Many people have proposed we ban political advertising on TV and radio. While this would have the desired effect, it would also be a violation of the right to free speech.
The solution is to get rid of or drastically scale back the FCC. This would allow many people to set up TV channels at relatively low costs. Minor political parties could set up local and national TV stations, as could organizations or other groups of individuals. All of the sudden, getting your political point accross (via TV) wouldn't cost millions and would be relatively cheap.
What we need is to turn TV and the radio into something more like the internet. On the internet, anyone can set up their own website for a relatively low cost; you can even set one up from your PC. Thus, what we need to do is work towards a situation where, just as anyone can set up their own web-site at a relatively low cost, so too should anyone be able to set up their own TV channel or radio station at a relatively low cost. Part of this could be transient and random, allowing people to "grab" a certain space when they wanted it and then relinquish it.
This gets into another point regarding the corrupt ICANN and their fraudulent "selling" of domain-names, as if it actually costs anything to add www.site.com to a list of sites correlated to IP addresses (you can side-step this by using OpenNIC).
If you don't want people to use Z, the answer is not to restrict the freedom of the company that produced Z to release its software under whatever terms it likes.
Not the answer according to you. Fine, in that case, you license it under something else. It is a guarantee for people who believe in the FSF.
The answer is to improve X or Y to the point where it is a better option for users than Z. The answer, in other words, is to produce "open source" software that is better than its "closed source" competitors.
Well, that's one answer, and is always preferable. There's no reason not to also use the other solution, which is the GPL, which guarantees no derivatives will be proprietary. Also, it might not always be possible to make the FS program better -- there might be hundreds of corporate competitors, pouring in millions of dollars each. There is a problem, and there is a solution: The GPL. May not be the solution you like, but too bad.
This is only meaningful if you accept that "open source" software is inherently a good thing. It's not.
Please take care not to use FS and OSS as synonyms, and please take care not to use "open source" in place of OSS (OSI-certified). It is inherently a good thing: the same program will be better if its GPL'ed and EULA'ed, because bugs will be fixed faster, and the user will know what (s)he has.
Simply put, people using FS & OSS as opposed to proprietary software is meaningful and good if you value freedom. If you don't value freedom, then, fine, it doesn't matter. I know that freedom and rights are meaningless and hold no value to you.
Again, that's only meaningful if you consider "proprietary" software to be an inherently bad thing. It's not.
It is.
Truths require proofs to be accepted as fact.
This is the most important thing you've said. On this point, you are absolutely incorrect. Until you realize this, you will never understand my point of view.
I suppose I should re-state my original statment for slightly more clarity: "Assertions require proof to be accepted as fact."
You may be some kind of lemming who will accept whatever some authority-figure tells you. You may expect others to do the same and accept whatever you tell them. But rational, responsible, thinking people don't. When people have accepted things as "true" without proof, it has always resulted in regrettable situations, as I've pointed out before (Earth = flat, witches, etc). The truth is the truth no matter what we say -- our believing a false statement (i.e., earth = flat) is true doesn't make it any truer, nor vica-versa. However, you still need to prove any assertions you make -- or at least provide supporting evidence for them -- if you expect people to accept them.
I understand your point of view perfectly. You think that you are an absolute authority on right/wrong -- as if there is such a thing as matters of fact -- and that everyone should just accept what you say without thinking for themselves. Furthermore, you think that you should be allowed to force your opinions regarding what is right/wrong on everyone who disagrees with you.
Responding to a few relevant points, and a few tangents:
So...the fact that the GPL means that users are not free to create unrestricted derivative works somehow means that an all-GPL wo[rld] would somehow be more free?
Lets say if the GPL allowed derivative works to fall under any OSI-certified license. So, I make a GPL'ed program X (which solves a problem that hasn't been solved before), modifications of which can fall under any OSI-certified license. You then take my program X and make optimizations and feature improvements to it; you call your program Y and release it under the BSD license. A company then comes along and makes modifications to your BSD-licensed code and adds a GUI to it, making it easy to use. They release their program, Z, under a standard draconian EULA. It subsequently becomes the dominant program for its type of function, obtaining 95% market share, and taking users away from programs X and Y (which formerly accounted for 100% of the market, and now account for only 5%). Because these Free Open Sourced programs have lost many users, they have less feedback, and developers are less motivated to develop vigorously for them. Thus, by following your suggestions, we have went from a situation where 100% of the software used for a given problem was FS/OSS, to one where only 5% of it is. This is hypothetical, but the point is clear.
Summary: The revised-BSD type licenses offer more freedom initially, and the potential for greater freedom down the line if no-one proprietizes modifications; but they also allow for greater risks to invasions of proprietary software.
Every man has a conscience. You, it seems, have learned to ignore yours, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
Just because every man has a conscience doesn't mean that there is an absolute moral truth. Different men have different consciences. Mine doesn't tell me that prostitution, stripping, other other sex-work is wrong. It, however, tells me that rape, murder, torture, stealing, assault, sexual assault, child-molestation, etc. are wrong. My conscience also tells me that you and others like you trying to micromanage, control the lives of, and violate the rights of everyone around you is wrong. In all cases, reasoning backs up my conscience.
Also, referring to your conscience is meaningless. Where does this conscience you speak of come from? Well, there are two possible sources: (1) Its the results of genetic programming which affects neuronal factors; (2) Its instilled by society. Of course, I'm not suggesting that there are "conscience" genes -- that's absurd: they come about through complex gene interactions, which affect the morphology of (for example) synapses in the brain. Of course, what you call a "conscience" may be the result of both our genetic makeup and societal factors. In either case, if your source of "absolute moral truths" is what your conscience says, your on thin ice. Consciences vary from person to person within a nation: apparently, David Berkowitz' conscience told him it was right to kill people. They also vary from nation to nation: in many areas of the Middle East, its considered the morally appropriate thing to beat one's wife for showing her face in public.
In short, it seems like your absolute moral truth comes from "what you feel". This is obviously hogwash, as feelings tell people to do very cruel and ruthless things. The terrorists who ran a plane into the WTC on 9/11 thought it was right to kill 9,000 people: their "feelings" or "conscience" told them that it was right to kill 9,000 people.
I'll take a more personal example: the case of Carla Fay Tucker, the axe-murderer who was executed. Despite supporting the death penalty, my feelings made me feel sorry for this pretty woman who'd converted to being a devout Christian. That was obviously hogwash. If she'd been a fat ugly 6'5 African American who'd converted to being a Muslim, neither myself nor few others (who support the death penalty) would have "felt" sorry. Thus, if you support the death-penalty, the reasonable to do is ignore your feelings and support her execution.
My conscience says that it [prostitution] is [wrong]. I am in the majority on this point.
You keep on insisting that you're in the majority on every point. Firstly, this has no relevance to the truth (or lack of a truth) on the matter. Secondly, you have offered no statistics to show you're in the majority. That said, my conscience and that of many others disagrees with your conscience: we think that prostitution is not wrong. Prostitution is just a profession, and should be given as much respect as any other profession which does not violate the rights of others. Prostitution, like all other legitimate professions, serves a societal need: the need for sexual relief, for those who can't (or don't want to bother) getting it in a relationship.
Your cries of how prostitution destroys the institution of marriage, destroys sexual intimacy, and degrades women are nonsense: (1) Institutions, such as marriage, have no right to exist perpetually; (2) Good marriages spring from good relationships, and that is the responsibility of those involved in the marriage to obtain; (3) Nothing says sex has to be an intimate act between two people -- for some it is, for some it isn't, for some it is in some cases but isn't in others: if you or anyone else wants sex to be an intimate experience, prostitution isn't stopping that; (4) The actions of one woman reflect only on herself, and it is those who would judge all women by the actions of a few woman who degrade women, not the prostitutes. Nothing prostitutes or their customers are doing is going to stop you or anyone else from having valuable and meaningful sexual relations, nor trivialize the bond between you and your lover. The significance of your relation with your lover is your and her responsibility to establish and nourish. Take personal responsibility for a change.
I don't have to [prove that prostitution is wrong]. It's not even up for debate. It is moral truth.
You have to prove its wrong if you want to justify forcing your opinion that its wrong on everyone else. Just because you think its a morally wrong thing doesn't mean it is. Others don't. You arrogantly speak of moral truths as if you are some kind of authority on them. Outside of areas on which 99+% of society (in the US) agrees on -- such as rape, murder, torture, stealing, child molestation, assault, sexual assault, etc -- there is great debate on some of these "moral truths" you speak of.
Truths require proofs to be accepted as fact. That's what you want -- for us to accept that prostitution is wrong as a moral fact. You want us to accept that with the same certainty that we accept that gravity pulls objects towards the center of the Earth until a force of equal and opposite resistance is met. You want us to accept that based on what? Your word? Your conscience? Our conscience disagrees with you. So, if you want anyone who disagrees with you to accept that prostitution is wrong, you have to prove that it is wrong just as soundly as you can prove (and show) gravity. The only way for you to do that is take on the burden of the argument by staring with the initial assumption on moral or legal issues that others start out with.
Even if you can show its wrong, that doesn't mean it should be illegal. There are many things that most people think wrong but that they don't think should be illegal. For example, most/some people think the following things are wrong: (1) For priests to protect confessed rapists and murderers; (2) For lawyers to get guilty people acquitted; (3) To say cruel and hateful things; (4) To commit blasphemy. Despite that, most people don't think these things should be illegal, nor is there any good argument for why they should be illegal.
Prove that life has inherent value. You can't. But that doesn't mean it isn't true.
I assume that here you mean the life of a human being (and I'm not talking about a zygote/embryo here). Other forms of life have little or no inherent value to us: I could care less about any other form of life outside of human beings, except for how it can benefit human beings. Few if anyone think that yeast has any inherent value, or that infectious viruses or bacteria have any value. Some PETA-nutcakes apparently think that any life-form capable of feeling pain has inherent value and "rights".
In any case, it is obvious that this "sanctity of life" we speak of is something we invented, like all matters related to ethics and morality. It is not an absolute truth of the universe, nor is it one of nature.
. It just means that that idea doesn't require proof in order to be accepted as true.
What you're saying is that we should just accept these "moral truths" on faith. In some cases, that's fine, because there is almost a perfect consensus among the US population that various things shouldn't be allowed. For others, such as prostitution, drug-use, abortion, euthanasia, there isn't. Many don't accept these "moral truths" you spew, and in fact believe the opposite. Until you can convince most people that something is wrong and that it is significant enough to illegalize (in that it violates other's rights and harms) you have no basis for illegalizing it.
What you want is for everyone to do as you say: if you think/feel something is wrong, you want the law to mandate that no-one do it, no matter what anyone else thinks. You are the one who wants to be some kind of dictator. You spew out self-righteous and arrogant moral statements, and expect everyone to accept them on faith. Furthermore, you have no first principle from which you derive how all these things are morally wrong, thus no-one can reason with you starting from your first principle.
