It was interesting to see how completely both parties talked past each other here, and how their biases almost completely blinded them to the other's arguments.
Clarke clearly does not care about illegal use of his system due to an obvious religious zeal for free and anonymous speech (which, as an American it's hard to disagree with).
Oppenheim, on the other hand, completelely (and obviously willfully) ignores the idea that the debate is about anything other than the protection of IP rights; Corporate control of government and free speech aren't even issues worth discussing to the RIAA (gee, wonder why?).
Still, though I'd hardly call this a debate, it's nice that someone beside the directly involved parties still cares enough about these issues to present both sides.
I've never had any audio driver crash on Linux, but then again I've only used 3 different drivers so what do I know?;)
The only time I've ever had Linux hang (rather than X Windows hanging) were due to hardware problems.
However, one of these was a bad port on an SBLive! card. The kernel would hang when the ALSA driver was insmod'ed for this card. The same card on a Windows 2000 machine would NOT hang the machine -- the bad port just didn't work.
Now, I can see both sides of an argument here regarding whether drivers should accommodate hardware which is actually broken (rather than just poorly designed). If I didn't use that port, I'd have never know w/ Windows that the card was bad.
Well, since it's in the constitution, I think you'll still legally be able to quote for review purposes, although the copy protection itself may thrawrt you there.
That's the whole point. The "fair use" doctrine isn't going away, but the right of people to excercise it is because the technology that will make it possible (circumvention tools) are illegal! What good does it do me if Supreme Court precedent says I can make fair use of copyrighted material but the record companies make it impossible and the Congress stands behind them?
I hold some faint hope that the Supreme Court would rule that laws like the DMCA and CBDTPA which effectively give the content "producers" the right to take away fair use are unconstitutional. But it's faint indeed.
Do you think they need to "rent studio time" to make copies of data?
Did you read the post I was responding to? His hypothetical, not mine. However, if some of the legislation that is being proposed (CBDTPA) ever passed, only professional-quality audio devices will be able to copy audio marked as "copyrighted", as all "consumer" digital devices will be crippled, or illegal to manufacture in or import into the US.
The idea of trying to stifle all those human beings by limiting their capabilities, just so one "approved" group can profit from their creations, is vile and disgusting.
I agree. I'm not advocating for copy protection, or legislation supporting it. I'm firmly behind Boucher's and Lofgren's efforts to legislatively codify fair use and to protect it from prosecution under ridiculous laws like the DMCA (which should be repealed).
I concede that there will be a small # of people who want to prove they can "beat the system," as it were, but if it gets to the point where you have to pay money to rent studio time to copy audio, do you really think that someone who doesn't expect to get some remuneration will go to the trouble?
Is there really an underground of millionaire hackers out there, digital Robin Hoods who will spare no personal expense or risk to bring free entertainment to the FreeNET(illegal under the imagined scheme)-wielding masses?
They broke CSS, and released deCSS; and that was prior to the content creators getting "all of the legal protections they're asking for", e.g., hardware-level copy protection in all digital devices...
hacked the Xbox,
which is a computer that the owner purchased, and can arguably "hack" it if they want to...
take camcorders to pre-release showings of major movies
Which I'm sure has a <sarcasm>huge</sarcasm> impact on the film industry, as we all know how much the average moviegoer wants to pay for a copy of a movie at the wrong aspect ratio w/ background theater noise...
Since all of this can be done relatively anonymously, there's no real legal way to stop people from releasing copyrighted stuff on the Internet
Well, I'd hardly call sitting w/ camcorder in a theater during a pre-release showing of a movie (where there are presumably movie studio employees or people sympathetic to the studios present; it's pre-release, right?) anonymous.
But you've collossally missed the point of the entire discussion.
We're talking about giving the content "creators" "all the technical and legal protections they've been asking for." That means, hardware-level copy protection in all digital devices and heavy jail time for anyone selling or altering such devices.
We're therefore assuming for the sake of the argument that the types of activities you brought up will be much, much harder and riskier in the future.
