By the way, since pi is a supposedly infinite string of numbers, somewhere in there you will find the Bible.
Obviously, you make a good point here, although infinite and non-repeating are not the same things.
This does bring up an interesting question, though: what other forms could a scientifically grounded proof of Christianity (or Islam, or any other religion) take? Fulfilled "prophecy" doesn't cut the mustard, since it may be self-fulfilled.
It seems to me that the only way would be to find some sort of message encoded in one of the fundamental constants of the universe, but are there any other ways?
God and the very concept of absolute, objective truth are inseparable. If objective truth exists, it can only exist because it is embodied in the nature of God.
Science doesn't claim "objective truth", at least not in the philosophical sense you mean it. Scientific truths are never claimed to be anything more than theory informed by repeatability. I'm comfortable basing my worldview on that. In fact, I'm not only comfortable, I feel that it's the only secure ground to stand on.
I can't follow the rest of your argument because it's a non sequiter. You go from objective physical truth (which science doesn't claim, but does investigate) to objective moral and ethical truth (which science doesn't claim or investigate).
The whole of Christianity (or any other religion) cannot be proven...THAT idea is actually a tenet of Christianity (it wouldn't be a religion if that wasn't the case)
I think you're misunderstanding the role of faith in religion here. It's not a tenet of Christianity that it cannot be proven true -- if tomorrow we were to uncover the fact that the decimal expression of pi turns out to be an encryption of the Bible, for instance, Christianity would do just fine.
Most religions simply say that shared, physical proof (or scientific proof) that their religion is true isn't necessary to justify belief. They usually go on to say that this is because they have an internal form of subjective, nonphysical proof (spirituality) which justifies belief. Some religions believe that this spiritual truth trumps mere physical truth, while others (like the apologetics you mention) believe that the two should be in accord.
It's important to keep this in mind, I think, because when you're discussing science and the world with someone who believes that they have access to a separate, higher truth standard that trumps physical reality, you really need to probe how well they're aware of this. Some people aren't, and will find the idea odious upon reflection. Some people will find it right and comforting. Unless you can agree on a standard for truth, there's no point in arguing with someone.
Back when I still had a Windows box, I really enjoyed Vitrite. I used it on my network monitor so I could display the graph over my browser and still read websites. Just wanted to say thanks. Your work was appreciated.
The difference in this case is that Antarctica is close enough for us to send help if a disaster strikes and to set up regular supply lines...
This mentality is exactly why Mars ought to be colonized first. We can't count on having the political or economic will to support regular supply lines indefinitely. The political and economic climates on Earth change rapidly. What happens when the political winds have shifted, and the Moon isn't pulling its economic weight? We cut back. Maybe, like the Russians did with Mir, we end up abandoning our investments altogether, after we've damaged them through lack of continuous maintenance.
Colonizing Mars brings with it a different mindset and different possibilities. It brings with it the mindset of self-reliance instead of trade reliance, for example. And it brings with it the possibility that even when we fail to maintain our political will, Martian colonization can survive and even grow with minimal intervention from us for long periods of time.
We had the chance to colonize the Moon once before, and we blew it. We couldn't maintain the momentum. Let's not allow ourselves to make the same mistakes again.
And this is exactly why the Moon will probably be the destination for a permanent settlement and Mars will not.
One of the things the Moon has going against it is that it's in a militarily strategic position. Colonization of the Moon by any one nation (or its affiliated corporations) necessarily creates political ramifications back home on Earth. Mars isn't immune from these ramifications, but it's much less politically contentious, since its strategic position is essentially meaningless back here.
Why start with distant Mars, to re-learn the ropes?
The Moon and Mars are two vastly different environments, and the skills of colonizing these environments probably won't have much overlap.
Our goals on both will be very different. Going to the Moon won't teach us how build greenhouses from Martian elements, for instance, because natural light greenhouses aren't a part of Moon colonization. Looking for water ice hidden in deep crater shadows is a skill we'll try to perfect on the Moon, but on Mars we'll be drilling to find water. We'll learn different things from each environment, and we'll need different skills for each environment, so I think the argument that we should explore the Moon first so we'll be ready for Mars is based on a false premise. You could just as well say the reverse.