I, on the other hand, and others, do have first personal principles. My minimum principal is the Chinese Golden Rule: Do not do unto others, as I would have them not do unto myself. My principal for what makes a good moral action is to Do unto others as I would have them do unto yourself. Despite these being good rules or personal actions, they are not ideal to base laws around (because, they would, for example, be impractical, mandating good summaritan laws and laws requiring us all to "voluntarily" give to charity). Thus, my first legal principle is that people should be able to be free to do as they will, so long as they don't prevent others from excercising that same freedom. This is, in essence, a subset of the two moral first principals.
LOL, yea I agree. We should have the right to self-defense, not to bear arms. Self-defense would mean a glock with 10 rounds in it: if 10 rounds isn't enough to defend yourself, you're fucking anyways.
Yep, you're right. Better yet, after screenshotting JPGEGs, they can feed those JPEGs into a OCR program, which will put the adobe document in OpenOffice format. Much more convenient than JPEGs.
Really, does anyone give a damn? Who could possibly care? What do they expect, that if they calculate the value of pi out to 10^1000 they will learn the secret of life, in some secret message inserted into the number pi?
This is about as useful as measuring the length of your erect penis (or clitoris) out to the trillionth decimal place.
This situation, despite what a shitload of misinformed people seem to think, does not mean the DMCA was a bad law. In fact, quite the opposite; 512(f) makes it against the law to use the DMCA in an unfair or unjust manner. That's not the mark of a bad law; that's the mark of a very good law.
That section is completely useless in reality. It hasn't stopped any unfair, unjust, or overzealous applications of the law. Big corporations will do whatever they want, and if someone tries to sue them for inappropriate use of the law, they will be immune due to their army of lawyers.
Just because the DMCA makes things you would like to do illegal doesn't mean it is, prima facie, a bad law.
Whether the intent of the law is good/bad is up for debate and not the question here. I won't go into the reasons why it's a bad law, but will note that every intellectual organization -- libraries, universities, rights organizations, etc -- campaigned (to no avail) against it. The politicians listened to the folks paying the biggest bribes: big-business.
The more important issue is that the DMCA is a vague, imprecise, and unclear law: even the nation's top lawyers can't agree on exactly what it means.
As you said, it just requires substantially more energy. Ideally, the best course of action would be to get it out of the Earth's gravity well and on a course towards the sun. However, this seems pointless, as we now have methods which can neutralize nuclear waste here on earth -- certain machines can heat it to such an extent that it becomes a hard inert substance. This is probably safer and requires less energy than getting it out of Earth's gravity-well. Also sounds better than sending it all to Yucca mountain, which seems like a disaster given all the possible transportation accidents that could happen. Not to mention the security risks involved.
In the case of ICANN, the safest assumption -- as they have proven by their long history of actions which harm the public interest and sacrafice individuals at the alter of multi-national corporations -- is that whatever they have done, there is some corrupt motive in it. They will eliminate the 5 board members elected by the public, two of whom were clearly serving the public interest (Auerbach in particular).
Please change your signature. It is deeply offensive.
Tough. My signature will stay as it is until I tire of it. I will say whatever I want to, and I have the right to do so. Right now, I have that signature as support for Katie Sierra. I do not agree with her views regarding the war on terrosim, but that is irrelevant. I support her right to say what she said without being suspended from school for saying it. What is outrageous is your attempt and other's attempts to shut up people who disagree with the war on terrorism.
I do not recognize the authority of the FSF to define what "free" means.
Disagree all you want. You can also disagree with the authority of the dictionary to define that word. The simple fact is, that the FSF is an authority on what Free Software means. The OSI is an authority on what "Open Source" means, a slightly more lax term than Free Software.
But a world in which developers aren't free to use "free" software in whatever way they see fit doesn't sound like "a world with more freedoms" to me.
A world where developers are "free" to impose the most restrictive EULA's on their end-users doesn't sound free to me. Also note that no-one has to accept the GPL license.
There's nothing free about the FSF's software; it's covered by a license that's just a restrictive as any other, and moreso than some.
Not according to the FSF or the OSI. The GPL offers many freedoms to end-users and developers which proprietary licenses don't. It places one restriction on developers that the revised-BSD doesn't -- they can't modify and redistribute under a different license. So, in the very immediate term, the revised-BSD is more free than the GPL. But in the long term, the revised-BSD may lead to a situation where there is much less freedom than there would be had the GPL been used (because under the GPL, all derivative will be Free Software, but not necessarily so under the BSD).
You believe that you know what's right and what's wrong.
No, actually I know there is no absolute right and wrong. Right/wrong, justice/injustice, rights, morals, ethics, etc is all something which human beings made up. It is not a natural phenomena of this world, but rather a man-made one, which is not absolute and can be reshaped.
And the opinions of people who disagree with you are irrelevant-- as you say here-- because you are right.
Actually, the opinions of anyone and everyone is irrelevant to what the truth is. 500 years ago, people thought the Earth was flat -- wrong. ~300 years ago in America, people thought that there were witches who cast magic spells and thus needed to be killed -- again, wrong. When will you get it? Your opinion, my opinion, the opinion of everyone else in the world, is completely irrelevant to whether or not something is true. What you are suggesting is that if a tree falls in the middle of a forest, and there's no-one there to hear it, it didn't really fall -- that is a rather arrogant view.
I don't need to have absolute certainty, because I know that all this morals, ethics, justice, injustice is just stuff we made up. That doesn't mean it serves no purpose, but it also doesn't mean that we have to accept whatever the status quo is. The vast majority of people would be happier if the laws were derived from my first principle.
And you honestly believe that the world would be a better place if everybody just did what you say.
No, I believe the world would be a better place if everyone left their neighbors to do as they please in-so-much as possible (that is, in so far as their neighbor's activities aren't significantly directly harmful to them). I believe the world would be a better place if people tolerated other's actions as much as possible. That means, if your neighbor decides to have sex with a prostitute, fine -- doesn't necessarily harm you or anyone else; if your neighbor decides to rape your daughter, not fine -- does harm you and your daughter.
I don't believe the world would be a better place if everyone did as I said. I say "don't worship any god, that's all non-sense which is a waste of your time"; yet, doing such makes some people happy. I have certain preferences and hobbies (for example, reading poetry) which would invariably bore or make miserable others if they did the same. The same thing which makes me happy, might (for example) make you miserable. We should be thankful of that, as it allows for win-win situations for everyone.
Some things-- again, let's just prostitution as an example-- are wrong for purely moral reasons, and as such are not subject to the rules of your logical debating game...because it [prostitution is] bad
Prove it. You can't. You can only say "most people believe it is" which I don't think is even the case. Nothing can be better evidence for the non-existence of morality/ethics as an a priori entity than that we can't prove any moral/ethical statements in the same solid sense that we can prove scientific facts.
If I think the world is flat, you can say, "no idiot, its round..." You can show me photographs from space. You can take me out to a flat desert and show me that if I walk far enough, you're head will dissapear over the horizon, even with a high-powered telescope. If all else fails, you can put me in a hot-air balloon and tell me to keep going in one direction.
Not the same with any moral statement.
There are a few reasons why people say prostitution is "bad", but none of those reasons can convince anyone who starts out from a different first principle. Even assuming that prostitution is "bad", I can show that it is worse to criminalize it using reasons which would convince almost anyone starting from almost any first principles.
The simple fact is, you can't even define what criteria something must meet if it is to be titled "bad", because (from what I've seen) you're beliefs are just a collage of different "feelings" you have. You can't show why something's bad, or prove why its bad.
Neither can I show that my first principle is right or wrong, nor would I try because I believe that human beings invent what is right or wrong. But I don't have to, I just have to show people that under most circumstances, they would be happier if it were obeyed, which is easily demonstratable, as the greatest unhappiness to people comes from the ultimate violations of that first principle (i.e., rape, torture, murder, despotism, etc).
Yep, ICANN deliberatly made it cumbersome and difficult to register for voting, precisely because they didn't want the public involved. Then they said "well, we shouldn't have public elections because not enough people voted to represent the public interest". Well, let me say that 700 votes is more representative of the public interest than an assembly of corporate interest groups. Let me also say that this is a circular argument: all that the low-vote count proves is that ICANN is corrupt and should aid people in voting and reach out to people to try to get them to vote. ICANN has not tried to inform internet users of its existence or significance: it has stayed in the shadows like the snake it is.
Regarding anarchy. Thank you for admitting that you were wrong in calling anarchy a "form of government". That is the most absurd idea I've heard from you yet. Calling anarchy a form of government because it is "the absence of any government" is like calling chaos a form of order because it is "the absence of order".
Regaring freedom. Freedom and anarchy are still incompatable, despite what you say. If I have freedom, I am (for example) free to do as I will with my own body. During a time of anarchy, someone can abuct me, tie me up to a chair, and torture me. In such a state, you can not say that I have any freedom what-so-ever. I don't have the freedom to move; the freedom to do what I want with my body; or the freedom to eat, drink, and sleep when I want. In short, anarchy will rapidly lead to a situation where few have freedom...physically strong individuals will prevent others from excercising their freedom. Of course, we don't have absolute freedom in society either; that's where rights come in -- to gaurantee us certain freedom's. In anarchy, you have no more -- if not less -- freedom than you would under a dictatorship; in the freest society possible, you still wouldn't have absolute freedom. In so far as is physically capable, the only people I can think of who have ever had absolute freedom are Lucy Irvine and her "husband G" when they were Castaway voluntarily on an abandoned island. Read the book and decide if absolute freedom is a good thing. For the only way one can have absolute freedom (or close to it) is to be all alone (or in this case, all alone with one other person).
Regarding the FSF and its Free GNU GPL License. Again, there can be no such thing as absolute freedom, unless one is all alone (in which case one can do whatever one wants, but may not much enjoy it). The FSF and the OSI define what requirements a license must meet to be free (for the most part, they are the same, though the OSI is a little more lax). If a license meets those requirements, it is defined as free. In short, those requirements are a set of freedoms that a license must guarantee the user. The GPL meets every one of those requirements, thus it is a Free as in Freedom (and OSI-certified) license. The GPL basically prevents you from doing one thing: using a GPL'ed program as the basis for a program which you will license and distribute under a license other than the GPL. In that immediate sense, yes it is less free than the BSD license. But over the long haul, it will create a world with more freedoms, as developers won't be able to restrict the freedoms others may use (if they base their code off of GPL'ed code). These ideas are very much compatable with reality. I'm sure the "reality" you speak of is the "reality" that people want to get paid to write software. Nothing in the GPL prevents that -- nothing mandates that you give your product and the source away for free online, or anywhere else. You can sell your product for whatever price you want. And you don't have to give the source code with your product, but simply the offer to provide the source code (at the cost of shipment); also, note that nothing in the GPL mandates you provide your source code in a format which is easy to copy and distribute accross the entire internet. You could provide it on paper in hand-writing, for example (or another way making it unscannable by a computer).
