Indeed... Besides such bizarre restrictions being a clear violation of "fair use" and fairness in general, it's just stupid. If they were good, they'd be releasing emulators and copies of dead/oudated games on the 'Net as a way of building brand recognition. If they were crafty, they might sell the emulation software and "classic" games as a way of co-opting this movement and deriving revenue from their old works.
Anyway, the best they can do is to drive it underground, where they can't touch it and where they've done PR damage so deep that people will deliberately pirate their games as sort of a boycott/counterpunch.
Well, that's kind of off-topic, but when has that stopped anyone?;)
I think the idea of bringing the Internet to countries with 4% literacy rates is sketchy at best. Electricity, water, roads, sufficient food supply & distribution of same, and universal public education in the 3 R's would all be a better start.
OTOH, the 'Net can be a valuable tool for revolutionaries, and a great way to exchange information under the noses of the oppressive & greed-headed regimes that tend to lead countries to third-worldness to begin with.
Anyway, I guess I think it couldn't hurt, it might help, but there are other things that might help more.
So in your opinion it would have been better if only Xerox could have been able to market Ethernet devices, laser printers and mice?
I'm not sure how you get that from what I'm saying... I simply asserted that Xerox frequently dropped the ball. I didn't say that that's the way it should be, or that it would have been better for the rest of us if things had happened some other way. It was simply an observation about Xerox's strange treatment of what is obviously an amazing asset.
True, true. OTOH, they might get picked up by another bumbler, or Microsoft/Intel/pick-yer-favorite-Borg. I'll be really interested to see how it goes, whether or not the PARC talent jumps ship or stays, and what they put out in the next 5 years.
I hope for their sake, of course, that it comes out just like you describe.;)
This is the logical conclusion of Xerox's long-standing trend of fumbling PARC-created technologies and letting someone else build multi-billion dollar companies from them. It was only a matter of time before this was extended to PARC itself.
Does this surprise anyone? Nobody ever wanted these filters, or thought they were a good idea - even the Christian Coalition opposed the rider on the appropriations bill - but a few nimrods in Congress wanted to provide the Democrats a Catch-22. The choice is supposed to be: Stand against protecting our children and take funding from libraries, or deny funding for the Departments of Education, Labor, etc. and take the blame for another government shutdown.
The worst of it is, the American populace (present company excepted) is probably ignorant enough to fall for it.
Your points are interesting and well-taken. I'll agree that self-controlled, self-replicating nanotechnology of human design is pretty far off.
I think another useful lesson to apply to the Gray Goo debate is the fact that there already exists a self-replicating, motile machine capable of surviving in diverse environments and feeding off a variety of chemicals: bacteria.
While I understand that they do have some limitations due to the materials involved (water, DNA), I'll bet we'll find that (barring the application of some new physical principle) nanomachines are limited in practice by some of the same problems of environmental suitability and resource procurement as bacteria, as well as functional limitations of how much processing power you can really put in a nanite. The Real Grey Goo would need so many features, I bet it would rapidly balloon past the millimeter scale...
Of course, that goes out the window if you nanites to mutate. That's a whole different ball of goo...
You're right. Without a critical mass of people with cheap and useful tools, Open Source (as a movement) certainly wouldn't happen.
OTOH, it also seems to me that the roots of open source had been around for quite some time (in the form of a somewhat less formalized hacker ethic), even when the tools of the trade were only available to a few. Then came minis, and micros, and open-architecture PC's, and BSD...
I'll bet that we'll probably see something similar happen with nanotech - at first, it'll be corporations and universities, but the knowledge will spread (mainly from the universities), the technology will get cheaper (maybe something like the 3D ice-printer mentioned in yesterday's article working on nanoscale and in polymers), and as more people can afford the gear, more people will start tinkering.
Thinking about applying open source principles now, though, is probably a Good Thing: It might get the early nanotech hackers thinking in that direction, and accelerate the growth of an open nanodesign culture far faster than it took for the open software culture to gestate.
