Hey, I completely agree with you. I also like to have apps that will work when our RoadRunner line goes down (an inevitability) and we're flying blind with 20 people on dialup.
Uh, you can have any job and use any language and still be a good coder. Or a bad one. It's all about the care you take with the program. I've written friggin' DOS batch files that were beautiful and flexible yet subtle. And I've written C# that was completely unorganized and only ran in a small range of circumstances.
True. But evil is subjective. I consider Apple's DRM to be a good thing -- because it gives the labels the peace of mind they apparently need to open up their music sphincters and let me get cheaply priced tunes while giving me enough leeway to do whatever I want with it.
Sure, I'd prefer unencrypted 320 kbit AAC files...but this is not Mars, it's Earth and big corporations are still scared that digital media will kill them off. Give it another three years and maybe we'll see that sphincter open a little wider.
Seriously. A good layer of reflective insulation in your attic should decrease the effect significantly by reflecting radio waves YOU send from Wireless G back into the house and radar waves back into the sky.
Well, the improvement is more than just speed...it's speed at a distance. I only get 1 mb/s on my porch with G...if N can bump that up to 4 mb/s, i'll be a happy camper.
Because then three more would step into his shoes. Besides, do you want to manage a guy who knowingly breaks the law whenever he wishes and posts about it online?
My question is, why hasn't Johansen been offered a multi-million dollar book deal considering how much egg he's left on the faces of security developers?
Well, sure. What do you expect when we have a guy claiming not only that one language is better than another but also that it is better because the others because the users aren't greedy?I wonder how else we can pad programmer's egos based on completely subjective hypothesis on language choice?
Perl users have more dense social lives.
Ruby users have big, full beards chicks love to run their hands through.
VB users have sensible shoes and drive Toyotas.
C++ users enjoy a good mystery now and then.
PHP users probably own one or more Dremel multitools.
Javascripters are full of little trivia snippets and are great fun at parties.
Cold Fusion users are kind of quiet but have very deep thoughts.
SQL programmers have annoying laughs but are otherwise okay guys
Oh, and C# users have bigger dicks. But that can be proven empirically.
The other way to look at it is that this could be a great boon for anybody who can figure out a way to charge a fair price for sensible customer service.
Think about it: a $1 per minute 900 number manned by people good at communicating (not necessarily techies) who can easily explain what error messages mean and how programs work. Or a drop-in "tech class for dummies."
It's not that people won't pay to get something fixed. It's that they don't want to pay what they perceive as a lot to be talked down to.
Incidentally, if you're the "tech friend," make sure you let people know that you're on the clock when they bug you to fix their PCs.
Re:basic... very basic.
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You've Got PC
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Yeah, but to put together a commercial computer -- meaning you can't use used parts, as there's no steady supply, and you need to use parts that will be in production for at least the next year for swapping out broken stuff -- it would cost the same to use those stats as to lower them.
I hate to break it to you, they existed long before America.
Yeah, no shit. People will create without copyright protection. Copyright protection is there so they can make money off what they create. And arguing whether it's valid or not because people would create, anyway, is moot. Copyright makes the environment better for content creators, as it gives them power over those with simply better resources. It's been here for over 200 years and people seem to like it. People who understand and aren't theives, anyway.
Generally perfomances are not protected by copyright unless recorded, so this is not true.
Again, this shows poor understanding of copyright. There are two issues here: the audio of the performance, which would indeed be unprotected as it is an unrepeatable thing, and the text of the song itself, which would be protected (otherwise anybody could copy it and claim they were just transcribing a live performance). You could, if you wished, record the audio. You could not, however, give it to anybody without invalidating the copyrights on the song. You would be able to license the song and then sell the audio -- this is how live shows can be sold by labels other than the one the artist's signed to -- but unless you did this, you'd be breaking the law.
How many books, or movies, or TV shows have used characters like Holmes, Dracula or Frankenstien
Perfect example. Much fewer. And this is both *FAIR* and desirable. If people like the character of Sherlock Holmes, and they do, then they're willing to pay for stories involving him. Allowing anybody who wants to jump on the Holmes gravy train would result in dilution of the Holmes mythos, and it has. I see his ass showing up EVERYWHERE, used wrong, and it irks me.
I mean, people riff poorly on Shakespeare all the time. For every Rosencrantz and Guilderstern, there's about a hundred completely unclever abuses of the man's work. And say what you will about Disney -- but there is still a high demand for Disney's retellings of public domain work, and most of the fairy tales they've animated stand as the de facto, most famous, most beloved versions. Is a 100 year copyright crazy? I think so. But I'm not a lobbiest. And I don't care enough to prevent its extension. Since I don't use other people's work anyway, it wouldn't hurt me in the least.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't copyrights a rather new idea with respect to MUSIC, BOOKS, and INVENTIONS?