Regarding my central premise, that we should be free to do as we will so long as we don't prevent others from doing so, so long as we don't violate the rights of others (note, that my central premise is almost identical to the Golden Rule). No, you have not demolished this idea, except perhaps in your own very closed mind. Your arguments for why victimless crimes (for example) should be illegal are flimsy at best. Again, please try to use valid logic. Simply because the world does not operate the way I suggest it should does not mean that it never will, nor that it shouldn't. 500 years ago, people would have scoffed at the idea of a society as free as the US...they also would have called you a infidel for trying to say the Earth revolves around the sun. The world is changing, and its changing towards being more free, and away from your tyranical visions of utopia. When the world operates as you suggest it does, that is "very bad". You're utopia has been "realized" many times throughout history, and the results were all abhorrent: the execution of Socrates, the French Revolution and the mass-beheadings of aristocrats, the Salem Witch trials, the lynch mobbings of African-Americans here in the US. That is what your ideas amount to.
Regarding biopiracy. What's wrong with biopiracy isn't that biotech companies use the knowledge of indigenous people. The problem is they get a patent for something they didn't invent: patents are supposed to be an incentive to invent, but they certainly can't be an incentive to invent if they aren't given to the inventors (but rather, those who tresspass on the inventors land). Please try to be honest while debating. I have not said I think that there should be no copyrights, patents, or trademarks: I have only said that, as Lessig realizes is needed, we restrict both the scope and duration of all of the aforementioned.
Regarding trademark, copyright, and patent laws. You offer no solid rebuttal of my position. Trademark laws exist to protect the public and allow people to easily distinguish one product from another. Thus, corporations shouldn't be allowed to trademark certain things, or to chop up the English language between themselves. For example, symbols such as Nike in the public domain. In other cases, the law is extended beyond its domain, such as Intel Inside and Yoga Inside. Patent laws exist to encourage innovation and invention. New and superior business models naturally provide their own reward, and we shouldn't force the rest of the business world to operate inefficiently (that is a Pareto inferior outcome). Certain things shouldn't be patentable because they aren't inventions but discoveries. Life-forms shouldn't be patentable. Furthermore, patents exist to promote invention/progress and serve the public interest. When they don't, exceptions should be made. Patents shouldn't mean that people who can't afford drugs should die; those people wouldn't have been able to pay for the drugs in the first place, so they should be sold them at the cost of production (or rather, we should allow corps to sell generic drugs to them at cheap prices). Patents also shouldn't prevent scientific progress, as they often do by creating prohibitive barriers. Copyrights exist only to promote the creation of new pieces of writing, acting as engines of freedom. Their purpose is to act as an engine of free speech, not to benefit the authors. Thus, they only be of sufficient scope and duration to do such: I think that is 10-20 years. Make them too short, and there isn't enough incentive to create; too long, and no-one can make derivative works, thus they start to inhibit what they were intended to promote. In short, the thing to do in all of these areas is find the optimal balance between too much protection (i.e., anything over 50 years) and too little (i.e., none).
LOL at your high opinion of yourself -- "doing a public service by rebutting my insane ideas". Firstly, my ideas aren't insane -- they're simply practical suggestions on what we could do to make a better society, in which we all have more rights. Secondly, you haven't rebutted anything other than in your own self-loving mind. Somehow, I doubt that if we took a poll, many/.ers would agree with you. Not that that means anything -- the opinion of the masses is irrelevant to whether or not something is true/right/good.
Btw, please stop harping on this rights issue: whether rights exist a priori or not is irrelevant, because they are only significant if protected by force. Yes, the only rights we have (or which are meaningful to us) are those we defend with force. Also stop harping on this appeal to popularity/force. Just because something is popular does not mean that it is right, nor is something right if it has powerful forces behind it. Simply because the majority *can* force something on the minority doesn't mean that its right (or even that it will happen). In reality the "will of the people" is rarely abided by in the Legislative branch of our government, which only acts as a central point of bribery for big-money special interest groups.
P.S.: Feel free to continue being my stalker. I'm rather flattered and have always wanted one. Don't expect me to repay the favor though: I see no need to troll you around/. and respond to your tyranical views. I doubt that such fanatacism towards totalitarianism in one form or another (notably, the tyranny of the masses) is well-taken here.
Freedom is a state of being. Anarchy is a system of governance.
Actually, no, anarchy is not a form of government. Anarchy is the absence of any government. Use a dictionary:
anarchy 1. Absence of any form of political authority. 2. Political disorder and confusion. 3. Absence of any cohesive principle, such as a common standard or purpose.
They [anarcy and freedom]... are not mutually incompatible. In fact, anarchy would be the system of governance-- that is, none at all-- that offers the most freedom to its citizens.
What world do you live on? Here on planet Earth, anarchy and freedom are incompatable. Why? Because given free reign to do what they will, people will invariably rape, murder, steal from, torture, assault, etc. their neighbors, thus depriving their neighbors of freedom. Their neighbors will likewise do the same in return. This creates a situation where no-one has any freedom, but where there is only Fear and War. I'd have thought you would have read Hobbes' "The Leviathan". Though I disagree with his solutions, I agree completely with his analysis of the nature of man in the natural state of anarchy.
No, they [the FSF] don't [think that Free Software should be a right]. This is a misrepresentation of the FSF's ideas.
Well, their website seems to disagree with you. Let me give you a few quotes from their website
As further notice, in an e-mail to me, RMS told me something along the lines of "the definition of free software is the minimum standard". That implies that free software should be a right. However, that is not certain, and I'm sure you won't believe my unverifiable "evidence". I will e-mail the FSF and put the question to him directly and post it in a reply.
Once again we see an example of this user, dh003i, picking something arbitrary and senseless and calling it his right. So far we've seen drug abuse, prostitution, deviant sexual practices, and now access to software source code.
No, I have no arbitrarily picked this. I have stated what I believe to be the FSF's position. I am not sure if it is my position, but will ponder the issue. All of my positions derive from one premise: that we should have the right to do whatever we want, so long as we don't violate other's rights; that we should be free to do as we will so long as we don't prevent others from doing the same. At the current time, my position on copyrights, patents, and trademarks mirrors that of Lessig: I think both the scope and duration of all of the aforementioned needs to be drastically reduced. Some things -- such as life-forms, business models, and biopirated information taken from Indigenous cultures for example -- should not be patentable period. Some things should not be allowed to be trademarked: Nike is a perfect example (as that comes from the Greek godess of victory, as does the Nike symbol). Copyright scope should also be reduced; for example, fair use should be drastically expanded, as should the public domain. Books like "The Wind Done Gone" should be covered under fair use. I am much more severe, however, than Lessig in terms of duration: I think that, though 20 years for valid patents is fine, life + X for copyrights is not. Copyrights should get at most 20 years of protection.
When do I get to call not having to listen to your claptrap my right?
No one's forcing you to listen. Remember, the right to speak does not mean the right to be heard? (though it does mean the right to have the potential to be heard). You're the one trolling around/. responding with irrelevant tangent-issues to everything I post. Oh well, I suppose everyone needs their stalker.
If you really don't want to listen to "my claptrap" then you can stop reading my posts. If -- because I'm always modded up so high -- you find reading my posts unavoidable, then simply add me to your foes list, and modify all foes to have a -6 default, and set your threshold to 2.
ICANN is right about one thing -- not enough people participated in online elections. That doesn't mean they should be abolished -- they're still better than the corporate-interests free-for-all ICANN wants. ICANN's criticisms about how easy it is to fake online voting is bunk: simple verification scheme can be instituted. I.e., make potential voters register with information verifying who they are, and store that information securely.
The problem with these types of articles is that they don't explain anything. Do you know why only 700 some people voted for ICANN board members in the US? Because very few people even know what DNS means: it means Domain Name System. Now, you can't just say that. You have to say what it does. The DNS binds a certain web-address (such as www.slashdot.org), which you type in your web-browser, to its location in computer-space, represented by its IP (Internet Protocol) number, which might be something like 135.352.653.354. DNS is necessary because no one can remember IP numbers, and you need to have easy-to-remember things to type in.
Now, there does not need to be one and only one DNS. Different people can use different resolution systems. The main one is that of ICANN, but free public-interest alternatives such as OpenNIC exist. Also, note that there is no reason why you have to abide by ICANN's assignment of any website to its IP number. You can -- in your hosts file, a file on your computer -- make it so that web addresses assign to the IP you want them do. Don't think the courts were right in stealing Nissan.com from its rightful owner, a computer business owner? Then assign Nissan.com to the actual IP address of his website. Don't think that Stampede.com should belong to a corporation which makes useless products you have no need for? Fine, reassign it in your hosts file to the IP address of Stampede.org, the Linux distro.
The point is, you the user have power to assign any web address to any IP address. you also have the power to choose whether to use ICANN or OpenNIC...I use my HOSTS file first, then OpenNIC, then ICANN.
In fact, anyone can start a DNS system. All it takes is a server. The only thing is getting major recognition. But that doesn't matter: people who want a free, public-interest DNS will be able to find the appropriate one's. I think that OpenNIC is wrong when they say they won't do anything to conflict with ICANN's domain name resolution. They should actively counter ICANN when ICANN makes decisions taking domain names away from private individuals and giving them to corporations. The court's have no business interfering with OpenNIC's decisions on who to assign domain-names to via its server: this is a private organization, and it can assign domain-names to whatever IP address it wants to. Corporations don't like that, too fucking bad. Users can choose which domain name resolution systems to go to...if corporations don't like OpenNIC assigning intel.com to someone who is selling information services, then they can try to convince people to use ICANN instead of OpenNIC. But in the end, its up to each individual user to decide: Intel (for example) has no right to have intel.com assigned to the IP address for its website on every single DNS system. I can start my own DNS system, convince all you fellow slashdotters to use it, and assign intel.com to my own website! How about that!
Now, there is an obvious problem with having conflicting DNS systems between ICANN and OpenNIC...that is, that ICANN might assign intel.com to 135.354.535.343, while OpenNIC will assign it to 463.534.643.134. Thus, hyperlinking becomes a problem...if I type in
<a href=www.slashdot.org>Slashdot</a>
, then it might mean a different thing for someone who uses ICANN and for someone who uses OpenNIC or dh003iNIC:-). This, of course, is a problem: I wouldn't be able to type in url ref.'s in hyperlinks and know where they pointed to for every user. The solution, of course, is technological -- the solution is NOT for the government to tell everyone they can't conflict with ICANN. The solution is to have services that automatically convert the href I type in to a IP number, depending on the DNS system I'm using. This way, it *will* point to the same thing for everyone. On the other side, the IP number will be translated to whatever href (depending on whether the user uses ICANN or OpenNIC).
So, what can we/.ers do?
Stop using ICANN as our primary service.
