> Only a monopoly could claim their software is > poorly designed without fearing loss of > customers.
The Linux kernel has made similar comprimises, and Torvalds has admitted as much in debates about monolithic vs. micro kernels. Linux's monolithic design is not as flexible as it could be (when compiled), but the design increases execution speed and ease-of-coding. The HURD was designed to be aggressively modular, with very cool, very fine-grained things you can do with services that would be the exclusive domain of the superuser on other kernels. It was designed this way because the FSF is lead by a visionary, uncomprimising, probably somewhat mad Coder. Linux was designed initially to be a quick fix for GNU (see Torvalds' 1991 post to comp.os.minix announcing Linux -- "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu"). So the Linux kernel design comprimised modularity for expediency. This was a good thing, just as the continuing work on the HURD is a good thing. They have different goals, and will succeed in different ways.
G-tes, although he probably doesn't realize it, is pointing out the same phenomenon in the codebase of his Spawn. The ol' NT codebase wasn't designed to be modular (to the extent it was, it didn't stay that way long). The non-modularity was for expediency (like Linux) and to promote an inescapable software monoculture (ALSO LIKE LINUX!...oh, I kid...must not troll during hopefully great troll blackout...). But the point is, modularity is something that is great for users once it's completed, but really hinders rapid software deployment. Real-world software engineering is riddled with these comprimises.
"Catcher in the Rye" is about a young man who doesn't fit into society, and who realizes that his strong moral sense is disjointed with the values of society-at-large. This is why Holden Caulfield wants to rub out all the "fuck you" grafitti in the world, why he fantasizes about being the catcher on a rye-covered cliff who saves everyone from falling to their deaths (continuing with their mass madness), and why his former english teacher says that Holden will "die valiantly for some highly unworthy cause." "Taxi Driver" is very, very similar (and drove Hinkley to shoot Ronald Reagan); through Travis Bickle's (De Niro's) eyes we see an amoral world, with politicians and pimps right at the center of it (even though, like Caulfield, Bickle is himself totally confused and lost.)
Why do mass killers connect with these literary element and not those of, say, "Emma"? Look at all those kids who did school shootings; think back to some time in high school when you felt like going postal; imagine what life is like for the solitary, ignored folks who tend to assassinate and spree-kill. Their lives are out of whack with society at large, which they (usually correctly) see to be flawed. They don't have any idea what to do to change the world, but they have a strong sense that it needs to be changed. Their malcontent and isolation drive them to action, but their social immaturity means that action will be ham-fisted. Hence, high-profile killing.
Although I think your logic is flawed, I thank you for posting this. The moderation of your comment is disappointing -- comments like this are exactly the reason I try (unsuccessfully -- rock on, slash!) to turn off negative moderation. Even if your comment were a troll (which it isn't, if your previous posts are a guide), this would still be a worthwhile discussion to be had.
> Harmful mutations far outnumber beneficial
> mutations
No, relatively meaningless mutation far outnumber both of these. Look at the people around you. Most of their differences are minor -- different hair, different complection, some are a little stronger, some shorter, some smarter. Everyone has lots of little, largely meaningless variations. (These can be both recessive or dominant traits.) Relatively rare is the person with a deeply serious genetic variation, good or bad.
> Evolution is impossible as beneficial recessive
> mutations could never have arisen.
This isn't how evolution works. Keep in mind that every population has a good deal of variety in it. When that population is put under stress (say, there's a flood and all the short people die), individuals whose genetic traits give them an advantage for dealing with that specific stress have a better chance of survival.
> Natural selection requires a genetic mutation
> to express itself in order for the selection to
> work
No, no, no. Evolution doesn't take place when an organism inherits some magical mutation, which allows him to eat more, which is somehow magically linked with having more children. Evolution is the result of stress on a large and diverse population -- limited resources, predators, oil spills, et cetera. When that stress occurs, the various weird traits that had always been occuring (different hair, different skin, whatever) give some of those organisms a better chance.
> We have evidence that close relations have
> cumulatively worse of children than average
> partners.
