Of course Three-Rings is a slash based site with more than just a reference to Gibson's article. So, more they post there, the less obvious it will be as to which reader Michael is referring.
In fact, Michael means the article posted by analytic at 4/4/01 7:47:21 PM entitled "William Gibson and the London-Tokyo connection".
To avoid/.ing this site, I've included the meat of analytic's response below:
Like Gibson, I always did feel that one of the most important sentiments that fuels British breakbeat is the sort of broadly orientalist subtext of British music in the twentieth century; not orientalist in the literal sense that it is directed specifically towards Asian culture, but rather in the sense that the British seem to have a hightened sensitivity towards and appreciation for the idea of the foreign. This foreign-ness, I think, ultimately reveals itself to the British as something new, valuable, and thus worthy of appropriation.
This disposition can be seen in Drum and Bass, which for so long aligned itself with American musical forms like jazz and hiphop, as well as with dub. Most recently, this tendency has become evident in UK Garage, which relies so heavily on the influence of US hiphop,R+B and Jamaican dancehall reggae. Strangely, I think, the xenophiliac impulse that drives so much British music to borrow from and expand upon American, West Indian, and Asian musics, in many cases manifests itself in American breakbeat audiences as a kind of anglophilia, an appreciation for the non-american aspects of breakbeat music.
Non zero-sum games amount to cooperative games that all the players must work together to win. Generally speaking, there should be no single winner in positive-sum games.
One of the best positive sum games I"ve ever played is Lord of the Rings by world class game designer Reiner Knizia. (You can buy a copy at Funagain games.) The box says ages 12 and up; I think it's appropriate for kids in 4th grade or higher. It does not require familiarity with the books. In America, it's produced by Hasbro, where it has received basically no advertising.
In the game, each player is a Hobbit on a Corruption scale from 1-15. So is the Eye of Sauron. Various game events move individual Hobbits towards Darkness, and various events move the Eye of Sauron towards the Hobbits. If Sauron finds you, you lose. If you're the Ringbearer, everyone loses.
Play proceeds through Bag End, Rivendell, Moria, Lothlorien, Helm's Deep, Shelob's Lair, and finally Mordor, where, if the Hobbits are quick enough, they destroy the One Ring and win the game together.
I'm a college student and *I've* had a lot of fun playing this game. I highly recommend it for your students.
Why do some "personal" versions of Linux come pre-installed with a web-server?
Windows 98 and ME both come with Microsoft's "Personal Web Server" pre-installed. This is a good example of Windows following Linux's lead, rather than the other way around.
Yes, realMyst will have a new ending. Those who remember Myst's ending will remember the sheer disappointment you got... no congratulations at all, if I do say so myself.
realMyst will have a new ending. This, more than real-time lighting, has me excited.
Something that's been overlooked recently is that realMyst will have a new ending. The ending to Myst was one of the most disappointing endings in the history of adventure gaming. Hopefully, realMyst's ending will be substantially better.
You have to run this software as a nameserver. A fake nameserver, granted, but a nameserver nonetheless. To do this, you have to have a working bidirectional TCP/IP connection.
So, you can use this 31337 Xploit to gain free Internet access... assuming you're already paying for a static IP, and you just happen to know a telephone number that lets anybody in the world log in and use their DNS. Uhm. Yeah.
I guess this is cool just for the sheer niftiness of running data through DNS; I'm sure this will soon be implemented as yet another steganographic protocol, but this isn't too useful, even for ripping off Microsoft.
Re:Digital signatures are better than signatures.
on
GPG vs. PGP?
·
· Score: 1
It's true that digital signatures are not really signatures. That's because, despite their names, they were never really designed to fulfill that role.
Digital signatures can be made up by anybody with any name (or pseudonym/handle) you like. But the advantage of these signatures is that once you make up a signature and do something with it, (e.g. post a message to a public discussion group,) nobody can claim "I'm that same guy!" except you.
