My thoughts exactly.
Really going out on a limb at this point for Intel to criticize China. The Dragon chip is one thing. I think the bigger issue that we're just starting to hear bits and pieces about over at eet is immersion lithography.
Intel is the lone voice of dissent swearing it's not going to work while IBM and Infineon keep coming up with reports on how great it is and how quickly ASML, Canon and Nikon are going to be bringing tools to market.
Meanwhile Infineon is getting all cozy making deals all over the place.
Sad.
This is such a sad state of affairs. Every month we get news about how Japan is finally catching up with Korea and Hong Kong and even Canada is looking good.
Pundits suggest the US may begin to pick up in the next decade or so although it's no guarantee as they've fallen so far behind. I mean what would you expect? It's just the US after all. They've always had a backwards telecoms system, right?
What is wrong with this picture?
No, let me guess. It's that bandwidth REALLY is expensive and all those other countries have mistaken bits for bytes? It's all a big misunderstanding.
Nah, too simple. Here we go, they're all commies and they're using state subsidies in a big plot to make the US look bad. That seems to go well with the pot thing in Canada. Could that be it?
Perhaps. Maybe it's something else.
Hmm. What could the matter be?
The PDF was hosed and the CNet article was spartan, so I'm still left wondering about this great big definition issue in the term "home."
This reminds me of the crisis over defining "copy" that underlies all the legal arguments over file sharing. The fact is, these terms have long been de-stabilized. The advent of electronic media that began at the turn of the century created a whole new level of complexity in language that text based laws simply cannot encompass.
Just imagine the use of the term "home" in a filesystem. Where is home? Does that mean in relation to root? Which root? Or is it the user home? Does that include the virtual network or locally? Local meaning active or including backups?
Glazing over these things as if they didn't exist simply because a lot of people don't want to face it is not looking at the reality we live in today.
It's simple really. You're not supposed to just make up LOC numbers for you local archive out of thin air. If you've got a new title, you have to submit your title to the LOC. But if your book is largely a collection of "borrowed" material being reprinted without authorization, that's obviously not going to be your first choice.
Things really have changed with the IP nazis on everybody's ass these days, but once upon a time there was a large market in reprinting expensive foreign titles and even making custom bound compilations. See the problem? Where are you going to file that?
No doubt. The DDC is such a pain in the ass when you're used to LOC. I am also suprised to find tht it's still being licensed. I thought the only people still using it were in countries that didn't want to submit to LOC guidelines because their own copyright laws were uhm, different.
I know that's the case here in Taiwan. I was shocked to find major research universities using DDC and then when I began working with a publisher I learned that it had a lot to do with copyright and the LOC. In fact, I taught classes on using the LOC at one point for students preparing to go overseas.
But personally I find the DDC obnoxious and far more of an obstacle to research than a helpful classification system.
Same thing here. I read the article and I was like case specs? WTF?
The future is oversized desks. I've got four boards on the back of this desk behind the monitors and I'm building a new super triple decker monster upstairs that will have room to grow. Fill up a sixteen port switch and a stack of KVMS. Yum.
Cases are so 90s, let's talk racks.
"The act of civil disobedience etc. .."
As a child of the 70s, trained in non-violent civil disobedience from a tender age --I think I was about six when I started helping my mom direct traffic at anti-nuclear protests in California-- I can say for sure that this is not true.
Civil disobedience is something you have to be willing to accept the consequences for, but it's going too far to say that it is of no value if you aren't punished.
It sounds like you're confusing freudian theories of criminal behavior with non-violent political action here.
There's a big difference between being willing to face the consequences and having to face the consequences to be of value.
To take the issue at hand. If I share music and movies as an act of civil disobedience, it is still a valueable act that fullfills my goal of committing civil disobedience even if I'm not confronted for my actions. If you think it's the right thing, just do it. Don't go looking for trouble. You don't have to be a martyr to partake in civil disobedience.
How about using a display like this with flourescent particles and then surrounding it in heavy UV argon/mercury tubes.
I'm just thinking that if it's so much like paper, then that's one of the ways paper billboards are enhanced for better nighttime viewing.
Cartoon images could potentially be quite intense. Think of, for instance, the Simpsons done this way.
But as cool as this is, I still think that in the long-term we're going to see effiecient, mass produced, high powered lasers dominate the outdoor display market and perhaps other display markets as well. But since high powered lasers are still a very long way from cheap at this point, this is a cool near-term solution.
Sales tax is not progressive. Income tax is potentially a progressive tax although it sure hasn't worked that way in the US in recent years. But upping sales tax is inexcuseable further burden on the poor.
You're right to an extent, but it is the DMCA makes enforcement possible. Without the DMCA, the relationship between the ISP and the individual citizen is confidential and without the confidential records from the ISP, there is nothing but heresay evidence from questionable enforcement agencies who would have to defend themselves from the accusation that they simply made up the data.