What's unreasonable from keeping the public from copying your work and giving it to friends while you're trying to make money from it within a shorter time frame?
AND keeping people from making backup copies in case the original is damaged, AND keeping people from making personal compilations, AND keeping people from making a copy for the car/office/whatever, AND keeping people from making digital works of criticism or education which quote the original in its original form.
if they were given all copy protection they wanted (barring the banning of unlicensed microphones), people would still pirate music. It only takes one person circumventing the protection to open a work to the world.
Who are these people that will "pirate" works even if the content creators are given all of the technological and legal protections they're asking for? I.e., who will go to whatever technical lengths are required to copy the materials and risk whatever legal sanctions may accrue?
REAL pirates, people who are motivated by profit. The same mass copiers that operate in Ukraine, China and Taiwan today and who sell the pirated copies. They don't "open [works] to the world" unless the world pays them.
And people who are willing to pay will pay the record companies, if the price is reasonable.
And in the meantime, we wont' be able to make backup copies, mix cd's, a copy for the car, a digital work of criticism which incorporates a "quote" from the original, etc.
Is that worth it?
At this point, I really believe that the future of music is going to involve just completely circumventing/reinventing the middle, distribution/parasite layer of the industry, and perhaps finding ways to add value to music above just charging for the music itself.
You do realize that when you vote pretty much anywhere in the US they have all that information on file all ready?
With one vital exception... they don't know how you vote. They can't correlate your personal information with your voting behavior.
At least here in PA, I go into a booth with a curtain all around it (so some little man can't look at the back of the machine) and make my selections, then hit a lever which records and clears the machine. Then I come out.
You could argue that they do know your political party and that many people vote straight tickets for their party. That's about as close as they can get, though.
Agreed. As an MCSE (Windows NT), I've supported all the flavors of Windows around (and some that were never officially released, via the TechNet program). NT works like Unix. In fact, the Chicago Board of Trade, nuclear power plants, and airports often use NT for mission critical systems.
And I've had moving a window on the screen of a heavily loaded NT 4 box bring the server down (BSOD). Mission critical only if your mission tolerates frequent catastrophical failure, or the load on the box is negligible, maybe.
After reading the majority opinion, I have to say I basically agree with the court's reasons for finding against Eldred et al.
I don't like it, but basically the founders screwed up by leaving too much discretion over the definition of "limited Times" to Congress, and then by setting precedents themselves (i.e., Thomas Jefferson as President signing into law the first extension Act -- though for patents, not copyright; they're covered under the same clause and Constitutional rationale) that Congress could use that discretion as it saw fit.
I don't like the decision, but the court was consistent with itself and legislative history.
It seems that the only way now to put a real limit on Congress' power to extend copyright would be to pass a constitutional ammendment, or trust the motives of our future legislators (who, as we know, will be Honda Asimos operated by remote control by Jack Valenti from within the CEO's office at Disney headquarters).
So I like the statement of principle. But don't go valorizing your spending power (especially not after declaring yourself a citizen rather than a consumer). Spending power is no measure of democracy let alone of freedom. If the use of discretionary income had a direct influence upon the level of freedom available to a people, we'd be rolling in freedom -- and not a people staring down Homeland Security Departments with briefs for unmitigated domestic spying...
Point well taken, and thank you for engaging in rational debate rather than flattery or vilification -- the/. norm.
However, I have to take issue to an extent. Economic power has no direct influence over legislation/legislators who are already elected. But it is virtually (along with lawsuits -- which is why I oppose tort reform unless it happens after election/election-finance reform and tighter controls on the runaway capitalist fraud machine we call the American economy) the only power an individual has over corporations.
Any type of economic opt-out-ism, as you rightly pointed out, is of (possibly very) limited value (possibly not). But combined with public advocacy -- like this, and hopefully someday to a wider audience; corresponding w/ elected officials to try to educate/enlighten them, direct political pressure via support (financial and manpower) of alternate candidates, and any other legal means, it may be the best an individual can do (I hold out some slim hope for organized efforts like GeekPAC but the lack of any public progress reports is frustrating).