This is why digital signatures were supposed to herald the oncoming of anonymous e-commerce: I was supposed to be able to reveal to you my digital signature and have you NOT know who I was. I could have my credit card company sign a random number for me to prove that I've got credit, and then use that number to buy things online. You don't get my personal info because you don't NEED to know who I am; you just need to fulfill my order.
If I try to back out of paying, you take the money from my credit card company. If you try to back out of fulfillment, I take you to court and prove that *I* was the one who was frauded, that I'm the same guy, by using my pseudonymous signature.
Web of trust? PKI? These were designed because somebody saw the word "signature" and thought that they could use digital signatures like ordinary ones. IMO, this is just another example of the age-old problem: when all you've got is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.
The trouble with this little theory is that they intend to make all of their profits off of sales of the PHB. This whole Open Gaming License is designed from the ground up with one goal in mind: "...we hope to drive sales to the D&D PHB."
They'd be insane to go forward with this plan as written. Suppose I, as an enterprising gamer, decide to release a system "based" on the PHB called the Cheaper Handbook under the Open Gaming License, identical in every respect to the PHB (page for page, line for line) only without using any of the D&D trademarks. A quick find/replace for "dungeonmaster", "D20", and a few others would suffice.
The CHB wouldn't call itself "D20 compatible," but it would be just as useful as the PHB, would cost me practically nothing to make, and could be sold for the cost of printing the book.
There goes their main revenue stream.
The fact of the matter is that one of these days, probably not very far in the future, something like digital paper will start to look readable. At that point, book dealers everywhere need to watch out. Wizards will need a totally different business model (probably one which focuses on live events) from the book sales racket they're running currently.
Do a search for "cocholate chips" (an easy spelling mistake, especially for someone unfamiliar with the language!) on Hotbot and you get a link to a semi-steamy X-files fanfic AND a link to a bunch of dirty pictures!
No, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle did not deal anything like a death blow to determinism; it's still alive and well in Everett's so-called "Many Worlds Interpretation" (MWI) of quantum physics, at odds with the Copenhagen interpretation, which is pretty invariably the one adhered to by mystics like Walker.
The Copenhagen interpretation states that upon the action of the "observer," (whatever THAT is; CI never bothers to define the observer rigorously!) the waveform "collapses." MWI argues that the waveform never collapses, but instead that histories "split" when thermodynamically irreversible processes take place. (Note that all of the tools we have available for "measurement" are thermodynamically irreversible processes.) All splits happen, but we observe ourselves to be in only one split, giving the appearance of randomness against a background of determinism.
From the Everett FAQ:
------------------
Q25
Why am I in this world and not another? Why does the universe appear random?
These are really the same questions.
Consider, for a moment, this analogy:
Suppose Fred has his brain divided in two and transplanted into two different cloned bodies (this is a gedanken operation! [*]). Let's further suppose that each half-brain regenerates to full functionality and call the resultant individuals Fred-Left and Fred-Right. Fred-Left can ask, why did I end up as Fred-Left? Similarly Fred-Right can ask, why did I end up as Fred-Right? The only answer possible is that there was no reason. From Fred's point of view it is a subjectively random choice which individual "Fred" ends up as. To the surgeon the whole process is deterministic. To both the Freds it seems random.
Same with many-worlds. There was no reason "why" you ended up in this world, rather than another - you end up in all the quantum worlds. It is a subjectively random choice, an artefact of your brain and consciousness being split, along with the rest of the world, that makes our experiences seem random. The universe is, in effect, performing umpteen split-brain operations on us all the time. The randomness apparent in nature is a consequence of the continual splitting into mutually unobservable worlds.
(See "How do probabilities emerge within many-worlds?" for how the subjective randomness is moderated by the usual probabilistic laws of QM.)
[*] Split brain experiments were performed on epileptic patients (severing the corpus callosum, one of the pathways connecting the cerebral hemispheres, moderated epileptic attacks). Complete hemispherical separation was discontinued when testing of the patients revealed the presence of two distinct consciousnesses in the same skull. So this analogy is only partly imaginary.
----------------- MWI isn't as unpopular as you might think, either:
------------------
Q1 Who believes in many-worlds?
