops that approximate an overall straight line.
about content ownership? With all these blog hosting services... do the licenses permit them to republish your information? What kind of information are they gathering out of all those blogs, neatly stored on their servers?
We freak out about the government wanting to pry into anything, yet we see no issue when the largest ISP on earth wants to encourage everyone to post their innermost thoughts online for all to see, to be forever archived by the googlebot?
That's the point.. the players demanded it, so it was kept. It started as a bug, now it's a feature.
It's ignorant for any creator to think he knows everything.. very often the success of a creation is much more than the creator intended, and peopel find new ways to use them. Why should video games be any different?
I do not dispute that there are behaviors in any game that are wrong, that destroy the game for everyone.. but they are not necessarily about bugs at all.
I do not believe developers understand the game better than anyone.. I've seen many a game where they players undestand the intricacies and quirks of the game far better than the developers do.. understanding comes through actual use, not design.
It's not about bugs, but behavior..
Spawncamping on the wrong map, though completely permitted and possible, simply ruins the game, there is no fun, for either side... especially if the spawns are placed in the wrong places. Does that make someone a sour player for doing it? In a way. Is it always bad? Certainly not.
There was a place in Urban Terror where you could die while flying, and the flag would go somewhere unreachable, then vanish from the game. Doing this ruins the game for everyone..
Sometimes perfectly normal behavior as far as game design goes ruin the game, and sometimes exploiting bugs makes the game more fun.. you just can't say.
If it really disturbs the balance in TF, and the players don't like it, then fine... I'm not really a TF player, and I don't want to dispute it.. I have no doubt it does ruin the game.
I was speaking more about whether or not the developers vision is what counts.
I've used many systems, and many package systems.. from old machines where there really was no concept of a package, to debian, with it's superb package management, and everything in between.
The only conclusion I've come to is this: The package format itself isnt' so important.. what matters is the whole system approach to packaging and distribution.
Take Debian. Everyone agrees, I think, that the debian package format, and apt, together make for a great system.. but that's because of the method of package distribution and tracking, not the packaging system itself.. that and the fact that it's fairly universal in the debian world. Several apt repositories make up basically all software available for debian... and it's a lot. SO the overall experience is "Great package management". It's not just about the format, but the people.. people know what's in the standard packages, and can refer back and forth to them, checking for compatability and whatnot. The overall appraoch to package management is what rocks.. not the binary format.
Look at OSX.. they have fink. Fink, if you don't know, is basically apt-get for OSX. Works fine, no problem... except, it puts stuff in it's own folder (/sw) and it doesn't necessairly know about apple stuff already installed.. it only tracks stuff that is in the fink repositories.
In other words.. it's useful, but it doesn't have the feel of a really great package system.. because the system itself isn't based on it.
People say "ports rocks" in bsd land... but why? Becasue it's superior? No.. just because it's a big collection of useful stuff that handles dependencies well. The actual package management system is extremely basic. But the system is more or less based on it, so it works very, very well.
Redhat.. is kind of a mess. Is it because rpm sucks? Heck no.. it's just because, well, the overall approach wasn't right.
OSX.. (yeah okay I'm a mac fiend now.. I admit it.). What package management? Apps tend to be one single file, which is a package containing all the bits and pieces. No real package management system to see what's installed or not.. and who needs it.. you can just go to the Apps folder and toss stuff in the trash to get rid of it. The system was designed to work that way. so it works really well. You don't say "Gee I wish the system tracked apps" because it's so very simple to get rid of them, and to ferret out any pieces they may have left behind, which is rare..
So overall... the complexity of the package management isn't as important as everyone sticking together on how things are going to be installed and removed. If everything works the same way, it doesn't really matter how sophisticated it is.
In quake3, you can also do this. Look up "strafejumping" and "circlejumping" , you'll find plenty of references to it.
You don't notice it in q3a as much because, well, the maps are smaller, and already fast paced, and there aren't as many places in the stock maps where it's really useful. In some mods, like Urban Terror, it's a godsend.
You "bunnyhop" as you call it, and strafe.. and also turn a bit during each hop.. once you get the feel of it, you can fly after 2 or 3 hops. Fire up urban terror, then go find some of the Urban Terror "Jump" videos that were done.. you'll see people making manoevers that, although difficult to perform, and require lots of practice, will drop your jaw.
