I didn't say all financial transactions are okay. I specifically referred to "victimless activities." So long as the government tries to prevent people from engaging in victimless activities, it is, in my opinion, entirely ethical for people to find ways around their laws. And if people use those methods of evasion to engage in actually unethical activities, then they're simply compounding their bad behavior.
The fact that this currency can be used for truly unethical activities -- just like hard cash -- is simply the price of freedom.
I find the GPL idea of charging for distribution naive. The Internet has made distribution into a trivial problem, with negligible costs. Have to change to some other method.
Sure. This is just like the situation with the RIAA/MPAA cartels: $20 for a physical CD made sense, when that was all that was available. With the Internet, expecting people to pay more than, say, 99 cents per song just leads people to piracy.
That said, people are more than welcome to try to charge obscene costs for distributing GPLed software. There's nothing illegal nor unethical about doing so. Fortunately, and unlike the situation with the *AA dinosaurs, reasonably resourceful people can in turn redistribute the GPLed software for a more reasonable cost, or for free, without fear of the wrath of the original distributor coming down on them.
By default, nowadays, all creative works are considered copyrighted. I believe this traces back to the Berne convention in 1976. Putting an "all rights reserved" notice on it is merely prudent, not required.
Of course you can sell GPL software. There's nothing differentiating charging a "distribution fee" from "selling" it. Ever go into a brick-and-mortar computer store and see all the Linux distributions available? Do you not think that RedHat, SuSe, Ubuntu, &c., are making money off of selling software that Linus Torvalds and the GNU Project authored?
I see Bitcoin as true "digital cash," as in, it can be used for any economic transaction one wishes to engage in, both without restriction and without traceability. No one can say "you can't use it for this or that," or "you can't use that much of it without filing special paperwork." And whereas Bitcoin transactions are open to the public, if you manage your IDs properly, no one will see that you made a particular purchase, and if you create new IDs for every transaction, no one will be able to trace the flow of money through the system.
If the Bitcoin developers do anything to remove any of these features, they're destroying the usefulness of the entire system. If the anonymity that Bitcoin were to offer is only good against private thieves and spies, and not the "legitimate" (heh) authorities, what use is it? It becomes nothing more than another PayPal or mainstream credit card company, but denominated in strange, volatile non-USD units and operated through a slow, CPU-intensive interface.
So long as governments define myriad victimless activities and mere attempts to keep their prying nose out of your private financial transaction as "crimes," I would say Bitcoin's "criminal uses" are a feature, not an obstacle.
This is true. My issue is with the FDA and the time (and expense) it takes to do this testing. If we had some sort of private certification firm, especially if there were multiple ones so they had to compete, this kind of testing would be a lot faster and cheaper. But instead we have a government monopoly, and therefore a massive, inefficient bureaucracy to deal with.
Some people bother refilling their propane grill's propane tanks, others just return the tank to a store for an already-filled one. Then the slower process of filling can be done behind the scenes while the customer isn't waiting.
Perhaps a similar paradigm is needed for battery-powered cars.
So your point is what, that there's nothing wrong with this because the FDA inflicts years-long delays on bringing other life-saving drugs to market, too? Yeah, I'm so much happier now. At least their insane regulations are fair and aren't singling this drug out.
And say hello to the other straw man right above your comment. Who said I supported compulsory inoculation?
I guess the FDA has to make sure the drug is truly safe, after all. At least all those people who will contract and die of AIDS over the next four years will die safely.
Last I checked, gasoline-powered vehicles don't have an "unlimited" range either. It may be an order of magnitude farther before you have to fill up a gas car than you have to recharge an electric, or somesuch, but that's still far from "unlimited."
What little headway they've made, convincing people to pay for their content rather than download it for free from places like The Pirate Bay, will be quickly reversed.
"Yaw" doesn't sound like you're trying to write out/ja/, but this word. (And if Slashdot actually supported the thirteen-year-old technology that is UTF-8, I could just paste the IPA.)
The government can infringe on people's right to be free of something (if one reads the Bill of Rights, one will see that the rights are not rights to things but rather rights to be free of things), but it cannot infringe on an inalienable right. By definition, an inalienable right is a right that cannot be infringed upon by the government.
You're confusing "cannot" and "should not."
The government infringes upon the rights of people they've convicted of crimes all the time, and practically every single one of their rights. From a constitutionalist perspective this isn't even wrong, since the Constitution even allows for it explicitly, in the Fifth Amendment: "No person shall be... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".
I'm not saying I agree with this, but it's well-established law and it's right from the Constitution itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Straw man.
I didn't say all financial transactions are okay. I specifically referred to "victimless activities." So long as the government tries to prevent people from engaging in victimless activities, it is, in my opinion, entirely ethical for people to find ways around their laws. And if people use those methods of evasion to engage in actually unethical activities, then they're simply compounding their bad behavior.
The fact that this currency can be used for truly unethical activities -- just like hard cash -- is simply the price of freedom.