"Political scientist" L David Raub reports a poll of 72 of the "leading cosmologists and other quantum field theorists" about the "Many-Worlds Interpretation" and gives the following response breakdown [T].
1) "Yes, I think MWI is true" 58% 2) "No, I don't accept MWI" 18% 3) "Maybe it's true but I'm not yet convinced" 13% 4) "I have no opinion one way or the other" 11%
Amongst the "Yes, I think MWI is true" crowd listed are Stephen Hawking and Nobel Laureates Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman. Gell-Mann and Hawking recorded reservations with the name "many-worlds", but not with the theory's content. Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg is also mentioned as a many-worlder, although the suggestion is not when the poll was conducted, presumably before 1988 (when Feynman died). The only "No, I don't accept MWI" named is Penrose.
The findings of this poll are in accord with other polls, that many- worlds is most popular amongst scientists who may rather loosely be described as string theorists or quantum gravitists/cosmologists. It is less popular amongst the wider scientific community who mostly remain in ignorance of it.
More detail on Weinberg's views can be found in _Dreams of a Final Theory_ or _Life in the Universe_ Scientific American (October 1994), the latter where Weinberg says about quantum theory: "The final approach is to take the Schrodinger equation seriously [..description of the measurement process..] In this way, a measurement causes the history of the universe for practical purposes to diverge into different non-interfering tracks, one for each possible value of the measured quantity. [...] I prefer this last approach"
In the The Quark and the Jaguar and Quantum Mechanics in the Light of Quantum Cosmology [10] Gell-Mann describes himself as an adherent to the (post-)Everett interpretation, although his exact meaning is sometimes left ambiguous.
Steven Hawking is well known as a many-worlds fan and says, in an article on quantum gravity [H], that measurement of the gravitational metric tells you which branch of the wavefunction you're in and references Everett.
Feynman, apart from the evidence of the Raub poll, directly favouring the Everett interpretation, always emphasized to his lecture students [F] that the "collapse" process could only be modelled by the Schrodinger wave equation (Everett's approach).
[F] Jagdish Mehra The Beat of a Different Drum: The Life and Science Richard Feynman [H] Stephen W Hawking Black Holes and Thermodynamics Physical Review D Vol 13 #2 191-197 (1976) [T] Frank J Tipler The Physics of Immortality 170-171
So, with all this heat/power consumption reduction in the Crusoe chip, does this mean we can overclock it more easily? What kind of speeds can we get if we're willing to get it as hot as, say, a P!!!?
Chaum has been sitting on his license for years, refusing to open it up to others until his company, Digicash, finally went bankrupt and he sold it to Ecash Technologies; if Bowie licensed it from them and started using it, it would be a big step forward for digital anonymous cash users.
For those of you who are unaware, anonymous digital cash has significant consequences for Internet commerce.
Big name, big money, big business. And maybe even crypto-anarchy to boot!
Assuming that Microsoft settles or is found guilty, what would be the best thing to have happen, in your expert legal opinion? Open up the Windows APIs? Open up the source? "Break up" the company into smaller OS companies?
For a few years, back in the early nineties, we were being treated with a vision of the future in which all money would be anonymous tokens and monitoring commerce would become impossible. Tim May called this future "Crypto Anarchy."
Since you're still subscribed to one or two of the cypherpunks mailing lists, it appears as if you still consider this a possibility.
What effect do you see cryptography having on our wallets and on our financial institutions? Will anonymous commerce ever make it big?
I recognize that reclaiming the word "hacker" from the media is an uphill battle that many people here are fighting, but it seems to beg the question as to why you'd even WANT to be called a hacker in the first place.
When most people say "hacker," they mean cracker. The media won't use the word "cracker," because it sounds like slang. (In fact, it's already taken, as a racial slang term, making it a word you basically can't say on TV.) Hackers who aren't crackers are just coders, committed to the cause of freedom (esp. of information).
I'd rather people call me a Freedom Coder than they call me a "hacker." The term itself automatically communicates the fact that I write code, that I have an ethical system, and that I care about freedom. What does the word "hacker" convey? Mistrust of authority, at best?
