If they're increasing their attention spans and problem solving abilities with games like Legend of Zelda, that's one thing. If they're becoming psychologically dependant on Quake in order to evoke patience and calmness, that seems like a problem. Imagine a whole generation of kids who get a calm, centering feeling every time they commit an act of violence.
Umm, I'm pretty sure Governor of Texas is an elected position. Otherwise, I want to know what I was voting for on that ballot.
ORBS "gulty until proven innocent" stance
on
MAPS vs. ORBS
·
· Score: 1
What really bugs me is the whole concept of their "hall of shame". The page says that the listed domains have open relays, but block the ORBS testing. How can that be? If they block the testing, then you don't really know they have open relays do you. But instead, ORBS assumes they must have something to hide if they won't allow themselves to be scanned. Guilty until proven innocent.
Basically it comes off like "these guys won't play nice with us, so we're just going to add them to our list anyway." What seems particularly ironic to me is that the whole purpose of ORBS is to block certain kinds of traffic (theoretically spam), but when someone else decides to block a certain kind of traffic (ORBS' feelers), they're blacklisted.
Actually, the reduction in drag probably more than makes up for the electricity of the ccds. It's just like the fact that in most cars, you waste more fuel opening the windows than running the AC.
Scientists today released a preliminary report that finds that people are willing to do things in return for some sort of reward. It turns out that when people receive free gifts, they tend to take a generally favorable attitude toward the giver. Particularly shocking, said one researcher, was that celebrities on TV are often paid large sums of money to say good things about a product.
As a follow up report, the group plans to investigate whether politicians can be swayed by large campaign donations.
More seriously, do the authors of these snippets believe that reviewers who receive free copies of Windows software don't suffer from the same conflict of interests?
More than anything, the openSSH vs. SSH situation demonstrates that moving from an open source license to a less-open license is a bad idea, BECAUSE it will lead to a splinter project. The main problems with this instance are:
A. SSH didn't convince it's v1 users that v2 was worth moving to or paying for (Not that it necessarily is or isn't worth it). B. openSSH, while it's progress has been fantastic, still lacks features of the commerical version and GUI versions of v2 are not available C. the open and commercial versions are not entirely compatible.
All of these facts have led to confusion about what version of SSH people should be using. For instance, what's the point in getting my users to use SSH in place of telnet when they make just as many connections with ftp (or dreamweaver or frontpage, etc.). SSH2 provides a graphical sftp client for windows, which makes the users happy and prevents that problem. Of course, I'd prefer the open source version for moral reasoons, but the two aren't compatible, so I can't run them interchangeably.
All in all it's just led to the better v2 ssh protocol not being widely adopted.
On another note, this situation is not like GIMP vs. Photoshop, et. al. because Photoshop or AIM or Napster were never open source to begin with, and if Linux user wanted the functionality those programs offered, they had to write it themselves. SSH was already available, but was was "revoked" later.
John Markoff is quoted in Gelernter's bio saying: "...[Gelernter] prophesied the rise of the World Wide Web. He understood the idea half a decade before it happened."
And later they say that Mirror Worlds, published in 1991 claimed "in effect that one day, there would be something like the Web.
Except that Tim Berners-Lee wrote his original proposal for the World Wide Web in March of 1989.
Isn't that a little like saying you predicted the stock market crash of 1929 in a book you wrote in 1931?
I think the real issue in this case is fair use, which is essentially the problem with all of Boies' arguments. He argues that other court cases allow copying of music, but he doesn't address how fair use in those cases can apply to napster.
For instance, it is clearly fair use to make a copy for yourself that you can put on your Rio and take jogging. BUT, for Boies to cite this case and say that it is therefore OK to make available copies for hundreds or thousands of other people is a stretch.
As an analogy, imagine you go to the public library, copy an article from a magazine so you can refer to it while writing a research paper. This is clearly covered by fair use. If, however, you are the professor of a class and hand out copies to all your 100 students, you are starting to walk a fine line. If you scanned it in and posted it on the Internet, no court in the US would uphold that as fair use.
Basically, fair use is decided in part based on the amount you copy as well as the extent to which you distribute the copied materials. In the case of Napster, their users are often copying large amounts of material and making them available for wide distribution.
NOW, this doesn't make Napster any more legally responsible than say Xerox would be for the magazine article example, but the fact of the matter is that a large number of Napster users are infringing copyright without falling under fair use.
I think perhaps ESR and the others are not as far apart as they might imagine. In the third round, ESR states that "we [hackers] are very, very good at co-opting the system". What he doesn't seem to realize is that there are two entities in his statement, the co-opter and the system being co-opted.
From my reading, I believe that what Lessig in particular is saying is that the system exists in the form of policy, and that system has already been co-opted by the Microsofts, MPAAs and other large corporate interests to pass things like UCITA and DMCA. Lessig seems to be suggesting that if we don't co-opt the policy process the way we've done in other areas, somebody else will, much to the open source movement's detriment.
ESR seems to be arguing that we don't need no stinking system, because hackers are the real creators of the digital revolution. What he is ignoring is the fact that without a system, there is nothing to co-opt. For instance, if there had been no ARPA in 1969 with money to spend on a massive networking experiment and politicians nervous about mobile military communication, then it wouldn't have mattered how many hackers like JCR Liklider and Robert Taylor there were.
PS. I also grow weary of ESR as my "tribe's" representative. We are too diverse a group of people for any one (or two) people to really represent our views. Otherwise slashdot wouldn't be as interesteing as it is.