Again, this is a too-shallow analysis of complex systems. Your model (that any one beneficial trait is virtually always accompanied by at least one harmful trait) ignores the way these systems actually behave. Traits are meaningless until stress is put on the population, thus there is little correllation between them.
Anyway, there's a counter-argument; post up what you think its flaws are. Hopefully the moderators will de-lodge their heads from their collective asses, shake their heads vigorously, and mod your post back up.
We seem to have some differences of interpretation about the tone of my original post. I'll try to better explicate what I meant.
>>...and that would fit pretty well with the anticorporate overtones
>> of free software.
>
> It's unfair of you to leave a plainly incorrect barb like that
> undefended.
It's not a barb, it's a compliment. I admire what I see as anticorporate aspects of free software, and appreciate the aspects of free software which slow complete corporate dominance over my computing experience.
> As a class of license, free software licenses have no
> anti-corporate overtones and the free software movement does not
> promote anti-corporate behavior or ethics.
Free software was created in response to a closed atmosphere regarding software distribution; that atmosphere was created by corporations to increase profits. (Once upon a time, the corporation was Xerox, the software was a printer driver, and the user being fucked over was RMS.) I also consider open scientific discourse to be anticorporate; democracy, too. Anything that dulls the Beast's claws helps give everyone else a chance to live.
Note as well the term "overtones;" I never said free software was axiomatically anticorporate. Corporations can play nicely, if forced to. But if IBM had half a chance to go back in time and close up the hardware specs for desktop machines, they'd do it in a second. This is inherent in the nature of power itself; freedom, of all kinds, is always the enemy of the powerful.
...they were prominent (along with commercial stations) in getting the FCC to back down on its plans for community radio. Their behavior is more similar to Sun's licensing of Java than the FSF's licensing of GNU; they want non-commercial radio to be available, but they want it to be NPR.
> In my opinion, National Public Radio (whose mission is to aid the
> growth and development of noncommercial radio) should definitely be
That indeed is the actual wording of the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act. But NPR, both in the late seventies and late nineties, worked vigorously against just that.
That said, they're pretty liberal on most other issues, and that would fit pretty well with the anticorporate overtones of free software.
IBM doesn't matter; they market linux servers. With the opening up of desktop hardware, the power to steer the network moved from the server to the desktop. It used to be that the type of server dictated the type of desktop (terminal), now the type of desktop and its OS dictates the type of server and its OS (by and large). When the average desktop OS is open and free (which will happen, eventually; GNU's licensing makes this an inevitability) this battle will move somewhere else. (Kill Morgoth, Sauron pops up; destroy Sauron, Saruman spreads mischief.) It may be in application space; who knows? We may someday be railing against the tyrrany of custom applications.
I haven't seen ZIM, but Mad, in its original form, was a Harvey Kurtzman showcase. The content back then was largely too complex for kids.
The Kurtzman/Elder/Krigstein parody of George McManus' Bringing Up Father in Mad #17 is a good example -- it's a dark take on McManus' use of domesic violence as comedy.
Kurtzman was pushed out of Mad after a couple of years, and his later magazine Help! was also Not For Kids; R. Crumb's Fritz the Cat pseudo-rape comic was published there, some of the first non-greeting-card stuff Crumb published. (Terry Gilliam also worked for Help.)
And EC in general was really an adult comics line back then (Tales from the Crypt, etc.); the Comics Code Authority killed off all EC comics but Mad (which was billed as a magazine, and thus not for kids, because only kids read comics, right?), and Mad was steadily dumbed-down over the years to increase sales to kids. But back before the CCA dark times, EC almost a low-brow Fantagraphics, a tiny niche for grown-ups' comics.
[sigh...]
> The whole point of subversiveness is to open
> eyes.