Of course, cheap nanotech construction could be a bad thing - the lessons of ARMM loom large here. I suppose we'll see...
No, actually, that has nothing to do with the point I'm making, which is that outsider parties, even when they lose, bring up issues that the corporate puppets in the major parties would otherwise ignore. But, I'll respond anyway:
Yes, Perot drew votes from Bush, and caused Clinton to be elected. Yes, Clinton is a scumbag. But to call him the "progenitor" of the combination of likability and criminality in politicians is beyond ignormant: Perhaps you've heard of President Nixon. And here's another way to look at your 19% "point": Perot prevented four more years of selling arms to Iran, giving money to right-wing terrorists in Latin America, and shifting the tax burden to the poor while legislating corporate welfare. Best of all, if anything ever happened to Papa Bush, Perot prevented President Quayle.
Or are you one of those who believes everything bad about the other party's guy and nothing bad about your own party's guy?
As for your "point" that the cabinet is such a big deal, yes, they're influential. But they don't sign bills, they don't sign treaties, and none of them is Commander-in-Chief. There is still one and only one desk at which the buck stops.
From what you wrote, it's tough to precisely discern what your problem is with third-party candidates, except that you think they're into group hugs. Where you get that idea is unclear - Jesse Ventura could probably hug your spine into two pieces.
And finally, I'll do whatever I damn well please with my vote, and that includes wasting it.
This is yet another repeat story... And it's already been beaten to death by myself and others.
All bitching about repeat stories aside, though, it is interesting to note that the Christian Coalition and other right-wing pressure groups actually oppose this bill. Nobody wants this - the nimrods who sponsored this rider want it vetoed so they can blame Clinton (and by extension, Gore) for a government shutdown.
It will probably have minimal impact on the election, though, and this piece of shit won't survive ten minutes of court review. So in the end, it probably won't mean much, but it really chaps my ass that the people who are supposed to be representing my interests have nothing better to do.
Anyone interested in going in together on an island and seceding, drop me a line.
Well, then, his people can call my people, and our lawyers can do lunch.;)
I suppose I could contest that on the grounds that my mention of N*****e P*****n and M*******t are in my sig, and not in the comment itself. It's all in the details...
That is approximately the most anti-democratic thing I've read on Slasdot. Last I heard, democracy was not about picking the scumbag most likely to win and then voting for him, but about picking a candidate who suits your beliefs, and in the absence of that, running for office oneself.
As for your assertion that a third-party (or fourth-party, or nth-party) vote is wasted, that's provably wrong. Do you think the two major parties would have made balancing the budget a priority if Ross Perot hadn't run on that platform and pulled in 19% of the popular vote? Do you think Gore would be harping on questions of economic justice if he didn't have to fend off Nader? You don't think Bush is losing votes to out-of-the-closet cultural conservatives like Phillips and Buchanan for his softness on cultural issues during the post-primary campaign?
Using a vote as a protest is effective - and if people don't use their votes to speak, none of us will ever hear anything but what's told to us by the two major parties to whom you've caved in.
A better, more lucid, more just, and certainly less boring plan than anything I heard from Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Smart last night. Slashdot Cruiser has my vote.
Well, maybe that's what the artist was going after: The effects of media saturation on our view of history. Maybe this is the confirmation of the idea that not just media violence, but media filtering in general engenders detachment from (or at least different associations with) things that happen in the real world. If one accepts the hypothesis that the developing brain (and all our brains are developing, I'm not restricting this to kids) develops its habits of subjective perception based on sensory input without regard to whether that input represents a real thing happening or a depiction of a thing happening, it becomes a bit clearer. And I'm not talking about some facile argument that kids who play violent games shoot people - I'm talking about deeper structures, things like image processing and semantic assignment.
That was either a potent and cogent statement on the way the post-TV generation views reality - that is, that they view it as being no different from a video game, or at least that they view it through the filters developed during media consumption - or it was utter foolishness. I'm still deciding.