But, you're right. It's the NETAct which makes sharing a crime. However, that was only be a late amendment that redefined the term "commercial" to mean any exchange of value.
This is such an absurd abuse of logic, that I doubt that either the NETAct, or the DMCA will be around for the long haul. It's too easy to make good arguments against bad logic.
"I doubt file sharing will ever beome legal."
Well, it has already been mentioned a few times above, but apparently it's still not clear to some folks. In fact, file sharing is already quite legal.
And the kiddie porn thing. Well, that tactic is about as old as calling your political opponent a queer. It's dramatic and might get you out of a tight spot, but it's hardly a winning long term strategy unless you're dealing with a huge number of users that you can show are actual child molestors and that's rather unlikely. You're going to need at least as many victims to testify in court as you've got pedophiles. It's not that simple as waving your arms in the air and shouting --they're all godless child molesters with boogers hanging out of their noses! Sure, it's a dramatic spectacle, but it's not real unless it can stick in court and that's doubtful.
Whether micropayments can work, or even defining what a micropayment is, seems a bit besides the point when we don't have e-currency.
When I use the term "currency" I don't mean some private company's wishful thinking about taking over the job of the federal government. Anybody who thinks that the establishment of the currency is not the job of the federal government and can be left to Citibank or Banc America has a very limited grasp of the Constitution. And as for some Johnny-come-lately start up issuing the new coin of the realm. Well, it's an ambitious goal, but there are some major obstacles in reality. You might not notice them till you get big enough to attract attention, but they're out there.
So all this speculation about how e-currency will be spent and what will constitute a micrompayment and how the technical details of how the exchange will be handled is jumping the gun. And it's the same thing with any kind of e-commerce. The arguments are all hypothetical until there is a genuine currency.
Traditional retailers depend on compulsive buys in a big way. The very archictecture of retail businesses is organized in a fashion that will promote compusive shopping to the greatest extent possible. In this sense, micropayments already exist, work and can even be considered essential to business. What does not exist is e-currency issued and backed by a government.
The DMCA is in reference to the access to confidential telecommunications providers records without a subpeona. Their charges would be merely speculative without that evidence.
However, what makes you think the RIAA only scans people actively using P2P software? I know for a fact and have log files that can demonstrate quite the contrary. I have abundant logs showing scans from a whole range of IP enforcement agencies on computers that contain no P2P software whatsoever and never did. I'm sure many others are in the same position and this is going to cause them some serious problems down the road. While their scans may not be illegal per se, they are highly questionable as evidence in court when used so broadly and intrusively.
NET Act --redefines "commercial gain" in infringement as any exchange of value such as in a man and a woman making love or even just participating in a conversation. Brilliant piece of legislation.
Without this, it could be argued that P2P falls within fair use because it is noncommercial --see fair use section of copyright law.
DMCA --allows copyright holders to unreasonably search people's private and confidential records in violation of the constitution.
Well I see you defining inflation a few times and talking about some causes, but I don't see how you address the novel idea of a self-deflating electronic currency.
When you come up with an insightful criticism addressing the topic, I'm sure we'll all be interested in discussing it further.
Not to be picky --who me-- but, right and wrong are normative terms that are used to describe people's opinions about what should and should not be. So, if you are in sympathy, but believe I have mispoken, then you should say that this if false.
But false in relation to which measure of truth? The exisiting law? Well, I just mentioned the abomination of the English language known as the NET Act. It is true that what I have said about P2P being fair use under the NET Act is false. That much is clear. However, whether what I stated is wrong is quite another matter.
What I believe is right is that copyright was intended to give a limited commercial monopoly on the sale of a limited class of products. I'm well aware of the existence of legislation that redefines copyright into something akin to birthright or the framework for a class based society. However, I believe that legislation is wrong.
As a non-commercial publicly accessible library, it is okay to make a single copy for lending purposes. So, you don't necessarily have to delete the original each time.
This really is a complex issue though that the courts clearly haven't thought through very well. When they do, they'll probably find that P2P in general is fair use.
For instance, when I was in college I almost exclusively based my research on materials that weren't available in our campus library holdings. This was possible because I was able to get copies for free through inter-library loan. These were photocopies for me to keep. Now, the shipping and duplication fees were paid through by a grant to the university, but there were no copyright fees per se because inter-library loan, even of photocopied materials that will never be returned, is fair use.
Indeed, P2P is also fair use. That's quite clear from the fact that it is non-commercial and thus has nothing to do with copyright. Eventually the courts will come to that conclusion. Indeed, the only thing standing in the way currently is the poorly written and last minute ammended Net Act which, were it not for its horrible consequences, would be hardly more than a bad joke.
Well, business oriented socialism may not be a new idea, but an intelligent electronic currency most certainly is and I'm sure you'll concede that point.