Yeah, but it still needs to be aimed at kids to be really subversive. Otherwise it will just be disturbing; they won't understand what's being subverted. Crumb's How Snoids are Born (Snoid Comics, Kitchen Sink Press) is a glorious treatise on how dysfunction is passed down through generations, but I sure wouldn't give that comic to a kid (in the comic, the Snoid masturbates to thoughts of dismembered women; the droplets of jizz turn into little Snoids; the Snoid then shoos the offspring out the door with a broom, saying "Scoot! 'An don't let me see yer ugly faces around this neighborhood!"). A kid wouldn't get that comic; hell, I'm expecting some AC flames from folks who don't get it. The target audience matters.
> In my experience, people who use the term 'anti-spam zealots' are
> either spambags themselves, of members of the mainsleaze spam lobby,
> (i.e. Ken Magill of the Direct Marketing Associations, or various
> random clueless marketdroids who occasionally write for mainstream
> rags).
Bah. By this logic, anyone advocating due process for suspicious immigrants is a terrorist, and the HUAC's victims must really have been Stalin's spies after all. Sounds like zealotry to me.
Once upon a time, Communism was an idea for a society that cared for all its citizens, instead of just the rich. Once it began to genuinely threaten the plutocracy, propaganda and police forces were implemented. Now everyone knows Communists are scum.
Once upon a time, recreational drug use -- especially hallucenigens -- was a harmless way to expand one's mind. Once the drop-outs and revolutionaries of the 1960's began to genuinely threaten the plutocracy (and it did, too -- Nixon had troops in the basement of the White House after Kent State), propaganda and police forces were implemented. Now everyone knows drug users are scum.
Once upon a time, computers were tools of free speech. You could write as you wished, you could share ideas, you could communicate with anyone. It is starting to genuinely threaten the plutocracy in many ways, in ``intellectual propery'' subversion and the routing around of censorship. Propaganda and police forces are being implemented. Soon everyone will think of you, the users of this uncensored bulletin board which runs on free software, as scum. -------
For examples of this, go to the International Obfuscated C Code Contest. Programs there use the formal code itself as expression -- programs are ranked according to a quality of ``obfuscation'' not unlike how very dense poetry or prose is valued. ``I have seen them riding seaward on the waves, combing the white hair of the waves blown back when the wind blows the water white and black'' is valued for its complexity of meaning, its sound, and its manipulation of the english language. The code in the IOCCC is valued for similar eloquence. -------
Er, so if PepsiCo mails me a letter with their logo on it, do I get free reign on use of their trademarks? If I'm mailed a description of the molecular structure of Prozac, can I form a company to sell it? Legally, logical use might be different from physical use. (Rather, it's almost certainly a legal grey area; computers are where logical use and physical use converge.) -------
> You think the solution is to charge $10,000,000
> for the first copy of Windows and make the
> others free? That's plain stupid.
Yet this software model exists, in various forms, today. Almost all highly specialized software is made this way; programmers are hired for a limited time to write code. The first copy of the program has a high cost, and the rest are virtually free. Boxed copies of free software work this way; swanky CDs with printed documentation sell for about fifty bucks. The first copy of the program has a high cost, and the rest are virtually free. Indeed, Windows itself already works on pretty much the same model. Businesses and PC buyers are under enough scrutiny to be coerced to pay for the OS, but those who assemble their own machines can illegally use a free copy with effective impunity.
All three of these software business situations reflect the differing costs between initial and subsequent copies of software. The key difference with the last situation is that the little guy gets screwed -- businesses will pay money for software in the first two situations. (Mine did. Hell, I plan to pay for personal Debian 2.2 CDs, and I've got the 2.1s and 2.0s lying around here somewhere.) -------
> Otherwise, for every cabinet the carpenter
> makes, he would charge exactly the same
> amount as that weight of logs would cost
> from the lumbar yard.
No, s/he's charging money for the finished product -- the cost of which presumably reflects the cost of raw materials, the cost of the work put into it, and market considerations.
In a way, this is the cost of putting an actual cabinet in the hands of a customer. (A single usable instance of a cabinet.) For a carpenter, the cost is the same for every cabinet. For a programmer, the cost of the first copy of software is very high, but is virtually zero for all subsequent copies. The programmer should therefore be paid a high amount of money for the first copy, and virtually nothing for all subsequent copies.