But don't get me wrong! There are lots of good reasons to colonize the Moon, too, including using it as a base for astronomy, or even better, for lunar solar power which can be beamed back to Earth via microwave.
If I thought we could do both simultaneously, I'd be for it. But my hunch, based on history, is that the winner takes all. And I don't think lunar exploration is politically financially sustainable. Since a Martian colony could reasonably be expected to support themselves, while a lunar colony can't, I've gotta support putting our energies into Mars first.
If anything, I think the argument works in reverse: if we have a sustained colony on Mars, we're going to be constantly being brought back into thinking about space and its possibilities, but if we have a lunar colony that goes bust, we'll be much more likely to ignore those possibilities, the same way we have been for the past 30-odd years.
While I'm all for anything that gets the human race back in space, the Moon shouldn't be our first destination. It's gotta be Mars.
The Moon is a harsh environment (some would say mistress), and colonies there will likely never be able to support themselves with native resources alone. Surface temps on the Moon are scorching, water is nearly impossible to find (despite the optimistic tone of the article), there's no atmosphere to speak of, there's a lack of important metals, and the nights are two weeks long. Lunar industry and colonists will probably always need help from Earth just to stay alive.
But not Mars. Mars has water, soil, sunlight, 25 hour days, and summer daytime temps that reach almost 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And did I mention the sunsets?
Our frenzy for space exploration, and our willingness to fund it, seems to come and go in waves. What happens when the current wave passes? Do we want a stranded lunar outpost which will rely on Earth for most of its supplies, or do we want a Martian community which can largely sustain itself when we start pinching pennies again? It's the difference between colonizing Virginia or Antarctica. We really ought to make our money count.
You get hits which include "boycott" and "Palladium". Some are about boycotting Microsoft in general. Some are about boycotting the RIAA. Some don't have to do with DRM at all. The fact that no page uses the words "boycott Palladium" in sequence says a lot about how much we've actually done so far.
A Google search on the phrase "boycott Palladium" returns no results. Not one. That's unbelievable.
We have a chance to defeat Palladium in the cradle if we, as consumers, simply refuse to upgrade to any Palladium chip. But we're not doing it. We're not even organizing an anti-Palladium movement. We're just sitting here smugly joking with each other about how much better we are than Microsoft.
A Google search on the phrase "boycott Palladium" reveals no results. What I'd like to see is a website where individuals could sign their names, pledging that they will not upgrade to or support any chip manufacturer which supports Palladium. The site should also include information on why Palladium and the DRM OS are ideas with terrible consequences not just for computing freedom, but for freedom in general.
For those who could give a rat's ass about freedom -- and there are quite a few -- the website should remind them that Palladium will lead to a world of pay-per-use content.
AMD's line about Palladium being "optional" is just a smokescreen. To defeat Palladium, we have to defeat it AS an option. Anyone wanna list their favorite candidate for the site I described above?
In the future, a Palladium-enabled DRM aware OS could stop you from installing this driver. Or even researching enough to write a similar one. With a DRM OS, Microsoft could specify that only cryptographically signed drivers from approved developers will be allowed on your system. The DRM future is one where you don't control your box. Everything you want to do will have to be approved and accepted. This is not your father's copy protection, and you treat it lightly at your peril.
First, you're missing the distinction between server and client. No one ever said you would have an open source DRM client, but an open source DRM server would work just fine.
I mostly agree with your second point, but with a caveat: I see this issue as a dichotomy between Strong DRM vs. Weak DRM. Strong DRM would be DRM which could rely on a secure hardware environment, like Palladium. Weak DRM would be what we have now.
I think weak DRM is ultimately doomed to failure for the reasons you mentioned in your post, and more. But Strong DRM is different. With Strong DRM, a DRM server could send you a key which you couldn't view. Strong DRM takes control of your box away from you. It's a fundamentally different strategy than has ever been used in copy protection before, and I think all bets are off as to whether it will be successful or not.