The talk was interesting, but he didn't say anything that isn't already in his book.
In the first part of his book he talks about the standard social science model, which argues that human nature, to the extent that there is one, is a blank slate, and why he disagrees with that model. He also argues that there is no justification for discrimination on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. and that no biological finding will refute that moral fact. He also points out that many people make the naturalistic fallacy (assuming that what is natural is what is right) when dealing with questions of human evolutionary psychology, and that this fallacy should be eliminated from our discussion in order to put our science and our ethics on stronger territory. Finally, he talks about the existence of moral responsibility when we fully understand the causes behind a person's actions. Pinker argues that to understand is not to forgive, and that just because we know why someone did something does not mean that it is morally justifiable.
Like I say, if you find these ideas interesting, go pick up his book: he said nothing in the lecture that wasn't there.
Structured connectionism offers a plausible explanation for semantic ability - see Terry Regier's "The Human Semantic Potential" for some viable models using neural networks, that do excellent jobs of understanding, for example, the difference between "on," "above" and "over" with fairly quick learning, and distinguishing between the German "auf" and "an". Also, I recommend the work of George Lakoff, especially "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things - What Categories Reveal About The Mind."
Lucky you... Pinker agrees. He devotes a large section of his book to discussing just how connectonist networks work, and what they can and can't do given the size of the human brain. He, too, thinks that connectionism is a big part of the way the mind works, but his emphasis is on the "structured" part of "structured connectionism."
Pinker is giving a series of lectures here at Yale this week. His lecture yesterday basically outlined his book, and his lecture today will discuss how his theory relates to the question of human values. If it's interesting, I'll post a summary here.
I'm not entirely happy with my contribution points idea either, and I'd welcome improvements. But it was the best solution I could come up with given the constraints that such a system would have to work under. How would you suggest it be improved?
After only a little thought about this, it seems to me that contributors who write good modifications (patches) to the original program should be allowed to sell run-time licences to use the patches under a COSS license. If someone (you?) writes a solid, publicly available COSS license a la the GPL, it would be easy for contributors to use it to distribute their software. It should include a clause which clearly specifies that anyone, even the original vendor, can buy a copy of the modification and the source code to that modification, but it would be illegal to actually use that source code in a program of your own without the permission of the author. (In this case, it would be illegal for the vendor to buy a copy of the modification and add it to the program on the sly.)
In addition, contributors should be able to sell the whole copyright to others (or, in this case, sell the right-to-license to others); I would expect that the most likely buyer would be the original software vendor itself. At this point, we can just let the market figure out the best payment scheme, though I suspect that the most efficient plan would involve the buyer paying a lump sum for the right-to-license, and not a share of the profits/gross.
For those who don't feel like reading the whole thing, the gist of the article is this:
Commercial Open Source Software (COSS) would entail a commercial software vendor selling software licenses the same way they do now; however, they would also sell copies of the source code to their product. All users would still be required to pay the run-time license fee for the product, but modified versions of the software could be distributed (so long as the end users paid the license fee).
In addition, the author suggests that contributors to the source code might be paid for their contributions, and suggests a compensation scheme based on "contribution points." The company essentially outlines how many points a person gets for a contribution, (ie 1pt for a minor bug fix, 2pt for a minor/simple feature, etc.) and in return for contribution points, the contributor receives some revenue. The author suggests that these points should not be tradeable, to avoid alienation from the product and investment scams. Even if contribution points aren't a good way to pay contributors, the author still maintains that some mechanism should be provided for doing so.
My take on this is that the argument for selling your source is excellent. Many people believe that if anyone has a copy of a commercial vendor's source code then they will be unable to charge for it. This is pretty obviously wrong; we've seen a variety of cases where a sneaky hacker has busted in and liberated the source code to a variety of products, (the Quake source code was liberated in this way,) but the products made money anyway. This suggests to me that id could have easily have been distributing the source code to Quake, in c, and would not have suffered for it.