Your seem unable to realize this fundamental difference, and fear that some sort of anarchy ("Why do we have to pay for ANYTHING AT ALL?" whimper wail whimper) will tear down nations should we fail to pay fees for each copy of software. Society will not be ripped apart at the sinews; rather, the cost of software copies will come to reflect the respective cost of their creations. -------
> On that note, where's the ability to read email?
Er, stick a paper clip in the CDROM hole. Take out the CD. Put in whatever bootable CD you want (Linux, windows, BSD, ProDOS-86...). Intentionally or not, they've allowed the things to be easily hackable. -------
This is a project that needs to shit or get off the pot.
Bullshit. This is a project that needs to continue its steady pace of development, which has already yeilded an impressive base of code.
I'm sick of having to use a crappy 3+ year old browser in linux.
Then don't use Linux. Point your fellow ex-linux-users to a local Gateway Country. Or maybe you could stop being a whining pussy and start coding.
If you don't like your operating system, and you're too candy-assed to make it better, you're the one who needs to shit or get off the pot. -------
The high-data stuff doesn't have to be real-time
on
Advertising Via GPS
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· Score: 2
The device could track your location throughout the day, then upload that in a single burst. In a single burst, the device could be sent an archive of ads, one of which is displayed when the device detects itself in a specific location. Memory is cheaper than data transfer in this situation, I would speculate. -------
> I don't recall Lars making any suggestions as to how you should do _your_ job or how you should be compensated for it.
Seriously, Lars, if you want a copy of any software I've written, send me an email and I'll get it to you. (Now *you too* can verify checks using our keypads!) -------
Reading again, I must have misread your post regarding video streams. That aside, I think we have different definitions of "practical." Getting OTP to work requires one pad -- sent over a secure channel -- for each pair of users to communicate. While it would be feasible for me to set up a one time pad with, say, my spy contact in Serbia, it wouldn't be feasible for me to set up a one time pad with, say, eBay. (And every other `secure' web site I visit; and it wouldn't be feasible for them to set up huge pads for each user, and the secure channels to transmit them.) -------
Remember, one time pads are only genuinely secure if the pad is at least as long as the message, the pad is genuinely random, and the pad is never reused. If any of these is not true, the encryption is breakable. Anyway, even setting aside that a video stream is not necessarily totally random, if pre-agreeing on a giant key to draw from for small messages were a practical scheme, folks would use it now. -------
That's exactly the point -- such regulations would significantly retard the functionality of "legitimate" network services. For example, I have an SMB share on my internal network. Making it either unreadable or unwritable by all users would get me sacked, and making it unaccessible to anonymous users would increase my administration time greatly. (It's private, so it's irrelevant to this legislation, but it suggests how a "legitimate" internet-wide service could need both anonymous reading and anonymous writing.)
As for your comments on slashdot accounts, such requirements would immediately have this account deleted. There may be someone out there named "Jon Kennis," but I sure as shit haven't met him. And anyway, CmdrTaco has the AC account because he thinks it (after moderation) improves the site's quality. Would congress bumbling in and making him take out AC posting be just? -------
> service providers whose services mean serious risk of copyright > infringement (i.e. Napster) should be required to get solid > identifying information for users, should have to respond to Yes, such a thing would apply to napster. It could also apply to, oh, I don't know, maybe AN ANONYMOUS NFS SHARE. This, the slightest moment's thought makes clear, was exactly CmdrTaco's point. According to your description ("providers whose services mean serious risk of copyright infringement should be required to get solid identifying information on users"), there could be no more ACs on Slashdot, and no more anonymous write access to public file systems. -------
Your post illustrates the brain-deadness of IP law
on
Dialectizer Shut Down
·
· Score: 2
The setup you describe, with a server containing scripts in an interpreted language that are then downloaded directly to the end user's client machine to be interpreted, is an accident of history. Computers don't have to be set up this way, as seperate Von Neumann boxes on a network, with language source transmitted directly between the two, stored on one and interpreted on the other. If some other design besides the Von Neumann had appeared, the situation would be totally different. When other designs beside the Von Neumann are made feasible, the situation will be totally different. Carving laws into stone based on transitory accidents is foolish government. -------
Slashdot Mirror
> Only a monopoly could claim their software is
...oh, I kid...must not troll during hopefully great troll blackout...). But the point is, modularity is something that is great for users once it's completed, but really hinders rapid software deployment. Real-world software engineering is riddled with these comprimises.
