"...Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, has decided that we should keep a copy of every book..." That's brilliant!
And if the idea gets off the ground, let's give it an official name, like the Library of Congress. Perhaps even a website, does anyone know if http://www.loc.gov/index.html is available?
That's the one where the entire hypothesis* was floated by a self-promoting narcissist failed politician hypocrite, not in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but as a mass-market faux-documentary film...you know, the way all 'serious' scientific ideas are presented?
*of "global warming"....this is before that was corrected to "climate change". I'm still wondering when the climate wasn't changing...?
And to your non-sequitur sig comment: if you define "Book of Science" as "the knowledge of the world as accepted fact today", yeah, there are a few religious leaders that have not only been threatened, but in fact killed for their statements. You might even have heard of one of them - Jesus?
It will "take time"? No need to be vague, I can calculate it at about 2 months.
I've proven this with a regularly-repeated experiment where solar inputs to the world system change (both positively and negatively, so we can check for hysteresis) and I can observe directly the rise and fall of systemic temperatures.
LOL, one of the 'precious' Apple cultists, working in their snobby stores (note the 'glass and steel' description, rather than the rather pedestrian 'brick & mortar' that other stores are made of), in the most precious, narcissistic city on the planet is complaining...and you're surprised that people are skeptical/amused?
Notice, the website for the Union doesn't even SAY anything. In total, it states: "Apple Retail Workers Union âoeAt Apple, our most important resource, our soul, is our people.â Our Time Has Come."
Wow, what a manifesto of injustice. I'm sure Eugene Debs and Cesar Chavez would be impressed.
The fact that he's not even a FULL TIME WORKER (and, in his words, "The core issues definitely involve compensation, pay, benefits") suggests he's simply a massively self-absorbed douche that wants primo pay, free lattes, and full health care for little or no work aside gently fondling Apple products for a couple of hours a day.
I sympathize with the guy, and was going to say that this will be an important case in turning back the overweening power of government, but will it?
The fact is, if he's in a state that REQUIRES the consent of both parties in a conversation to be recorded, and he didn't get the consent of both parties, it may be as simple as that.
I'm saying that the 2-party-consent law is BS, and that's the first thing that needs to be changed.
"The point is, Google was once pushing technology. And now, they are not, at least, in these very fields."
But that's ENTIRELY natural, thus the tenor of posts here, mostly "so?".
The fact is that what begins as fire-breathing, risk-taking revolutionary, with success and age, ends up being a staunch, reactionary defender of the status quo.
It's the same for Google as it was for the United States and even (in general terms) individuals.
To your point - I think the guy's comments smell more of former-employee carping than a reasoned engineering evaluation of Google's use of tech.
I believe the OP meant 'supposed' as in the implied "people supposed that....", not 'supposed to' as in "Your parents said you were supposed to study your English homework."
Stallman posits only 2 possibilities, but there are really 3: 1) Buy the ebook, and subject yourself to the relatively draconian and arbitrary 'ownership' limits granted by the ebook vendors 2) don't buy the ebook
Of course the other option is to 3) steal the ebook (and logically, strip it of DRM)
Granted, there is a significant question of morality here - is the author getting compensated, or are you simply stealing?
I believe that in any society, the wants of a people will be fulfilled. If they cannot be filled legally or at what the public deems a reasonable cost, a black market will develop. In this view, the "sins" - gambling, drugs, prostitution (and now apparently, reading ebooks cheaply) are absolutely endemic to a large enough group of people. Parochial attempts to ban them only raises the price in the black market, they never go away.
It's not irrelevant to note that by any measure, ebook sellers are pricing their books unreasonably. Take a popular title, the first Game of Thrones book: http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Song-Fire-Book/dp/0553386794/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1307543608&sr=8-2 Massmarket Paperback: $8.99 Kindle edition: $8.99 (Your link may vary, it's no secret that Amazon 'adjusts' prices based on your cookies and how much you've been "shopping".) Considering that after the author is paid and the book laid-out for publishing, replication and shipping (which are huge costs for the physical book) are nearly zero for the Kindle that's nonsense. (Go ahead and argue, it's been exhaustively and conclusively discussed @ http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?threshold=-1&mode=thread&commentsort=0&op=Change&sid=2047898 )
I still doubt that absurd pricing justifies stealing, except in the case of profiteering critical goods. But (in my view) it certainly weakens the argument that the seller is 'entitled' to the fruits of his labor, if he's charging $10 for an apple. That's capitalism - if he can get it, great. But if he's colluding to fix prices and prevent the free market from pricing goods fairly, then he loses any moral high ground at all.