And your comment about the national socialism is intriguing. You seem to imply that human rights abuses were a result of the economic advantages the system offered as opposed to the core value of racism that was a part of German Nazism from the begninning. History seems to suggest that the economic advances the Nazi government brought to Germany were a roaring success. You say that this inevitably led to human rights abuse, but that is an opinion I do not share.
However, rather than shunning your reference to the Nazis and Fascism, I am glad you brought it up. What were the conditions that allowed these political movements to take hold? That's right, the collapse of free market economies. We may perhaps see this again in our own lives. I mean look at the P/E on techs. It doesn't look right. And when was the last time you checked a thirty year chart of the Dow? Is it a bubble, or a spike? The Nasdaq looks a lot more like a spike than a bubble.
Should we reach a state of crisis where vast numbers of baby boomers are not getting health care and their children have been unemployed for years, we will need solutions and we will be in a situation somewhat resembling the thirties. What I'm saying is that this time we can make a difference.
As I mentioned up front, I knew this was going to be hard for most of you. But as the issue of the black market was brought up, I'd like to add one more comment because I think it's imprortant to address this when talking about a dual currency system.
I took several trips to China during the time when the dual currency system was still in use and black markets are an enormous problem in a dual currency system. That's why I mentioned the neat feature of being able to prevent businesses from becoming currency traders by using the new currency as a carrot that could be taken away.
But in the US today, we have another form of black market which would make this system unfesasible and that is the market in prohibited substances of various sorts. This system would not work in a country cultivating a black market like the one we currently live with day to day.
So, this is clearly down the way. I'm just saying it could be a safety net when things get rough and the ol' flag wavin' fightin' mad rehetoric isn't doing anything about the lack of jobs.
Thank you.
It's disturbingly simple. I'm not going to pretend that I thought this up myself, but I've added a bit to the original idea that I saw in The Economist last year.
The idea is that with a centrally controlled electronic currency, you'd have a degree of control over the economy that nobody in the pre-digital world could begin to imagine. In that sense, it's a completely revolutionary break from earlier economic theories because in the past there was no way to anticipate its possibility and thus no way to speculate on its potentials.
So, to get to your question about how you control inflation while handing out money to the masses in a massive welfare state, it's simple: the currency automatically deflates. This novel electronic currency would have a time-to-live like an internet packet or one of PK Dick's mutants. This type of system would simply have been to complex to imagine in the past, but now that's no longer necessarily the case.
The beauty of such a system is that it forces circulation. If you don't circulate, you lose it. That basically eliminates speculation which, along with inflation, is another historical source of troubles for welfare states.
Now, in the original article in which I saw this idea, they speculated that such a system could only come into place with the total destruction of the existing economy. That's where I took off in a different direction.
Thinking about it for awhile, I wondered if this same idea couldn't become both the basis of a vast welfare state and, at the same time, an enormous business stimulus.
Rather than waiting for the existing economy to collapse, these welfare credits could be introduced in parallel and only businesses would be allowed to exchange them into hard currency, thus leaving the existing business infrastructure intact. Businesses could still use hard currency and anybody could get into business. But the welfare recipients would have to be satisfied with their deflating currency. The only thing it would be good for it propping up businesses. Businesses that tried to cheat the system by providing exchange services would simply be restricted from accepting credits. So, the punishment system is simply to withdraw the reward.
If anything, you'd think this system would provide an enormous incentive for people to get into business and businesses would become more efficient and productive than ever. At the same time business standards rose, the vast majority of the people who couldn't make it in this ultra competitive enviroment would still be cared for.
It's pro-business socialism. People are so used to thinking either or, but I'm not sure it has to be that way. Perhaps we're struggling too hard when the answers are quite simple.
This is not even to get into the idea that a lot of America's woes are really about over production and over consumption to the detriment of living standards which are problems that might potentially be addressed more reasonably in a welfare state than in the system we're using now.
It's fascinating to look at these early efforts at controlled economies and think how much better the US economy could be with a bit of technological innovation. And by innovation I don't mean another few decades of intense patent litigation.
The lack of a national electronic currency is a glaring absence. You can hardly expect e-retailing to compete with cash when e-currency consists of credit cards issued by usurous, predatory corporate behemouths. But a conservative government has no reason to disturb the status quo of all things. A national e-currency would disrupt the existing financial industry to no end and that potential negative is much more important to a conservative government than the possible positive of helping the economy as a whole. Why trade what works for some today for what might work for many tomorrow.
So, I understand that it's a political impossibility today, but when the government finally does awake to its responsibility to create a usable currency as it is laid out in the Consitituion, the possibilities are great. It could make a viable welfare state a reality.
The currency could be manipulated in ways previously unheard of. People could be paid simply to live their lives and still there would be no need for inflation. Businessnes could prosper at the same time. It wouldn't have to be anti-business at all. America could never thrive without business, but it wouldn't have to. A planned economy and a thriving business world could easily exist side by side.