> poorly designed without fearing loss of
> customers.
The Linux kernel has made similar comprimises, and Torvalds has admitted as much in debates about monolithic vs. micro kernels. Linux's monolithic design is not as flexible as it could be (when compiled), but the design increases execution speed and ease-of-coding. The HURD was designed to be aggressively modular, with very cool, very fine-grained things you can do with services that would be the exclusive domain of the superuser on other kernels. It was designed this way because the FSF is lead by a visionary, uncomprimising, probably somewhat mad Coder. Linux was designed initially to be a quick fix for GNU (see Torvalds' 1991 post to comp.os.minix announcing Linux -- "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu"). So the Linux kernel design comprimised modularity for expediency. This was a good thing, just as the continuing work on the HURD is a good thing. They have different goals, and will succeed in different ways.
G-tes, although he probably doesn't realize it, is pointing out the same phenomenon in the codebase of his Spawn. The ol' NT codebase wasn't designed to be modular (to the extent it was, it didn't stay that way long). The non-modularity was for expediency (like Linux) and to promote an inescapable software monoculture (ALSO LIKE LINUX!
"Catcher in the Rye" is about a young man who doesn't fit into society, and who realizes that his strong moral sense is disjointed with the values of society-at-large. This is why Holden Caulfield wants to rub out all the "fuck you" grafitti in the world, why he fantasizes about being the catcher on a rye-covered cliff who saves everyone from falling to their deaths (continuing with their mass madness), and why his former english teacher says that Holden will "die valiantly for some highly unworthy cause." "Taxi Driver" is very, very similar (and drove Hinkley to shoot Ronald Reagan); through Travis Bickle's (De Niro's) eyes we see an amoral world, with politicians and pimps right at the center of it (even though, like Caulfield, Bickle is himself totally confused and lost.)
Why do mass killers connect with these literary element and not those of, say, "Emma"? Look at all those kids who did school shootings; think back to some time in high school when you felt like going postal; imagine what life is like for the solitary, ignored folks who tend to assassinate and spree-kill. Their lives are out of whack with society at large, which they (usually correctly) see to be flawed. They don't have any idea what to do to change the world, but they have a strong sense that it needs to be changed. Their malcontent and isolation drive them to action, but their social immaturity means that action will be ham-fisted. Hence, high-profile killing.
Although I think your logic is flawed, I thank you for posting this. The moderation of your comment is disappointing -- comments like this are exactly the reason I try (unsuccessfully -- rock on, slash!) to turn off negative moderation. Even if your comment were a troll (which it isn't, if your previous posts are a guide), this would still be a worthwhile discussion to be had.
> Harmful mutations far outnumber beneficial
> mutations
No, relatively meaningless mutation far outnumber both of these. Look at the people around you. Most of their differences are minor -- different hair, different complection, some are a little stronger, some shorter, some smarter. Everyone has lots of little, largely meaningless variations. (These can be both recessive or dominant traits.) Relatively rare is the person with a deeply serious genetic variation, good or bad.
> Evolution is impossible as beneficial recessive
> mutations could never have arisen.
This isn't how evolution works. Keep in mind that every population has a good deal of variety in it. When that population is put under stress (say, there's a flood and all the short people die), individuals whose genetic traits give them an advantage for dealing with that specific stress have a better chance of survival.
> Natural selection requires a genetic mutation
> to express itself in order for the selection to
> work
No, no, no. Evolution doesn't take place when an organism inherits some magical mutation, which allows him to eat more, which is somehow magically linked with having more children. Evolution is the result of stress on a large and diverse population -- limited resources, predators, oil spills, et cetera. When that stress occurs, the various weird traits that had always been occuring (different hair, different skin, whatever) give some of those organisms a better chance.