Use OpenNIC as our primary service.
Modify our host files to fuck over greedy corporations, and create a server system for these specific modifications so anyone can access them. If thee aren't to many, just post them and offer them for download. I figure there might be about a thousand or so web addresses which ICANN has assigned to various entities that we disagree (and should disagree) with.
Create automated services to resolve web-address conflictions between different services by auto-converting them to IP numbers and then re-converting back to web-addresses, depending on which service (ICANN or OpenNIC) is used.
So, in short, there is something we can do other than just try to reform ICANN. I personally think ICANN's hopeless anyways. Selling web-address locations for all kinds of money is absurd...its only one entry in a file pinning a web-address to an IP number: costs next to nothing to do. There could easily be as many top-level domain's as there are ideas...you the individual user could even create personal "domains" in your hosts file.
Also, remember that nothing in Lindows prevents you from creating a user account separate from root. And like I said before, if users don't see the need/benefit of having an accont separate from root, then they shouldn't be doing that, for one of two reasons: (1) Maybe they don't need it; (2) Maybe they do need it but don't realize; they'll be taught when they get infected with a virus -- people learn best by mistakes.
I disagree w/ the implication that XP's user priviledge features rival those of unix. For one thing, setting priviledges in unix can be done quickly and to a large number of files by simple commands. But that's a matter of opinion.
More importantly, security and priviledge features do nothing to attract new users. Remember what I said about the average user? The average user, remember, thinks that Windows and MacOS are "hard to use" and confusing.
I don't remember which post I put it in, but I did say somewhere this: Lindows is for real. They do good business, smart business: (1) Naming their product to sound like Windows attracts Windows users; (2) Making it look like OSX in ways attracts Mac users and the general public; (3) Website designed like Apple's website -- makes it easy to use, and familiar; (4) Debian-based -- couldn't base it on a better, more stable, distro; (5) Making deals with big-time players like Walmart. In short, these guys make good business decisions.
In response to a few criticisms of Lindows proprietary software:
The only proprietary thing that I can find is Lindows slick upgrading utility (Click-'n-Run), which can easily be replaced by apt-get or a apt-get GUI. Does anyone here think that people are going to pay the high price for Click-'n-run after it expires? Not likely. If you're worried about the new user being swayed by proprietary software, you don't have to worry about Click-'n-Run -- few will pay for that service. So, thus, its up to you to educate them about FS/OSS.
Yes, it runs as root. So does Windows. The average computer user doesn't want to bother to distinguish between root and user. If they do, they want it to be simple and graphical, like OSX's system is. I'd say that until a user is intelligent enough to understand why (s)he shouldn't be running in root, they shouldn't. You learn by experience. This is also a call for the FS/OSS world to develop some good anti-virus software: even if you run in user, you're still not invulnerable to viri.
No, they haven't offered the source or ISO online for free download. Why? They actually have a real business plan, which doesn't include giving away their product for free (as in beer). In other words, they have a plan to make money, and have obviously learned from dot.bomb. Giving away your product and hoping people will buy it anyways is not a good business model (RedHat has been successful because they sell support services). It is fine and dandy for non-profit projects like Debian to give things away for free (i.e., their updates), but they aren't trying to make money. Even Debian doesn't put their official ISO online because it would require huge amounts of space/bandwidth, and they want to encourage people to buy the $5 Debian CD's.
Quite frankly, I think Lindows is the best chance to topple the MS empire, because of the software itself and the business plan/model behind it. Once people are using Lindows, its a few steps from there to more traditional GNU/Linux distros.
Lindows is, quite frankly, very easy to use -- even for newbies. You can't underestimate how important that is for the typical user. Remember, your parents even have a hard time using Windows or MacOS!
Absurd. Freedom does not mean the power to do whatever you will. That's anarchy.
The FSF thinks that free software should be a right -- perhaps derived from the right to free speech. Thus, they've engineered the GPL to prevent corporations from taking free code and using it as the base on which to build code that is not freem, thus violating what the FSF considers to be a right.
Its very simple: the FSF wants to give the user and developer freedom, but not the power to take away other people's freedomrights...and the FSF considers free software a right; they also consider proprietary software a violation of that right. Thus, they don't want to aid in the creation of proprietary software.
I believe that most people are very much supportive of laws that you would deem to be unacceptable.
So, according to you, the majority of people want the government to be able to arrest/prosecute them for sodomy in the states where sodomy is illegal, even between adults? Do you have any statistics showing that most Americans find rights-violations acceptable? Most Americans do not deem abridging free speech, just because it may be "offensive", to be acceptable. I.e., most Americans are offended by Mein Kampf, but think it should be allowed to be sold. Even if what you say is true, just becuase "most Americans" think a certain thing doesn't mean it should be put into the law, or that it is true. Most Americans believe in the Christian/Catholic God...that doesn't mean its true, nor that it should be put into the law.
Which is kind of the point, really. The majority gets to make the laws. You did, of course, fail to describe how you would hope to institute limits on the power of the citizens to make their own laws, so that question remains defiantly open.
Under our current system of government, the majority does not get to make the rules. The majority doesn't even get to elect the President (rather, electoral votes). All the majority gets to do is elect Congressmen and Senators, who invariably lie and deceive in regards to what they will do, and are easily influenced by big money from powerful corporate interests. Thus, the majority at the moment has little say or even influence.
What I propose is a simple modification of the current system: let direct democracy-type voting replace the current House and Senate. Why? Because its harder for the RIAA, MPAA, SIAA, MS, drug-companies, and other big-money corporations or corporate interest groups to bribe 300 million Americans than to bribe 500 or so elected officials. Thus, your criticisms of how I'm going to limit the power of the majority are dealt with. The power that the majority has would be limited by the same thing that limits the power of the Congress and Senate -- that is, the other two branches of government, the judicial and executive.
That's a very broad generalization, too. What facts or statistics do you have to back this one up?
Don't need any -- given the numerous number of things we do in our day-to-day lives, and the numberous number of things that offend people, its a certainty. The more pertinent question, however, is not "am I doing somehting that most people are offended by" but "in the future, is it possible most people will be offended by what I do."
I assert just the opposite: most people don't do anything that the majority of society would object to.
So, according to you, most people don't get drunk in public places, be insulting, drive recklessly or far over the speed limit at some point. The point is, that in your private life, there's going to be alot of things you do that many -- if not most -- people will object to. Oral sex, anal sex, S&M, corporal punishment, killing an animal for sport, chopping down a tree in one's back yard, racist joke, abortion, contraception, the after-pill, ethanasia, and being a lawyer and getting a guilty man acquitted. These are all things that the "majority" of people most likely finds offensive...yet, it is likely that most individuals have done at least one of these things, or does one of these things regularly.
The only one who's showing ignorance and naivete here is you. First, just because the majority of people think something does not mean that it's true or just. People used to think the Earth was flat and that slavery was ok. Second, just because the majority of the people want something does not mean it will happen. Almost everywhere on the Earth today -- including the US -- the will of the majority of the people is completely ignored...any influence the "majority of the people" have is at best indirect. Third, a direct democracy with unchecked power -- as you seem to suggest -- is not a good thing: it becomes nothing more than a lynch-mob, slightly any better than anarchy.
The simple truth about the "will of the majority" is that everyone thinks it should be obeyed when they are part of the majority; but when they aren't part of the majority, they think it should be restrained. Thus, a check on the will of the majority -- in the form of the judicial and executive branches -- is necessary.
Your idea is that we should live in a society where the people make the rules, but where they're not allowed to make rules that abridge what you call "rights." Right? Limited power, that's the key.
Exactly.
through an external source of power, or through the actions of the citizenry themselves. For example, a...ruling court...could veto laws that the citizens pass that infringe on these "rights" of yours...but at that point it's hardly a direct democracy.On the other hand, the citizenry itself could agree to limit its own power...but that would never work, because the majority clearly disagrees with your idea of what "rights" exist, so the first chance they get, they're going to change the rules and make laws that infringe on one or another of your notional and mythical "rights."
Well, the majority of people just want to be left alone. Most people don't want their neighbors or the government prying into their bedrooms. They don't want the government or anyone else telling them what they can and can not read.
In short, every individual does something or has some hobby that the rest of society would want to prevent him or her from doing, but yet that (s)he takes great (and harmless) pleasure/satisfaction from. Thus, no one would agree to let the will of the masses regulate their lives without any check on that power. No one would want their guilt or innocence -- which may mean execution -- to rest on the uninformed and emotional will of the masses. No one would, essentially, want their lives controlled by an unrestrained mob.
if Slashdot were a democracy, I'll bet I could get together enough votes to take away your posting privileges.
Nope, doubtful, for two reasons. (1) My comments often get modded very highly to 4 or 5; (2) I have more fans than freaks, and my fans include more senior members of/.
I will continue to criticize you for your logical fallacies. You seem to be implying that it is just that the will of the masses be obeyed. By that absurd argument, slavery, the Salem-Witch trials, and the lynch mobbings of African Americans were all OK. You then also seem to imply that might makes right; if that's the case, then the holocaust was right. Now, it may be that you are just being unclear. Perhaps you mean that the will of the people makes reality. But this is not true, not in China, not even in the US. The will of the people can make something a reality, if they organize. If you're arguing that its power that makes reality -- or the efficient excercise of that power -- then I'd say you're right, but power comes in many forms, from physical to persuasive.
Freedom of speech, as defined, should be absolute. Freedom of speech does not cover things like saying "murder him" or yelling "fire" in a crowded room or committing perjury under oath or violating other people's right to privacy. Why? B/c all of these things necessarily violate someone elses -- or many other ppl's, in the case of "fire" -- rights. Thus, freedom of speech is absolute until it intrudes on some equally important right.
The community right you speak of is non-sense. Just b/c the majority of the ppl want something does not make it ok, right, just, etc. According to you, b/c "most of the Greeks" voted to execute Socrates, it was OK. The French Revolution, where the masses voted to have people decapitated at their will, is also OK according to you. So were the Salem Witch trials, and lynch mobbings of African Americans. For that matter, slavery too.
The fact is, all of these things violated human rights.
What you are arguing is essentially the fallacies of ad populum and ad baculum: popularity makes right and threat of force makes right. Your ad populum is like saying "Millions of people believe in pyramid power, thus it must be true." Your ad baculum is like saying "I can beat you up, so I must be right and you wrong." Just because the masses happen to want something at the moment doesn't mean its right/just/etc.
I do support Democracy -- in fact, direct Democracy, as a replacement for the House and Senate, which are filled with corrupt individuals stealing our money and habitually giving themselves payraises. But the will of the people has to have limits as to what it can impose (hence the need for a judicial branch).
No, the masses should not have the right to silence speech which offends them. Granted, they have the power to do such if they organized, but that does not mean that they should or have the right to do so. History has shown that every time the unchecked will of the masses to prevail to be a disaster, a bloodbath, an atrocity. Ref. to witch-trials, revolutions, and lynch-mobbings.