But I'll offer this: my local library has ebooks for loan, which is INCREDIBLY convenient. It's a great service, saving me the hassle of physically GOING to the library and checking it out. However, they only offer it for the Nook and a few other readers - not the Kindle. I would have no hesitation to check out these books and strip them of their DRM in order to convert to kindle-readable if that's all I had. As long as I delete the book within the 21-day loaner window, I don't believe anything illegal has been done. However, I'm sure that according to law, it would have been.
Maybe for you. Maybe progress quest is fun, for me.
The point I find so interesting is - why do you CARE what I find fun?
Why do so many people get so literally angry about MMO's being like a Skinner Box. I know it is one, I'm paying my money to be entertained, I'm entertained, I get what I want for my $. Why do you care?
Er, correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the British missions to Lexington and Concord in fact *specifically* to seize supplies in those towns, in particular military supplies?
So I don't know what stupid edits were done 'reinterpreting' what he said on wiki - Paul Revere was most definitely just announcing their method of advance - but the POINT that he was announcing the approach of the British "to take away privately-owned guns" is entirely reasonable.
I don't think you're being skeptical, but too narrow-viewed.
Earth may have served as an optimal place for life to develop in some areas, and then evolve to tolerate/inhabit less-optimal environs.
That doesn't preclude the idea that the process took place one step earlier, either: that life getting to earth in the first place may have ALSO been a matter of it surviving inhospitable conditions until it reached a place where it could flourish.
In fact, it suggests that (with the sample size of 1, of course) that life probably is opportunistic generally, and wherever it finds a place to get a foothold, it will expand to every conceivable niche (and a few inconceivable ones). Considering the wealth of 'footholds' in the universe, I'd say that every extremophile discovered just broadens the likelihood that we're going to stumble on life out there. Whether we recognize it as such is another question.
Cogent point, but I think you simply skipped over one of the significant arguments.
"Prisons spend so much money and provide items such as health care, exercise facilities and food because those people are forced to be there. You can't really just offer lunch in prison"
Well, that's the point, isn't it? That prisoners are cared-for to a degree that even comes close to compare to that of our students is obscene.
Prison should not be a place where we care for the incarcerated as if they are disaster victims that happen to need a place to live....entertainment, education, vocational training, internet, libraries? Why? At what point do we stop this silly experiment in rehabilitation and just turn prisons back into punishment?
Even Minnesota's intensive and carefully-studied CIP program didn't change the rates of recidivism, merely extended the average time before the subject was again arrested.
I suggest that cinderblock cells with minimally-nutritious food, a medically-required minimum hours of outdoor time, and no other services would cost substantially less than $4/hour, the entirety of the savings could just go straight to education.
By that same standard, just about ANY entertainment is equally immoral. Go read a book - whups, the author MIGHT be telling you that story merely to hook you and get you to read his next book!
Seriously, you're 'discovering' the relationship between media, consumer, and producer that's existed since advertising was invented, but reached its zenith with free-broadcast TV: the programs are bait, to get your eyeballs on the screen, and your attention is being sold to the advertisers, the real customers in the transaction. When you say "there are too many commercials", that just means the bait is too small for the hook, and the fish are swimming away.
So for MMOs, they continue to entertain you with a carefully-metered trickle of rewards to keep you entertained? So what? If you're paying to be entertained, isn't that the point? I can drop $15 on a month of an MMO, and have hundreds of hours of fun, or I can spend $15 on a theater movie (and get 90 minutes of entertainment, and perhaps a pop or popcorn), or I can spend $15 on a pro sports ticket and get maybe 15 minutes of a game. Which is the best entertainment value?
For all the people complaining about being conditioned as a faux-excuse for their excessive gameplay: grow up, and either enjoy your hobby unashamedly, or (if you feel your focus on it is too excessive) just change your friggin' behavior.