This is easily the most lucid thing I've seen written re: this article, including anything I've said. Wish I could mod it up.
I also wish people would learn the lesson you seem to take to heart so vigorously: There is no tamper-proof hardware, and technical fixes to legal problems rarely stick.
Admittedly, I was hostile, but I don't believe that I was unreasonable. There are enough corporate interests who really would like to make taking something apart a crime that when I see what looks like a journalist supporting that view, I feel the need to speak out, and in strong terms. This is an issue that touches on freedom of speech (especially as it applies to academic research), consumer protection, and the vitality of the engineering professions - it's way too important to let it slide.
Anyway, as it stands, his beliefs on the matter didn't match his words, and since his clarification, he and I have had a pleasant exchange about it. Also, to be fair, I posted that excerpt from his email to show his side of the story, and retracted much of what I said in the original letter - I am now willing to give this man the benefit of the doubt.
Yes, but you're missing the important point: The act of selling somebody else's design or other intellectual property is theft. The act of taking someone else's device apart to understand how it works is curiosity. The two are different. In one case, there is profit from someone else's (stolen) labor. In the other, there's no harm and no foul.
In the specific case you bring up, if Mackie had truly done something original and protected it under internationally-recognized IP laws, and Berringer did use protected technology in their board, then Mackie should prosecute the criminal actions of Berringer. Outlawing the act of taking something apart would not have prevented Berringer's actions here, as I see it.
Brian Dipert actually just wrote me back, and sounded very reasonable about the matter. This is an excerpt from his reply to my email (which I trust he won't mind my using):
Thanks for writing, Brad. Although I admit that I didn't explicitly state
this, what I meant was reverse-engineering with intent to illegally re-use
IP protected by copyright and/or patent. I even mention legal reverse
engineering when I brought up Integrated Circuit Engineering....
Having this in my hands, I'm now a bit more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, though I would like to see him post a clarification on the site.
This may or may not be of interest to you. I just emailed this letter to the author of the article in question:
This letter is in response to your article "Cunning Circuits Confound Crooks" on ednmag.com, and specifically to your absurd and ignorant characterization of reverse engineering as a "damaging form of theft". Besides being a slanted, pejorative characterization, your line of thinking ignores numerous examples of how reverse engineering has advanced the computer, electronics, automotive, and other fields.
To clarify, I don't believe that duplicating someone else's intellectual property and selling it for profit is ethical - that would certainly fall under a sane definition of "theft". However, the simple act of taking something apart to figure out how it works is NOT a crime - in fact, this one act has probably advanced the breadth of human knowledge more than any other since the invention of tools.
Also, I certainly don't mean to say that a company doesn't have the right to obfuscate their designs as much as they'd care to. I don't believe there's as much to be gained from it as you article suggests, though - technical solutions to what are fundamentally legal problems rarely work as well as planned, as DeCSS and SDMI show. But that, I suppose, could be called a matter of opinion.
Unless I hear that there's been some retraction or modification of this extremist stance about reverse engineering (which sounds oddly like the party line of, say, a big-league bully like Sony), I can only conclude that neither you nor EDN represent unbiased sources of information.
Sincerely,
- Brad Heintz
I urge all of you to write this industry mouthpiece and tell him where you stand, too.
And by the way, this might actually belong under the "Censorship" rather than the "Hardware" category - because what else do you call banning reverse engineering?
I wish I could mod this post up - it highlights the real problem the original poster should have been focusing on, which is not the research itself (which seems terribly interesting, with many potential applications). The problem is the crappy science reporting at discover.com (which has never exactly been a bastion of critical thinking or good journalism), and a secondary issue might be the editorial review process at Slashdot that lets these awful articles make it into the queue.
Perhaps a dedicated science editor at/. is in order? (Especially since discover.com probably won't bother with one.)
I hadn't had my coffee when I wrote that, and I wasn't nearly as coherent as I meant to be. To clarify: If I saw interest, I might actually help coordinate an effort to write up a choice few of these faux patents, submit them to the USPTO, and tell it to the world if any of them get accepted.