Anyway, I'm not at the point of buying a rifle and organizing a militia, and I don't have the money to buy politicians. Nor do I think illegal activity or violence are the answer. So until the hordes (even the Software Engineer hoardes, who are fairly well represented here) decide to join w/ me and constitue an overwhelming economic force to precipitate change, unfortunately ranting in fora like this, writing my representatives, and not buying shit sold by companies trying to dominate me are among my only options.
You're willing to bet $1000 that I care more about seeing every crease in Hugh Grant's smarmy grin than our democracy? If Representative Goodlatte actually wrote that post, our democracy is in serious danger. So much so that I think it's nearly fair to say that it's a complete sham.
I have not been this disillusioned with American politics in over a decade.
I switched parties (from Independant to republican) so I could vote for McKain in the primary in my state, only to have the corporate-and-soft-money machine of the Bush campaign screw him in South Carolina before my state's primary even happened.
Now, McKain/Feingold has passed, and the corporatae stooges at the FEC gutted it. I'm willing to wait a couple of years to see if McKain succeeds in his vows to go to court to overturn the FEC's rules as obvious executive flouting of Congress's power, and to fight to have the FEC commisioners replaced with people with even a shred of integrity.
In the meantime, you can keep up your anonymous posting lamely equating your brand of limp-dick cynicism with growing up to like asparagus. People like you not only piss me off, but are fucking up our country bigtime. Nobody even vaguely remembers what the word "sacrifice" means anymore, apparently.
If shit doesn't start to get better, I'll not only stop buying the corporate crap that has apparently come to be our country's entire raison-d'etre (rather than individual liberty): I'll refuse to work or contribute positively to our economy at all; I'll agitate for a general strike; I'll hoof it all over this fat, lazy country to help save it from its complacent self by contributing time to the campaigns of any political candidate I can find with some integrity and vision; I'll do everything legal in my power to disrupt this whole stinking, corrupt system, to deprive these cynical "this Lear jet is my bonus for laying off 30,000 workers at a time of record profits for my company" evil scumbags of their livelihood. Get it?
Is exactly what I will do if legislation like Berman's and all of the other stupid, dinosaur-Entertainment-cartel-protection-racket legislation passes.
As a professional in the IT industry and as an American citizen (NOT CONSUMER!), I care so much more about the usurpation of the American political process by and transfer of control over my rights regarding my personal property to big (mostly global) corporations than I do about what you mischaracterize as "piracy" -- piracy is commercial activity, passing out tapes for free on the streetcorner is not, and may even be protected under the Audio Home Recording act -- THAT I SIMPLY WON'T SPEND ANY MONEY ON ENTERTAINMENT AGAIN!
Read this, Rep. Goodlatte -- if that is really who you are -- over the past 5 years my income has been significantly higher than the national mean, due to my profession. I have spent an enormous amount of money on entertainment, computers and consumer electronics.
But with each step further into my home that the Entertainment industry attempts to exert power, my consumption has dropped and will continue to.
I do not, AND WILL NEVER own a DVD player thanks to CSS, region coding and other corporate attempts to control my private behavior.
I do not, AND NEVER WILL own an HDTV thanks to the broadcast flag and rules and legislation being proposed which seem to be designed to make things like the Linux computer which so empowered me (by, for instance, providing me with a learning platform which I used to leverage myself into this income bracket in the first place) illegal.
When ALL TV broadcasts are digital and protected, I won't be watching TV, and I'll just be one high-income but UNREACHABLE to advertisers "permanently potential consumer" thanks to you. Ask GM, Proctor and Gamble, and Pepsico how they feel about that. I will also be unable to view your campaign ads or those of like-minded fools who run for office in my district.
When ALL movies are only rentable on DVD (about 50% are only on DVD at my local Blockbuster now), I'll stop renting movies, AND MPAA MEMBER COMPANIES will stop receiving that much more of my large income -- as a frame of reference, I currently rent about 3 movies a week. By then, maybe even my wife will be so incensed that I'll be able to convince her of what I've been unsuccesful at convincing her in the past -- that we should stop going to movies alltogether.