You're wrong. Books and inventions have been protected since the 1790...that's almost as long as this country has existed.
I found this out using a search engine called Google. It's full of facts, as opposed to guesses.
Incidentally, copyright is not always about consumerism. Sometimes it's about protecting the ability to deny a work entirely, or to use ones own creations outside of the context of a contract (check the current dispute on the comic book Miracle Man, written by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. Gaiman doesn't want dollar one, he just wants the ability to prevent the work from being exploited which making it accessible). Copyright allows me to play works in progress at coffee house open mics without fear of having my half-baked ideas stolen for somebody else's profit. And you can't have these protections WITHOUT protecting "blind consumerism" as well.
NOBODY is in dispute on the issue of ORAL HYGIENE.
Nobody's in dispute on the right to protect copyright, either. At least, nobody important. What's in dispute is the effect of copyright protections on other freedoms. And that's not that they'd be teaching.
Furthermore, there's tons of dispute in oral hygeine...regular toothbrushes vs. electrics, flouride toothpastes, I've even seen studys showing too much brushing and too frequent cleanings can decrease the enamel finish on teeth.
Of course, this would confuse the shit out of 4th graders. Know what you do? You teach safe. You introduce the concepts in ways they can understand. And you may not like the idea of explaining copyright to kids as a way of preventing other people from stealing your creative works or using them without permissions -- but this is EXACTLY what it is, and it'd be great to be able to explain that.
Copyright is freeing...unless you believe you should be free to do whatever you can do with anybody else's work.
You can't not teach something just because it's disputed by nutjobs. There's a group out there that hates everything from Earth Science to Foreign Languages. If you want to protect your child from controversy, consider putting out his eyes and ears. Though that won't work either -- just ask Helen Keller.
What you're talking about -- fair use -- is indeed extremely complex but can be broken down in a very easy way that even my ten year old brother can understand:
You can copy this disk for your walkman, to protect the original in case you drop it or it gets stolen. But you can't make a copy for your friend.
You can even take it a step further:
You can use up to ten seconds of a song however you like, so long as you don't get paid for it.
Pretty simple, huh? Not black and white, but I think 4th graders can understand light and dark grey.
(Incidentally, I'm a big fan of right-to-mix legislation, but I expect that my mixes for friends will be technically illegal (if not enforced) for at least the forseeable future. Copyright is too important to let it soften in what has become its most critical period)
Well, since Shell and Sunoco are two of the biggest developers of alternative fuel sources (as a result of their being intimately aware that drilling for oil will not be profitable forever and they have no interest in dying along with readily available reserves), I'd have no problem with this. In fact, I'd love to hear them tell kids the #1 reason we're still using fossil fuels is that they're the most cost effective. The more idealistic youths who realize the only real barrier to alternative energy is cost, the more folks we'll have working not to revolutionize energy, but to bring already know solutions into the realm of economic feasibility.
Bias is not proof of incompetence. If the BSA hand teachers a lesson plan that's essentially propaganda, many of them won't teach it. It has happened many times in the past with corporate lessons (though not often enough for some peoples' tastes). But when done right, the partnership can be great...I took a class on photography sponsored by AGFA; they gave us great cameras, all the black and white we could shoot, chemicals -- and even a few hundred feet of motion picture film (which we used to win a local festival, the only entry on cellulose). We also got a ton of marketting materials for AGFA films, explanations of why their ISO grades were more exact than Kodak's, etc. We took this with a grain of salt.
Anyhow, with kids as young as 13 being sued for copyright infringement, now is the time to teach it. If the BSA wants to nip it in the bud before kids get into a culture of infringement, where's the harm? Shit, if you're worried that this might make future generations numb to the prospect of copyright extension, consider writing the EFF and asking them to put together a counter program that is also free, interesting and informative.
I guarantee you THAT would be more full of propaganda than even the BSA's kit.
Because we don't want or need advocacy groups pushing their positions on our kids in the public schools WE fund with our tax dollars.
The BSA's position is that the owner of a copyright on a work has the exclusive right to copy that work. And that those who copy the work without permission owe the copyright holders restitution. This is an intriguing position to have, as it is exactly what copyright law says. What, should we have equal time in schools for people who don't want to share?