Anyone similarly inclined may post here or contact me through my website.
I think I'm going to have to second that motion about actually writing up and submitting some of the patents that were entered. If any were actually taken - and if we throw enough mud at the wall, some will stick - it could, perhaps, be parlayed into some actual media exposure and become a great bludgeon on behalf of patent law reform.
Does anyone else think this might be a neat way to raise awareness of the issue?
Well, I don't know that I'd throw the "C" word in - that's just begging for flames - but I know that I hear Green party people talk a lot about "income redistribution" and whatnot. They use a lot of codewords for taking my money and giving it to other people. Before the flames come, allow me to clarify: I approve of enforcing equal opportunity (which doesn't yet exist in this country), both educational and economic, and will happily pay reasonable taxes to provide that. I disapprove of enforcing equal outcome through taxation.
Communist or not, he still favors a lot more government activity in my life than I'd care for.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyway, the best they can do is to drive it underground, where they can't touch it and where they've done PR damage so deep that people will deliberately pirate their games as sort of a boycott/counterpunch.
OK. That's my US$2e-2. I'll shut up now.
OK,
- B
I think the idea of bringing the Internet to countries with 4% literacy rates is sketchy at best. Electricity, water, roads, sufficient food supply & distribution of same, and universal public education in the 3 R's would all be a better start.
OTOH, the 'Net can be a valuable tool for revolutionaries, and a great way to exchange information under the noses of the oppressive & greed-headed regimes that tend to lead countries to third-worldness to begin with.
Anyway, I guess I think it couldn't hurt, it might help, but there are other things that might help more.
OK,
- B
I'm not sure how you get that from what I'm saying... I simply asserted that Xerox frequently dropped the ball. I didn't say that that's the way it should be, or that it would have been better for the rest of us if things had happened some other way. It was simply an observation about Xerox's strange treatment of what is obviously an amazing asset.
Read carefully before you put words in my mouth.
OK,
- B
I hope for their sake, of course, that it comes out just like you describe. ;)
OK,
- B
OK,
- B
The worst of it is, the American populace (present company excepted) is probably ignorant enough to fall for it.
OK,
- B
I think another useful lesson to apply to the Gray Goo debate is the fact that there already exists a self-replicating, motile machine capable of surviving in diverse environments and feeding off a variety of chemicals: bacteria.
While I understand that they do have some limitations due to the materials involved (water, DNA), I'll bet we'll find that (barring the application of some new physical principle) nanomachines are limited in practice by some of the same problems of environmental suitability and resource procurement as bacteria, as well as functional limitations of how much processing power you can really put in a nanite. The Real Grey Goo would need so many features, I bet it would rapidly balloon past the millimeter scale...
Of course, that goes out the window if you nanites to mutate. That's a whole different ball of goo...
OK,
- B
OTOH, it also seems to me that the roots of open source had been around for quite some time (in the form of a somewhat less formalized hacker ethic), even when the tools of the trade were only available to a few. Then came minis, and micros, and open-architecture PC's, and BSD...
I'll bet that we'll probably see something similar happen with nanotech - at first, it'll be corporations and universities, but the knowledge will spread (mainly from the universities), the technology will get cheaper (maybe something like the 3D ice-printer mentioned in yesterday's article working on nanoscale and in polymers), and as more people can afford the gear, more people will start tinkering.
Thinking about applying open source principles now, though, is probably a Good Thing: It might get the early nanotech hackers thinking in that direction, and accelerate the growth of an open nanodesign culture far faster than it took for the open software culture to gestate.
Of course, cheap nanotech construction could be a bad thing - the lessons of ARMM loom large here. I suppose we'll see...