If it gets to the point where music is only available on media or devices that are likewise crippled, I'll DISCONTINUE ALL MUSIC PURCHASES. I've already greatly curtailed my previously prodigious music buying behavior due to my outrage at this whole DRM regime bullshit.
And you know what? That's all fine by me. I own a guitar and a computer that can record music; I'll make my own music, and probably even give it away -- PROBABLY BECOMING ONE OF JUST MANY PROVIDING COMPLETELY FREE COMPETING PRODUCT for "consumers" to choose over that of your corporate pimps.
I have friends who own conventional and digital flim equipment.
I have a computer with which to compose and disseminate my views.
Unless you plan on making all means for individual citizens to produce their own entertainment and their own news media, you'll eventually fulfill the exact opposite goal of all this legislation; you'll help impoverish the very companies you're trying to protect. Let's see if they continue to fund your campaigns then!
Our forefathers died for (and grandfathers fought world wars for) freedom, NOT FOR DISNEY!
Actually...I was thinking more along the lines of RAS into the home network. Issue your "startup" command while you drive home from Dinner.
Lights come on, the heat is turned up a few notches, bath water starts running at a comfortable 106 degrees, the stereo comes on to your favorite cd...etc.
Right. Then when you get home, you can step on your Segway HT to get from one room to the other, while your Honda Asimo takes your Sony Aibo for a walk. All while you turn into a fatter, richer, dummer target for the hoardes of hungry poor who -- if there's any justice in the universe at all -- will be sitting in old chevy panel vans right around the corner, lithe from walking and energized with righteous anger, armed with good old-fashioned baseball bats, waiting to beat your head in when your fat, affluent family finally fall asleep to the relaxing hiss of your Sonet System.
If software specifications are not worth formalizing on paper - it isn't worth creating.
Hardware Engineer, to a
It just formalizes the lazy practices of programmers. 50% to 90% of software projects fail because of embracing fly-by-night "technologies" like this.
Manager?
;-) No offense, really.
But so as not to be merely flaming you (and with all due seriousness and respect), let me deal with your points individually again:
Formal specs or IT AIN'T WORTH IT -
Puleeaase. This is great, maybe, if you work in a company that does shrinkwrap software, you have no real direct link to your customers anyway, and a great marketing department to convince your users that what you came up with for "what they want" based on the little bit of focus-group-based market research you did is really what they want.
But the VAST majority of software projects are internal to a company or are bespoke software developed on a contract basis. In those cases, getting the requirements exactly right is very important, because you actually have a contract that states that you will meet the customer's goals, the goals are explicit but often conflicting and from multiple interested parties w/in the client, and they almost always change before the project ends. So your assertion basically reads, "90% of software shouldn't be written and companies should stick w/ phones and pencils."
It just formalizes the lazy practices of programmers -
Well, if programmers are lazy (Larry Wall says they are, and he's pretty smart), then you better design your software processes (and programming languages -- Thanks Larry!) to accommodate or explictly capitalize on that. All of the Agile Methodologies are somewhat premised on the fact that people are the ones that write software, so you better choose a methodology which capitalizes on their stengths and mitigates their weaknesses.
50% to 90% of software projects fail because of embracing fly-by-night "technologies" like this -
Well, last I heard is that the "canonical" figure is that 78% of software projects fail because of a variety of by now well-understood (by everyone but people making decisions on software projects, apparently) factors such as a) requirements change (that's right, there was an IRON-CLAD spec, but it changed repeatedly); b) unrealistic and inflexible project deadlines set before the project was initiated; and c) poor developer morale, growing exponentially over time because of the cumulative effect of a) and b).
So, all of the Agile Methodologies attempt to address these things. You may not agree with the details of how they do it.
But I doubt most of the software-using world will agree with "lets stop writing almost all software," either.
