Necessity is the mother of invention, and so a bad product of any kind that people find unusable due to poor design, implementation, or a just rotten license will eventually have to be improved on. This works well for something like SSH, which is relatively simple to code (compared to some high-level applications), and is used by a great many people who would be willing to improve on it for free.
In the case of something like, say, AutoCAD, it works not so well. The license is obstructive, but the code base there is so vast compared to the people willing to work on it for free that the alternatives are just, well, inadequate. In which case you're just stuck with an irritating piece of software.
Open source only really works when you have a lot of people interested in something, compared to how complicated that something is. Relatively esoteric, complex things (ie, not gcc or kernel, which *everyone* uses, but, say, Adobe Aftereffects) fall by the wayside.
Not to mention licenses that prohibit reverse-engineering altogether...
Honestly? This is where the libertarian platform begins to fray at the edges a little. Libertarians, like any rational political movement, agree (as I understand it) that government should enforce legal contracts. (People who claim otherwise are generally trying to make some cash for themselves.) The problem is how you give it enough power to do so effectively. And it's that very compromise that moved the US away from a libertarian government initially. It's the old Jefferson vs. Madison debate -- personal freedoms vs. healthy organization. So I guess the thing to do is be a moderate libertarian. Plenty of room in the right wing between the center and the fringes. Government will save you, and it will screw you. It'll do both because it's a pretty big thing, and you yourself both help and harm people every day you live. Find a balance. Vote for it. Live it.
Welcome, my friend, to the world of antitrust legislation. You will note, sir, that we do break up large companies when they get too monolithic occasionally. From Standard Oil to the Bell conglomerate to (maybe) Microsoft today. Huge huge companies can be very efficient and save you, the consumer, wads of cash. They can also be very dangerous and screw you, the consumer, where the sun don' shine.
Of course, as in the case of AOL/TW and the network companies, somehow it sometimes slips past the regulatory comissions. At which time it is up to you, the voter, to kindly, politely, firmly point it out to your representative.
Or we can all look forward to living in a real Neuromancer world, complete with megazaibatsu... hey, it's a valid society too.
WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
I was hoping someone would mod him up, actually. I'll be buggered if I can think of some way that you can have strong libertarian values in a socialist society (left and right wing were opposing sides last I checked), but, hey, what do I know?
In the same vein, you could have put together falsified allegations and accused the company of things it never did, in the hopes of making some cash and fame off the lawsuits, television deals, and so on. You may lose eventually... but in the process bleed the company so much it has to lay off a couple hundred people. Who are then on the street looking for a way to feed their kids.
Corporations are jobs, you know. We have those in this country.
It's called a newspaper. Call your local metro rag if you're being treated unlawfully or unfairly. It makes great copy -- take it from a reporter; we kill for that kind of story. Of course, make sure you're actually being treated unfairly, otherwise...
Aha! You see? This service is a tool of the capitalist pig-dogs to be used to further oppress the socialized working masses! By reading through many public messages they, yes, these very top-hat wearing, cigar-smoking, glasses-wearing fiends shall shatter so-called "illegal" unionization everywhere!
We must put a stop to this! Hardworking souls should have a right to strike and ruin people's travel plans at their whim! It is the only possible road to a dictatorship of the masses.
Down with corporate message-reading! Wealth is theft! Consumers are a myth! Ignorance is freedom!
"Also, it's kind of nice to know that corporations care at some level. At this price, it can't be long before corporations decide to prevent rather than punish complaints, by building better products."
You know, that's a good point. This could revolutionize market research. A lot of corporate spin is fixing problems, contrary to the public belief. It usually proves cheaper in the long run than dealing with lost profits or lawsuits.
Would you have a problem with this service if it went around sleuthing down every word Mr. Gates said? Or some other corporate shark? Would it bother you at all if eWatch went to work on them? Or is this only an invasion if it's carried out on the meeker citizenry?
Does tracking what's done and said in public by frauds, liars, and criminals differ all that much from the Honeypot project mentioned right here on Slashdot earlier?
Does libel have a right to stay up? Does terrorism? If a Microsoft toadie went around posting lies about Linux on web discussions, saying blatant, fraudulent untruths to people who don't know better (and wouldn't listen to you anyway), would it worry you if eWatch went to work on them as well?
If you had a company and someone trashed it on the net, saying it slaughtered innocent bunnies in its research (when in fact the only thing slaughtered was a lot of Jolt and pizza by the coders in the basement), would you look to see what they said elsewhere?
You know, so far as the article goes, eWatch isn't doing any spying or invasion of privacy -- it's just tallying up what people see fit to say in public, and sending that information on to people who might be interested. This is a lot like filtering which is a lot like "Open Journalism", right? And free speech works both ways, I guess; if you say something, then someone who disagrees with you has a right to say that too. Or is that not if the other someone is a corporate? Does the bill of rights not apply to them?
These are all questions, you know, not statements. Answers will have to come from you.
If I had your tax returns, I would have enough information to take out loans in your name (and run off with the cash, of course).
If I were an insurance company, any of those things would be a good excuse to hike your rates.
If I were someone who knew you, I could put the arrest record and the questionable pictures and so on up around your place of work or residence. This reminds me in a way of Snowcrash -- I could pay a data haven for any information it might happen to have on you, and then use it at whim.
And I'm not even very creative. I'm sure someone else would have a better idea.