OK,
- B
Yes, Perot drew votes from Bush, and caused Clinton to be elected. Yes, Clinton is a scumbag. But to call him the "progenitor" of the combination of likability and criminality in politicians is beyond ignormant: Perhaps you've heard of President Nixon. And here's another way to look at your 19% "point": Perot prevented four more years of selling arms to Iran, giving money to right-wing terrorists in Latin America, and shifting the tax burden to the poor while legislating corporate welfare. Best of all, if anything ever happened to Papa Bush, Perot prevented President Quayle.
Or are you one of those who believes everything bad about the other party's guy and nothing bad about your own party's guy?
As for your "point" that the cabinet is such a big deal, yes, they're influential. But they don't sign bills, they don't sign treaties, and none of them is Commander-in-Chief. There is still one and only one desk at which the buck stops.
From what you wrote, it's tough to precisely discern what your problem is with third-party candidates, except that you think they're into group hugs. Where you get that idea is unclear - Jesse Ventura could probably hug your spine into two pieces.
And finally, I'll do whatever I damn well please with my vote, and that includes wasting it.
OK,
- B
All bitching about repeat stories aside, though, it is interesting to note that the Christian Coalition and other right-wing pressure groups actually oppose this bill. Nobody wants this - the nimrods who sponsored this rider want it vetoed so they can blame Clinton (and by extension, Gore) for a government shutdown.
It will probably have minimal impact on the election, though, and this piece of shit won't survive ten minutes of court review. So in the end, it probably won't mean much, but it really chaps my ass that the people who are supposed to be representing my interests have nothing better to do.
Anyone interested in going in together on an island and seceding, drop me a line.
OK,
- B
I suppose I could contest that on the grounds that my mention of N*****e P*****n and M*******t are in my sig, and not in the comment itself. It's all in the details...
OK,
- B
As for your assertion that a third-party (or fourth-party, or nth-party) vote is wasted, that's provably wrong. Do you think the two major parties would have made balancing the budget a priority if Ross Perot hadn't run on that platform and pulled in 19% of the popular vote? Do you think Gore would be harping on questions of economic justice if he didn't have to fend off Nader? You don't think Bush is losing votes to out-of-the-closet cultural conservatives like Phillips and Buchanan for his softness on cultural issues during the post-primary campaign?
Using a vote as a protest is effective - and if people don't use their votes to speak, none of us will ever hear anything but what's told to us by the two major parties to whom you've caved in.
OK,
- B
How does one get an invite to the bitchin' rave?
OK,
- B
Anyone else have thoughts along these lines?
OK,
- B
You are in a convertible in Dallas.
You see a man in a pinstriped suit on the Grassy Knoll.
Your car slows down for no apparent reason.
OK,
- B
OK,
- B
I also wish people would learn the lesson you seem to take to heart so vigorously: There is no tamper-proof hardware, and technical fixes to legal problems rarely stick.
OK,
- B
Anyway, as it stands, his beliefs on the matter didn't match his words, and since his clarification, he and I have had a pleasant exchange about it. Also, to be fair, I posted that excerpt from his email to show his side of the story, and retracted much of what I said in the original letter - I am now willing to give this man the benefit of the doubt.
OK,
- B
In the specific case you bring up, if Mackie had truly done something original and protected it under internationally-recognized IP laws, and Berringer did use protected technology in their board, then Mackie should prosecute the criminal actions of Berringer. Outlawing the act of taking something apart would not have prevented Berringer's actions here, as I see it.
OK,
- B
Having this in my hands, I'm now a bit more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, though I would like to see him post a clarification on the site.
OK,
- B
I urge all of you to write this industry mouthpiece and tell him where you stand, too.
And by the way, this might actually belong under the "Censorship" rather than the "Hardware" category - because what else do you call banning reverse engineering?
OK,
- B
Perhaps a dedicated science editor at /. is in order? (Especially since discover.com probably won't bother with one.)
OK,
- B
Anyone similarly inclined may post here or contact me through my website.
OK,
- B
Does anyone else think this might be a neat way to raise awareness of the issue?
OK,
- B
Communist or not, he still favors a lot more government activity in my life than I'd care for.
OK,
- B