> We have evidence that close relations have
> cumulatively worse of children than average
> partners.
Again, this is a too-shallow analysis of complex systems. Your model (that any one beneficial trait is virtually always accompanied by at least one harmful trait) ignores the way these systems actually behave. Traits are meaningless until stress is put on the population, thus there is little correllation between them.
Anyway, there's a counter-argument; post up what you think its flaws are. Hopefully the moderators will de-lodge their heads from their collective asses, shake their heads vigorously, and mod your post back up.
We seem to have some differences of interpretation about the tone of my original post. I'll try to better explicate what I meant.
...and that would fit pretty well with the anticorporate overtones
>>
>> of free software.
>
> It's unfair of you to leave a plainly incorrect barb like that
> undefended.
It's not a barb, it's a compliment. I admire what I see as anticorporate aspects of free software, and appreciate the aspects of free software which slow complete corporate dominance over my computing experience.
> As a class of license, free software licenses have no
> anti-corporate overtones and the free software movement does not
> promote anti-corporate behavior or ethics.
Free software was created in response to a closed atmosphere regarding software distribution; that atmosphere was created by corporations to increase profits. (Once upon a time, the corporation was Xerox, the software was a printer driver, and the user being fucked over was RMS.) I also consider open scientific discourse to be anticorporate; democracy, too. Anything that dulls the Beast's claws helps give everyone else a chance to live.
Note as well the term "overtones;" I never said free software was axiomatically anticorporate. Corporations can play nicely, if forced to. But if IBM had half a chance to go back in time and close up the hardware specs for desktop machines, they'd do it in a second. This is inherent in the nature of power itself; freedom, of all kinds, is always the enemy of the powerful.
...they were prominent (along with commercial stations) in getting the FCC to back down on its plans for community radio. Their behavior is more similar to Sun's licensing of Java than the FSF's licensing of GNU; they want non-commercial radio to be available, but they want it to be NPR.
> In my opinion, National Public Radio (whose mission is to aid the
> growth and development of noncommercial radio) should definitely be
That indeed is the actual wording of the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act. But NPR, both in the late seventies and late nineties, worked vigorously against just that.
That said, they're pretty liberal on most other issues, and that would fit pretty well with the anticorporate overtones of free software.
"Ma'am, did you realize that Chevrolet has an important plan for your life?"
> We already have that, with IBM no less
IBM doesn't matter; they market linux servers. With the opening up of desktop hardware, the power to steer the network moved from the server to the desktop. It used to be that the type of server dictated the type of desktop (terminal), now the type of desktop and its OS dictates the type of server and its OS (by and large). When the average desktop OS is open and free (which will happen, eventually; GNU's licensing makes this an inevitability) this battle will move somewhere else. (Kill Morgoth, Sauron pops up; destroy Sauron, Saruman spreads mischief.) It may be in application space; who knows? We may someday be railing against the tyrrany of custom applications.
> How is ZIM any worse than, say, MAD Magazine?
I haven't seen ZIM, but Mad, in its original form, was a Harvey Kurtzman showcase. The content back then was largely too complex for kids.
The Kurtzman/Elder/Krigstein parody of George McManus' Bringing Up Father in Mad #17 is a good example -- it's a dark take on McManus' use of domesic violence as comedy.
Kurtzman was pushed out of Mad after a couple of years, and his later magazine Help! was also Not For Kids; R. Crumb's Fritz the Cat pseudo-rape comic was published there, some of the first non-greeting-card stuff Crumb published. (Terry Gilliam also worked for Help.)
And EC in general was really an adult comics line back then (Tales from the Crypt, etc.); the Comics Code Authority killed off all EC comics but Mad (which was billed as a magazine, and thus not for kids, because only kids read comics, right?), and Mad was steadily dumbed-down over the years to increase sales to kids. But back before the CCA dark times, EC almost a low-brow Fantagraphics, a tiny niche for grown-ups' comics.
[sigh...]
> The whole point of subversiveness is to open
> eyes.