In addition, the author notes that the most expensive software is used by companies in the course of business. Managers who pay for software licenses take that payment out of their budgets; if they don't, they run the risk of employees blowing the whistle on a company when they see that the company endorses software piracy. This makes companies somewhat easier to monitor for software piracy.
Finally, many people want a packaged product, with manuals, tech support, and a pretty box; this can generally only be provided by buying a legal copy of the software.
Selling the source is a great idea, but what about contributors? Well, it's hard to tell whether and how contributors should be paid for contributions. In many cases, I think we'll find that contribution schemes like the one listed above will be unnecessary. It's unlikely that someone will decide to fix a bug in someone else's software in exchange for the meager sum that a company is likely to provide for that service. Many coders will be unwilling to contribute to COSS on the principle that it isn't Free. Coders still might do so for the prestige value, however; they might also do so if they get frustrated with a bug in the software and decide to go in and fix it themselves. So it seems to me that paying contributors won't add much to the contribution pool, and that contributors will still contribute source anyway.
The author's contribution scheme is especially flawed, IMO, because it could easily lead to feature bloat as programmers decide to code up lots and lots of minor features to try to get points. I also disagree with the author's claim that the points should not be made tradeable: it's hard to tell what would prevent the contributors from making contracts with others to accept a certain sum of money now in exchange for transferring all further contribution revenue to the buyer. While the author points out that trading leads to a whole body of rule/lawmakers who regulate investments, this is only another mark against contribution points.
In sum, COSS is a good idea. Giving contribution points in exchange for contributions probably isn't a good idea. However, some other mechanism of contribution might work, and might be necessary to develop a large body of programmers working on the project.
While sengan described the conventional economy as zero-sum, the author of the Agalmics document doesn't. Here's what he said instead:
7. It is positive-sum. In games theory, a 'zero-sum game' is one in which one player's gain is another player's loss. Conventional economics often describes zero-sum games. When two suppliers compete for the dollars of a single customer, or when two government agencies compete with each other for fixed budget dollars, a zero sum game is played. A 'positive-sum game' is one in which players can gain by behavior which enhances the gains of others. Efficient agalmics is a positive-sum game. For example, when a free software programmer gives his source code away, he gains a large population of users to report bugs; the users gain the use of his programs. By awarding the other players points, the player gains points.
In addition, the "real economist" who posted earlier is right: this is nothing new. But then...
8. It is not new. Gift cultures have existed during much of human history, and other, non-gift cultures have clear agalmic influences. Religious communities have engaged in agalmic behavior, as have governments, businesses and individuals. Charities, standards organizations and trade associations often act agalmicly. It may be argued convincingly that civilization itself is an agalmic activity.
I think it's clear that several posters (I'm not naming names) neglected to read any further than sengan's incorrect summary and the title.
I'd really like to see high-scoring replies. I've found several posts scored 3 or even 4 which just happened to be replies to an earlier comment, effectively burying them from my view.
This should be an easy hack, I'd think... Just make the flat mode sort ALL posts by score, instead of just sorting the threads by the parents' score.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, Michael means the article posted by analytic at 4/4/01 7:47:21 PM entitled "William Gibson and the London-Tokyo connection".
To avoid /.ing this site, I've included the meat of analytic's response below:
Like Gibson, I always did feel that one of the most important sentiments that fuels British breakbeat is the sort of broadly orientalist subtext of British music in the twentieth century; not orientalist in the literal sense that it is directed specifically towards Asian culture, but rather in the sense that the British seem to have a hightened sensitivity towards and appreciation for the idea of the foreign. This foreign-ness, I think, ultimately reveals itself to the British as something new, valuable, and thus worthy of appropriation.
This disposition can be seen in Drum and Bass, which for so long aligned itself with American musical forms like jazz and hiphop, as well as with dub. Most recently, this tendency has become evident in UK Garage, which relies so heavily on the influence of US hiphop,R+B and Jamaican dancehall reggae. Strangely, I think, the xenophiliac impulse that drives so much British music to borrow from and expand upon American, West Indian, and Asian musics, in many cases manifests itself in American breakbeat audiences as a kind of anglophilia, an appreciation for the non-american aspects of breakbeat music.
