That's stupid. They don't need to use your email account to send the mail, they could use automated methods to break captchas on hotmail, yahoo mail or gmail and send through temporary accounts. Thus not having an email account configured does not in anyway guarantee that you're not sending spam. Alternatively, it would actually be pretty trivial to search for your ISP's mail server and see if you're allowed to send through it and try to send the email even if you don't have the account configured.
This isn't compromising ethics to accomplish a noble goal. The computer's already part of the botnet, disabling the botnet and alerting the users (to the best of your ability) is the ethical thing to do.
The problem is, there is no intrinsic value to an item, without people nothing has value. To the starving man food is worth more than gold, to the well fed man, gold is worth more, partly because it's easier to store than food.
Even in a pure barter system, the value of items will constantly fluctuate. Basic economics says the price of something is determined by demand and supply. The financial crisis is limiting the money supply, and thus effectively limiting the demand for goods. But that's really beside the point.
The point remains, the people who own the land want to make money off of it. The best use they've found is raising meat. Convince one of them to give up raising cattle, and the price of beef goes up, and then someone else figure they can make money doing that and the price goes back down.
Turn all of that land into low value agricultural crops and not only do the people owning it make less money, giving them an immediate incentive to go back to what they were doing before, you'd flood the markets with whatever they're growing driving the prices down, and encouraging everyone else growing the same crops to switch to something more profitable. Why? Because we don't need that much food.
Like it or not, money is a pretty awesome thing. It's an intermediate state of a barter transaction. I trade my labour for money, which I then carry around until I want to trade it for food. At it's worst, money is a distraction, but money doesn't value anything. Sure, they may express that value in terms of money. But it's not the money that could destroy our civilization, it's just us.
But shutting down beef production, and growing more tofu is just going to put both the people who raise beef and the people who make tofu out of business.
There's a lot of land that is already being used to grow trees. Lumber companies might be interested in that, but I don't think they make enough money to buy agricultural land and it turn it into tree farms.
The government hasn't indicated it's interesting in buying more land to turn into parks, or paying more people to maintain the parks and patrol them.
Biodiesel, as far as I understand it, is a fool's game where the inputs are usually bigger than the outputs.
Frankly, all of this stuff is possible right now, but it certainly seems like the best use that land can be put to is actually raising cattle, because that's the use that actually makes the money for the owners.
It's a plugin that blocks Javascript and Flash from running unless you ok them first. You can permit Javascript on a per source basis, permanently or only for this session, you can easily revoke permissions. If it blocks any Javascript from running, it puts a little yellow bar across the bottom of your browser when it blocks scripts, informing you of how many scripts were allowed/blocked, with an easy button to enable/disable those scripts. Flash will be blocked and not displayed at all, unless you click on the Flash applet to unblock it.
It's very handy for blocking those incredibly annoying flash ads that talk.
Your advisor was pretty much wrong. It's the users who are like bus drivers (think your typical office drone), the programmers are more like the mechanics. In that good programmers are better paid and you actually have to know what you're doing to keep the buses running.
Also, anyone can tinker with an engine, but being able to tinker doesn't make you a mechanic.
I'm sorry, but what you wrote is just profoundly ignorant.
You act like I'm making this stuff up, rather than it being the well known political rhetoric of libertarians, which if you were paying attention, is what I was talking about in the first place. You are not the topic of conversation here, bud, I suggest you get over yourself.
How is it a lie? How can a US resident chose not to pay taxes without being imprisoned?
Interesting question, it's a lot like "How can I eat my cake, and not have to pay for it?"
The key here is you CAN choose not to not be a resident of the U.S. Move someplace else, and don't come back and the U.S. government can't tax you. It's not cheap or easy, but it is the ultimate solution if your democracy doesn't want to run things the same way you want to run them.
I won't argue that you get a bad deal from the U.S. government, because I think you do. I'm not sure whether you're complaining that 54% of that pie is being spent on the military or 46% of it is not. In either case, the idealized libertarian society spends 100% of it's taxes on the military and police.
I'd like to say "nothing", but the whole "taken away by force" part is, frankly, a lie you tell yourself. It's like you can't understand that there's a difference between being a part of a democracy and a slave. Of course, if I think you don't understand the difference there, well, I'm not going to trust your judgment enough to take your advice. That whole "taxes are violence" line pretty much destroys any credibility the person using it had.
Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to pay less in taxes, it's the stupidity that many libertarians coat their desires in that tends to drive non-libertarians away.
And frankly, a large part of the U.S. government sucking comes from flaws in the U.S. system of government. Riders, earmarks, partisan election officials and gerrymandering to name a few big flaws.
I had the opposite reaction to Microsoft's "I'm a PC ad". It said to me that the people in charge at Microsoft didn't understand the Apple ads. I wonder if they tried to cross the Apple ads with the Discovery Network ads and got garbage.
The underlying metaphor of the Apple ads isn't that Mac users are cool and PC users are dorky. It's that PCs are business oriented machines and Macs are better at the hipster arty stuff.
The "slams" that they deliver to PCs tend to be good natured and not overly negative. I think that since Windows is the default OS for computers, Apple has to contrast the Mac OS with Windows in order for the ad to be effective.
Somehow I doubt that Slashdot is "one of the most polarising environments on the internet". In fact, I find that most of the time the moderation is reasonably fair and reflects the middle ground, you'll find highly rated comments reflecting just about about any legitimate viewpoint.
The people who tend to complain about moderation, tend to in fact by the people with extreme viewpoints who are upset when they are correctly modded down for their hyberbole or ranting. Pretty much every claim I've seen of "Slashdot group think" has been from someone who was simply wrong. Not merely voicing an unpopular opinion, but materially wrong.
Now sometimes people do get modded unfairly, but most of the time the system seems to work pretty well.
"I don't see where people started to get this idea that libertarianism is a synonym for greedy capitalism."
Oh that's easy, it's because the majority of visible self-proclaimed libertarians appear to poorly educated capitalist cheer leaders. In other words, most of the libertarians we see appear to be nothing more than greedy capitalists who are mostly for libertarianism because they'd pay less in taxes.
And I've gotten the distinct impression that most libertarians are opposed to unions in practice because they consider them a form of government, and therefore always evil.
Re:Hey, remember when Ender's Game was good?
on
Ender in Exile
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· Score: 1
You have no idea how true that is.
If you want a quick recap of the Mormon story, you might want to watch the South Park episode, All About the Mormons.
Re:Hey, remember when Ender's Game was good?
on
Ender in Exile
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· Score: 1
I got the impression, possibly wrongly, that Card is philosophical opposed to gay Mormons. I seem to remember him saying you can't be a good Mormon and gay, because Mormonism says being gay is wrong. Many people seem to conclude that Card is therefore saying that "being gay is wrong", but I think that's a simplification of the message.
I think the message might be a little more subtle: That if you can't fit your life into the way your religion says you should live, you should probably choose a different religion.
In particular, if you're gay and you can't be an openly gay Mormon, you, in theory, have two possible answers: Don't be gay or don't be Mormon. If you're actually bi-sexual, the first might be an option, if not, then you should choose the second. Of course, if there were more people leaving the Mormon church because of their anti-homosexual stance the church might actually have to reconsider their position.
Indeed, for something to be properly vigilantism, it must involve breaking the law to stop someone else from doing something "wrong".
The so called "vigilantes" aren't breaking the law, they merely informing the proper people that someone is engaging in highly illegal activities on their network.
People shouldn't mistake vigilance for vigilantism, they're not the same thing.
Huh? Who said anything about people dying? Doctors save people, not software. Software enables them to be more efficent... say processing billing. No one will die at the other hospital... it just won't make as much money, and won't be able to invest as much in better doctors and equipment.
How disingenuous. Better doctors and equipment won't save lives?
And that's my point; why would the hosiptal that made the software investment give it to any other hosiptal? What Stallman is doing is saying the hospital can't license the software to others, to help recoup some of the cost. They'd have to give it away. Which they won't, because they get nothing in return. But if they're allowed to own it and sell it as they please, they get their investment back quicker, enabling them to get better doctors and equipment.
Sorry, you're mistaken. RMS says you shouldn't distribute the software without the code and the freedom to use it. Note: it's shouldn't, not can't. And he says people should be able to sell the software, just that they shouldn't without giving people to freedom to use it however they want.