The effect is not enough that you can outrun weapons... but it is pronounced enough that, if we had a race, and you don't have the hang of it, I can blow you away with ease. Two hops and I'm just plain gone.
Combined with other weapons and mods and falling and whatnot, like if you hit it off of an already accelerated motions, the effect is that much more pronounced.
The effect is not gone at all, it still exists in the q3 engine.
the thing is, many of us players LIKE those quirks of the game physics. They are available to everyone, and are universal, and you know, many great games were greater than their creators intended due to things they didn't plan. Not necessarily outright bugs.. but some quirk of the physics.
It was cool, in quake, to be able to play for a long time, then start to discover that once you had your movement skills down really solid, you could actually do some fantastic things.
So.. if the original designer didn't intend it, fine.. but if you want to call it cheating... that all depends on what your view of a game is.
I, for one, don't view a game as JUST what the creator intended.. I view it on it's own, in it's entirety, and how it interacts with me. Just because the creator of some computer design didn't mean for it to be used in guided missiles, does that mean it's use as such is a bug? no.
Motion bugs are one of those things that tend to enhance games, and lend to the illusion that there is always more to learn. They don't destroy the game.
I say go with it.
Sure, some bugs destroy the game.. letting one player crash a multiplayer game, for instance... but if you are the kind of game player who insists on researching what the "intent" was, and following that alone.. you don't push the boundaries, and you probably didn't like The Matrix.
I'm not saying all bugs are good.. certainly, someone who ruins the game for everyone is not a good citizen... but, as far as quake engine motion quirks... I don't think you are a real quake player if you don't LOVE those.
is the universe's sense of irony.
I played GTA3: Vice city for 2 weeks straight..
Then my car got stolen from the mall.
Really.
the language things is very true. You don't think industrial robots are programmed in C, do you? Yes, the operating systems on some of the controllers might be.. but when it comes to coding the actual behavior, it's done in one of several languages that would probably not be well suited to operating system design.
You have a good point there... when it comes to the actual legalese, you need to spell out some situations where you can see it being misapplied and say that things are specifically okay.
I realize you can't draw a firm line... I'm going on common sense here.
Do I think I should be a criminal for giving my buddy a copy of some new music I want him to check out? No
Do I think I should be criminal for putting up a site and offering entire albums for download, and effectively distributing thousands of copies to strangers? Yes
I'm not saying it's about "market value". I don't believe specifying a right to any market value should be part of any copyright law, it's too subjective, and there are too many other factors to take into account.
All I'm saying is, we can all sort of agree that some thinigs should be okay, and some things are not okay.. but we haven't yet come up with a set of rules or language that works.
We can say
1) Abolish copyright - okay, that works, I admit it. We no longer have a fuzzy area.
2) Draft draconian laws, make it based solely on the right to copy, in any form. Have down to the wire DRM, including cached copies, etcetera. Make any attempt at any kind of circumvention for any reason totally illegal, blah blah... this is a departure from the original purpose of copyright, and is more about "market value" and absolute control.
As we can all see those two options are unreasonable, what's the third? Has anyone yet suggested a way that we can retain copyright, and also allow people to copy things? where do we draw the line, and what, exactly, does that line mean?
If I'm write software/ book / music/ whatever.. I don't really care if little johnny gives a copy to his best friend. I do care if little johnny gives it to everyone on earth, and my rights as a copyright holder are basically useless. Where do I draw the line, though? I really don't know.
Previous to the digital age, that line was really about finances.. if the copyright holder found a large enough infringement that was actually costing them significant funds, they'd jump on it.. they didn't really give a hoot if some student made a photocopy of a couple pages of a book, or a kid copied some stuff for school, or the odd poor kid got a photocopied book... so while many things were technically illegal, nobody cared.
The problem now is mass distribution and one copy are about the same cost and difficulty.
If you run a stopsign placing your vehicle where it's not supposed to be, and I run into you, being where I *am* supposed to be according to the rules of the road we all agree to adhere to, I am not "involved in a crime". The crime was when you ran the light. The part where I smash into you is called an accident.