Your conception of a truely free society -- where the majority is free to make whatever rules they want that govern the behavior of all -- is not free at all: its the tyranny of the masses. The same form of "government" which executed Socrates. The masses can violate freedoms just as easily as any other entity.
Furthermore, such a system as you propose would inevitably become unfree by even your own standards: i.e., masses say "X should be illegal, and trying to make X legal should also be illegal". Thus, at some later point, when most of society thinks X should be legal, they won't be able to try to make it legal because it's illegal to try to make it legal. Hence, the system which started out allowing the "masses the freedom to make any rules which govern the behavior of all" no-longer allows such.
We might find pornography offensive, but that's no justification for violating freedom of speech. The only justification for curtailing freedom of speech is to protect other equally important rights, such as privacy, and the right of a crowd to safety (i.e., no "fire!"), and the right to one's life (i.e., "kill him" from a mob boss to a hit-man isn't covered under free speech).
We also might find pornography involving use of religious objects -- i.e., a crucafix as a dildo, or an S&M scene in a church where a woman's tied to the crucafix on top of the statue of jesus -- offensive, but that, again, does not allow the violation of freedom of speech.
Since the official religion of China is none at all (atheist) according to the government, they shouldn't care about this anyways.
Slashdot Mirror
Many people have proposed we ban political advertising on TV and radio. While this would have the desired effect, it would also be a violation of the right to free speech.
The solution is to get rid of or drastically scale back the FCC. This would allow many people to set up TV channels at relatively low costs. Minor political parties could set up local and national TV stations, as could organizations or other groups of individuals. All of the sudden, getting your political point accross (via TV) wouldn't cost millions and would be relatively cheap.
What we need is to turn TV and the radio into something more like the internet. On the internet, anyone can set up their own website for a relatively low cost; you can even set one up from your PC. Thus, what we need to do is work towards a situation where, just as anyone can set up their own web-site at a relatively low cost, so too should anyone be able to set up their own TV channel or radio station at a relatively low cost. Part of this could be transient and random, allowing people to "grab" a certain space when they wanted it and then relinquish it.
This gets into another point regarding the corrupt ICANN and their fraudulent "selling" of domain-names, as if it actually costs anything to add www.site.com to a list of sites correlated to IP addresses (you can side-step this by using OpenNIC).
If you don't want people to use Z, the answer is not to restrict the freedom of the company that produced Z to release its software under whatever terms it likes.
Not the answer according to you. Fine, in that case, you license it under something else. It is a guarantee for people who believe in the FSF.
The answer is to improve X or Y to the point where it is a better option for users than Z. The answer, in other words, is to produce "open source" software that is better than its "closed source" competitors.
Well, that's one answer, and is always preferable. There's no reason not to also use the other solution, which is the GPL, which guarantees no derivatives will be proprietary. Also, it might not always be possible to make the FS program better -- there might be hundreds of corporate competitors, pouring in millions of dollars each. There is a problem, and there is a solution: The GPL. May not be the solution you like, but too bad.
This is only meaningful if you accept that "open source" software is inherently a good thing. It's not.
Please take care not to use FS and OSS as synonyms, and please take care not to use "open source" in place of OSS (OSI-certified). It is inherently a good thing: the same program will be better if its GPL'ed and EULA'ed, because bugs will be fixed faster, and the user will know what (s)he has.
Simply put, people using FS & OSS as opposed to proprietary software is meaningful and good if you value freedom. If you don't value freedom, then, fine, it doesn't matter. I know that freedom and rights are meaningless and hold no value to you.
Again, that's only meaningful if you consider "proprietary" software to be an inherently bad thing. It's not.
It is.
Truths require proofs to be accepted as fact.
This is the most important thing you've said. On this point, you are absolutely incorrect. Until you realize this, you will never understand my point of view.
I suppose I should re-state my original statment for slightly more clarity: "Assertions require proof to be accepted as fact."
You may be some kind of lemming who will accept whatever some authority-figure tells you. You may expect others to do the same and accept whatever you tell them. But rational, responsible, thinking people don't. When people have accepted things as "true" without proof, it has always resulted in regrettable situations, as I've pointed out before (Earth = flat, witches, etc). The truth is the truth no matter what we say -- our believing a false statement (i.e., earth = flat) is true doesn't make it any truer, nor vica-versa. However, you still need to prove any assertions you make -- or at least provide supporting evidence for them -- if you expect people to accept them.
I understand your point of view perfectly. You think that you are an absolute authority on right/wrong -- as if there is such a thing as matters of fact -- and that everyone should just accept what you say without thinking for themselves. Furthermore, you think that you should be allowed to force your opinions regarding what is right/wrong on everyone who disagrees with you.
Responding to a few relevant points, and a few tangents:
So...the fact that the GPL means that users are not free to create unrestricted derivative works somehow means that an all-GPL wo[rld] would somehow be more free?
Lets say if the GPL allowed derivative works to fall under any OSI-certified license. So, I make a GPL'ed program X (which solves a problem that hasn't been solved before), modifications of which can fall under any OSI-certified license. You then take my program X and make optimizations and feature improvements to it; you call your program Y and release it under the BSD license. A company then comes along and makes modifications to your BSD-licensed code and adds a GUI to it, making it easy to use. They release their program, Z, under a standard draconian EULA. It subsequently becomes the dominant program for its type of function, obtaining 95% market share, and taking users away from programs X and Y (which formerly accounted for 100% of the market, and now account for only 5%). Because these Free Open Sourced programs have lost many users, they have less feedback, and developers are less motivated to develop vigorously for them. Thus, by following your suggestions, we have went from a situation where 100% of the software used for a given problem was FS/OSS, to one where only 5% of it is. This is hypothetical, but the point is clear.
Summary: The revised-BSD type licenses offer more freedom initially, and the potential for greater freedom down the line if no-one proprietizes modifications; but they also allow for greater risks to invasions of proprietary software.
Every man has a conscience. You, it seems, have learned to ignore yours, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
Just because every man has a conscience doesn't mean that there is an absolute moral truth. Different men have different consciences. Mine doesn't tell me that prostitution, stripping, other other sex-work is wrong. It, however, tells me that rape, murder, torture, stealing, assault, sexual assault, child-molestation, etc. are wrong. My conscience also tells me that you and others like you trying to micromanage, control the lives of, and violate the rights of everyone around you is wrong. In all cases, reasoning backs up my conscience.
Also, referring to your conscience is meaningless. Where does this conscience you speak of come from? Well, there are two possible sources: (1) Its the results of genetic programming which affects neuronal factors; (2) Its instilled by society. Of course, I'm not suggesting that there are "conscience" genes -- that's absurd: they come about through complex gene interactions, which affect the morphology of (for example) synapses in the brain. Of course, what you call a "conscience" may be the result of both our genetic makeup and societal factors. In either case, if your source of "absolute moral truths" is what your conscience says, your on thin ice. Consciences vary from person to person within a nation: apparently, David Berkowitz' conscience told him it was right to kill people. They also vary from nation to nation: in many areas of the Middle East, its considered the morally appropriate thing to beat one's wife for showing her face in public.
In short, it seems like your absolute moral truth comes from "what you feel". This is obviously hogwash, as feelings tell people to do very cruel and ruthless things. The terrorists who ran a plane into the WTC on 9/11 thought it was right to kill 9,000 people: their "feelings" or "conscience" told them that it was right to kill 9,000 people.
I'll take a more personal example: the case of Carla Fay Tucker, the axe-murderer who was executed. Despite supporting the death penalty, my feelings made me feel sorry for this pretty woman who'd converted to being a devout Christian. That was obviously hogwash. If she'd been a fat ugly 6'5 African American who'd converted to being a Muslim, neither myself nor few others (who support the death penalty) would have "felt" sorry. Thus, if you support the death-penalty, the reasonable to do is ignore your feelings and support her execution.
My conscience says that it [prostitution] is [wrong]. I am in the majority on this point.
You keep on insisting that you're in the majority on every point. Firstly, this has no relevance to the truth (or lack of a truth) on the matter. Secondly, you have offered no statistics to show you're in the majority. That said, my conscience and that of many others disagrees with your conscience: we think that prostitution is not wrong. Prostitution is just a profession, and should be given as much respect as any other profession which does not violate the rights of others. Prostitution, like all other legitimate professions, serves a societal need: the need for sexual relief, for those who can't (or don't want to bother) getting it in a relationship.
Your cries of how prostitution destroys the institution of marriage, destroys sexual intimacy, and degrades women are nonsense: (1) Institutions, such as marriage, have no right to exist perpetually; (2) Good marriages spring from good relationships, and that is the responsibility of those involved in the marriage to obtain; (3) Nothing says sex has to be an intimate act between two people -- for some it is, for some it isn't, for some it is in some cases but isn't in others: if you or anyone else wants sex to be an intimate experience, prostitution isn't stopping that; (4) The actions of one woman reflect only on herself, and it is those who would judge all women by the actions of a few woman who degrade women, not the prostitutes. Nothing prostitutes or their customers are doing is going to stop you or anyone else from having valuable and meaningful sexual relations, nor trivialize the bond between you and your lover. The significance of your relation with your lover is your and her responsibility to establish and nourish. Take personal responsibility for a change.
I don't have to [prove that prostitution is wrong]. It's not even up for debate. It is moral truth.
You have to prove its wrong if you want to justify forcing your opinion that its wrong on everyone else. Just because you think its a morally wrong thing doesn't mean it is. Others don't. You arrogantly speak of moral truths as if you are some kind of authority on them. Outside of areas on which 99+% of society (in the US) agrees on -- such as rape, murder, torture, stealing, child molestation, assault, sexual assault, etc -- there is great debate on some of these "moral truths" you speak of.
Truths require proofs to be accepted as fact. That's what you want -- for us to accept that prostitution is wrong as a moral fact. You want us to accept that with the same certainty that we accept that gravity pulls objects towards the center of the Earth until a force of equal and opposite resistance is met. You want us to accept that based on what? Your word? Your conscience? Our conscience disagrees with you. So, if you want anyone who disagrees with you to accept that prostitution is wrong, you have to prove that it is wrong just as soundly as you can prove (and show) gravity. The only way for you to do that is take on the burden of the argument by staring with the initial assumption on moral or legal issues that others start out with.
Even if you can show its wrong, that doesn't mean it should be illegal. There are many things that most people think wrong but that they don't think should be illegal. For example, most/some people think the following things are wrong: (1) For priests to protect confessed rapists and murderers; (2) For lawyers to get guilty people acquitted; (3) To say cruel and hateful things; (4) To commit blasphemy. Despite that, most people don't think these things should be illegal, nor is there any good argument for why they should be illegal.
Prove that life has inherent value. You can't. But that doesn't mean it isn't true.