Because pushing an issue on school children, trying to form their opinions at a young age, on behalf of CORPORATIONS
Corporations, or any of the thousands of small developers who are also members of the BSA. Or any of the thousands of artists whose work is stolen against their will. My old company was a member of the BSA, and they only employed 50 people.
strongarms small businesses into "compliance", trying to bluff business owners into thinking they are guilty until proven innocent.
This is a common slashdot line. Speaking as somebody who's seen the BSA in action from both sides, there is no blackmail here. If an anonymous tipster informs the BSA of a company that has unlicensed software, the first thing the BSA does is send out a disk with a self audit program. This self audit program reports all of the software on a network and -- here's the thing that might blow your mind -- reports it NOT to the BSA, but to the admin running the audit. He may then compare it to his list of licenses. If there's nothing amiss, he has nothing to fear. If there is something amiss (and there usually is...some joker always installs a program he isn't supposed to have and thinks he can hide it from IT), you can remove it and run the audit again, or get it licensed.
As for the strong arm tactics...if you are a business owner running software without licenses, and you find out about it, you are going to have to get licenses. Duh. The last thing you want is a lawsuit saying your company didn't buy its software. The BSA generally offers a better deal than even wholesale, and I don't call that strongarming.
Because controversial issues that are not directly related to education or universally accepted understandings of right and wrong
Here's the nail on the head time. There should not be anything controversial at all about the idea that exclusive copyright MEANS the exclusive right to copy. The fact that you think it is is strong evidence that it should be taught in schools -- it's one of the fundamental aspects of American creative culture and has been in place for over 200 years. You may not like the concept of copyright (in which case I suggest you look into moving to China or Russia, where copyright law is much looser), but that doesn't make it controversial.
One of the important purposes of a public education is training children in civics -- things like how government works, how government is changed, and what happens to you if you disobey the government. Not as a scare tactic, but as an informative one. You can't prepare a child to do well in the world without giving him or her the rules of the land, especially ones he or she will directly encounter in their life.
The schools are doing pretty well when it comes to explaining to students what happens if they steal, or menace, or hurt people. It doesn't do a good job of explaining what happens if they infringe on other people's copyrights. In fact, in my public school days it never came up once. I was sort of shocked to find out that the tapes I'd been trading since grade school were more or less illegal but existed in a grey area where the scale of infringement wasn't worth prosecution.
This is important. Because copyright protection is one of the luxuries of living in America. We treat intellectual property in many of the same ways we treat physical property, and as a result, we have had some really great authors, musicians, directors, software companies, inventors, etc. Knock the BSA/MPAA/RIAA for being dicks about it if you want, but all they're doing is what you're supposed to do when somebody infringes on your copyright: find them, and demand restitution.
Does that mean a curriculum designed by the BSA is a great idea? Well, it's no worse than the oral hygiene curriculum designed by Crest I had in elementary school, a program to which I credit my fantastic smile. 'Course, I use Toms of Maine nowadays...
Hell, if an immigrant seeking nationalization has to pass a test like this, why shouldn't joe-sixpack?
Because what you're talking about is a Jim Crow law, and it's illegal. Even if it's just a tax-break, it's a tax break at the expense of knowledge...kind of like a tax break if you know a secret code. There's too much potential for abuse. Besides, knowing who your congressmen is doesn't mean you get less out of the system.
As for Australia...well, due to a voting system which permits you to vote for any or all of the candidates you like, as opposed to voting for just one, you don't have much of a reason not to vote. Here in the US, if a guy is pretty much guaranteed to win your state, or if you don't care about either candidate, there's not really much of a point to voting. Going out to support your favorite third party is nicely symbolic, but it doesn't really matter. So if you're not into symbols, you don't vote. It's why so many people vote according to the polls in primaries...there may be four or five decent candidates, and you may vote not for the guy you think would do the best job but for a guy who has more of a chance of winning. Heck, for a while the only reason I voted in the New York republican primaries was to block Buchanan.
Obviously, if you live in a swing state, your ass should be in those polls. But c'mon...Bush is as likely to win New York as he is to apologize for his nationalistic foreign policies post 9-11.
You want to see record numbers in the polls? Adopt Australia's vote-for-who-you-want policy. You'll start to see the ignored third parties -- right to life, independence, green party, libertarians, marijuana reform, socialists -- get more power real quick. I'm saying Libertarian congressmen by 2010 if we changed the voting law today. And Socialist senators -- probably from Vermont -- as early as 2014.
for the most part the status quo sucks...We're on slashdot which is about technology, learning about it, and overcoming the obstacles to take it to the next level. In other words it's about always putting the hand in the face of the status quo and taking it further.