Yeah, but it still needs to be aimed at kids to be really subversive. Otherwise it will just be disturbing; they won't understand what's being subverted. Crumb's How Snoids are Born (Snoid Comics, Kitchen Sink Press) is a glorious treatise on how dysfunction is passed down through generations, but I sure wouldn't give that comic to a kid (in the comic, the Snoid masturbates to thoughts of dismembered women; the droplets of jizz turn into little Snoids; the Snoid then shoos the offspring out the door with a broom, saying "Scoot! 'An don't let me see yer ugly faces around this neighborhood!"). A kid wouldn't get that comic; hell, I'm expecting some AC flames from folks who don't get it. The target audience matters.
> In my experience, people who use the term 'anti-spam zealots' are
> either spambags themselves, of members of the mainsleaze spam lobby,
> (i.e. Ken Magill of the Direct Marketing Associations, or various
> random clueless marketdroids who occasionally write for mainstream
> rags).
Bah. By this logic, anyone advocating due process for suspicious immigrants is a terrorist, and the HUAC's victims must really have been Stalin's spies after all. Sounds like zealotry to me.
> brother in sight.
You don't? Are you sure?
> I sure hope not! I would much rather use software that was written TO
> BE something, rather than software that was written NOT TO BE
> something.
GNU: GNU's Not Unix
Hell, even Unix was created as a non-Multics Multics.
You want software written to be something, run the original Amiga. (I will envy you.)
Once upon a time, Communism was an idea for a society that cared for all its citizens, instead of just the rich. Once it began to genuinely threaten the plutocracy, propaganda and police forces were implemented. Now everyone knows Communists are scum.
Once upon a time, recreational drug use -- especially hallucenigens -- was a harmless way to expand one's mind. Once the drop-outs and revolutionaries of the 1960's began to genuinely threaten the plutocracy (and it did, too -- Nixon had troops in the basement of the White House after Kent State), propaganda and police forces were implemented. Now everyone knows drug users are scum.
Once upon a time, computers were tools of free speech. You could write as you wished, you could share ideas, you could communicate with anyone. It is starting to genuinely threaten the plutocracy in many ways, in ``intellectual propery'' subversion and the routing around of censorship. Propaganda and police forces are being implemented. Soon everyone will think of you, the users of this uncensored bulletin board which runs on free software, as scum.
-------
For examples of this, go to the International Obfuscated C Code Contest. Programs there use the formal code itself as expression -- programs are ranked according to a quality of ``obfuscation'' not unlike how very dense poetry or prose is valued. ``I have seen them riding seaward on the waves, combing the white hair of the waves blown back when the wind blows the water white and black'' is valued for its complexity of meaning, its sound, and its manipulation of the english language. The code in the IOCCC is valued for similar eloquence.
-------
Er, so if PepsiCo mails me a letter with their logo on it, do I get free reign on use of their trademarks? If I'm mailed a description of the molecular structure of Prozac, can I form a company to sell it? Legally, logical use might be different from physical use. (Rather, it's almost certainly a legal grey area; computers are where logical use and physical use converge.)
-------
> You think the solution is to charge $10,000,000
> for the first copy of Windows and make the
> others free? That's plain stupid.
Yet this software model exists, in various forms, today. Almost all highly specialized software is made this way; programmers are hired for a limited time to write code. The first copy of the program has a high cost, and the rest are virtually free. Boxed copies of free software work this way; swanky CDs with printed documentation sell for about fifty bucks. The first copy of the program has a high cost, and the rest are virtually free. Indeed, Windows itself already works on pretty much the same model. Businesses and PC buyers are under enough scrutiny to be coerced to pay for the OS, but those who assemble their own machines can illegally use a free copy with effective impunity.
All three of these software business situations reflect the differing costs between initial and subsequent copies of software. The key difference with the last situation is that the little guy gets screwed -- businesses will pay money for software in the first two situations. (Mine did. Hell, I plan to pay for personal Debian 2.2 CDs, and I've got the 2.1s and 2.0s lying around here somewhere.)