I'd agree with you, unless you believe for some reason this is unique to the US?
Your comments seem to imply that this is the case?
1) The US established this for ourselves WELL before 1945, arguably as early as the War of 1812 which was our opportunistic grab at Canada, but likewise reiterated in the Indian Wars, the Spanish American war, etc etc etc. In this it really wasn't behaving any differently than any other 'Great Power' vis a vis any lesser opponent for at least the previous 200 years.
2) Insofar that WW2 left the US one of two surviving superpowers, we were of course more able than others to project our geopolitics at will. One might argue persuasively that as seemingly-freely as the US did so, the Soviets were even LESS hesitant to throw military power at any situation post 1945 that they felt like, including the occupation/absorption of the Baltic states, Berlin Blockade, the invasion of Hungary, Czechslovakia, Afghanistan, etc. The Soviets were probably even more likely to use proxies than the US (who also did so to some degree), supplied amply with Soviet weapons and cadre.
So I'm not sure what your position on this is, but while the US postwar policy may or not be described as 'evil', using the same yardstick to the only comparable other state would reveal the US as objectively the "lesser" evil of the two.
All the studies are inconclusive one way or another, but the bulk of studies seem to be against the idea that they are carcinogenic. Limited (I believe ONE) studies did show an increase in a lethal form of brain cancer, but no other studies supported this.
So they are probably not carcinogenic, but the bureaucrats are too testicularly-impaired to actually come out and say that, so they leave it at a "may be harmful" rating the same as a bunch of other meaninglessly-"dangerous" things like copper or being a carpenter.
1) I'm not sure that you can assert "Wikipedia" as sufficient casus belli. "Some guy somewhere (we're not sure who) said you attacked us, this means war!"
2) There are two levels to the article's question, both of which are directly relevant: - first, there's the question of 'what's worth war?' - a question that has been asked from the beginning of time, and for which there is no hard and fast answer, because it depends entirely on the context. The fact is that all countries leave this line vague, as a deterrent to any opponent ever coming close. Is shooting down another country's plane an act of war? What if they were flying close to your borders spying on you? How about axe-murdering some of your soldiers? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axe_murder_incident). None of these led to war, but can you imagine the repercussions if the US stated categorically that such actions posed no risk of war? - second, there is a significant risk of disinformation in real life, probably an order of magnitude greater in cyberops. The burning of the Reichstag is the first example that comes to mind, but history is littered with cat's paw, false flag, or other disinformation operations meant to convince one state that another is attacking it. If the Stuxnet virus contained comment code in Yiddish, or even "Copyright 2004(c) Israel Cyberwarfare Unit", many, many gullible people would take that as proof-positive that "the jews did it!", even though a sensible person would be dubious that the real culprit would be quite so stupid (unless, of course, it's a double-blind, but you can go a long way down that hallway if your tinfoil hat is planted firmly enough).
My point is that it's clear that a cyber attack could be an act of war. Stating so is only marginally useful as a way to give yourself some diplomatic flexibility if you detect such an attack. "Insisting on more clarity" is at a minimum silly, unreasonable, and wholly misunderstands the context of why such statements are made. At worst, it's just another disingenuous political attack.
"...ditch the nuclear power and finally invest some of the billions of moneys that the electric cooperations taking and come up with a sustainable and green energy source..."
So let me see, your solution is "switch off those nasty nuclear power plants, and then spend billions fishing around in our ass for an alternative".
Thank god people like you aren't in charge. It's really easy to coach the game from the cheap seats. The grandparent poster listed the REALITIES of the various power techs today. To replace current nuclear, you need an alternative now, not one you "hope" to find sometime in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
"...Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, has decided that we should keep a copy of every book..."
That's brilliant!
And if the idea gets off the ground, let's give it an official name, like the Library of Congress. Perhaps even a website, does anyone know if http://www.loc.gov/index.html is available?
You missed stage 1, conveniently.
That's the one where the entire hypothesis* was floated by a self-promoting narcissist failed politician hypocrite, not in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but as a mass-market faux-documentary film...you know, the way all 'serious' scientific ideas are presented?
*of "global warming"....this is before that was corrected to "climate change". I'm still wondering when the climate wasn't changing...?