Right. If we really wanted an informed electorate, we'd teach critical thinking skills directly ("Every 'fact' is just an opinion you aquired from sources you considered authoritative or reliable -- the more the better, and if you're lucky you can check them against your own experience or reason -- which may be faulty" and its corollary "Don't automatically believe information or trust someone's motives.") instead of "remember these 'important facts', the most important of which is 'everything your parents, teachers and civic leaders say is correct!'"
Re:read the first chapter at the book store.
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A coder typically writes code and others will maintain it (because you left for another job, got promoted, the project was handed off to a maintenance crew, you got fired for your crappy work, or whatever). THEY have to make sense of your code to fix/maintain it.
The mere fact that you used design patterns is no guarantee that your code will be comprehensible to another programmer; actually, it will likely make your code less comprehesible to anyone but someone equally versed in Design Patterns because it adds another layer of abstraction.
Design Patterns have 2 useful qualities, IMHO:
it provides a shared language to talk about design at a somewhat more abstract level than individual classes from the problem/solution domains
most of the patterns in the GoF book are aimed at reducing coupling between/cohesion within modules
Its the second of these that helps to make code more maintainable, because it means that changes don't have to propagate wildly throughout the system.
However, you still need to write terse, elegant code with terse, meaningful comments for others to navigate your code, whether you use design patterns or not.
Re:Design Patterns help "losers lose less"
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That's great, but until those dynamic languages gain legitimacy to business managers, who are usually the particular losers who pick the technologies for a project -- and who use whatever "everybody else" uses (i.e. "no one ever got fired for using Java") -- then patterns are an indispensable way to work around inherent limitations in popular languages which make decoupling harder.
Because so far it's been an incalculably great boon. How's that for an answer?
I agree it's been a great boon for some, and even an modest boon to neutral for most. My problem is with the "incalcuable" part.
Your assertion that slowing progress is unjustifiable except in the face of a "recognized" looming catastrophe begs the question "recognized by whom?"
For instance, the general consensus among climatologists, from an outsider's point of view at least, is that climate change is occuring and human activity is a primary cause (not neccesarily the only one). Even Bush's own administration just admitted it, but Bush dismisses his own administration's report!
I guess my argument boils down to: if you're driving forward, and someone says that there is a sudden dropoff ahead, do you keep driving fast because you can't see the dropoff yourself (realizing that at that speed, once you do see it, you won't be able to stop in time)? Yes, driving slow is frustrating and takes longer to get where you're going. But when you don't know the road, it's also vastly safer.
If you harvest a tree, you have gained some wood and removed from the world some habitat and a carbon sink. You should have to pay to harvest that tree, because a cost is incurred by society. The same principle applies to clearcutting 100 acres, except the cost is much greater. The same principle applies to polluting bodies of water, paving land, taking game, etc.
If you carefully consider my point, you will see that it actually fits best with libertarian free market philosophy.
It doesn't fit with "libertarian free market philosophy" because that philosophy recognizes the tree as the property of the person cutting it down, while the myriad people using the carbon sink and depending on the biodiversity resulting from the habitat it provides have no property rights in the tree whatsoever.
I have long been interested in what the philosophical framework is for property rights in the West, in particular with regard to limited, vital resources. I can't understand why we sacrifice the future of our species on the altar of production and trade.
If anyone out there knows of any comprehensive treatments of the history of property rights which doesn't have an axe to grind, I'd love to hear of it.
No, of course, the NIC will be programmed not to let streams that don't contain clear text (using a dictionary lookup) or binary data with known formats from crossing the wire.
Yes, the cost per NIC will be $10,000. However, that'll be partially subsidized by a tax on all computer, electronics, and software purchases.
Looks like NIC cards are going to basically have full packet filtering & application level firewalls built in. "Hmmm, does this stream of packets have a broadcast flag when I attempt to assemble them thusly? Yes? Hmmm, what's the destination IP? 204.*? Yikes, start dropping packets on this connection!" It'll have to know TCP/IP, UDP, and whatever network & transport level protocols anyone dreams up. The race for protocols is on. Anyone see IPX coming back in style quickly?
Boy, I bet those babys will be a joy to design. And market. And dirt cheap, to boot!