Wow, that's kind of strange way of looking at it. Think: where does the technology you use come from? The status-quo. Why was it created? To serve the status quo. And who will have more of an effect on the future of computing -- the hackers attempting to subvert or bypass the status quo, or the engineers working within it?
If the status quo didn't "suck," things would be different. Many things would be much worse. Without a technology industry driving micronization, computers would be massively underpowered and the software that ran them massively underfeatured. We wouldn't have digital cameras. We wouldn't have ubiquitous internet.
Supplanting and subverting the status quo is not the answer. Working to direct its course sensibly is what we should be doing. All this nail biting paranoia is defeating what could be a fabulous sophist movement in the technology sector. The only thing stopping the 2600 crowd or the Slashdot crowd from taking over the industry and remolding it in their own image of openness and tinkering (something the average user NEEDS to learn; don't be afraid to break it) is a needless sense of competetion. There is no war going on here...and turning a minor thing like optional and easily defeatable DRM technologies or choice of operating systems into a knock-down, drag out fight against everything that's wrong with society is not only extreme, it's psychotic.
Remember: an engineer is nothing but a hacker who works shorter hours. You got to distance yourself from the details of the implementation, or else the details will become the implementation.
Of course, you're right. Anybody who doesn't brake laws for no other reason than hubris MUST be addicted to prescription drugs and be for an Orwellian society.
For somebody who claims to be about visceral experiences, you sure seem to archetype people fairly easy.
But touché. I pulled the same shit on you. If you MUST know, I too believe in a healthy amount of skepticism. But that doesn't mean automatic distrust, automatic rejection of tradition or the assumption that the status quo is fundamentally wrong. I believe in analysis first and action second. This is the essence of critical thinking. Hating something solely on its associations is just as dogmatic as liking something for the same reasons. Use some goddamn judgment, man, and don't assume somebody is a square just because they think going on to one wheel speeding on a device weighing 800 lbs or so is a bloody stupid thing to do, even if you THINK you're good at it.
That is to say, that momentum (p) is equal to the mass of the object multiplied by its velocity. During a collision, this momentum is transferred to the frame of the car. Modern cars are designed to crumple in the event of a high speed crash...the crumpling absorbs the energy of impact and prevents it from being transferred to the passenger compartment. However, they can only absorb so much energy before damage to the passenger compartment becomes inevitible. Since the mass of the vehicle is constant, the variable which determines the energy transferred to the passenger compartment supports is V. Speed.
As for the "every mile an hour over the limit" bit -- cars are designed to withstand a crash of 65-75 MPH. Each mile an hour above the design parameters decreases the possibility that overengineering is going to prevent the passenger compartment from buckling. And this is additive. If 76 mph makes it 5% more likely you'll soon be encased in a luxury tincan, then 77 mph makes in 10%.
This is of course neglecting tons of other deadly crash physics based on momentum, such as rollovers, impact of airbags and seatbelts, the brain impacting the front of the skull (!) or your cars ability to brake and thus avoid a crash in the first place. Needless to say, if you're speeding and thinking "it's only 5 mph," you're luring yourself into a false sense of security. Same as those who buy a big, heavy SUV thinking it'll be safer in a crash. A heavy frame is a great thing if you're absorbing a collision -- until you've got your own momentum to worry about. More weight means greater stress on the frame means the benefit is reduced, sometimes greatly so. If you look at the consumer reports numbers on deadly crashes, you'll see that the safest vehicle to drive is actually a minivan -- which, for its volume, is relatively lightweight.
Bully for you, man. Some people don't like anarchy and consider the fact that "life isn't safe" all the more reason to create pockets of relative safety in what would otherwise be extremely inhospitable environments. Like on an open highway: some people worry when a motorcyclist thinks he's Peter Fonda, drives like a moron and lays out in front of their car at 55 mph. They worry because there's now a heavy piece of machinery and a meat puppet they're going to hit full speed and it's not even their fault. People who worry about silly shit like that pushed for a government that could create laws and raise taxes to pay for police to enforce them. These laws were made so that your deathwish doesn't impact others and they aren't "meant to be broken" any more than the laws that maintain the roads so you can drive recklessly on them.
There's thousands of ways you can endanger your life without incurring fines or possible jail time by driving like an obnoxious fuck. Pick one of them. America's a big prosperous place full of adventure and I'm sure you can maintain your bullshit "Fight Club" worldview without endangering other drivers.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, I completely agree with you. I also like to have apps that will work when our RoadRunner line goes down (an inevitability) and we're flying blind with 20 people on dialup.