Of course, there's no longer term benefit in selling the exact same software under this model, but then again there isn't any in the real world either.
It's not a perfect model, after all, support for software could be very different. Microsoft's approach to support is all based on a pretty standard base where they prohibit modifications with click wrap contracts.
But they aren't; they pass LESS because MS can lease the SAME software to many companies. And there's no exclusive support either; MS doesn't care if you hire someone else to support their software.
Less than what?
And Microsoft is an exclusive supplier of some kinds of support for Windows, for example, security patches. Plus they have a large certification system that they run to generate Microsoft Certified support people. Plus they have a system whereby they certify partners for support. They haven't gone the monopoly support route for Windows, because there's really no feasible way they could.
Well, let's look at Starcraft 2. I suppose they've have to enforce copyrights and trademarks on the Zerg, Protoss and Terrans. You would be able to use the same units that they developed because they are particular artistic expressions, likewise the campaigns and missions would be covered by copyright. It's be mostly the engine underneath it all that is open source. That would mean that other companies could quickly produce knock offs once they've had a time to check out the engine and learn how to use it.
Of course, looking at this from "it was always open source" situation, Starcraft 2 would be built on one of a several competing open source RTS engines. It would probably be less of a blockbuster because there would be more games produced each of which is cheaper. Games would be driven more by the quality of the campaigns, the quality of the setting, and the quality of the support rather than engine quality. Which, kind of makes it seem like not a whole lot would change.
Now as far as the free distribution issue, we should all know that Starcraft 2 is already competing against the free version of Starcraft 2, unless you think it's somehow going to be magically immune to cracking and pirating.
Let's leave the hospital example out of this. Because I, personally, find your example to be abhorrent. Letting people die for the miscreant desire to prevent your competitors from earning profits? That's pretty damn sick right there.
There seems to be some confusion in your example, a company who commissions you to write software for them would have the right to decide whether to release the software in the first place. In effect there is no net difference between the two situations on a work-for-hire basis. In either case, the company owns the rights to the software, it's their decision whether to release it or not.
It's more of an issue in the case where someone writes the software and then seeks to lease (or license) it to their customers, so that the developers have an exclusive monopoly on support and development for it. Then it becomes an issue of why would any company want to enter a system where they will pay more for their software then they have to? Usually it's because the company doesn't know that it has alternative options, or, in some cases, because it doesn't trust the alternatives.
I refer you to Albert Einstein's quote, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind," and so religion at least can co-exist with science. You certainly don't have to accept either one!
You keep using those words, I do not think they mean what you think they mean. That was Einsteins summary of a talk he gave on the interplay between religion and science. Specifically, he said Religion aught to be concerned with how things should be, not with how they are.
More specifically, he said that Religion's job was to deal with issues relating to the emotions. He went on to say in the same speech:
"The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God,"
You also seem to have gotten Pascal's wager wrong. Pascal said assuming that there's a 50-50 chance that God exists and that if you do not believe in God you will go to hell for all eternity, it is safer to believe in God. Because if you're wrong to believe in God, you don't lose anything.
It doesn't look like you read the article you linked, particularly the section entitled criticisms of Pascal's wager. He doesn't account for the cost of believing in the wrong God. And his supposition is only to be applied in the case where you can not determine through reason whether a god exists or not.
Of course, if you can not determine that a God exists, you can not know how such a God would want you to live, so you can never actually follow through on the wager.
Actually, I thought that was specifically the point. If people hate using their computer, then you're doing something wrong.
It's about getting the job done, but Microsoft has consistently been the roadblock. Microsoft is the barrier to compatibility. They're the roadblock to having everything "just work". The Windows monopoly has to end before we can move forward again.
And once again, you ignore the big picture to focus on the details.
Nobody cares about the mistakes because most Americans wouldn't realize any had been made until they were pointed out. It's the same reason why Bush's endless gaffes didn't cost him the election in 2000 or 2004. Plus, we've had 8 years of "the president makes a stupid blunder" stories, and you wonder why they no longer have any traction with the public when made by the boring vice-presidential candidate?
Slashdot Mirror
That's stupid. They don't need to use your email account to send the mail, they could use automated methods to break captchas on hotmail, yahoo mail or gmail and send through temporary accounts. Thus not having an email account configured does not in anyway guarantee that you're not sending spam. Alternatively, it would actually be pretty trivial to search for your ISP's mail server and see if you're allowed to send through it and try to send the email even if you don't have the account configured.