I realize these ideas are still quite blasphemous, but should we reach a point of crisis trodding the well worn path, it's nice to know that there are alternatives that could be introduced before things got too bad.
I wrote in my journal about this awhile back. ETS was trying to sell their essay grader to a group of the local test prep chains here in Taiwan. The local schools called me in to sit in on the presentation. Before I had gone in, I searched around and found numerous free and open implementations and I asked the speaker why they were selling their academic software for so much money --it was a rather complex contract on a per seat basis-- when there were similar product available for free. Their rep claimed to be unamare of any similar open sourced products that could match the amazing and advanced artificial intelligence features they were offering. Sales reps --hmm. The mere posing of question definitely made them stutter and squirm though.
But the interesting part was after I got home. I looked at ETS's own research monologues and found that internally this overpriced system had been debunked. It was discovered that by writing one well-formed short paragraph and then cutting and pasting it over and over an almost perfect score could be attained. The more times it was pasted, the higher the score.
It was also possible to write an essay on an unrelated topic and still get a high score allowing students to use rote memoriziation of a single model essay. This, natually, is impossible with a human reader because they can tell what the topic is fairly easily. According to the sales literature this software could to, but in actual tests that didn't hold up.
Their sales literature claimed that the software contained aritificial intelligence and thus implied that such simple techniques would not fool it, but in practice this was far from the case.
Monographs published by ETS also made it clear that despite their aggressive marketing of this product outside the US, they were not planning to use it as an exclusive grading system on their own tests. Rather, it was to be used as a teaching tool. However, it took a lot of digging to uncover that information.
Just as with translation, there's a lot of financial motivation to make this technology work, but that doesn't necessarily translate into workable products. In the nineties when spelling and grammar checking was already old hat and English/Euro translation was making such headway I thought fluent Chinese/English translation was just a few years away. Now it's 2003, grammar checkers still only work if you write in prescribed style and I've yet to see something halfway decent in Chinese/English translation software although you still hear claims all the time for some overpriced product that's really almost there.
I think we'll see dramatic life extension long before we see decent computer essay graders. Decent trade as far as I'm concerned. As for translation, we can always teach more languages in school.
Yeah, I'm aware that there are two sides to everything, even --ugh, I hate to even write the prhase-- social sciences. My dear Ma majored in Linguistics at Berkeley in the 60s, so we've argued this for decades now.
I do get the point that both good things and bad things can come from the same origins. But I can't get over the emotions I have towards things that touch my personal life deeply. These academic institutions that call themselve the social sciences are the underpinnings of current penal system. This is not something that can be casually ignored by someone who has wittnessed lives destroyed, literally terminated, by the abuses of that system.
And if that's not bad enough, how about generative grammar! Jesus freakin' Christ. You have to have your head so far up your ass to even consider that as a useful topic and people are still, to this day, writing their theses on that crap. I know because I proof read them every week.
How about psycohtherapy? The social sciences have some serious problems and there have been so many years to address them, but I just don't see it. It's just business as usual.
I admit I have a chip on my shoulder here. I think I'm in good company historically on that. But I know there are good sides too. I can think of sex therapy, especially in the 70s, as having been an important and useful field of study, but if you look at what happened institutionally, that kind of research got almost totally ignored once the 80s rolled around. I think if you take the big picture on the institutional role of the social sciences it's bad news. It could be different, but my argument is that the fact is --it's not.
I would argue that both the social sciences and the hard sciences should be de-emphasized in favor of creative arts which, I believe, is the real source of technological and social advance.
Well, this is the first I've learned of it. My ultra cheap standard issue 1.5Mbps DSL connection seems to be going just fine. Got a few connections to the WayBack machine going and I just finished the rounds at a dozen web sites, EETimes, DisplaySearch, BioTech East, Digitimes, Google News and on and on. None of them had any problems, nice snappy connections. A few of those are in Taiwan so locally and internationally the network itself seems fine.
The only thing I couldn't get to was the feakin' story at the notoriously paranoid Taipei Times because apparently the greater threat to the local net than the mainland is slashdotting!
That part of it made me think of fair use. I know, one track mind here. But I think it's quite relevant.
When you present the metaphor of files and folders to a judge in a court of law, it tends to oversimplify what's really going on to the detriment of fair use. A completely different file system would provide a concrete example that complicates this metaphor and I think it could only help because the oversimplification of how data operates in a computer is a huge part of how bullshit anti-technology laws get passed and upheld by the courts.
But I was a bit put off by the part about cutting edge techniques from the linguistics community. I suppose I have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to linguistics. Linguistics, sociology and psychology are all rather unfortunate fields of study in my opinion. I think Adorno and Benjamin are with me on that point, but that's another story.
Slashdot Mirror
My thoughts exactly.