Brad Pitt as Beeblebrox? Feckin' brilliant! He'd be perfect, I think. Manic, vain, and cool. Now I'll be disappointed if he's not.
I can accept Tia Carrera as Trillian, although I was thinking perhaps Uma Thurman could pull it off well.
Slartibartfast? Gary Oldman is too hammy, methinks. I like the Ian McKellen choice someone else suggested, even though I recognize that's a bit too obvious.
Vogon Captain: Robbie Coltrane.
Marvin: Couldn't they get the same fellow who did Marvin for the radio show? It's just a voice, after all. I have a hard time imagining anyone besting his tone of strained ennui.
Voice of the Guide: John Cleese
Arthur: Hard choice. Rowan Atkinson isn't average enough. Hugh Grant is probably the best choice I've heard so far, but I don't think he could carry off Arthur's pointed sarcasm. I have to think some more.
(And we haven't even mentioned Deep Thought or Eddie yet.)
Almost by definition, there can be no such thing as an effective open source DRM server. To be effective, the software must honor DRM parameters embedded within, for example, a media file. If the source code is available under a license like the GPL, nothing stops a user from modifiying it to ignore those parameters, rendering it ineffective.
I think you're missing the difference between client and server here. Using an open source DRM server wouldn't enable clients to rewrite code on a server they don't have access to. There may be other arguments against the viability of an open source DRM server, but this isn't one of them.
As for the patent issues: Microsoft patented the idea of a DRM OS, not the idea of DRM in general. An open source DRM server could and almost certain would be made to interoperate with a DRM OS.
Either way, I think the invasion of DRM is only going to lead to bad ends.
Hey, you may have just hit on something there. Obviously, the closer you are to the business, the better the banner ad works, but I think this would have some appeal for businesses across town. Your banner ad could even offer directions to the store from the viewer's general location.
CrossOver Office is capable of running a range of Windows software, but CodeWeavers will support the following applications:
* Microsoft Office 97 and 2000
o Microsoft Word
o Microsoft Excel
o Microsoft Powerpoint
o Microsoft Outlook
o Microsoft Internet Explorer
* Microsoft Visio
* Lotus Notes
* Quicken
I haven't used it, but I have used their Crossover Plugin for running Quicktime and Windows Media Player on my Redhat box, and it's sweet. The Codeweavers guys even came to a local Linux users group last month. They're worth supporting.
OTOH... OpenOffice 1.0.1 is pretty damn impressive, too. There's really nothing you can do in Microsoft Office you can't do in OpenOffice, and OpenOffice is free. It's your call.
I think you state the problem pretty well. It's the last part of your second paragraph that resonates with me most:
I can also see corporations... doing enough to reassure the powerful that they will address our fears whilst shoveling DRM through, such that any efforts on our behalf [to keep DRM in the public interest] will be too late.
This is the most likely path, in my opinion. I think Palladium and other DRM-related technologies will be promoted as benign tools that simply enable us to enforce existing laws through code, but will ultimately, if they gain acceptance, begin to strip away rights we previously had, and will lead to something akin to a police state on our computers.
I'm not as paranoid as Stallman when it comes to this future, though. His ideas are interesting and illuminating, but too often they veer into scare tactics like this paragraph from the beginning of RTR:
"Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and wrong--something that only pirates would do."
There's a difference between sharing a single work and distributing multiple copies of that work. I doubt that there will ever come a time when you could go to prison just for letting someone view a work you paid for and did not copy.
But the spectre of abuse remains vivid. The idea of a future where your applications record everything you do with them and upload that information to various servers to determine whether your actions are legal or not is chilling to me. One can easily see how this technology could be abused by governments, corporations, even schools.
Microsoft is strong, but they're not invincible. Palladium will fail if we can decrease demand for it to the point where it becomes unprofitable, Likewise with strong DRM. Palladium and other DRM technologies may find a home in the top echelons of business -- my biggest concern is that we prevent them from colonizing the desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
By the way, since pi is a supposedly infinite string of numbers, somewhere in there you will find the Bible.