I think my point -- which was the larger privacy issue -- is being missed. Let's try some examples besides credit card number. What would you do if you saw posted
your tax returns
your medical history
your arrest record
a scan of the the default notice the bank sent you once (but no mention of the fact that it was their screwup and totally bogus)
those other honeymoon photos, long thought lost
a report tracking your movements
libel
And so on and so on and so on. My question was really: what would you do if you saw something up there that you felt violated your privacy? I guess that's a subquestion too -- what would violate your privacy -- but that's probably been dealt with elsewhere. What I'm curious about is what people would try to do, given the present situation.
The laudable libertarian stance on freedom of information notwithstanding, there's a question I've got for readers:
What will you do if you see your credit card number posted on a HavenCo-hosted site? Or some other spicy bit of personal information that you'd really rather fell under privacy laws?
Slashdot Mirror
In the case of something like, say, AutoCAD, it works not so well. The license is obstructive, but the code base there is so vast compared to the people willing to work on it for free that the alternatives are just, well, inadequate. In which case you're just stuck with an irritating piece of software.
Open source only really works when you have a lot of people interested in something, compared to how complicated that something is. Relatively esoteric, complex things (ie, not gcc or kernel, which *everyone* uses, but, say, Adobe Aftereffects) fall by the wayside.
Not to mention licenses that prohibit reverse-engineering altogether...
Honestly? This is where the libertarian platform begins to fray at the edges a little. Libertarians, like any rational political movement, agree (as I understand it) that government should enforce legal contracts. (People who claim otherwise are generally trying to make some cash for themselves.) The problem is how you give it enough power to do so effectively. And it's that very compromise that moved the US away from a libertarian government initially. It's the old Jefferson vs. Madison debate -- personal freedoms vs. healthy organization. So I guess the thing to do is be a moderate libertarian. Plenty of room in the right wing between the center and the fringes. Government will save you, and it will screw you. It'll do both because it's a pretty big thing, and you yourself both help and harm people every day you live. Find a balance. Vote for it. Live it.
Of course, as in the case of AOL/TW and the network companies, somehow it sometimes slips past the regulatory comissions. At which time it is up to you, the voter, to kindly, politely, firmly point it out to your representative.
Or we can all look forward to living in a real Neuromancer world, complete with megazaibatsu... hey, it's a valid society too.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
I was hoping someone would mod him up, actually. I'll be buggered if I can think of some way that you can have strong libertarian values in a socialist society (left and right wing were opposing sides last I checked), but, hey, what do I know?
Corporations are jobs, you know. We have those in this country.
It's called a newspaper. Call your local metro rag if you're being treated unlawfully or unfairly. It makes great copy -- take it from a reporter; we kill for that kind of story. Of course, make sure you're actually being treated unfairly, otherwise...
Wow. You said what I wanted to say far more succinctly and clearly than I did. Thank you. =)
We must put a stop to this! Hardworking souls should have a right to strike and ruin people's travel plans at their whim! It is the only possible road to a dictatorship of the masses.
Down with corporate message-reading! Wealth is theft! Consumers are a myth! Ignorance is freedom!
Now go read Animal Farm and have a nice day. =)
You know, that's a good point. This could revolutionize market research. A lot of corporate spin is fixing problems, contrary to the public belief. It usually proves cheaper in the long run than dealing with lost profits or lawsuits.
Does tracking what's done and said in public by frauds, liars, and criminals differ all that much from the Honeypot project mentioned right here on Slashdot earlier?
Does libel have a right to stay up? Does terrorism? If a Microsoft toadie went around posting lies about Linux on web discussions, saying blatant, fraudulent untruths to people who don't know better (and wouldn't listen to you anyway), would it worry you if eWatch went to work on them as well?
If you had a company and someone trashed it on the net, saying it slaughtered innocent bunnies in its research (when in fact the only thing slaughtered was a lot of Jolt and pizza by the coders in the basement), would you look to see what they said elsewhere?
You know, so far as the article goes, eWatch isn't doing any spying or invasion of privacy -- it's just tallying up what people see fit to say in public, and sending that information on to people who might be interested. This is a lot like filtering which is a lot like "Open Journalism", right? And free speech works both ways, I guess; if you say something, then someone who disagrees with you has a right to say that too. Or is that not if the other someone is a corporate? Does the bill of rights not apply to them?
These are all questions, you know, not statements. Answers will have to come from you.
If I had your tax returns, I would have enough information to take out loans in your name (and run off with the cash, of course).
If I were an insurance company, any of those things would be a good excuse to hike your rates.
If I were someone who knew you, I could put the arrest record and the questionable pictures and so on up around your place of work or residence. This reminds me in a way of Snowcrash -- I could pay a data haven for any information it might happen to have on you, and then use it at whim.
And I'm not even very creative. I'm sure someone else would have a better idea.
- your tax returns
- your medical history
- your arrest record
- a scan of the the default notice the bank sent you once (but no mention of the fact that it was their screwup and totally bogus)
- those other honeymoon photos, long thought lost
- a report tracking your movements
- libel
And so on and so on and so on. My question was really: what would you do if you saw something up there that you felt violated your privacy? I guess that's a subquestion too -- what would violate your privacy -- but that's probably been dealt with elsewhere. What I'm curious about is what people would try to do, given the present situation.The laudable libertarian stance on freedom of information notwithstanding, there's a question I've got for readers: What will you do if you see your credit card number posted on a HavenCo-hosted site? Or some other spicy bit of personal information that you'd really rather fell under privacy laws?