Slashdot Mirror
If they're increasing their attention spans and problem solving abilities with games like Legend of Zelda, that's one thing. If they're becoming psychologically dependant on Quake in order to evoke patience and calmness, that seems like a problem. Imagine a whole generation of kids who get a calm, centering feeling every time they commit an act of violence.
Umm, I'm pretty sure Governor of Texas is an elected position. Otherwise, I want to know what I was voting for on that ballot.
What really bugs me is the whole concept of their "hall of shame". The page says that the listed domains have open relays, but block the ORBS testing. How can that be? If they block the testing, then you don't really know they have open relays do you. But instead, ORBS assumes they must have something to hide if they won't allow themselves to be scanned. Guilty until proven innocent.
Basically it comes off like "these guys won't play nice with us, so we're just going to add them to our list anyway." What seems particularly ironic to me is that the whole purpose of ORBS is to block certain kinds of traffic (theoretically spam), but when someone else decides to block a certain kind of traffic (ORBS' feelers), they're blacklisted.
Actually, the reduction in drag probably more than makes up for the electricity of the ccds. It's just like the fact that in most cars, you waste more fuel opening the windows than running the AC.
Scientists today released a preliminary report that finds that people are willing to do things in return for some sort of reward. It turns out that when people receive free gifts, they tend to take a generally favorable attitude toward the giver. Particularly shocking, said one researcher, was that celebrities on TV are often paid large sums of money to say good things about a product.
As a follow up report, the group plans to investigate whether politicians can be swayed by large campaign donations.
More seriously, do the authors of these snippets believe that reviewers who receive free copies of Windows software don't suffer from the same conflict of interests?
More than anything, the openSSH vs. SSH situation demonstrates that moving from an open source license to a less-open license is a bad idea, BECAUSE it will lead to a splinter project. The main problems with this instance are:
A. SSH didn't convince it's v1 users that v2 was worth moving to or paying for (Not that it necessarily is or isn't worth it).
B. openSSH, while it's progress has been fantastic, still lacks features of the commerical version and GUI versions of v2 are not available
C. the open and commercial versions are not entirely compatible.
All of these facts have led to confusion about what version of SSH people should be using. For instance, what's the point in getting my users to use SSH in place of telnet when they make just as many connections with ftp (or dreamweaver or frontpage, etc.). SSH2 provides a graphical sftp client for windows, which makes the users happy and prevents that problem. Of course, I'd prefer the open source version for moral reasoons, but the two aren't compatible, so I can't run them interchangeably.
All in all it's just led to the better v2 ssh protocol not being widely adopted.
On another note, this situation is not like GIMP vs. Photoshop, et. al. because Photoshop or AIM or Napster were never open source to begin with, and if Linux user wanted the functionality those programs offered, they had to write it themselves. SSH was already available, but was was "revoked" later.
John Markoff is quoted in Gelernter's bio saying: "...[Gelernter] prophesied the rise of the World Wide Web. He understood the idea half a decade before it happened."
And later they say that Mirror Worlds, published in 1991 claimed "in effect that one day, there would be something like the Web.
Except that Tim Berners-Lee wrote his original proposal for the World Wide Web in March of 1989.
Isn't that a little like saying you predicted the stock market crash of 1929 in a book you wrote in 1931?
I think the real issue in this case is fair use, which is essentially the problem with all of Boies' arguments. He argues that other court cases allow copying of music, but he doesn't address how fair use in those cases can apply to napster.
For instance, it is clearly fair use to make a copy for yourself that you can put on your Rio and take jogging. BUT, for Boies to cite this case and say that it is therefore OK to make available copies for hundreds or thousands of other people is a stretch.
As an analogy, imagine you go to the public library, copy an article from a magazine so you can refer to it while writing a research paper. This is clearly covered by fair use. If, however, you are the professor of a class and hand out copies to all your 100 students, you are starting to walk a fine line. If you scanned it in and posted it on the Internet, no court in the US would uphold that as fair use.
Basically, fair use is decided in part based on the amount you copy as well as the extent to which you distribute the copied materials. In the case of Napster, their users are often copying large amounts of material and making them available for wide distribution.
NOW, this doesn't make Napster any more legally responsible than say Xerox would be for the magazine article example, but the fact of the matter is that a large number of Napster users are infringing copyright without falling under fair use.
I think perhaps ESR and the others are not as far apart as they might imagine. In the third round, ESR states that "we [hackers] are very, very good at co-opting the system". What he doesn't seem to realize is that there are two entities in his statement, the co-opter and the system being co-opted.
From my reading, I believe that what Lessig in particular is saying is that the system exists in the form of policy, and that system has already been co-opted by the Microsofts, MPAAs and other large corporate interests to pass things like UCITA and DMCA. Lessig seems to be suggesting that if we don't co-opt the policy process the way we've done in other areas, somebody else will, much to the open source movement's detriment.
ESR seems to be arguing that we don't need no stinking system, because hackers are the real creators of the digital revolution. What he is ignoring is the fact that without a system, there is nothing to co-opt. For instance, if there had been no ARPA in 1969 with money to spend on a massive networking experiment and politicians nervous about mobile military communication, then it wouldn't have mattered how many hackers like JCR Liklider and Robert Taylor there were.
PS. I also grow weary of ESR as my "tribe's" representative. We are too diverse a group of people for any one (or two) people to really represent our views. Otherwise slashdot wouldn't be as interesteing as it is.