And to your non-sequitur sig comment: if you define "Book of Science" as "the knowledge of the world as accepted fact today", yeah, there are a few religious leaders that have not only been threatened, but in fact killed for their statements. You might even have heard of one of them - Jesus?
" This is significant in that it allows the stealing of patient information on a worldwide scale, improving the ease of identity theft and crime"
A couple of minor corrections.
What's "NIMBY" in the Osage tongue?
Damnit, you out-smartassed me.
And I thought I was being so clever. :(
I guess Global Warming is just too complicated for me.
It will "take time"? No need to be vague, I can calculate it at about 2 months.
I've proven this with a regularly-repeated experiment where solar inputs to the world system change (both positively and negatively, so we can check for hysteresis) and I can observe directly the rise and fall of systemic temperatures.
I call my experiment "SPRING" and "FALL".
Next, a democratic majority of voters will elect to replace water with Brawndo.
http://brawndo.com/.
LOL, one of the 'precious' Apple cultists, working in their snobby stores (note the 'glass and steel' description, rather than the rather pedestrian 'brick & mortar' that other stores are made of), in the most precious, narcissistic city on the planet is complaining...and you're surprised that people are skeptical/amused?
Notice, the website for the Union doesn't even SAY anything. In total, it states:
"Apple Retail Workers Union
âoeAt Apple, our most important resource, our soul, is our people.â
Our Time Has Come."
Wow, what a manifesto of injustice. I'm sure Eugene Debs and Cesar Chavez would be impressed.
The fact that he's not even a FULL TIME WORKER (and, in his words, "The core issues definitely involve compensation, pay, benefits") suggests he's simply a massively self-absorbed douche that wants primo pay, free lattes, and full health care for little or no work aside gently fondling Apple products for a couple of hours a day.
Bwahahahaha
I sympathize with the guy, and was going to say that this will be an important case in turning back the overweening power of government, but will it?
The fact is, if he's in a state that REQUIRES the consent of both parties in a conversation to be recorded, and he didn't get the consent of both parties, it may be as simple as that.
I'm saying that the 2-party-consent law is BS, and that's the first thing that needs to be changed.
Nevertheless, I hope he wins.
"The point is, Google was once pushing technology. And now, they are not, at least, in these very fields."
But that's ENTIRELY natural, thus the tenor of posts here, mostly "so?".
The fact is that what begins as fire-breathing, risk-taking revolutionary, with success and age, ends up being a staunch, reactionary defender of the status quo.
It's the same for Google as it was for the United States and even (in general terms) individuals.
To your point - I think the guy's comments smell more of former-employee carping than a reasoned engineering evaluation of Google's use of tech.
I wouldn't be too optimistic.
Recall that there was neither a great deal of planning (apparently) nor forethought in their demolition of a satellite in LEO what, 2 summers ago?
So no big loss that I'm running xp.
Misunderstanding English 101:
I believe the OP meant 'supposed' as in the implied "people supposed that....", not 'supposed to' as in "Your parents said you were supposed to study your English homework."
Stallman posits only 2 possibilities, but there are really 3:
1) Buy the ebook, and subject yourself to the relatively draconian and arbitrary 'ownership' limits granted by the ebook vendors
2) don't buy the ebook
Of course the other option is to
3) steal the ebook (and logically, strip it of DRM)
Granted, there is a significant question of morality here - is the author getting compensated, or are you simply stealing?
I believe that in any society, the wants of a people will be fulfilled. If they cannot be filled legally or at what the public deems a reasonable cost, a black market will develop. In this view, the "sins" - gambling, drugs, prostitution (and now apparently, reading ebooks cheaply) are absolutely endemic to a large enough group of people. Parochial attempts to ban them only raises the price in the black market, they never go away.
It's not irrelevant to note that by any measure, ebook sellers are pricing their books unreasonably. Take a popular title, the first Game of Thrones book:
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Song-Fire-Book/dp/0553386794/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1307543608&sr=8-2
Massmarket Paperback: $8.99
Kindle edition: $8.99
(Your link may vary, it's no secret that Amazon 'adjusts' prices based on your cookies and how much you've been "shopping".)