I just found an online bullshit generator that I intend to use to replace PowerPoint.
You may have to click through to the replies, that's where the greatest concentration of bullshit is generated...
Uh, you can have any job and use any language and still be a good coder. Or a bad one. It's all about the care you take with the program. I've written friggin' DOS batch files that were beautiful and flexible yet subtle. And I've written C# that was completely unorganized and only ran in a small range of circumstances.
True. But evil is subjective. I consider Apple's DRM to be a good thing -- because it gives the labels the peace of mind they apparently need to open up their music sphincters and let me get cheaply priced tunes while giving me enough leeway to do whatever I want with it.
Sure, I'd prefer unencrypted 320 kbit AAC files...but this is not Mars, it's Earth and big corporations are still scared that digital media will kill them off. Give it another three years and maybe we'll see that sphincter open a little wider.
What's the solution?
Ironically, a tinfoil hat.
Seriously. A good layer of reflective insulation in your attic should decrease the effect significantly by reflecting radio waves YOU send from Wireless G back into the house and radar waves back into the sky.
Well, the improvement is more than just speed...it's speed at a distance. I only get 1 mb/s on my porch with G...if N can bump that up to 4 mb/s, i'll be a happy camper.
You forgot parent 4:
"Sigh. Everybody so far has said X, Y and Z. Everybody always says X, Y and Z. I'm so sick of it. Moderators, I hate you and your children."
Because then three more would step into his shoes. Besides, do you want to manage a guy who knowingly breaks the law whenever he wishes and posts about it online?
My question is, why hasn't Johansen been offered a multi-million dollar book deal considering how much egg he's left on the faces of security developers?
Oh, and C# users have bigger dicks. But that can be proven empirically.
The other way to look at it is that this could be a great boon for anybody who can figure out a way to charge a fair price for sensible customer service.
Think about it: a $1 per minute 900 number manned by people good at communicating (not necessarily techies) who can easily explain what error messages mean and how programs work. Or a drop-in "tech class for dummies."
It's not that people won't pay to get something fixed. It's that they don't want to pay what they perceive as a lot to be talked down to.
Incidentally, if you're the "tech friend," make sure you let people know that you're on the clock when they bug you to fix their PCs.
Yeah, but to put together a commercial computer -- meaning you can't use used parts, as there's no steady supply, and you need to use parts that will be in production for at least the next year for swapping out broken stuff -- it would cost the same to use those stats as to lower them.
LOL! I really loved the line "rotation in fuckwit space." Thanks for posting!
I hate to break it to you, they existed long before America.
Yeah, no shit. People will create without copyright protection. Copyright protection is there so they can make money off what they create. And arguing whether it's valid or not because people would create, anyway, is moot. Copyright makes the environment better for content creators, as it gives them power over those with simply better resources. It's been here for over 200 years and people seem to like it. People who understand and aren't theives, anyway.
Generally perfomances are not protected by copyright unless recorded, so this is not true.
Again, this shows poor understanding of copyright. There are two issues here: the audio of the performance, which would indeed be unprotected as it is an unrepeatable thing, and the text of the song itself, which would be protected (otherwise anybody could copy it and claim they were just transcribing a live performance). You could, if you wished, record the audio. You could not, however, give it to anybody without invalidating the copyrights on the song. You would be able to license the song and then sell the audio -- this is how live shows can be sold by labels other than the one the artist's signed to -- but unless you did this, you'd be breaking the law.
How many books, or movies, or TV shows have used characters like Holmes, Dracula or Frankenstien
Perfect example. Much fewer. And this is both *FAIR* and desirable. If people like the character of Sherlock Holmes, and they do, then they're willing to pay for stories involving him. Allowing anybody who wants to jump on the Holmes gravy train would result in dilution of the Holmes mythos, and it has. I see his ass showing up EVERYWHERE, used wrong, and it irks me.
I mean, people riff poorly on Shakespeare all the time. For every Rosencrantz and Guilderstern, there's about a hundred completely unclever abuses of the man's work. And say what you will about Disney -- but there is still a high demand for Disney's retellings of public domain work, and most of the fairy tales they've animated stand as the de facto, most famous, most beloved versions. Is a 100 year copyright crazy? I think so. But I'm not a lobbiest. And I don't care enough to prevent its extension. Since I don't use other people's work anyway, it wouldn't hurt me in the least.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't copyrights a rather new idea with respect to MUSIC, BOOKS, and INVENTIONS?