Sure. This is just like the situation with the RIAA/MPAA cartels: $20 for a physical CD made sense, when that was all that was available. With the Internet, expecting people to pay more than, say, 99 cents per song just leads people to piracy.
That said, people are more than welcome to try to charge obscene costs for distributing GPLed software. There's nothing illegal nor unethical about doing so. Fortunately, and unlike the situation with the *AA dinosaurs, reasonably resourceful people can in turn redistribute the GPLed software for a more reasonable cost, or for free, without fear of the wrath of the original distributor coming down on them.
The ignorance in this post is stunning.
By default, nowadays, all creative works are considered copyrighted. I believe this traces back to the Berne convention in 1976. Putting an "all rights reserved" notice on it is merely prudent, not required.
Of course you can sell GPL software. There's nothing differentiating charging a "distribution fee" from "selling" it. Ever go into a brick-and-mortar computer store and see all the Linux distributions available? Do you not think that RedHat, SuSe, Ubuntu, &c., are making money off of selling software that Linus Torvalds and the GNU Project authored?
Thanks.
I see Bitcoin as true "digital cash," as in, it can be used for any economic transaction one wishes to engage in, both without restriction and without traceability. No one can say "you can't use it for this or that," or "you can't use that much of it without filing special paperwork." And whereas Bitcoin transactions are open to the public, if you manage your IDs properly, no one will see that you made a particular purchase, and if you create new IDs for every transaction, no one will be able to trace the flow of money through the system.
If the Bitcoin developers do anything to remove any of these features, they're destroying the usefulness of the entire system. If the anonymity that Bitcoin were to offer is only good against private thieves and spies, and not the "legitimate" (heh) authorities, what use is it? It becomes nothing more than another PayPal or mainstream credit card company, but denominated in strange, volatile non-USD units and operated through a slow, CPU-intensive interface.
So long as governments define myriad victimless activities and mere attempts to keep their prying nose out of your private financial transaction as "crimes," I would say Bitcoin's "criminal uses" are a feature, not an obstacle.
This is true. My issue is with the FDA and the time (and expense) it takes to do this testing. If we had some sort of private certification firm, especially if there were multiple ones so they had to compete, this kind of testing would be a lot faster and cheaper. But instead we have a government monopoly, and therefore a massive, inefficient bureaucracy to deal with.
Some people bother refilling their propane grill's propane tanks, others just return the tank to a store for an already-filled one. Then the slower process of filling can be done behind the scenes while the customer isn't waiting.
Perhaps a similar paradigm is needed for battery-powered cars.
If things like SOPA or "network neutrality" make it into law, your comment probably won't be a mere joke in a few years.
So your point is what, that there's nothing wrong with this because the FDA inflicts years-long delays on bringing other life-saving drugs to market, too? Yeah, I'm so much happier now. At least their insane regulations are fair and aren't singling this drug out.
And say hello to the other straw man right above your comment. Who said I supported compulsory inoculation?
Hi, Straw Man. How are you today?
Who said anything about wanting mass vaccinations? Let those who want to buy it, buy it.
This is a vaccine, not a cure: Meaning if anyone catches the disease in the next four years, it won't help them when it finally does come to market.
What does that have to do with the FDA?
Did you know that if the modern FDA regulations were around a century ago, both aspirin and penicillin would never have made available to the public?
Your point being? This is a vaccine, not a cure. It won't help anyone once they catch the disease.
I guess the FDA has to make sure the drug is truly safe, after all. At least all those people who will contract and die of AIDS over the next four years will die safely.
...can I just expect all the sites already bloated with slow, broken JavaScript to just increase said cruft by 20-30% to take advantage of this?
Expect the government to pass laws banning these devices... and exempting themselves from any such ban.
And this deserves to be modded up.
Last I checked, gasoline-powered vehicles don't have an "unlimited" range either. It may be an order of magnitude farther before you have to fill up a gas car than you have to recharge an electric, or somesuch, but that's still far from "unlimited."
What little headway they've made, convincing people to pay for their content rather than download it for free from places like The Pirate Bay, will be quickly reversed.
"Yaw" doesn't sound like you're trying to write out /ja/, but this word. (And if Slashdot actually supported the thirteen-year-old technology that is UTF-8, I could just paste the IPA.)
Siffy. Short for syphilis.
The monopolies that cable companies hold are granted by the government, not "natural" in any sense.
Or to pay the salary of the newest assistant deputy backup vice superintendent...
Probably just a lawsuit for negligence under one of the more broad and generic privacy laws?
You're confusing "cannot" and "should not."
The government infringes upon the rights of people they've convicted of crimes all the time, and practically every single one of their rights. From a constitutionalist perspective this isn't even wrong, since the Constitution even allows for it explicitly, in the Fifth Amendment: "No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".
I'm not saying I agree with this, but it's well-established law and it's right from the Constitution itself.