Really going out on a limb at this point for Intel to criticize China. The Dragon chip is one thing. I think the bigger issue that we're just starting to hear bits and pieces about over at eet is immersion lithography.
Intel is the lone voice of dissent swearing it's not going to work while IBM and Infineon keep coming up with reports on how great it is and how quickly ASML, Canon and Nikon are going to be bringing tools to market.
Meanwhile Infineon is getting all cozy making deals all over the place.
Sad.
This is such a sad state of affairs. Every month we get news about how Japan is finally catching up with Korea and Hong Kong and even Canada is looking good.
Pundits suggest the US may begin to pick up in the next decade or so although it's no guarantee as they've fallen so far behind. I mean what would you expect? It's just the US after all. They've always had a backwards telecoms system, right?
What is wrong with this picture?
No, let me guess. It's that bandwidth REALLY is expensive and all those other countries have mistaken bits for bytes? It's all a big misunderstanding.
Nah, too simple. Here we go, they're all commies and they're using state subsidies in a big plot to make the US look bad. That seems to go well with the pot thing in Canada. Could that be it?
Perhaps. Maybe it's something else.
Hmm. What could the matter be?
The PDF was hosed and the CNet article was spartan, so I'm still left wondering about this great big definition issue in the term "home."
This reminds me of the crisis over defining "copy" that underlies all the legal arguments over file sharing. The fact is, these terms have long been de-stabilized. The advent of electronic media that began at the turn of the century created a whole new level of complexity in language that text based laws simply cannot encompass.
Just imagine the use of the term "home" in a filesystem. Where is home? Does that mean in relation to root? Which root? Or is it the user home? Does that include the virtual network or locally? Local meaning active or including backups?
Glazing over these things as if they didn't exist simply because a lot of people don't want to face it is not looking at the reality we live in today.
It's simple really. You're not supposed to just make up LOC numbers for you local archive out of thin air. If you've got a new title, you have to submit your title to the LOC. But if your book is largely a collection of "borrowed" material being reprinted without authorization, that's obviously not going to be your first choice.
Things really have changed with the IP nazis on everybody's ass these days, but once upon a time there was a large market in reprinting expensive foreign titles and even making custom bound compilations. See the problem? Where are you going to file that?
No doubt. The DDC is such a pain in the ass when you're used to LOC. I am also suprised to find tht it's still being licensed. I thought the only people still using it were in countries that didn't want to submit to LOC guidelines because their own copyright laws were uhm, different.
I know that's the case here in Taiwan. I was shocked to find major research universities using DDC and then when I began working with a publisher I learned that it had a lot to do with copyright and the LOC. In fact, I taught classes on using the LOC at one point for students preparing to go overseas.
But personally I find the DDC obnoxious and far more of an obstacle to research than a helpful classification system.
Same thing here. I read the article and I was like case specs? WTF?
The future is oversized desks. I've got four boards on the back of this desk behind the monitors and I'm building a new super triple decker monster upstairs that will have room to grow. Fill up a sixteen port switch and a stack of KVMS. Yum.
Cases are so 90s, let's talk racks.
"The act of civil disobedience etc. . ."
As a child of the 70s, trained in non-violent civil disobedience from a tender age --I think I was about six when I started helping my mom direct traffic at anti-nuclear protests in California-- I can say for sure that this is not true.
Civil disobedience is something you have to be willing to accept the consequences for, but it's going too far to say that it is of no value if you aren't punished.
It sounds like you're confusing freudian theories of criminal behavior with non-violent political action here.
There's a big difference between being willing to face the consequences and having to face the consequences to be of value.
To take the issue at hand. If I share music and movies as an act of civil disobedience, it is still a valueable act that fullfills my goal of committing civil disobedience even if I'm not confronted for my actions. If you think it's the right thing, just do it. Don't go looking for trouble. You don't have to be a martyr to partake in civil disobedience.
How about using a display like this with flourescent particles and then surrounding it in heavy UV argon/mercury tubes.
I'm just thinking that if it's so much like paper, then that's one of the ways paper billboards are enhanced for better nighttime viewing.
Cartoon images could potentially be quite intense. Think of, for instance, the Simpsons done this way.
But as cool as this is, I still think that in the long-term we're going to see effiecient, mass produced, high powered lasers dominate the outdoor display market and perhaps other display markets as well. But since high powered lasers are still a very long way from cheap at this point, this is a cool near-term solution.
Sales tax is not progressive. Income tax is potentially a progressive tax although it sure hasn't worked that way in the US in recent years. But upping sales tax is inexcuseable further burden on the poor.
You're right to an extent, but it is the DMCA makes enforcement possible. Without the DMCA, the relationship between the ISP and the individual citizen is confidential and without the confidential records from the ISP, there is nothing but heresay evidence from questionable enforcement agencies who would have to defend themselves from the accusation that they simply made up the data.