One of the best positive sum games I"ve ever played is Lord of the Rings by world class game designer Reiner Knizia. (You can buy a copy at Funagain games.) The box says ages 12 and up; I think it's appropriate for kids in 4th grade or higher. It does not require familiarity with the books. In America, it's produced by Hasbro, where it has received basically no advertising.
In the game, each player is a Hobbit on a Corruption scale from 1-15. So is the Eye of Sauron. Various game events move individual Hobbits towards Darkness, and various events move the Eye of Sauron towards the Hobbits. If Sauron finds you, you lose. If you're the Ringbearer, everyone loses.
Play proceeds through Bag End, Rivendell, Moria, Lothlorien, Helm's Deep, Shelob's Lair, and finally Mordor, where, if the Hobbits are quick enough, they destroy the One Ring and win the game together.
I'm a college student and *I've* had a lot of fun playing this game. I highly recommend it for your students.
Windows 98 and ME both come with Microsoft's "Personal Web Server" pre-installed. This is a good example of Windows following Linux's lead, rather than the other way around.
realMyst will have a new ending. This, more than real-time lighting, has me excited.
Something that's been overlooked recently is that realMyst will have a new ending. The ending to Myst was one of the most disappointing endings in the history of adventure gaming. Hopefully, realMyst's ending will be substantially better.
So, you can use this 31337 Xploit to gain free Internet access... assuming you're already paying for a static IP, and you just happen to know a telephone number that lets anybody in the world log in and use their DNS. Uhm. Yeah.
I guess this is cool just for the sheer niftiness of running data through DNS; I'm sure this will soon be implemented as yet another steganographic protocol, but this isn't too useful, even for ripping off Microsoft.
Digital signatures can be made up by anybody with any name (or pseudonym/handle) you like. But the advantage of these signatures is that once you make up a signature and do something with it, (e.g. post a message to a public discussion group,) nobody can claim "I'm that same guy!" except you.
This is why digital signatures were supposed to herald the oncoming of anonymous e-commerce: I was supposed to be able to reveal to you my digital signature and have you NOT know who I was. I could have my credit card company sign a random number for me to prove that I've got credit, and then use that number to buy things online. You don't get my personal info because you don't NEED to know who I am; you just need to fulfill my order.
If I try to back out of paying, you take the money from my credit card company. If you try to back out of fulfillment, I take you to court and prove that *I* was the one who was frauded, that I'm the same guy, by using my pseudonymous signature.
Web of trust? PKI? These were designed because somebody saw the word "signature" and thought that they could use digital signatures like ordinary ones. IMO, this is just another example of the age-old problem: when all you've got is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.
They'd be insane to go forward with this plan as written. Suppose I, as an enterprising gamer, decide to release a system "based" on the PHB called the Cheaper Handbook under the Open Gaming License, identical in every respect to the PHB (page for page, line for line) only without using any of the D&D trademarks. A quick find/replace for "dungeonmaster", "D20", and a few others would suffice.
The CHB wouldn't call itself "D20 compatible," but it would be just as useful as the PHB, would cost me practically nothing to make, and could be sold for the cost of printing the book.
There goes their main revenue stream.
The fact of the matter is that one of these days, probably not very far in the future, something like digital paper will start to look readable. At that point, book dealers everywhere need to watch out. Wizards will need a totally different business model (probably one which focuses on live events) from the book sales racket they're running currently.
Make that "cocholate chip" NOT "cocholate chips"
Nonetheless, THIS link works.
Woof!
The Copenhagen interpretation states that upon the action of the "observer," (whatever THAT is; CI never bothers to define the observer rigorously!) the waveform "collapses." MWI argues that the waveform never collapses, but instead that histories "split" when thermodynamically irreversible processes take place. (Note that all of the tools we have available for "measurement" are thermodynamically irreversible processes.) All splits happen, but we observe ourselves to be in only one split, giving the appearance of randomness against a background of determinism.