I assume that here you mean the life of a human being (and I'm not talking about a zygote/embryo here). Other forms of life have little or no inherent value to us: I could care less about any other form of life outside of human beings, except for how it can benefit human beings. Few if anyone think that yeast has any inherent value, or that infectious viruses or bacteria have any value. Some PETA-nutcakes apparently think that any life-form capable of feeling pain has inherent value and "rights".
In any case, it is obvious that this "sanctity of life" we speak of is something we invented, like all matters related to ethics and morality. It is not an absolute truth of the universe, nor is it one of nature.
. It just means that that idea doesn't require proof in order to be accepted as true.
What you're saying is that we should just accept these "moral truths" on faith. In some cases, that's fine, because there is almost a perfect consensus among the US population that various things shouldn't be allowed. For others, such as prostitution, drug-use, abortion, euthanasia, there isn't. Many don't accept these "moral truths" you spew, and in fact believe the opposite. Until you can convince most people that something is wrong and that it is significant enough to illegalize (in that it violates other's rights and harms) you have no basis for illegalizing it.
What you want is for everyone to do as you say: if you think/feel something is wrong, you want the law to mandate that no-one do it, no matter what anyone else thinks. You are the one who wants to be some kind of dictator. You spew out self-righteous and arrogant moral statements, and expect everyone to accept them on faith. Furthermore, you have no first principle from which you derive how all these things are morally wrong, thus no-one can reason with you starting from your first principle.
I, on the other hand, and others, do have first personal principles. My minimum principal is the Chinese Golden Rule: Do not do unto others, as I would have them not do unto myself. My principal for what makes a good moral action is to Do unto others as I would have them do unto yourself. Despite these being good rules or personal actions, they are not ideal to base laws around (because, they would, for example, be impractical, mandating good summaritan laws and laws requiring us all to "voluntarily" give to charity). Thus, my first legal principle is that people should be able to be free to do as they will, so long as they don't prevent others from excercising that same freedom. This is, in essence, a subset of the two moral first principals.
LOL, yea I agree. We should have the right to self-defense, not to bear arms. Self-defense would mean a glock with 10 rounds in it: if 10 rounds isn't enough to defend yourself, you're fucking anyways.
Yep, you're right. Better yet, after screenshotting JPGEGs, they can feed those JPEGs into a OCR program, which will put the adobe document in OpenOffice format. Much more convenient than JPEGs.
Elcomsoft's software has many other uses aside from as a tool to assist in the pirating e-books.
However, what other purpose does an AK-47 or an Uzi serve than to kill people?
Really, does anyone give a damn? Who could possibly care? What do they expect, that if they calculate the value of pi out to 10^1000 they will learn the secret of life, in some secret message inserted into the number pi?
This is about as useful as measuring the length of your erect penis (or clitoris) out to the trillionth decimal place.
This situation, despite what a shitload of misinformed people seem to think, does not mean the DMCA was a bad law. In fact, quite the opposite; 512(f) makes it against the law to use the DMCA in an unfair or unjust manner. That's not the mark of a bad law; that's the mark of a very good law.
That section is completely useless in reality. It hasn't stopped any unfair, unjust, or overzealous applications of the law. Big corporations will do whatever they want, and if someone tries to sue them for inappropriate use of the law, they will be immune due to their army of lawyers.
Just because the DMCA makes things you would like to do illegal doesn't mean it is, prima facie, a bad law.
Whether the intent of the law is good/bad is up for debate and not the question here. I won't go into the reasons why it's a bad law, but will note that every intellectual organization -- libraries, universities, rights organizations, etc -- campaigned (to no avail) against it. The politicians listened to the folks paying the biggest bribes: big-business.
The more important issue is that the DMCA is a vague, imprecise, and unclear law: even the nation's top lawyers can't agree on exactly what it means.
As you said, it just requires substantially more energy. Ideally, the best course of action would be to get it out of the Earth's gravity well and on a course towards the sun. However, this seems pointless, as we now have methods which can neutralize nuclear waste here on earth -- certain machines can heat it to such an extent that it becomes a hard inert substance. This is probably safer and requires less energy than getting it out of Earth's gravity-well. Also sounds better than sending it all to Yucca mountain, which seems like a disaster given all the possible transportation accidents that could happen. Not to mention the security risks involved.
In the case of ICANN, the safest assumption -- as they have proven by their long history of actions which harm the public interest and sacrafice individuals at the alter of multi-national corporations -- is that whatever they have done, there is some corrupt motive in it. They will eliminate the 5 board members elected by the public, two of whom were clearly serving the public interest (Auerbach in particular).
Please change your signature. It is deeply offensive.
Tough. My signature will stay as it is until I tire of it. I will say whatever I want to, and I have the right to do so. Right now, I have that signature as support for Katie Sierra. I do not agree with her views regarding the war on terrosim, but that is irrelevant. I support her right to say what she said without being suspended from school for saying it. What is outrageous is your attempt and other's attempts to shut up people who disagree with the war on terrorism.
I do not recognize the authority of the FSF to define what "free" means.
Disagree all you want. You can also disagree with the authority of the dictionary to define that word. The simple fact is, that the FSF is an authority on what Free Software means. The OSI is an authority on what "Open Source" means, a slightly more lax term than Free Software.
But a world in which developers aren't free to use "free" software in whatever way they see fit doesn't sound like "a world with more freedoms" to me.
A world where developers are "free" to impose the most restrictive EULA's on their end-users doesn't sound free to me. Also note that no-one has to accept the GPL license.
There's nothing free about the FSF's software; it's covered by a license that's just a restrictive as any other, and moreso than some.
Not according to the FSF or the OSI. The GPL offers many freedoms to end-users and developers which proprietary licenses don't. It places one restriction on developers that the revised-BSD doesn't -- they can't modify and redistribute under a different license. So, in the very immediate term, the revised-BSD is more free than the GPL. But in the long term, the revised-BSD may lead to a situation where there is much less freedom than there would be had the GPL been used (because under the GPL, all derivative will be Free Software, but not necessarily so under the BSD).
You believe that you know what's right and what's wrong.
No, actually I know there is no absolute right and wrong. Right/wrong, justice/injustice, rights, morals, ethics, etc is all something which human beings made up. It is not a natural phenomena of this world, but rather a man-made one, which is not absolute and can be reshaped.
And the opinions of people who disagree with you are irrelevant-- as you say here-- because you are right.
Actually, the opinions of anyone and everyone is irrelevant to what the truth is. 500 years ago, people thought the Earth was flat -- wrong. ~300 years ago in America, people thought that there were witches who cast magic spells and thus needed to be killed -- again, wrong. When will you get it? Your opinion, my opinion, the opinion of everyone else in the world, is completely irrelevant to whether or not something is true. What you are suggesting is that if a tree falls in the middle of a forest, and there's no-one there to hear it, it didn't really fall -- that is a rather arrogant view.
I don't need to have absolute certainty, because I know that all this morals, ethics, justice, injustice is just stuff we made up. That doesn't mean it serves no purpose, but it also doesn't mean that we have to accept whatever the status quo is. The vast majority of people would be happier if the laws were derived from my first principle.
And you honestly believe that the world would be a better place if everybody just did what you say.
No, I believe the world would be a better place if everyone left their neighbors to do as they please in-so-much as possible (that is, in so far as their neighbor's activities aren't significantly directly harmful to them). I believe the world would be a better place if people tolerated other's actions as much as possible. That means, if your neighbor decides to have sex with a prostitute, fine -- doesn't necessarily harm you or anyone else; if your neighbor decides to rape your daughter, not fine -- does harm you and your daughter.
I don't believe the world would be a better place if everyone did as I said. I say "don't worship any god, that's all non-sense which is a waste of your time"; yet, doing such makes some people happy. I have certain preferences and hobbies (for example, reading poetry) which would invariably bore or make miserable others if they did the same. The same thing which makes me happy, might (for example) make you miserable. We should be thankful of that, as it allows for win-win situations for everyone.
Some things-- again, let's just prostitution as an example-- are wrong for purely moral reasons, and as such are not subject to the rules of your logical debating game...because it [prostitution is] bad
Prove it. You can't. You can only say "most people believe it is" which I don't think is even the case. Nothing can be better evidence for the non-existence of morality/ethics as an a priori entity than that we can't prove any moral/ethical statements in the same solid sense that we can prove scientific facts.
If I think the world is flat, you can say, "no idiot, its round..." You can show me photographs from space. You can take me out to a flat desert and show me that if I walk far enough, you're head will dissapear over the horizon, even with a high-powered telescope. If all else fails, you can put me in a hot-air balloon and tell me to keep going in one direction.
Not the same with any moral statement.
There are a few reasons why people say prostitution is "bad", but none of those reasons can convince anyone who starts out from a different first principle. Even assuming that prostitution is "bad", I can show that it is worse to criminalize it using reasons which would convince almost anyone starting from almost any first principles.
The simple fact is, you can't even define what criteria something must meet if it is to be titled "bad", because (from what I've seen) you're beliefs are just a collage of different "feelings" you have. You can't show why something's bad, or prove why its bad.
Neither can I show that my first principle is right or wrong, nor would I try because I believe that human beings invent what is right or wrong. But I don't have to, I just have to show people that under most circumstances, they would be happier if it were obeyed, which is easily demonstratable, as the greatest unhappiness to people comes from the ultimate violations of that first principle (i.e., rape, torture, murder, despotism, etc).
Yep, ICANN deliberatly made it cumbersome and difficult to register for voting, precisely because they didn't want the public involved. Then they said "well, we shouldn't have public elections because not enough people voted to represent the public interest". Well, let me say that 700 votes is more representative of the public interest than an assembly of corporate interest groups. Let me also say that this is a circular argument: all that the low-vote count proves is that ICANN is corrupt and should aid people in voting and reach out to people to try to get them to vote. ICANN has not tried to inform internet users of its existence or significance: it has stayed in the shadows like the snake it is.
- Regarding anarchy. Thank you for admitting that you were wrong in calling anarchy a "form of government". That is the most absurd idea I've heard from you yet. Calling anarchy a form of government because it is "the absence of any government" is like calling chaos a form of order because it is "the absence of order".
- Regaring freedom. Freedom and anarchy are still incompatable, despite what you say. If I have freedom, I am (for example) free to do as I will with my own body. During a time of anarchy, someone can abuct me, tie me up to a chair, and torture me. In such a state, you can not say that I have any freedom what-so-ever. I don't have the freedom to move; the freedom to do what I want with my body; or the freedom to eat, drink, and sleep when I want. In short, anarchy will rapidly lead to a situation where few have freedom...physically strong individuals will prevent others from excercising their freedom. Of course, we don't have absolute freedom in society either; that's where rights come in -- to gaurantee us certain freedom's. In anarchy, you have no more -- if not less -- freedom than you would under a dictatorship; in the freest society possible, you still wouldn't have absolute freedom. In so far as is physically capable, the only people I can think of who have ever had absolute freedom are Lucy Irvine and her "husband G" when they were Castaway voluntarily on an abandoned island. Read the book and decide if absolute freedom is a good thing. For the only way one can have absolute freedom (or close to it) is to be all alone (or in this case, all alone with one other person).