Considering that after the author is paid and the book laid-out for publishing, replication and shipping (which are huge costs for the physical book) are nearly zero for the Kindle that's nonsense. (Go ahead and argue, it's been exhaustively and conclusively discussed @ http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?threshold=-1&mode=thread&commentsort=0&op=Change&sid=2047898 )
I still doubt that absurd pricing justifies stealing, except in the case of profiteering critical goods. But (in my view) it certainly weakens the argument that the seller is 'entitled' to the fruits of his labor, if he's charging $10 for an apple. That's capitalism - if he can get it, great. But if he's colluding to fix prices and prevent the free market from pricing goods fairly, then he loses any moral high ground at all.
But I'll offer this: my local library has ebooks for loan, which is INCREDIBLY convenient. It's a great service, saving me the hassle of physically GOING to the library and checking it out. However, they only offer it for the Nook and a few other readers - not the Kindle. I would have no hesitation to check out these books and strip them of their DRM in order to convert to kindle-readable if that's all I had. As long as I delete the book within the 21-day loaner window, I don't believe anything illegal has been done. However, I'm sure that according to law, it would have been.
Maybe for you.
Maybe progress quest is fun, for me.
The point I find so interesting is - why do you CARE what I find fun?
Why do so many people get so literally angry about MMO's being like a Skinner Box.
I know it is one, I'm paying my money to be entertained, I'm entertained, I get what I want for my $. Why do you care?
Er, correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the British missions to Lexington and Concord in fact *specifically* to seize supplies in those towns, in particular military supplies?
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/338392/Battles-of-Lexington-and-Concord
So I don't know what stupid edits were done 'reinterpreting' what he said on wiki - Paul Revere was most definitely just announcing their method of advance - but the POINT that he was announcing the approach of the British "to take away privately-owned guns" is entirely reasonable.
Millions of voices cried out in fear, and were suddenly silenced...
(in relief)
I don't think you're being skeptical, but too narrow-viewed.
Earth may have served as an optimal place for life to develop in some areas, and then evolve to tolerate/inhabit less-optimal environs.
That doesn't preclude the idea that the process took place one step earlier, either: that life getting to earth in the first place may have ALSO been a matter of it surviving inhospitable conditions until it reached a place where it could flourish.
In fact, it suggests that (with the sample size of 1, of course) that life probably is opportunistic generally, and wherever it finds a place to get a foothold, it will expand to every conceivable niche (and a few inconceivable ones). Considering the wealth of 'footholds' in the universe, I'd say that every extremophile discovered just broadens the likelihood that we're going to stumble on life out there. Whether we recognize it as such is another question.
Cogent point, but I think you simply skipped over one of the significant arguments.
"Prisons spend so much money and provide items such as health care, exercise facilities and food because those people are forced to be there. You can't really just offer lunch in prison"
Well, that's the point, isn't it? That prisoners are cared-for to a degree that even comes close to compare to that of our students is obscene.
Prison should not be a place where we care for the incarcerated as if they are disaster victims that happen to need a place to live....entertainment, education, vocational training, internet, libraries? Why? At what point do we stop this silly experiment in rehabilitation and just turn prisons back into punishment?
Even Minnesota's intensive and carefully-studied CIP program didn't change the rates of recidivism, merely extended the average time before the subject was again arrested.
I suggest that cinderblock cells with minimally-nutritious food, a medically-required minimum hours of outdoor time, and no other services would cost substantially less than $4/hour, the entirety of the savings could just go straight to education.
By that same standard, just about ANY entertainment is equally immoral. Go read a book - whups, the author MIGHT be telling you that story merely to hook you and get you to read his next book!
Seriously, you're 'discovering' the relationship between media, consumer, and producer that's existed since advertising was invented, but reached its zenith with free-broadcast TV: the programs are bait, to get your eyeballs on the screen, and your attention is being sold to the advertisers, the real customers in the transaction. When you say "there are too many commercials", that just means the bait is too small for the hook, and the fish are swimming away.
So for MMOs, they continue to entertain you with a carefully-metered trickle of rewards to keep you entertained? So what? If you're paying to be entertained, isn't that the point? I can drop $15 on a month of an MMO, and have hundreds of hours of fun, or I can spend $15 on a theater movie (and get 90 minutes of entertainment, and perhaps a pop or popcorn), or I can spend $15 on a pro sports ticket and get maybe 15 minutes of a game. Which is the best entertainment value?