From the Everett FAQ:
------------------
-----------------MWI isn't as unpopular as you might think, either:
------------------
---------------So, with all this heat/power consumption reduction in the Crusoe chip, does this mean we can overclock it more easily? What kind of speeds can we get if we're willing to get it as hot as, say, a P!!!?
If MWI turns out to be wrong, do we have to give some scientific account of "observation?" Is this possible?
Chaum has been sitting on his license for years, refusing to open it up to others until his company, Digicash, finally went bankrupt and he sold it to Ecash Technologies; if Bowie licensed it from them and started using it, it would be a big step forward for digital anonymous cash users.
For those of you who are unaware, anonymous digital cash has significant consequences for Internet commerce.
Big name, big money, big business. And maybe even crypto-anarchy to boot!
For a few years, back in the early nineties, we were being treated with a vision of the future in which all money would be anonymous tokens and monitoring commerce would become impossible. Tim May called this future "Crypto Anarchy."
Since you're still subscribed to one or two of the cypherpunks mailing lists, it appears as if you still consider this a possibility.
What effect do you see cryptography having on our wallets and on our financial institutions? Will anonymous commerce ever make it big?
I recognize that reclaiming the word "hacker" from the media is an uphill battle that many people here are fighting, but it seems to beg the question as to why you'd even WANT to be called a hacker in the first place.
When most people say "hacker," they mean cracker. The media won't use the word "cracker," because it sounds like slang. (In fact, it's already taken, as a racial slang term, making it a word you basically can't say on TV.) Hackers who aren't crackers are just coders, committed to the cause of freedom (esp. of information).
I'd rather people call me a Freedom Coder than they call me a "hacker." The term itself automatically communicates the fact that I write code, that I have an ethical system, and that I care about freedom. What does the word "hacker" convey? Mistrust of authority, at best?
In the first part of his book he talks about the standard social science model, which argues that human nature, to the extent that there is one, is a blank slate, and why he disagrees with that model. He also argues that there is no justification for discrimination on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. and that no biological finding will refute that moral fact. He also points out that many people make the naturalistic fallacy (assuming that what is natural is what is right) when dealing with questions of human evolutionary psychology, and that this fallacy should be eliminated from our discussion in order to put our science and our ethics on stronger territory. Finally, he talks about the existence of moral responsibility when we fully understand the causes behind a person's actions. Pinker argues that to understand is not to forgive, and that just because we know why someone did something does not mean that it is morally justifiable.
Like I say, if you find these ideas interesting, go pick up his book: he said nothing in the lecture that wasn't there.
Lucky you... Pinker agrees. He devotes a large section of his book to discussing just how connectonist networks work, and what they can and can't do given the size of the human brain. He, too, thinks that connectionism is a big part of the way the mind works, but his emphasis is on the "structured" part of "structured connectionism."
Pinker is giving a series of lectures here at Yale this week. His lecture yesterday basically outlined his book, and his lecture today will discuss how his theory relates to the question of human values. If it's interesting, I'll post a summary here.
-Dan
-Dan
After only a little thought about this, it seems to me that contributors who write good modifications (patches) to the original program should be allowed to sell run-time licences to use the patches under a COSS license. If someone (you?) writes a solid, publicly available COSS license a la the GPL, it would be easy for contributors to use it to distribute their software. It should include a clause which clearly specifies that anyone, even the original vendor, can buy a copy of the modification and the source code to that modification, but it would be illegal to actually use that source code in a program of your own without the permission of the author. (In this case, it would be illegal for the vendor to buy a copy of the modification and add it to the program on the sly.)
In addition, contributors should be able to sell the whole copyright to others (or, in this case, sell the right-to-license to others); I would expect that the most likely buyer would be the original software vendor itself. At this point, we can just let the market figure out the best payment scheme, though I suspect that the most efficient plan would involve the buyer paying a lump sum for the right-to-license, and not a share of the profits/gross.