- Regarding the FSF and its Free GNU GPL License. Again, there can be no such thing as absolute freedom, unless one is all alone (in which case one can do whatever one wants, but may not much enjoy it). The FSF and the OSI define what requirements a license must meet to be free (for the most part, they are the same, though the OSI is a little more lax). If a license meets those requirements, it is defined as free. In short, those requirements are a set of freedoms that a license must guarantee the user. The GPL meets every one of those requirements, thus it is a Free as in Freedom (and OSI-certified) license. The GPL basically prevents you from doing one thing: using a GPL'ed program as the basis for a program which you will license and distribute under a license other than the GPL. In that immediate sense, yes it is less free than the BSD license. But over the long haul, it will create a world with more freedoms, as developers won't be able to restrict the freedoms others may use (if they base their code off of GPL'ed code). These ideas are very much compatable with reality. I'm sure the "reality" you speak of is the "reality" that people want to get paid to write software. Nothing in the GPL prevents that -- nothing mandates that you give your product and the source away for free online, or anywhere else. You can sell your product for whatever price you want. And you don't have to give the source code with your product, but simply the offer to provide the source code (at the cost of shipment); also, note that nothing in the GPL mandates you provide your source code in a format which is easy to copy and distribute accross the entire internet. You could provide it on paper in hand-writing, for example (or another way making it unscannable by a computer).
- Regarding my central premise, that we should be free to do as we will so long as we don't prevent others from doing so, so long as we don't violate the rights of others (note, that my central premise is almost identical to the Golden Rule). No, you have not demolished this idea, except perhaps in your own very closed mind. Your arguments for why victimless crimes (for example) should be illegal are flimsy at best. Again, please try to use valid logic. Simply because the world does not operate the way I suggest it should does not mean that it never will, nor that it shouldn't. 500 years ago, people would have scoffed at the idea of a society as free as the US...they also would have called you a infidel for trying to say the Earth revolves around the sun. The world is changing, and its changing towards being more free, and away from your tyranical visions of utopia. When the world operates as you suggest it does, that is "very bad". You're utopia has been "realized" many times throughout history, and the results were all abhorrent: the execution of Socrates, the French Revolution and the mass-beheadings of aristocrats, the Salem Witch trials, the lynch mobbings of African-Americans here in the US. That is what your ideas amount to.
- Regarding biopiracy. What's wrong with biopiracy isn't that biotech companies use the knowledge of indigenous people. The problem is they get a patent for something they didn't invent: patents are supposed to be an incentive to invent, but they certainly can't be an incentive to invent if they aren't given to the inventors (but rather, those who tresspass on the inventors land). Please try to be honest while debating. I have not said I think that there should be no copyrights, patents, or trademarks: I have only said that, as Lessig realizes is needed, we restrict both the scope and duration of all of the aforementioned.
- Regarding trademark, copyright, and patent laws. You offer no solid rebuttal of my position. Trademark laws exist to protect the public and allow people to easily distinguish one product from another. Thus, corporations shouldn't be allowed to trademark certain things, or to chop up the English language between themselves. For example, symbols such as Nike in the public domain. In other cases, the law is extended beyond its domain, such as Intel Inside and Yoga Inside. Patent laws exist to encourage innovation and invention. New and superior business models naturally provide their own reward, and we shouldn't force the rest of the business world to operate inefficiently (that is a Pareto inferior outcome). Certain things shouldn't be patentable because they aren't inventions but discoveries. Life-forms shouldn't be patentable. Furthermore, patents exist to promote invention/progress and serve the public interest. When they don't, exceptions should be made. Patents shouldn't mean that people who can't afford drugs should die; those people wouldn't have been able to pay for the drugs in the first place, so they should be sold them at the cost of production (or rather, we should allow corps to sell generic drugs to them at cheap prices). Patents also shouldn't prevent scientific progress, as they often do by creating prohibitive barriers. Copyrights exist only to promote the creation of new pieces of writing, acting as engines of freedom. Their purpose is to act as an engine of free speech, not to benefit the authors. Thus, they only be of sufficient scope and duration to do such: I think that is 10-20 years. Make them too short, and there isn't enough incentive to create; too long, and no-one can make derivative works, thus they start to inhibit what they were intended to promote. In short, the thing to do in all of these areas is find the optimal balance between too much protection (i.e., anything over 50 years) and too little (i.e., none).
- LOL at your high opinion of yourself -- "doing a public service by rebutting my insane ideas". Firstly, my ideas aren't insane -- they're simply practical suggestions on what we could do to make a better society, in which we all have more rights. Secondly, you haven't rebutted anything other than in your own self-loving mind. Somehow, I doubt that if we took a poll, many
/.ers would agree with you. Not that that means anything -- the opinion of the masses is irrelevant to whether or not something is true/right/good.
Btw, please stop harping on this rights issue: whether rights exist a priori or not is irrelevant, because they are only significant if protected by force. Yes, the only rights we have (or which are meaningful to us) are those we defend with force. Also stop harping on this appeal to popularity/force. Just because something is popular does not mean that it is right, nor is something right if it has powerful forces behind it. Simply because the majority *can* force something on the minority doesn't mean that its right (or even that it will happen). In reality the "will of the people" is rarely abided by in the Legislative branch of our government, which only acts as a central point of bribery for big-money special interest groups.P.S.: Feel free to continue being my stalker. I'm rather flattered and have always wanted one. Don't expect me to repay the favor though: I see no need to troll you around
Actually, no, anarchy is not a form of government. Anarchy is the absence of any government. Use a dictionary: They [anarcy and freedom]... are not mutually incompatible. In fact, anarchy would be the system of governance-- that is, none at all-- that offers the most freedom to its citizens.
What world do you live on? Here on planet Earth, anarchy and freedom are incompatable. Why? Because given free reign to do what they will, people will invariably rape, murder, steal from, torture, assault, etc. their neighbors, thus depriving their neighbors of freedom. Their neighbors will likewise do the same in return. This creates a situation where no-one has any freedom, but where there is only Fear and War. I'd have thought you would have read Hobbes' "The Leviathan". Though I disagree with his solutions, I agree completely with his analysis of the nature of man in the natural state of anarchy.
No, they [the FSF] don't [think that Free Software should be a right]. This is a misrepresentation of the FSF's ideas.
Well, their website seems to disagree with you. Let me give you a few quotes from their website As further notice, in an e-mail to me, RMS told me something along the lines of "the definition of free software is the minimum standard". That implies that free software should be a right. However, that is not certain, and I'm sure you won't believe my unverifiable "evidence". I will e-mail the FSF and put the question to him directly and post it in a reply.
Once again we see an example of this user, dh003i, picking something arbitrary and senseless and calling it his right. So far we've seen drug abuse, prostitution, deviant sexual practices, and now access to software source code.
No, I have no arbitrarily picked this. I have stated what I believe to be the FSF's position. I am not sure if it is my position, but will ponder the issue. All of my positions derive from one premise: that we should have the right to do whatever we want, so long as we don't violate other's rights; that we should be free to do as we will so long as we don't prevent others from doing the same. At the current time, my position on copyrights, patents, and trademarks mirrors that of Lessig: I think both the scope and duration of all of the aforementioned needs to be drastically reduced. Some things -- such as life-forms, business models, and biopirated information taken from Indigenous cultures for example -- should not be patentable period. Some things should not be allowed to be trademarked: Nike is a perfect example (as that comes from the Greek godess of victory, as does the Nike symbol). Copyright scope should also be reduced; for example, fair use should be drastically expanded, as should the public domain. Books like "The Wind Done Gone" should be covered under fair use. I am much more severe, however, than Lessig in terms of duration: I think that, though 20 years for valid patents is fine, life + X for copyrights is not. Copyrights should get at most 20 years of protection.
When do I get to call not having to listen to your claptrap my right?
No one's forcing you to listen. Remember, the right to speak does not mean the right to be heard? (though it does mean the right to have the potential to be heard). You're the one trolling around
If you really don't want to listen to "my claptrap" then you can stop reading my posts. If -- because I'm always modded up so high -- you find reading my posts unavoidable, then simply add me to your foes list, and modify all foes to have a -6 default, and set your threshold to 2.
The problem with these types of articles is that they don't explain anything. Do you know why only 700 some people voted for ICANN board members in the US? Because very few people even know what DNS means: it means Domain Name System. Now, you can't just say that. You have to say what it does. The DNS binds a certain web-address (such as www.slashdot.org), which you type in your web-browser, to its location in computer-space, represented by its IP (Internet Protocol) number, which might be something like 135.352.653.354. DNS is necessary because no one can remember IP numbers, and you need to have easy-to-remember things to type in.
Now, there does not need to be one and only one DNS. Different people can use different resolution systems. The main one is that of ICANN, but free public-interest alternatives such as OpenNIC exist. Also, note that there is no reason why you have to abide by ICANN's assignment of any website to its IP number. You can -- in your hosts file, a file on your computer -- make it so that web addresses assign to the IP you want them do. Don't think the courts were right in stealing Nissan.com from its rightful owner, a computer business owner? Then assign Nissan.com to the actual IP address of his website. Don't think that Stampede.com should belong to a corporation which makes useless products you have no need for? Fine, reassign it in your hosts file to the IP address of Stampede.org, the Linux distro.
The point is, you the user have power to assign any web address to any IP address. you also have the power to choose whether to use ICANN or OpenNIC...I use my HOSTS file first, then OpenNIC, then ICANN.
In fact, anyone can start a DNS system. All it takes is a server. The only thing is getting major recognition. But that doesn't matter: people who want a free, public-interest DNS will be able to find the appropriate one's. I think that OpenNIC is wrong when they say they won't do anything to conflict with ICANN's domain name resolution. They should actively counter ICANN when ICANN makes decisions taking domain names away from private individuals and giving them to corporations. The court's have no business interfering with OpenNIC's decisions on who to assign domain-names to via its server: this is a private organization, and it can assign domain-names to whatever IP address it wants to. Corporations don't like that, too fucking bad. Users can choose which domain name resolution systems to go to...if corporations don't like OpenNIC assigning intel.com to someone who is selling information services, then they can try to convince people to use ICANN instead of OpenNIC. But in the end, its up to each individual user to decide: Intel (for example) has no right to have intel.com assigned to the IP address for its website on every single DNS system. I can start my own DNS system, convince all you fellow slashdotters to use it, and assign intel.com to my own website! How about that!