Apparently, you don't actually know anything.
This isn't compromising ethics to accomplish a noble goal. The computer's already part of the botnet, disabling the botnet and alerting the users (to the best of your ability) is the ethical thing to do.
The problem is, there is no intrinsic value to an item, without people nothing has value. To the starving man food is worth more than gold, to the well fed man, gold is worth more, partly because it's easier to store than food.
Even in a pure barter system, the value of items will constantly fluctuate. Basic economics says the price of something is determined by demand and supply. The financial crisis is limiting the money supply, and thus effectively limiting the demand for goods. But that's really beside the point.
The point remains, the people who own the land want to make money off of it. The best use they've found is raising meat. Convince one of them to give up raising cattle, and the price of beef goes up, and then someone else figure they can make money doing that and the price goes back down.
Turn all of that land into low value agricultural crops and not only do the people owning it make less money, giving them an immediate incentive to go back to what they were doing before, you'd flood the markets with whatever they're growing driving the prices down, and encouraging everyone else growing the same crops to switch to something more profitable. Why? Because we don't need that much food.
Like it or not, money is a pretty awesome thing. It's an intermediate state of a barter transaction. I trade my labour for money, which I then carry around until I want to trade it for food. At it's worst, money is a distraction, but money doesn't value anything. Sure, they may express that value in terms of money. But it's not the money that could destroy our civilization, it's just us.
But shutting down beef production, and growing more tofu is just going to put both the people who raise beef and the people who make tofu out of business.
There's a lot of land that is already being used to grow trees. Lumber companies might be interested in that, but I don't think they make enough money to buy agricultural land and it turn it into tree farms.
The government hasn't indicated it's interesting in buying more land to turn into parks, or paying more people to maintain the parks and patrol them.
Biodiesel, as far as I understand it, is a fool's game where the inputs are usually bigger than the outputs.
Frankly, all of this stuff is possible right now, but it certainly seems like the best use that land can be put to is actually raising cattle, because that's the use that actually makes the money for the owners.
It's a plugin that blocks Javascript and Flash from running unless you ok them first. You can permit Javascript on a per source basis, permanently or only for this session, you can easily revoke permissions. If it blocks any Javascript from running, it puts a little yellow bar across the bottom of your browser when it blocks scripts, informing you of how many scripts were allowed/blocked, with an easy button to enable/disable those scripts. Flash will be blocked and not displayed at all, unless you click on the Flash applet to unblock it.
It's very handy for blocking those incredibly annoying flash ads that talk.
Your advisor was pretty much wrong. It's the users who are like bus drivers (think your typical office drone), the programmers are more like the mechanics. In that good programmers are better paid and you actually have to know what you're doing to keep the buses running.
Also, anyone can tinker with an engine, but being able to tinker doesn't make you a mechanic.
Did you bother to read what you quoted? Is "illegal and immoral" too subjective a term for you?
FYI: "Illegal and immoral" pretty much means "wrong". I don't see how any reasonable person could come to any other conclusion.
I'm sorry, but what you wrote is just profoundly ignorant.
You act like I'm making this stuff up, rather than it being the well known political rhetoric of libertarians, which if you were paying attention, is what I was talking about in the first place. You are not the topic of conversation here, bud, I suggest you get over yourself.
How is it a lie? How can a US resident chose not to pay taxes without being imprisoned?
Interesting question, it's a lot like "How can I eat my cake, and not have to pay for it?"
The key here is you CAN choose not to not be a resident of the U.S. Move someplace else, and don't come back and the U.S. government can't tax you. It's not cheap or easy, but it is the ultimate solution if your democracy doesn't want to run things the same way you want to run them.
I won't argue that you get a bad deal from the U.S. government, because I think you do. I'm not sure whether you're complaining that 54% of that pie is being spent on the military or 46% of it is not. In either case, the idealized libertarian society spends 100% of it's taxes on the military and police.
I'd like to say "nothing", but the whole "taken away by force" part is, frankly, a lie you tell yourself. It's like you can't understand that there's a difference between being a part of a democracy and a slave. Of course, if I think you don't understand the difference there, well, I'm not going to trust your judgment enough to take your advice. That whole "taxes are violence" line pretty much destroys any credibility the person using it had.
Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to pay less in taxes, it's the stupidity that many libertarians coat their desires in that tends to drive non-libertarians away.
And frankly, a large part of the U.S. government sucking comes from flaws in the U.S. system of government. Riders, earmarks, partisan election officials and gerrymandering to name a few big flaws.
I had the opposite reaction to Microsoft's "I'm a PC ad". It said to me that the people in charge at Microsoft didn't understand the Apple ads. I wonder if they tried to cross the Apple ads with the Discovery Network ads and got garbage.
The underlying metaphor of the Apple ads isn't that Mac users are cool and PC users are dorky. It's that PCs are business oriented machines and Macs are better at the hipster arty stuff.
The "slams" that they deliver to PCs tend to be good natured and not overly negative. I think that since Windows is the default OS for computers, Apple has to contrast the Mac OS with Windows in order for the ad to be effective.
Somehow I doubt that Slashdot is "one of the most polarising environments on the internet". In fact, I find that most of the time the moderation is reasonably fair and reflects the middle ground, you'll find highly rated comments reflecting just about about any legitimate viewpoint.
The people who tend to complain about moderation, tend to in fact by the people with extreme viewpoints who are upset when they are correctly modded down for their hyberbole or ranting. Pretty much every claim I've seen of "Slashdot group think" has been from someone who was simply wrong. Not merely voicing an unpopular opinion, but materially wrong.
Now sometimes people do get modded unfairly, but most of the time the system seems to work pretty well.
"I don't see where people started to get this idea that libertarianism is a synonym for greedy capitalism."
Oh that's easy, it's because the majority of visible self-proclaimed libertarians appear to poorly educated capitalist cheer leaders. In other words, most of the libertarians we see appear to be nothing more than greedy capitalists who are mostly for libertarianism because they'd pay less in taxes.
And I've gotten the distinct impression that most libertarians are opposed to unions in practice because they consider them a form of government, and therefore always evil.
You have no idea how true that is.
If you want a quick recap of the Mormon story, you might want to watch the South Park episode, All About the Mormons.
I got the impression, possibly wrongly, that Card is philosophical opposed to gay Mormons. I seem to remember him saying you can't be a good Mormon and gay, because Mormonism says being gay is wrong. Many people seem to conclude that Card is therefore saying that "being gay is wrong", but I think that's a simplification of the message.
I think the message might be a little more subtle: That if you can't fit your life into the way your religion says you should live, you should probably choose a different religion.
In particular, if you're gay and you can't be an openly gay Mormon, you, in theory, have two possible answers: Don't be gay or don't be Mormon. If you're actually bi-sexual, the first might be an option, if not, then you should choose the second. Of course, if there were more people leaving the Mormon church because of their anti-homosexual stance the church might actually have to reconsider their position.
Indeed, for something to be properly vigilantism, it must involve breaking the law to stop someone else from doing something "wrong".
The so called "vigilantes" aren't breaking the law, they merely informing the proper people that someone is engaging in highly illegal activities on their network.
People shouldn't mistake vigilance for vigilantism, they're not the same thing.
Huh? Who said anything about people dying? Doctors save people, not software. Software enables them to be more efficent... say processing billing. No one will die at the other hospital... it just won't make as much money, and won't be able to invest as much in better doctors and equipment.
How disingenuous. Better doctors and equipment won't save lives?
And that's my point; why would the hosiptal that made the software investment give it to any other hosiptal? What Stallman is doing is saying the hospital can't license the software to others, to help recoup some of the cost. They'd have to give it away. Which they won't, because they get nothing in return. But if they're allowed to own it and sell it as they please, they get their investment back quicker, enabling them to get better doctors and equipment.
Sorry, you're mistaken. RMS says you shouldn't distribute the software without the code and the freedom to use it. Note: it's shouldn't, not can't. And he says people should be able to sell the software, just that they shouldn't without giving people to freedom to use it however they want.
Of course, there's no longer term benefit in selling the exact same software under this model, but then again there isn't any in the real world either.
It's not a perfect model, after all, support for software could be very different. Microsoft's approach to support is all based on a pretty standard base where they prohibit modifications with click wrap contracts.