-Dan
Commercial Open Source Software (COSS) would entail a commercial software vendor selling software licenses the same way they do now; however, they would also sell copies of the source code to their product. All users would still be required to pay the run-time license fee for the product, but modified versions of the software could be distributed (so long as the end users paid the license fee).
In addition, the author suggests that contributors to the source code might be paid for their contributions, and suggests a compensation scheme based on "contribution points." The company essentially outlines how many points a person gets for a contribution, (ie 1pt for a minor bug fix, 2pt for a minor/simple feature, etc.) and in return for contribution points, the contributor receives some revenue. The author suggests that these points should not be tradeable, to avoid alienation from the product and investment scams. Even if contribution points aren't a good way to pay contributors, the author still maintains that some mechanism should be provided for doing so.
My take on this is that the argument for selling your source is excellent. Many people believe that if anyone has a copy of a commercial vendor's source code then they will be unable to charge for it. This is pretty obviously wrong; we've seen a variety of cases where a sneaky hacker has busted in and liberated the source code to a variety of products, (the Quake source code was liberated in this way,) but the products made money anyway. This suggests to me that id could have easily have been distributing the source code to Quake, in c, and would not have suffered for it.
In addition, the author notes that the most expensive software is used by companies in the course of business. Managers who pay for software licenses take that payment out of their budgets; if they don't, they run the risk of employees blowing the whistle on a company when they see that the company endorses software piracy. This makes companies somewhat easier to monitor for software piracy.
Finally, many people want a packaged product, with manuals, tech support, and a pretty box; this can generally only be provided by buying a legal copy of the software.
Selling the source is a great idea, but what about contributors? Well, it's hard to tell whether and how contributors should be paid for contributions. In many cases, I think we'll find that contribution schemes like the one listed above will be unnecessary. It's unlikely that someone will decide to fix a bug in someone else's software in exchange for the meager sum that a company is likely to provide for that service. Many coders will be unwilling to contribute to COSS on the principle that it isn't Free. Coders still might do so for the prestige value, however; they might also do so if they get frustrated with a bug in the software and decide to go in and fix it themselves. So it seems to me that paying contributors won't add much to the contribution pool, and that contributors will still contribute source anyway.
The author's contribution scheme is especially flawed, IMO, because it could easily lead to feature bloat as programmers decide to code up lots and lots of minor features to try to get points. I also disagree with the author's claim that the points should not be made tradeable: it's hard to tell what would prevent the contributors from making contracts with others to accept a certain sum of money now in exchange for transferring all further contribution revenue to the buyer. While the author points out that trading leads to a whole body of rule/lawmakers who regulate investments, this is only another mark against contribution points.
In sum, COSS is a good idea. Giving contribution points in exchange for contributions probably isn't a good idea. However, some other mechanism of contribution might work, and might be necessary to develop a large body of programmers working on the project.
-Dan
7. It is positive-sum. In games theory, a 'zero-sum game' is one in which one player's gain is another player's loss. Conventional economics often describes zero-sum games. When two suppliers compete for the dollars of a single customer, or when two government agencies compete with each other for fixed budget dollars, a zero sum game is played. A 'positive-sum game' is one in which players can gain by behavior which enhances the gains of others. Efficient agalmics is a positive-sum game. For example, when a free software programmer gives his source code away, he gains a large population of users to report bugs; the users gain the use of his programs. By awarding the other players points, the player gains points.
In addition, the "real economist" who posted earlier is right: this is nothing new. But then...
8. It is not new. Gift cultures have existed during much of human history, and other, non-gift cultures have clear agalmic influences. Religious communities have engaged in agalmic behavior, as have governments, businesses and individuals. Charities, standards organizations and trade associations often act agalmicly. It may be argued convincingly that civilization itself is an agalmic activity.
I think it's clear that several posters (I'm not naming names) neglected to read any further than sengan's incorrect summary and the title.
-Dan
This should be an easy hack, I'd think... Just make the flat mode sort ALL posts by score, instead of just sorting the threads by the parents' score.
Otherwise, keep up the good work!
-Dan