But, you're right. It's the NETAct which makes sharing a crime. However, that was only be a late amendment that redefined the term "commercial" to mean any exchange of value.
This is such an absurd abuse of logic, that I doubt that either the NETAct, or the DMCA will be around for the long haul. It's too easy to make good arguments against bad logic.
"I doubt file sharing will ever beome legal."
Well, it has already been mentioned a few times above, but apparently it's still not clear to some folks. In fact, file sharing is already quite legal.
And the kiddie porn thing. Well, that tactic is about as old as calling your political opponent a queer. It's dramatic and might get you out of a tight spot, but it's hardly a winning long term strategy unless you're dealing with a huge number of users that you can show are actual child molestors and that's rather unlikely. You're going to need at least as many victims to testify in court as you've got pedophiles. It's not that simple as waving your arms in the air and shouting --they're all godless child molesters with boogers hanging out of their noses! Sure, it's a dramatic spectacle, but it's not real unless it can stick in court and that's doubtful.
Whether micropayments can work, or even defining what a micropayment is, seems a bit besides the point when we don't have e-currency.
When I use the term "currency" I don't mean some private company's wishful thinking about taking over the job of the federal government. Anybody who thinks that the establishment of the currency is not the job of the federal government and can be left to Citibank or Banc America has a very limited grasp of the Constitution. And as for some Johnny-come-lately start up issuing the new coin of the realm. Well, it's an ambitious goal, but there are some major obstacles in reality. You might not notice them till you get big enough to attract attention, but they're out there.
So all this speculation about how e-currency will be spent and what will constitute a micrompayment and how the technical details of how the exchange will be handled is jumping the gun. And it's the same thing with any kind of e-commerce. The arguments are all hypothetical until there is a genuine currency.
Traditional retailers depend on compulsive buys in a big way. The very archictecture of retail businesses is organized in a fashion that will promote compusive shopping to the greatest extent possible. In this sense, micropayments already exist, work and can even be considered essential to business. What does not exist is e-currency issued and backed by a government.
The DMCA is in reference to the access to confidential telecommunications providers records without a subpeona. Their charges would be merely speculative without that evidence.
However, what makes you think the RIAA only scans people actively using P2P software? I know for a fact and have log files that can demonstrate quite the contrary. I have abundant logs showing scans from a whole range of IP enforcement agencies on computers that contain no P2P software whatsoever and never did. I'm sure many others are in the same position and this is going to cause them some serious problems down the road. While their scans may not be illegal per se, they are highly questionable as evidence in court when used so broadly and intrusively.
NET Act --redefines "commercial gain" in infringement as any exchange of value such as in a man and a woman making love or even just participating in a conversation. Brilliant piece of legislation.
Without this, it could be argued that P2P falls within fair use because it is noncommercial --see fair use section of copyright law.
DMCA --allows copyright holders to unreasonably search people's private and confidential records in violation of the constitution.
Well I see you defining inflation a few times and talking about some causes, but I don't see how you address the novel idea of a self-deflating electronic currency.
When you come up with an insightful criticism addressing the topic, I'm sure we'll all be interested in discussing it further.
Not to be picky --who me-- but, right and wrong are normative terms that are used to describe people's opinions about what should and should not be. So, if you are in sympathy, but believe I have mispoken, then you should say that this if false.
But false in relation to which measure of truth? The exisiting law? Well, I just mentioned the abomination of the English language known as the NET Act. It is true that what I have said about P2P being fair use under the NET Act is false. That much is clear. However, whether what I stated is wrong is quite another matter.
What I believe is right is that copyright was intended to give a limited commercial monopoly on the sale of a limited class of products. I'm well aware of the existence of legislation that redefines copyright into something akin to birthright or the framework for a class based society. However, I believe that legislation is wrong.
Well if you've looked into that, you should check out the libraries and archives section of fair use, because it might be even better than that.
As a non-commercial publicly accessible library, it is okay to make a single copy for lending purposes. So, you don't necessarily have to delete the original each time.
This really is a complex issue though that the courts clearly haven't thought through very well. When they do, they'll probably find that P2P in general is fair use.
For instance, when I was in college I almost exclusively based my research on materials that weren't available in our campus library holdings. This was possible because I was able to get copies for free through inter-library loan. These were photocopies for me to keep. Now, the shipping and duplication fees were paid through by a grant to the university, but there were no copyright fees per se because inter-library loan, even of photocopied materials that will never be returned, is fair use.
Indeed, P2P is also fair use. That's quite clear from the fact that it is non-commercial and thus has nothing to do with copyright. Eventually the courts will come to that conclusion. Indeed, the only thing standing in the way currently is the poorly written and last minute ammended Net Act which, were it not for its horrible consequences, would be hardly more than a bad joke.
Well, business oriented socialism may not be a new idea, but an intelligent electronic currency most certainly is and I'm sure you'll concede that point.