-------
> Otherwise, for every cabinet the carpenter
> makes, he would charge exactly the same
> amount as that weight of logs would cost
> from the lumbar yard.
No, s/he's charging money for the finished product -- the cost of which presumably reflects the cost of raw materials, the cost of the work put into it, and market considerations.
In a way, this is the cost of putting an actual cabinet in the hands of a customer. (A single usable instance of a cabinet.) For a carpenter, the cost is the same for every cabinet. For a programmer, the cost of the first copy of software is very high, but is virtually zero for all subsequent copies. The programmer should therefore be paid a high amount of money for the first copy, and virtually nothing for all subsequent copies.
Your seem unable to realize this fundamental difference, and fear that some sort of anarchy ("Why do we have to pay for ANYTHING AT ALL?" whimper wail whimper) will tear down nations should we fail to pay fees for each copy of software. Society will not be ripped apart at the sinews; rather, the cost of software copies will come to reflect the respective cost of their creations.
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> On that note, where's the ability to read email?
Er, stick a paper clip in the CDROM hole. Take out the CD. Put in whatever bootable CD you want (Linux, windows, BSD, ProDOS-86...). Intentionally or not, they've allowed the things to be easily hackable.
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This is a project that needs to shit or get off the pot.
Bullshit. This is a project that needs to continue its steady pace of development, which has already yeilded an impressive base of code.
I'm sick of having to use a crappy 3+ year old browser in linux.
Then don't use Linux. Point your fellow ex-linux-users to a local Gateway Country. Or maybe you could stop being a whining pussy and start coding.
If you don't like your operating system, and you're too candy-assed to make it better, you're the one who needs to shit or get off the pot.
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The device could track your location throughout the day, then upload that in a single burst. In a single burst, the device could be sent an archive of ads, one of which is displayed when the device detects itself in a specific location. Memory is cheaper than data transfer in this situation, I would speculate.
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Seriously, Lars, if you want a copy of any software I've written, send me an email and I'll get it to you. (Now *you too* can verify checks using our keypads!)
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Reading again, I must have misread your post regarding video streams. That aside, I think we have different definitions of "practical." Getting OTP to work requires one pad -- sent over a secure channel -- for each pair of users to communicate. While it would be feasible for me to set up a one time pad with, say, my spy contact in Serbia, it wouldn't be feasible for me to set up a one time pad with, say, eBay. (And every other `secure' web site I visit; and it wouldn't be feasible for them to set up huge pads for each user, and the secure channels to transmit them.)
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Remember, one time pads are only genuinely secure if the pad is at least as long as the message, the pad is genuinely random, and the pad is never reused. If any of these is not true, the encryption is breakable. Anyway, even setting aside that a video stream is not necessarily totally random, if pre-agreeing on a giant key to draw from for small messages were a practical scheme, folks would use it now.
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As for your comments on slashdot accounts, such requirements would immediately have this account deleted. There may be someone out there named "Jon Kennis," but I sure as shit haven't met him. And anyway, CmdrTaco has the AC account because he thinks it (after moderation) improves the site's quality. Would congress bumbling in and making him take out AC posting be just?
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> service providers whose services mean serious risk of copyright
> infringement (i.e. Napster) should be required to get solid
> identifying information for users, should have to respond to
Yes, such a thing would apply to napster. It could also apply to, oh, I don't know, maybe AN ANONYMOUS NFS SHARE. This, the slightest moment's thought makes clear, was exactly CmdrTaco's point. According to your description ("providers whose services mean serious risk of copyright infringement should be required to get solid identifying information on users"), there could be no more ACs on Slashdot, and no more anonymous write access to public file systems.
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The setup you describe, with a server containing scripts in an interpreted language that are then downloaded directly to the end user's client machine to be interpreted, is an accident of history. Computers don't have to be set up this way, as seperate Von Neumann boxes on a network, with language source transmitted directly between the two, stored on one and interpreted on the other. If some other design besides the Von Neumann had appeared, the situation would be totally different. When other designs beside the Von Neumann are made feasible, the situation will be totally different. Carving laws into stone based on transitory accidents is foolish government.
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