You're wrong. Books and inventions have been protected since the 1790...that's almost as long as this country has existed.
I found this out using a search engine called Google. It's full of facts, as opposed to guesses.
Incidentally, copyright is not always about consumerism. Sometimes it's about protecting the ability to deny a work entirely, or to use ones own creations outside of the context of a contract (check the current dispute on the comic book Miracle Man, written by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. Gaiman doesn't want dollar one, he just wants the ability to prevent the work from being exploited which making it accessible). Copyright allows me to play works in progress at coffee house open mics without fear of having my half-baked ideas stolen for somebody else's profit. And you can't have these protections WITHOUT protecting "blind consumerism" as well.
NOBODY is in dispute on the issue of ORAL HYGIENE.
Nobody's in dispute on the right to protect copyright, either. At least, nobody important. What's in dispute is the effect of copyright protections on other freedoms. And that's not that they'd be teaching.
Furthermore, there's tons of dispute in oral hygeine...regular toothbrushes vs. electrics, flouride toothpastes, I've even seen studys showing too much brushing and too frequent cleanings can decrease the enamel finish on teeth.
Of course, this would confuse the shit out of 4th graders. Know what you do? You teach safe. You introduce the concepts in ways they can understand. And you may not like the idea of explaining copyright to kids as a way of preventing other people from stealing your creative works or using them without permissions -- but this is EXACTLY what it is, and it'd be great to be able to explain that.
Copyright is freeing...unless you believe you should be free to do whatever you can do with anybody else's work.
You can't not teach something just because it's disputed by nutjobs. There's a group out there that hates everything from Earth Science to Foreign Languages. If you want to protect your child from controversy, consider putting out his eyes and ears. Though that won't work either -- just ask Helen Keller.
What you're talking about -- fair use -- is indeed extremely complex but can be broken down in a very easy way that even my ten year old brother can understand:
You can copy this disk for your walkman, to protect the original in case you drop it or it gets stolen. But you can't make a copy for your friend.
You can even take it a step further:
You can use up to ten seconds of a song however you like, so long as you don't get paid for it.
Pretty simple, huh? Not black and white, but I think 4th graders can understand light and dark grey.
(Incidentally, I'm a big fan of right-to-mix legislation, but I expect that my mixes for friends will be technically illegal (if not enforced) for at least the forseeable future. Copyright is too important to let it soften in what has become its most critical period)
Well, since Shell and Sunoco are two of the biggest developers of alternative fuel sources (as a result of their being intimately aware that drilling for oil will not be profitable forever and they have no interest in dying along with readily available reserves), I'd have no problem with this. In fact, I'd love to hear them tell kids the #1 reason we're still using fossil fuels is that they're the most cost effective. The more idealistic youths who realize the only real barrier to alternative energy is cost, the more folks we'll have working not to revolutionize energy, but to bring already know solutions into the realm of economic feasibility.
Bias is not proof of incompetence. If the BSA hand teachers a lesson plan that's essentially propaganda, many of them won't teach it. It has happened many times in the past with corporate lessons (though not often enough for some peoples' tastes). But when done right, the partnership can be great...I took a class on photography sponsored by AGFA; they gave us great cameras, all the black and white we could shoot, chemicals -- and even a few hundred feet of motion picture film (which we used to win a local festival, the only entry on cellulose). We also got a ton of marketting materials for AGFA films, explanations of why their ISO grades were more exact than Kodak's, etc. We took this with a grain of salt.
Anyhow, with kids as young as 13 being sued for copyright infringement, now is the time to teach it. If the BSA wants to nip it in the bud before kids get into a culture of infringement, where's the harm? Shit, if you're worried that this might make future generations numb to the prospect of copyright extension, consider writing the EFF and asking them to put together a counter program that is also free, interesting and informative.
I guarantee you THAT would be more full of propaganda than even the BSA's kit.
Because we don't want or need advocacy groups pushing their positions on our kids in the public schools WE fund with our tax dollars.
The BSA's position is that the owner of a copyright on a work has the exclusive right to copy that work. And that those who copy the work without permission owe the copyright holders restitution. This is an intriguing position to have, as it is exactly what copyright law says. What, should we have equal time in schools for people who don't want to share?
Because pushing an issue on school children, trying to form their opinions at a young age, on behalf of CORPORATIONS
Corporations, or any of the thousands of small developers who are also members of the BSA. Or any of the thousands of artists whose work is stolen against their will. My old company was a member of the BSA, and they only employed 50 people.
strongarms small businesses into "compliance", trying to bluff business owners into thinking they are guilty until proven innocent.