But they aren't; they pass LESS because MS can lease the SAME software to many companies. And there's no exclusive support either; MS doesn't care if you hire someone else to support their software.
Less than what?
And Microsoft is an exclusive supplier of some kinds of support for Windows, for example, security patches. Plus they have a large certification system that they run to generate Microsoft Certified support people. Plus they have a system whereby they certify partners for support. They haven't gone the monopoly support route for Windows, because there's really no feasible way they could.
In smaller markets it'd be easier to do so.
Not so, in his ideal world nobody wants to develop anything non-free.
Making it illegal would be the dystopian version of his utopia.
Well, let's look at Starcraft 2. I suppose they've have to enforce copyrights and trademarks on the Zerg, Protoss and Terrans. You would be able to use the same units that they developed because they are particular artistic expressions, likewise the campaigns and missions would be covered by copyright. It's be mostly the engine underneath it all that is open source. That would mean that other companies could quickly produce knock offs once they've had a time to check out the engine and learn how to use it.
Of course, looking at this from "it was always open source" situation, Starcraft 2 would be built on one of a several competing open source RTS engines. It would probably be less of a blockbuster because there would be more games produced each of which is cheaper. Games would be driven more by the quality of the campaigns, the quality of the setting, and the quality of the support rather than engine quality. Which, kind of makes it seem like not a whole lot would change.
Now as far as the free distribution issue, we should all know that Starcraft 2 is already competing against the free version of Starcraft 2, unless you think it's somehow going to be magically immune to cracking and pirating.
It's a well-known fact that anything Republicans dislike is communist, by definition.
Let's leave the hospital example out of this. Because I, personally, find your example to be abhorrent. Letting people die for the miscreant desire to prevent your competitors from earning profits? That's pretty damn sick right there.
There seems to be some confusion in your example, a company who commissions you to write software for them would have the right to decide whether to release the software in the first place. In effect there is no net difference between the two situations on a work-for-hire basis. In either case, the company owns the rights to the software, it's their decision whether to release it or not.
It's more of an issue in the case where someone writes the software and then seeks to lease (or license) it to their customers, so that the developers have an exclusive monopoly on support and development for it. Then it becomes an issue of why would any company want to enter a system where they will pay more for their software then they have to? Usually it's because the company doesn't know that it has alternative options, or, in some cases, because it doesn't trust the alternatives.
I refer you to Albert Einstein's quote, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind," and so religion at least can co-exist with science. You certainly don't have to accept either one!
You keep using those words, I do not think they mean what you think they mean. That was Einsteins summary of a talk he gave on the interplay between religion and science. Specifically, he said Religion aught to be concerned with how things should be, not with how they are.
More specifically, he said that Religion's job was to deal with issues relating to the emotions. He went on to say in the same speech:
"The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God,"
You also seem to have gotten Pascal's wager wrong. Pascal said assuming that there's a 50-50 chance that God exists and that if you do not believe in God you will go to hell for all eternity, it is safer to believe in God. Because if you're wrong to believe in God, you don't lose anything.
It doesn't look like you read the article you linked, particularly the section entitled criticisms of Pascal's wager. He doesn't account for the cost of believing in the wrong God. And his supposition is only to be applied in the case where you can not determine through reason whether a god exists or not.
Of course, if you can not determine that a God exists, you can not know how such a God would want you to live, so you can never actually follow through on the wager.
You realize, of course, that he might not care about converting anyone?
Seriously most atheists don't care what you believe, they just want people to stop breaking stuff because their religion says it's wrong.
Actually, I thought that was specifically the point. If people hate using their computer, then you're doing something wrong.
It's about getting the job done, but Microsoft has consistently been the roadblock. Microsoft is the barrier to compatibility. They're the roadblock to having everything "just work". The Windows monopoly has to end before we can move forward again.
And once again, you ignore the big picture to focus on the details.
Nobody cares about the mistakes because most Americans wouldn't realize any had been made until they were pointed out. It's the same reason why Bush's endless gaffes didn't cost him the election in 2000 or 2004. Plus, we've had 8 years of "the president makes a stupid blunder" stories, and you wonder why they no longer have any traction with the public when made by the boring vice-presidential candidate?