Obviously, you make a good point here, although infinite and non-repeating are not the same things.
This does bring up an interesting question, though: what other forms could a scientifically grounded proof of Christianity (or Islam, or any other religion) take? Fulfilled "prophecy" doesn't cut the mustard, since it may be self-fulfilled.
It seems to me that the only way would be to find some sort of message encoded in one of the fundamental constants of the universe, but are there any other ways?
God and the very concept of absolute, objective truth are inseparable. If objective truth exists, it can only exist because it is embodied in the nature of God.
Science doesn't claim "objective truth", at least not in the philosophical sense you mean it. Scientific truths are never claimed to be anything more than theory informed by repeatability. I'm comfortable basing my worldview on that. In fact, I'm not only comfortable, I feel that it's the only secure ground to stand on.
I can't follow the rest of your argument because it's a non sequiter. You go from objective physical truth (which science doesn't claim, but does investigate) to objective moral and ethical truth (which science doesn't claim or investigate).
The whole of Christianity (or any other religion) cannot be proven...THAT idea is actually a tenet of Christianity (it wouldn't be a religion if that wasn't the case)
I think you're misunderstanding the role of faith in religion here. It's not a tenet of Christianity that it cannot be proven true -- if tomorrow we were to uncover the fact that the decimal expression of pi turns out to be an encryption of the Bible, for instance, Christianity would do just fine.
Most religions simply say that shared, physical proof (or scientific proof) that their religion is true isn't necessary to justify belief. They usually go on to say that this is because they have an internal form of subjective, nonphysical proof (spirituality) which justifies belief. Some religions believe that this spiritual truth trumps mere physical truth, while others (like the apologetics you mention) believe that the two should be in accord.
It's important to keep this in mind, I think, because when you're discussing science and the world with someone who believes that they have access to a separate, higher truth standard that trumps physical reality, you really need to probe how well they're aware of this. Some people aren't, and will find the idea odious upon reflection. Some people will find it right and comforting. Unless you can agree on a standard for truth, there's no point in arguing with someone.
Back when I still had a Windows box, I really enjoyed Vitrite. I used it on my network monitor so I could display the graph over my browser and still read websites. Just wanted to say thanks. Your work was appreciated.
Would you rather use a browser called Fred? :)
The difference in this case is that Antarctica is close enough for us to send help if a disaster strikes and to set up regular supply lines...
This mentality is exactly why Mars ought to be colonized first. We can't count on having the political or economic will to support regular supply lines indefinitely. The political and economic climates on Earth change rapidly. What happens when the political winds have shifted, and the Moon isn't pulling its economic weight? We cut back. Maybe, like the Russians did with Mir, we end up abandoning our investments altogether, after we've damaged them through lack of continuous maintenance.
Colonizing Mars brings with it a different mindset and different possibilities. It brings with it the mindset of self-reliance instead of trade reliance, for example. And it brings with it the possibility that even when we fail to maintain our political will, Martian colonization can survive and even grow with minimal intervention from us for long periods of time.
We had the chance to colonize the Moon once before, and we blew it. We couldn't maintain the momentum. Let's not allow ourselves to make the same mistakes again.
And this is exactly why the Moon will probably be the destination for a permanent settlement and Mars will not.
One of the things the Moon has going against it is that it's in a militarily strategic position. Colonization of the Moon by any one nation (or its affiliated corporations) necessarily creates political ramifications back home on Earth. Mars isn't immune from these ramifications, but it's much less politically contentious, since its strategic position is essentially meaningless back here.
Why start with distant Mars, to re-learn the ropes?
The Moon and Mars are two vastly different environments, and the skills of colonizing these environments probably won't have much overlap.
Our goals on both will be very different. Going to the Moon won't teach us how build greenhouses from Martian elements, for instance, because natural light greenhouses aren't a part of Moon colonization. Looking for water ice hidden in deep crater shadows is a skill we'll try to perfect on the Moon, but on Mars we'll be drilling to find water. We'll learn different things from each environment, and we'll need different skills for each environment, so I think the argument that we should explore the Moon first so we'll be ready for Mars is based on a false premise. You could just as well say the reverse.