This is a common slashdot line. Speaking as somebody who's seen the BSA in action from both sides, there is no blackmail here. If an anonymous tipster informs the BSA of a company that has unlicensed software, the first thing the BSA does is send out a disk with a self audit program. This self audit program reports all of the software on a network and -- here's the thing that might blow your mind -- reports it NOT to the BSA, but to the admin running the audit. He may then compare it to his list of licenses. If there's nothing amiss, he has nothing to fear. If there is something amiss (and there usually is...some joker always installs a program he isn't supposed to have and thinks he can hide it from IT), you can remove it and run the audit again, or get it licensed.
As for the strong arm tactics...if you are a business owner running software without licenses, and you find out about it, you are going to have to get licenses. Duh. The last thing you want is a lawsuit saying your company didn't buy its software. The BSA generally offers a better deal than even wholesale, and I don't call that strongarming.
Because controversial issues that are not directly related to education or universally accepted understandings of right and wrong
Here's the nail on the head time. There should not be anything controversial at all about the idea that exclusive copyright MEANS the exclusive right to copy. The fact that you think it is is strong evidence that it should be taught in schools -- it's one of the fundamental aspects of American creative culture and has been in place for over 200 years. You may not like the concept of copyright (in which case I suggest you look into moving to China or Russia, where copyright law is much looser), but that doesn't make it controversial.
No place in the classroom???
One of the important purposes of a public education is training children in civics -- things like how government works, how government is changed, and what happens to you if you disobey the government. Not as a scare tactic, but as an informative one. You can't prepare a child to do well in the world without giving him or her the rules of the land, especially ones he or she will directly encounter in their life.
The schools are doing pretty well when it comes to explaining to students what happens if they steal, or menace, or hurt people. It doesn't do a good job of explaining what happens if they infringe on other people's copyrights. In fact, in my public school days it never came up once. I was sort of shocked to find out that the tapes I'd been trading since grade school were more or less illegal but existed in a grey area where the scale of infringement wasn't worth prosecution.
This is important. Because copyright protection is one of the luxuries of living in America. We treat intellectual property in many of the same ways we treat physical property, and as a result, we have had some really great authors, musicians, directors, software companies, inventors, etc. Knock the BSA/MPAA/RIAA for being dicks about it if you want, but all they're doing is what you're supposed to do when somebody infringes on your copyright: find them, and demand restitution.
Does that mean a curriculum designed by the BSA is a great idea? Well, it's no worse than the oral hygiene curriculum designed by Crest I had in elementary school, a program to which I credit my fantastic smile. 'Course, I use Toms of Maine nowadays...
You're wondering how famous people can win lawsuits based on a set of laws designed to protect the integrity of well known names?
Are you dumb? They win because that's WHY we have trademark law in the first place! If you get famous, you'll be protected too.
Hell, if an immigrant seeking nationalization has to pass a test like this, why shouldn't joe-sixpack?
Because what you're talking about is a Jim Crow law, and it's illegal. Even if it's just a tax-break, it's a tax break at the expense of knowledge...kind of like a tax break if you know a secret code. There's too much potential for abuse. Besides, knowing who your congressmen is doesn't mean you get less out of the system.
As for Australia...well, due to a voting system which permits you to vote for any or all of the candidates you like, as opposed to voting for just one, you don't have much of a reason not to vote. Here in the US, if a guy is pretty much guaranteed to win your state, or if you don't care about either candidate, there's not really much of a point to voting. Going out to support your favorite third party is nicely symbolic, but it doesn't really matter. So if you're not into symbols, you don't vote. It's why so many people vote according to the polls in primaries...there may be four or five decent candidates, and you may vote not for the guy you think would do the best job but for a guy who has more of a chance of winning. Heck, for a while the only reason I voted in the New York republican primaries was to block Buchanan.
Obviously, if you live in a swing state, your ass should be in those polls. But c'mon...Bush is as likely to win New York as he is to apologize for his nationalistic foreign policies post 9-11.
You want to see record numbers in the polls? Adopt Australia's vote-for-who-you-want policy. You'll start to see the ignored third parties -- right to life, independence, green party, libertarians, marijuana reform, socialists -- get more power real quick. I'm saying Libertarian congressmen by 2010 if we changed the voting law today. And Socialist senators -- probably from Vermont -- as early as 2014.
for the most part the status quo sucks...We're on slashdot which is about technology, learning about it, and overcoming the obstacles to take it to the next level. In other words it's about always putting the hand in the face of the status quo and taking it further.