And your comment about the national socialism is intriguing. You seem to imply that human rights abuses were a result of the economic advantages the system offered as opposed to the core value of racism that was a part of German Nazism from the begninning. History seems to suggest that the economic advances the Nazi government brought to Germany were a roaring success. You say that this inevitably led to human rights abuse, but that is an opinion I do not share.
However, rather than shunning your reference to the Nazis and Fascism, I am glad you brought it up. What were the conditions that allowed these political movements to take hold? That's right, the collapse of free market economies. We may perhaps see this again in our own lives. I mean look at the P/E on techs. It doesn't look right. And when was the last time you checked a thirty year chart of the Dow? Is it a bubble, or a spike? The Nasdaq looks a lot more like a spike than a bubble.
Should we reach a state of crisis where vast numbers of baby boomers are not getting health care and their children have been unemployed for years, we will need solutions and we will be in a situation somewhat resembling the thirties. What I'm saying is that this time we can make a difference.
As I mentioned up front, I knew this was going to be hard for most of you. But as the issue of the black market was brought up, I'd like to add one more comment because I think it's imprortant to address this when talking about a dual currency system.
I took several trips to China during the time when the dual currency system was still in use and black markets are an enormous problem in a dual currency system. That's why I mentioned the neat feature of being able to prevent businesses from becoming currency traders by using the new currency as a carrot that could be taken away.
But in the US today, we have another form of black market which would make this system unfesasible and that is the market in prohibited substances of various sorts. This system would not work in a country cultivating a black market like the one we currently live with day to day.
So, this is clearly down the way. I'm just saying it could be a safety net when things get rough and the ol' flag wavin' fightin' mad rehetoric isn't doing anything about the lack of jobs.
Thank you.
It's disturbingly simple. I'm not going to pretend that I thought this up myself, but I've added a bit to the original idea that I saw in The Economist last year.
The idea is that with a centrally controlled electronic currency, you'd have a degree of control over the economy that nobody in the pre-digital world could begin to imagine. In that sense, it's a completely revolutionary break from earlier economic theories because in the past there was no way to anticipate its possibility and thus no way to speculate on its potentials.
So, to get to your question about how you control inflation while handing out money to the masses in a massive welfare state, it's simple: the currency automatically deflates. This novel electronic currency would have a time-to-live like an internet packet or one of PK Dick's mutants. This type of system would simply have been to complex to imagine in the past, but now that's no longer necessarily the case.
The beauty of such a system is that it forces circulation. If you don't circulate, you lose it. That basically eliminates speculation which, along with inflation, is another historical source of troubles for welfare states.
Now, in the original article in which I saw this idea, they speculated that such a system could only come into place with the total destruction of the existing economy. That's where I took off in a different direction.
Thinking about it for awhile, I wondered if this same idea couldn't become both the basis of a vast welfare state and, at the same time, an enormous business stimulus.
Rather than waiting for the existing economy to collapse, these welfare credits could be introduced in parallel and only businesses would be allowed to exchange them into hard currency, thus leaving the existing business infrastructure intact. Businesses could still use hard currency and anybody could get into business. But the welfare recipients would have to be satisfied with their deflating currency. The only thing it would be good for it propping up businesses. Businesses that tried to cheat the system by providing exchange services would simply be restricted from accepting credits. So, the punishment system is simply to withdraw the reward.
If anything, you'd think this system would provide an enormous incentive for people to get into business and businesses would become more efficient and productive than ever. At the same time business standards rose, the vast majority of the people who couldn't make it in this ultra competitive enviroment would still be cared for.
It's pro-business socialism. People are so used to thinking either or, but I'm not sure it has to be that way. Perhaps we're struggling too hard when the answers are quite simple.
This is not even to get into the idea that a lot of America's woes are really about over production and over consumption to the detriment of living standards which are problems that might potentially be addressed more reasonably in a welfare state than in the system we're using now.
It's fascinating to look at these early efforts at controlled economies and think how much better the US economy could be with a bit of technological innovation. And by innovation I don't mean another few decades of intense patent litigation.
The lack of a national electronic currency is a glaring absence. You can hardly expect e-retailing to compete with cash when e-currency consists of credit cards issued by usurous, predatory corporate behemouths. But a conservative government has no reason to disturb the status quo of all things. A national e-currency would disrupt the existing financial industry to no end and that potential negative is much more important to a conservative government than the possible positive of helping the economy as a whole. Why trade what works for some today for what might work for many tomorrow.
So, I understand that it's a political impossibility today, but when the government finally does awake to its responsibility to create a usable currency as it is laid out in the Consitituion, the possibilities are great. It could make a viable welfare state a reality.
The currency could be manipulated in ways previously unheard of. People could be paid simply to live their lives and still there would be no need for inflation. Businessnes could prosper at the same time. It wouldn't have to be anti-business at all. America could never thrive without business, but it wouldn't have to. A planned economy and a thriving business world could easily exist side by side.