But don't get me wrong! There are lots of good reasons to colonize the Moon, too, including using it as a base for astronomy, or even better, for lunar solar power which can be beamed back to Earth via microwave.
If I thought we could do both simultaneously, I'd be for it. But my hunch, based on history, is that the winner takes all. And I don't think lunar exploration is politically financially sustainable. Since a Martian colony could reasonably be expected to support themselves, while a lunar colony can't, I've gotta support putting our energies into Mars first.
If anything, I think the argument works in reverse: if we have a sustained colony on Mars, we're going to be constantly being brought back into thinking about space and its possibilities, but if we have a lunar colony that goes bust, we'll be much more likely to ignore those possibilities, the same way we have been for the past 30-odd years.
While I'm all for anything that gets the human race back in space, the Moon shouldn't be our first destination. It's gotta be Mars.
The Moon is a harsh environment (some would say mistress), and colonies there will likely never be able to support themselves with native resources alone. Surface temps on the Moon are scorching, water is nearly impossible to find (despite the optimistic tone of the article), there's no atmosphere to speak of, there's a lack of important metals, and the nights are two weeks long. Lunar industry and colonists will probably always need help from Earth just to stay alive.
But not Mars. Mars has water, soil, sunlight, 25 hour days, and summer daytime temps that reach almost 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And did I mention the sunsets?
Our frenzy for space exploration, and our willingness to fund it, seems to come and go in waves. What happens when the current wave passes? Do we want a stranded lunar outpost which will rely on Earth for most of its supplies, or do we want a Martian community which can largely sustain itself when we start pinching pennies again? It's the difference between colonizing Virginia or Antarctica. We really ought to make our money count.
You get hits which include "boycott" and "Palladium". Some are about boycotting Microsoft in general. Some are about boycotting the RIAA. Some don't have to do with DRM at all. The fact that no page uses the words "boycott Palladium" in sequence says a lot about how much we've actually done so far.
Now Microsoft will be able to say what we already knew: "If it's good and it's Microsoft, it's gotta be Rare!"
A Google search on the phrase "boycott Palladium" returns no results. Not one. That's unbelievable.
We have a chance to defeat Palladium in the cradle if we, as consumers, simply refuse to upgrade to any Palladium chip. But we're not doing it. We're not even organizing an anti-Palladium movement. We're just sitting here smugly joking with each other about how much better we are than Microsoft.
Wake up, indeed.
your code is probably not too far off from the real code.
A Google search on the phrase "boycott Palladium" reveals no results. What I'd like to see is a website where individuals could sign their names, pledging that they will not upgrade to or support any chip manufacturer which supports Palladium. The site should also include information on why Palladium and the DRM OS are ideas with terrible consequences not just for computing freedom, but for freedom in general.
For those who could give a rat's ass about freedom -- and there are quite a few -- the website should remind them that Palladium will lead to a world of pay-per-use content.
AMD's line about Palladium being "optional" is just a smokescreen. To defeat Palladium, we have to defeat it AS an option. Anyone wanna list their favorite candidate for the site I described above?
I think you're missing something here.
In the future, a Palladium-enabled DRM aware OS could stop you from installing this driver. Or even researching enough to write a similar one. With a DRM OS, Microsoft could specify that only cryptographically signed drivers from approved developers will be allowed on your system. The DRM future is one where you don't control your box. Everything you want to do will have to be approved and accepted. This is not your father's copy protection, and you treat it lightly at your peril.
Douglas Adams seemed to like the idea.
Great idea, aside from the thorny legal issues, but who cares about those. :) If I had modpoints you'd be snacking on 'em now.
Couple of thoughts.
First, you're missing the distinction between server and client. No one ever said you would have an open source DRM client, but an open source DRM server would work just fine.
I mostly agree with your second point, but with a caveat: I see this issue as a dichotomy between Strong DRM vs. Weak DRM. Strong DRM would be DRM which could rely on a secure hardware environment, like Palladium. Weak DRM would be what we have now.