Now, there is an obvious problem with having conflicting DNS systems between ICANN and OpenNIC...that is, that ICANN might assign intel.com to 135.354.535.343, while OpenNIC will assign it to 463.534.643.134. Thus, hyperlinking becomes a problem...if I type in , then it might mean a different thing for someone who uses ICANN and for someone who uses OpenNIC or dh003iNIC
So, what can we
- Stop using ICANN as our primary service.
- Use OpenNIC as our primary service.
- Modify our host files to fuck over greedy corporations, and create a server system for these specific modifications so anyone can access them. If thee aren't to many, just post them and offer them for download. I figure there might be about a thousand or so web addresses which ICANN has assigned to various entities that we disagree (and should disagree) with.
- Create automated services to resolve web-address conflictions between different services by auto-converting them to IP numbers and then re-converting back to web-addresses, depending on which service (ICANN or OpenNIC) is used.
So, in short, there is something we can do other than just try to reform ICANN. I personally think ICANN's hopeless anyways. Selling web-address locations for all kinds of money is absurd...its only one entry in a file pinning a web-address to an IP number: costs next to nothing to do. There could easily be as many top-level domain's as there are ideas...you the individual user could even create personal "domains" in your hosts file.Also, remember that nothing in Lindows prevents you from creating a user account separate from root. And like I said before, if users don't see the need/benefit of having an accont separate from root, then they shouldn't be doing that, for one of two reasons: (1) Maybe they don't need it; (2) Maybe they do need it but don't realize; they'll be taught when they get infected with a virus -- people learn best by mistakes.
I disagree w/ the implication that XP's user priviledge features rival those of unix. For one thing, setting priviledges in unix can be done quickly and to a large number of files by simple commands. But that's a matter of opinion.
More importantly, security and priviledge features do nothing to attract new users. Remember what I said about the average user? The average user, remember, thinks that Windows and MacOS are "hard to use" and confusing.
Obviously, I was wrong. It happens once in a while. :-)
In response to a few criticisms of Lindows proprietary software:
Quite frankly, I think Lindows is the best chance to topple the MS empire, because of the software itself and the business plan/model behind it. Once people are using Lindows, its a few steps from there to more traditional GNU/Linux distros.
Lindows is, quite frankly, very easy to use -- even for newbies. You can't underestimate how important that is for the typical user. Remember, your parents even have a hard time using Windows or MacOS!
Absurd. Freedom does not mean the power to do whatever you will. That's anarchy.
The FSF thinks that free software should be a right -- perhaps derived from the right to free speech. Thus, they've engineered the GPL to prevent corporations from taking free code and using it as the base on which to build code that is not freem, thus violating what the FSF considers to be a right.
Its very simple: the FSF wants to give the user and developer freedom, but not the power to take away other people's freedomrights...and the FSF considers free software a right; they also consider proprietary software a violation of that right. Thus, they don't want to aid in the creation of proprietary software.
I believe that most people are very much supportive of laws that you would deem to be unacceptable.
So, according to you, the majority of people want the government to be able to arrest/prosecute them for sodomy in the states where sodomy is illegal, even between adults? Do you have any statistics showing that most Americans find rights-violations acceptable? Most Americans do not deem abridging free speech, just because it may be "offensive", to be acceptable. I.e., most Americans are offended by Mein Kampf, but think it should be allowed to be sold. Even if what you say is true, just becuase "most Americans" think a certain thing doesn't mean it should be put into the law, or that it is true. Most Americans believe in the Christian/Catholic God...that doesn't mean its true, nor that it should be put into the law.
Which is kind of the point, really. The majority gets to make the laws. You did, of course, fail to describe how you would hope to institute limits on the power of the citizens to make their own laws, so that question remains defiantly open.
Under our current system of government, the majority does not get to make the rules. The majority doesn't even get to elect the President (rather, electoral votes). All the majority gets to do is elect Congressmen and Senators, who invariably lie and deceive in regards to what they will do, and are easily influenced by big money from powerful corporate interests. Thus, the majority at the moment has little say or even influence.
What I propose is a simple modification of the current system: let direct democracy-type voting replace the current House and Senate. Why? Because its harder for the RIAA, MPAA, SIAA, MS, drug-companies, and other big-money corporations or corporate interest groups to bribe 300 million Americans than to bribe 500 or so elected officials. Thus, your criticisms of how I'm going to limit the power of the majority are dealt with. The power that the majority has would be limited by the same thing that limits the power of the Congress and Senate -- that is, the other two branches of government, the judicial and executive.
That's a very broad generalization, too. What facts or statistics do you have to back this one up?
Don't need any -- given the numerous number of things we do in our day-to-day lives, and the numberous number of things that offend people, its a certainty. The more pertinent question, however, is not "am I doing somehting that most people are offended by" but "in the future, is it possible most people will be offended by what I do."
I assert just the opposite: most people don't do anything that the majority of society would object to.
So, according to you, most people don't get drunk in public places, be insulting, drive recklessly or far over the speed limit at some point. The point is, that in your private life, there's going to be alot of things you do that many -- if not most -- people will object to. Oral sex, anal sex, S&M, corporal punishment, killing an animal for sport, chopping down a tree in one's back yard, racist joke, abortion, contraception, the after-pill, ethanasia, and being a lawyer and getting a guilty man acquitted. These are all things that the "majority" of people most likely finds offensive...yet, it is likely that most individuals have done at least one of these things, or does one of these things regularly.
The only one who's showing ignorance and naivete here is you. First, just because the majority of people think something does not mean that it's true or just. People used to think the Earth was flat and that slavery was ok. Second, just because the majority of the people want something does not mean it will happen. Almost everywhere on the Earth today -- including the US -- the will of the majority of the people is completely ignored...any influence the "majority of the people" have is at best indirect. Third, a direct democracy with unchecked power -- as you seem to suggest -- is not a good thing: it becomes nothing more than a lynch-mob, slightly any better than anarchy.
The simple truth about the "will of the majority" is that everyone thinks it should be obeyed when they are part of the majority; but when they aren't part of the majority, they think it should be restrained. Thus, a check on the will of the majority -- in the form of the judicial and executive branches -- is necessary.
Your idea is that we should live in a society where the people make the rules, but where they're not allowed to make rules that abridge what you call "rights." Right? Limited power, that's the key.
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Exactly.
through an external source of power, or through the actions of the citizenry themselves. For example, a...ruling court...could veto laws that the citizens pass that infringe on these "rights" of yours...but at that point it's hardly a direct democracy.On the other hand, the citizenry itself could agree to limit its own power...but that would never work, because the majority clearly disagrees with your idea of what "rights" exist, so the first chance they get, they're going to change the rules and make laws that infringe on one or another of your notional and mythical "rights."
Well, the majority of people just want to be left alone. Most people don't want their neighbors or the government prying into their bedrooms. They don't want the government or anyone else telling them what they can and can not read.
In short, every individual does something or has some hobby that the rest of society would want to prevent him or her from doing, but yet that (s)he takes great (and harmless) pleasure/satisfaction from. Thus, no one would agree to let the will of the masses regulate their lives without any check on that power. No one would want their guilt or innocence -- which may mean execution -- to rest on the uninformed and emotional will of the masses. No one would, essentially, want their lives controlled by an unrestrained mob.
if Slashdot were a democracy, I'll bet I could get together enough votes to take away your posting privileges.
Nope, doubtful, for two reasons. (1) My comments often get modded very highly to 4 or 5; (2) I have more fans than freaks, and my fans include more senior members of
I will continue to criticize you for your logical fallacies. You seem to be implying that it is just that the will of the masses be obeyed. By that absurd argument, slavery, the Salem-Witch trials, and the lynch mobbings of African Americans were all OK. You then also seem to imply that might makes right; if that's the case, then the holocaust was right. Now, it may be that you are just being unclear. Perhaps you mean that the will of the people makes reality. But this is not true, not in China, not even in the US. The will of the people can make something a reality, if they organize. If you're arguing that its power that makes reality -- or the efficient excercise of that power -- then I'd say you're right, but power comes in many forms, from physical to persuasive.
Freedom of speech, as defined, should be absolute. Freedom of speech does not cover things like saying "murder him" or yelling "fire" in a crowded room or committing perjury under oath or violating other people's right to privacy. Why? B/c all of these things necessarily violate someone elses -- or many other ppl's, in the case of "fire" -- rights. Thus, freedom of speech is absolute until it intrudes on some equally important right.
The community right you speak of is non-sense. Just b/c the majority of the ppl want something does not make it ok, right, just, etc. According to you, b/c "most of the Greeks" voted to execute Socrates, it was OK. The French Revolution, where the masses voted to have people decapitated at their will, is also OK according to you. So were the Salem Witch trials, and lynch mobbings of African Americans. For that matter, slavery too.
The fact is, all of these things violated human rights.
What you are arguing is essentially the fallacies of ad populum and ad baculum: popularity makes right and threat of force makes right. Your ad populum is like saying "Millions of people believe in pyramid power, thus it must be true." Your ad baculum is like saying "I can beat you up, so I must be right and you wrong." Just because the masses happen to want something at the moment doesn't mean its right/just/etc.
I do support Democracy -- in fact, direct Democracy, as a replacement for the House and Senate, which are filled with corrupt individuals stealing our money and habitually giving themselves payraises. But the will of the people has to have limits as to what it can impose (hence the need for a judicial branch).
No, the masses should not have the right to silence speech which offends them. Granted, they have the power to do such if they organized, but that does not mean that they should or have the right to do so. History has shown that every time the unchecked will of the masses to prevail to be a disaster, a bloodbath, an atrocity. Ref. to witch-trials, revolutions, and lynch-mobbings.
Your conception of a truely free society -- where the majority is free to make whatever rules they want that govern the behavior of all -- is not free at all: its the tyranny of the masses. The same form of "government" which executed Socrates. The masses can violate freedoms just as easily as any other entity.
Furthermore, such a system as you propose would inevitably become unfree by even your own standards: i.e., masses say "X should be illegal, and trying to make X legal should also be illegal". Thus, at some later point, when most of society thinks X should be legal, they won't be able to try to make it legal because it's illegal to try to make it legal. Hence, the system which started out allowing the "masses the freedom to make any rules which govern the behavior of all" no-longer allows such.
We might find pornography offensive, but that's no justification for violating freedom of speech. The only justification for curtailing freedom of speech is to protect other equally important rights, such as privacy, and the right of a crowd to safety (i.e., no "fire!"), and the right to one's life (i.e., "kill him" from a mob boss to a hit-man isn't covered under free speech).
We also might find pornography involving use of religious objects -- i.e., a crucafix as a dildo, or an S&M scene in a church where a woman's tied to the crucafix on top of the statue of jesus -- offensive, but that, again, does not allow the violation of freedom of speech.
Since the official religion of China is none at all (atheist) according to the government, they shouldn't care about this anyways.
Hmmm, someone who believes in a magical invisible man in the sky calling me stupid? That's a laugh.
Twirlip, you really have to find a better hobby than trolling me around Slashdot.