You are saying IF we can explain deviant behavior, even in part... but we CAN, it's not some fantasy... we know nature and nurture causes of many types of violent personalities. We know that some types of behavior are linked genetically. We also know that none of these elimenate people's free will.. people can still get to know themselves and find ways to exist in society.
If we take someone who we know is violent, and we accept that it's in a large degree, say, due to their upbringing as a young child, and genetic predisposition... we can say "Yes, we understnad that you have a tendency to be violent, and that it's harder for you to control rage than for the average person." We can understand, and society should provide mechanisms to help that person live a normal life and coexist with others, if that's their wish.
If, for whatever reason they can't get along.. what do we do? We don't just say "Oh well, it's okay to beat the shit out of people because it's genetic".. that's absurd... and won't happen.
Yeah, we are seeing more and more court cases where someone's upbringing or genetics are used as a defence against their actions.. but those should really only come into play when it comes to sentencing, or preferably in the future, treatment, or both.
I do see where you are going with it. Even now people are not responsible, and like to blame everything on something external.. it seems like it's a vicious cycle.. everyone is always blaming someone else, so that means everyone is always getting blamed for something, so they need excuses, etcetera. If people would just admit that accidents happen, shit happens, and that they were wrong once in a while, the world would be a better place.
Whoever said people are not responsible for what they do? Nobody said free will wasn't part of the factor, as a society, we find punishment for crimes to be the way we want to deal with those who break our rules.
And.. news flash... we DO know a great deal about the causes, biochemical and otherwise, of violent tendencies, and so on.. and we don't use them as an excuse for crimes. Yes, some lawyers try.. but saying that in one respect we understand the cause of something does not alleviate someone from responsibility for themselves.
And truthfully... do you think punishment is the solution for crimes? If we actually, in some magical land, KNEW the root cause of everything, that would also imply we could prevent or control what happens to a degree we woudn't NEED to punish people, because there would be no crime.. or if there were crime, we would simply take the person and reprogram them. But we aren't there, and nobody's saying we're going to be, either.
All I was saying is that psychological definitions often are taken out of context by joe average.. they see "Paranoia" and think "Oh great, now they think I'm paranoid" when really, they are just words in the doctor's vocabulary for dealing with human behavior.
I agree, blaming things on medical conditions, as is increasinglly common, is a bad thing, and we turn to drugs and other treatments far too easily.. but is it wrong to explain to someone why they are the way they are? the mistake is telling them the drugs are the only cure.
If someone had explained to me at a younger age that my brain chemistry was slightly differnet than others, and that it caused me to have a shorter attention span, and that I'd have to consider concentration a very important thing to work on... I would have DONE it. Instead, they just bitched at me like I was a misbehaved kid... but hey the work was easy, so who cares. What's better, for the kid to understand that he DOES have a handicap, in a manner of speaking, something he has to deal with.. or to stand there and call him lazy or irresponsible. You tell me.
You are not entitled to anyhting if you do not leave a forwarding address; however, it is still a crime for the current occupant to open mail addressed to you personally.
Makes sense right?
Again, I'm not disputing the technical nature of it. I'm not even saying they can't RECEIVE the mail...
If the new occupant has the same name, then obviously I can't have an issue with him opening my mail, as he has no way to tell it's not for him.
If, however, he discovers after opening and reading it that it's mine, and not his, for sure, and publishes it anyway, THEN I have a problem with it. It's bad manners.
I'm not stupid, I realize this is not about the US. Notice I ended with saying it was morally wrong? I suppose I use the word "Federal crime" to point out that certain things are most definately, for a good reason, illegal.
,of course, is also true.
The point that there is no actual envelope to open is a valid one... however..
So they read it. Fine. Found it wasn't for them. But then.. publishing it once you realize it's not? It's ethically wrong.
What happens when you let a domain expire, and someone sends you a letter, some long lost person, and it's private, just for you.. and the new owners publish it, and it hurts you financially, or personally.. you won' feel the same way. People ought to have respect for privacy, regardless of what the law says.
I'm talking more about morals and ethics than I am about laws... just because it's not illegal doesn't make it morally right. The opposite,