I think weak DRM is ultimately doomed to failure for the reasons you mentioned in your post, and more. But Strong DRM is different. With Strong DRM, a DRM server could send you a key which you couldn't view. Strong DRM takes control of your box away from you. It's a fundamentally different strategy than has ever been used in copy protection before, and I think all bets are off as to whether it will be successful or not.
Brad Pitt as Beeblebrox? Feckin' brilliant! He'd be perfect, I think. Manic, vain, and cool. Now I'll be disappointed if he's not.
I can accept Tia Carrera as Trillian, although I was thinking perhaps Uma Thurman could pull it off well.
Slartibartfast? Gary Oldman is too hammy, methinks. I like the Ian McKellen choice someone else suggested, even though I recognize that's a bit too obvious.
Vogon Captain: Robbie Coltrane.
Marvin: Couldn't they get the same fellow who did Marvin for the radio show? It's just a voice, after all. I have a hard time imagining anyone besting his tone of strained ennui.
Voice of the Guide: John Cleese
Arthur: Hard choice. Rowan Atkinson isn't average enough. Hugh Grant is probably the best choice I've heard so far, but I don't think he could carry off Arthur's pointed sarcasm. I have to think some more.
(And we haven't even mentioned Deep Thought or Eddie yet.)
Almost by definition, there can be no such thing as an effective open source DRM server. To be effective, the software must honor DRM parameters embedded within, for example, a media file. If the source code is available under a license like the GPL, nothing stops a user from modifiying it to ignore those parameters, rendering it ineffective.
I think you're missing the difference between client and server here. Using an open source DRM server wouldn't enable clients to rewrite code on a server they don't have access to. There may be other arguments against the viability of an open source DRM server, but this isn't one of them.
As for the patent issues: Microsoft patented the idea of a DRM OS, not the idea of DRM in general. An open source DRM server could and almost certain would be made to interoperate with a DRM OS.
Either way, I think the invasion of DRM is only going to lead to bad ends.
Now that you mention it, Jeff Goldblum would make a great Ford Prefect. Great casting call. But what about Arthur and the rest?
Hey, you may have just hit on something there. Obviously, the closer you are to the business, the better the banner ad works, but I think this would have some appeal for businesses across town. Your banner ad could even offer directions to the store from the viewer's general location.
for product placement in the in-game advertising of the metaversion of the Sims that the Sims play on their computers.
My head hurts now.
OTOH... OpenOffice 1.0.1 is pretty damn impressive, too. There's really nothing you can do in Microsoft Office you can't do in OpenOffice, and OpenOffice is free. It's your call.
I think you state the problem pretty well. It's the last part of your second paragraph that resonates with me most:
... doing enough to reassure the powerful that they will address our fears whilst shoveling DRM through, such that any efforts on our behalf [to keep DRM in the public interest] will be too late.
I can also see corporations
This is the most likely path, in my opinion. I think Palladium and other DRM-related technologies will be promoted as benign tools that simply enable us to enforce existing laws through code, but will ultimately, if they gain acceptance, begin to strip away rights we previously had, and will lead to something akin to a police state on our computers.
I'm not as paranoid as Stallman when it comes to this future, though. His ideas are interesting and illuminating, but too often they veer into scare tactics like this paragraph from the beginning of RTR:
"Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and wrong--something that only pirates would do."
There's a difference between sharing a single work and distributing multiple copies of that work. I doubt that there will ever come a time when you could go to prison just for letting someone view a work you paid for and did not copy.
But the spectre of abuse remains vivid. The idea of a future where your applications record everything you do with them and upload that information to various servers to determine whether your actions are legal or not is chilling to me. One can easily see how this technology could be abused by governments, corporations, even schools.
Microsoft is strong, but they're not invincible. Palladium will fail if we can decrease demand for it to the point where it becomes unprofitable, Likewise with strong DRM. Palladium and other DRM technologies may find a home in the top echelons of business -- my biggest concern is that we prevent them from colonizing the desktop.