For all the people complaining about being conditioned as a faux-excuse for their excessive gameplay: grow up, and either enjoy your hobby unashamedly, or (if you feel your focus on it is too excessive) just change your friggin' behavior.
I'd agree with you, unless you believe for some reason this is unique to the US?
Your comments seem to imply that this is the case?
1) The US established this for ourselves WELL before 1945, arguably as early as the War of 1812 which was our opportunistic grab at Canada, but likewise reiterated in the Indian Wars, the Spanish American war, etc etc etc. In this it really wasn't behaving any differently than any other 'Great Power' vis a vis any lesser opponent for at least the previous 200 years.
2) Insofar that WW2 left the US one of two surviving superpowers, we were of course more able than others to project our geopolitics at will. One might argue persuasively that as seemingly-freely as the US did so, the Soviets were even LESS hesitant to throw military power at any situation post 1945 that they felt like, including the occupation/absorption of the Baltic states, Berlin Blockade, the invasion of Hungary, Czechslovakia, Afghanistan, etc. The Soviets were probably even more likely to use proxies than the US (who also did so to some degree), supplied amply with Soviet weapons and cadre.
So I'm not sure what your position on this is, but while the US postwar policy may or not be described as 'evil', using the same yardstick to the only comparable other state would reveal the US as objectively the "lesser" evil of the two.
It also says it may NOT be carcinogenic.
All the studies are inconclusive one way or another, but the bulk of studies seem to be against the idea that they are carcinogenic. Limited (I believe ONE) studies did show an increase in a lethal form of brain cancer, but no other studies supported this.
So they are probably not carcinogenic, but the bureaucrats are too testicularly-impaired to actually come out and say that, so they leave it at a "may be harmful" rating the same as a bunch of other meaninglessly-"dangerous" things like copper or being a carpenter.
Sure, I have mame, but I'd love it if there were a website that had all these great games up for playing as flash/whatever.
1) I'm not sure that you can assert "Wikipedia" as sufficient casus belli. "Some guy somewhere (we're not sure who) said you attacked us, this means war!"
2) There are two levels to the article's question, both of which are directly relevant:
- first, there's the question of 'what's worth war?' - a question that has been asked from the beginning of time, and for which there is no hard and fast answer, because it depends entirely on the context. The fact is that all countries leave this line vague, as a deterrent to any opponent ever coming close. Is shooting down another country's plane an act of war? What if they were flying close to your borders spying on you? How about axe-murdering some of your soldiers? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axe_murder_incident). None of these led to war, but can you imagine the repercussions if the US stated categorically that such actions posed no risk of war?
- second, there is a significant risk of disinformation in real life, probably an order of magnitude greater in cyberops. The burning of the Reichstag is the first example that comes to mind, but history is littered with cat's paw, false flag, or other disinformation operations meant to convince one state that another is attacking it. If the Stuxnet virus contained comment code in Yiddish, or even "Copyright 2004(c) Israel Cyberwarfare Unit", many, many gullible people would take that as proof-positive that "the jews did it!", even though a sensible person would be dubious that the real culprit would be quite so stupid (unless, of course, it's a double-blind, but you can go a long way down that hallway if your tinfoil hat is planted firmly enough).
My point is that it's clear that a cyber attack could be an act of war. Stating so is only marginally useful as a way to give yourself some diplomatic flexibility if you detect such an attack. "Insisting on more clarity" is at a minimum silly, unreasonable, and wholly misunderstands the context of why such statements are made. At worst, it's just another disingenuous political attack.
Seriously, that's not an answer.
"...ditch the nuclear power and finally invest some of the billions of moneys that the electric cooperations taking and come up with a sustainable and green energy source..."
So let me see, your solution is "switch off those nasty nuclear power plants, and then spend billions fishing around in our ass for an alternative".
Thank god people like you aren't in charge. It's really easy to coach the game from the cheap seats. The grandparent poster listed the REALITIES of the various power techs today. To replace current nuclear, you need an alternative now, not one you "hope" to find sometime in the future.