Wow, that's kind of strange way of looking at it. Think: where does the technology you use come from? The status-quo. Why was it created? To serve the status quo. And who will have more of an effect on the future of computing -- the hackers attempting to subvert or bypass the status quo, or the engineers working within it?
If the status quo didn't "suck," things would be different. Many things would be much worse. Without a technology industry driving micronization, computers would be massively underpowered and the software that ran them massively underfeatured. We wouldn't have digital cameras. We wouldn't have ubiquitous internet.
Supplanting and subverting the status quo is not the answer. Working to direct its course sensibly is what we should be doing. All this nail biting paranoia is defeating what could be a fabulous sophist movement in the technology sector. The only thing stopping the 2600 crowd or the Slashdot crowd from taking over the industry and remolding it in their own image of openness and tinkering (something the average user NEEDS to learn; don't be afraid to break it) is a needless sense of competetion. There is no war going on here...and turning a minor thing like optional and easily defeatable DRM technologies or choice of operating systems into a knock-down, drag out fight against everything that's wrong with society is not only extreme, it's psychotic.
Remember: an engineer is nothing but a hacker who works shorter hours. You got to distance yourself from the details of the implementation, or else the details will become the implementation.
Of course, you're right. Anybody who doesn't brake laws for no other reason than hubris MUST be addicted to prescription drugs and be for an Orwellian society.
For somebody who claims to be about visceral experiences, you sure seem to archetype people fairly easy.
But touché. I pulled the same shit on you. If you MUST know, I too believe in a healthy amount of skepticism. But that doesn't mean automatic distrust, automatic rejection of tradition or the assumption that the status quo is fundamentally wrong. I believe in analysis first and action second. This is the essence of critical thinking. Hating something solely on its associations is just as dogmatic as liking something for the same reasons. Use some goddamn judgment, man, and don't assume somebody is a square just because they think going on to one wheel speeding on a device weighing 800 lbs or so is a bloody stupid thing to do, even if you THINK you're good at it.
Here's one I found in my Physics textbook:
P=MV.
That is to say, that momentum (p) is equal to the mass of the object multiplied by its velocity. During a collision, this momentum is transferred to the frame of the car. Modern cars are designed to crumple in the event of a high speed crash...the crumpling absorbs the energy of impact and prevents it from being transferred to the passenger compartment. However, they can only absorb so much energy before damage to the passenger compartment becomes inevitible. Since the mass of the vehicle is constant, the variable which determines the energy transferred to the passenger compartment supports is V. Speed.
As for the "every mile an hour over the limit" bit -- cars are designed to withstand a crash of 65-75 MPH. Each mile an hour above the design parameters decreases the possibility that overengineering is going to prevent the passenger compartment from buckling. And this is additive. If 76 mph makes it 5% more likely you'll soon be encased in a luxury tincan, then 77 mph makes in 10%.
This is of course neglecting tons of other deadly crash physics based on momentum, such as rollovers, impact of airbags and seatbelts, the brain impacting the front of the skull (!) or your cars ability to brake and thus avoid a crash in the first place. Needless to say, if you're speeding and thinking "it's only 5 mph," you're luring yourself into a false sense of security. Same as those who buy a big, heavy SUV thinking it'll be safer in a crash. A heavy frame is a great thing if you're absorbing a collision -- until you've got your own momentum to worry about. More weight means greater stress on the frame means the benefit is reduced, sometimes greatly so. If you look at the consumer reports numbers on deadly crashes, you'll see that the safest vehicle to drive is actually a minivan -- which, for its volume, is relatively lightweight.
Bully for you, man. Some people don't like anarchy and consider the fact that "life isn't safe" all the more reason to create pockets of relative safety in what would otherwise be extremely inhospitable environments. Like on an open highway: some people worry when a motorcyclist thinks he's Peter Fonda, drives like a moron and lays out in front of their car at 55 mph. They worry because there's now a heavy piece of machinery and a meat puppet they're going to hit full speed and it's not even their fault. People who worry about silly shit like that pushed for a government that could create laws and raise taxes to pay for police to enforce them. These laws were made so that your deathwish doesn't impact others and they aren't "meant to be broken" any more than the laws that maintain the roads so you can drive recklessly on them.
There's thousands of ways you can endanger your life without incurring fines or possible jail time by driving like an obnoxious fuck. Pick one of them. America's a big prosperous place full of adventure and I'm sure you can maintain your bullshit "Fight Club" worldview without endangering other drivers.