I realize these ideas are still quite blasphemous, but should we reach a point of crisis trodding the well worn path, it's nice to know that there are alternatives that could be introduced before things got too bad.
I wrote in my journal about this awhile back. ETS was trying to sell their essay grader to a group of the local test prep chains here in Taiwan. The local schools called me in to sit in on the presentation. Before I had gone in, I searched around and found numerous free and open implementations and I asked the speaker why they were selling their academic software for so much money --it was a rather complex contract on a per seat basis-- when there were similar product available for free. Their rep claimed to be unamare of any similar open sourced products that could match the amazing and advanced artificial intelligence features they were offering. Sales reps --hmm. The mere posing of question definitely made them stutter and squirm though.
But the interesting part was after I got home. I looked at ETS's own research monologues and found that internally this overpriced system had been debunked. It was discovered that by writing one well-formed short paragraph and then cutting and pasting it over and over an almost perfect score could be attained. The more times it was pasted, the higher the score.
It was also possible to write an essay on an unrelated topic and still get a high score allowing students to use rote memoriziation of a single model essay. This, natually, is impossible with a human reader because they can tell what the topic is fairly easily. According to the sales literature this software could to, but in actual tests that didn't hold up.
Their sales literature claimed that the software contained aritificial intelligence and thus implied that such simple techniques would not fool it, but in practice this was far from the case.
Monographs published by ETS also made it clear that despite their aggressive marketing of this product outside the US, they were not planning to use it as an exclusive grading system on their own tests. Rather, it was to be used as a teaching tool. However, it took a lot of digging to uncover that information.
Just as with translation, there's a lot of financial motivation to make this technology work, but that doesn't necessarily translate into workable products. In the nineties when spelling and grammar checking was already old hat and English/Euro translation was making such headway I thought fluent Chinese/English translation was just a few years away. Now it's 2003, grammar checkers still only work if you write in prescribed style and I've yet to see something halfway decent in Chinese/English translation software although you still hear claims all the time for some overpriced product that's really almost there.
I think we'll see dramatic life extension long before we see decent computer essay graders. Decent trade as far as I'm concerned. As for translation, we can always teach more languages in school.
Yeah, I'm aware that there are two sides to everything, even --ugh, I hate to even write the prhase-- social sciences. My dear Ma majored in Linguistics at Berkeley in the 60s, so we've argued this for decades now.
I do get the point that both good things and bad things can come from the same origins. But I can't get over the emotions I have towards things that touch my personal life deeply. These academic institutions that call themselve the social sciences are the underpinnings of current penal system. This is not something that can be casually ignored by someone who has wittnessed lives destroyed, literally terminated, by the abuses of that system.
And if that's not bad enough, how about generative grammar! Jesus freakin' Christ. You have to have your head so far up your ass to even consider that as a useful topic and people are still, to this day, writing their theses on that crap. I know because I proof read them every week.
How about psycohtherapy? The social sciences have some serious problems and there have been so many years to address them, but I just don't see it. It's just business as usual.
I admit I have a chip on my shoulder here. I think I'm in good company historically on that. But I know there are good sides too. I can think of sex therapy, especially in the 70s, as having been an important and useful field of study, but if you look at what happened institutionally, that kind of research got almost totally ignored once the 80s rolled around. I think if you take the big picture on the institutional role of the social sciences it's bad news. It could be different, but my argument is that the fact is --it's not.
I would argue that both the social sciences and the hard sciences should be de-emphasized in favor of creative arts which, I believe, is the real source of technological and social advance.
Well, this is the first I've learned of it. My ultra cheap standard issue 1.5Mbps DSL connection seems to be going just fine. Got a few connections to the WayBack machine going and I just finished the rounds at a dozen web sites, EETimes, DisplaySearch, BioTech East, Digitimes, Google News and on and on. None of them had any problems, nice snappy connections. A few of those are in Taiwan so locally and internationally the network itself seems fine.
The only thing I couldn't get to was the feakin' story at the notoriously paranoid Taipei Times because apparently the greater threat to the local net than the mainland is slashdotting!
That part of it made me think of fair use. I know, one track mind here. But I think it's quite relevant.
When you present the metaphor of files and folders to a judge in a court of law, it tends to oversimplify what's really going on to the detriment of fair use. A completely different file system would provide a concrete example that complicates this metaphor and I think it could only help because the oversimplification of how data operates in a computer is a huge part of how bullshit anti-technology laws get passed and upheld by the courts.
But I was a bit put off by the part about cutting edge techniques from the linguistics community. I suppose I have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to linguistics. Linguistics, sociology and psychology are all rather unfortunate fields of study in my opinion. I think Adorno and Benjamin are with me on that point, but that's another story.