Of course, it's possible that we'll all be mandated by law to switch to TCP-DRM/IP-DRM and UDP-DRM/IP-DRM and all other protocols will be outlawed. Patent lawyers, start your engines!
Meanwhile, I'll be programming in the Cayman Islands.
For text-based files, require them to be XML, and that the Schemas be published.
For binary files, specs already have to be precise (whether the spec is published or not) for reliable operation. And as far as extension goes, mandate that any extensions to the file format be made using specific extension semantics imposed by the format itself (i.e., reserved bits w/ a standards body allocating those bits to registered extensions, mandated publication of the semantics of the extensions, etc).
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Clarke clearly does not care about illegal use of his system due to an obvious religious zeal for free and anonymous speech (which, as an American it's hard to disagree with).
Oppenheim, on the other hand, completelely (and obviously willfully) ignores the idea that the debate is about anything other than the protection of IP rights; Corporate control of government and free speech aren't even issues worth discussing to the RIAA (gee, wonder why?).
Still, though I'd hardly call this a debate, it's nice that someone beside the directly involved parties still cares enough about these issues to present both sides.
However, one of these was a bad port on an SBLive! card. The kernel would hang when the ALSA driver was insmod'ed for this card. The same card on a Windows 2000 machine would NOT hang the machine -- the bad port just didn't work.
Now, I can see both sides of an argument here regarding whether drivers should accommodate hardware which is actually broken (rather than just poorly designed). If I didn't use that port, I'd have never know w/ Windows that the card was bad.
I hold some faint hope that the Supreme Court would rule that laws like the DMCA and CBDTPA which effectively give the content "producers" the right to take away fair use are unconstitutional. But it's faint indeed.
Now, if we could just find some of those...
I concede that there will be a small # of people who want to prove they can "beat the system," as it were, but if it gets to the point where you have to pay money to rent studio time to copy audio, do you really think that someone who doesn't expect to get some remuneration will go to the trouble?
Is there really an underground of millionaire hackers out there, digital Robin Hoods who will spare no personal expense or risk to bring free entertainment to the FreeNET(illegal under the imagined scheme)-wielding masses?
I doubt it.
But you've collossally missed the point of the entire discussion.
We're talking about giving the content "creators" "all the technical and legal protections they've been asking for." That means, hardware-level copy protection in all digital devices and heavy jail time for anyone selling or altering such devices.
We're therefore assuming for the sake of the argument that the types of activities you brought up will be much, much harder and riskier in the future.
REAL pirates, people who are motivated by profit . The same mass copiers that operate in Ukraine, China and Taiwan today and who sell the pirated copies. They don't "open [works] to the world" unless the world pays them.
And people who are willing to pay will pay the record companies, if the price is reasonable.
And in the meantime, we wont' be able to make backup copies, mix cd's, a copy for the car, a digital work of criticism which incorporates a "quote" from the original, etc.
Is that worth it?
At this point, I really believe that the future of music is going to involve just completely circumventing/reinventing the middle, distribution/parasite layer of the industry, and perhaps finding ways to add value to music above just charging for the music itself.
At least here in PA, I go into a booth with a curtain all around it (so some little man can't look at the back of the machine) and make my selections, then hit a lever which records and clears the machine. Then I come out.
You could argue that they do know your political party and that many people vote straight tickets for their party. That's about as close as they can get, though.
After reading the majority opinion, I have to say I basically agree with the court's reasons for finding against Eldred et al.
I don't like it, but basically the founders screwed up by leaving too much discretion over the definition of "limited Times" to Congress, and then by setting precedents themselves (i.e., Thomas Jefferson as President signing into law the first extension Act -- though for patents, not copyright; they're covered under the same clause and Constitutional rationale) that Congress could use that discretion as it saw fit.
I don't like the decision, but the court was consistent with itself and legislative history.
It seems that the only way now to put a real limit on Congress' power to extend copyright would be to pass a constitutional ammendment, or trust the motives of our future legislators (who, as we know, will be Honda Asimos operated by remote control by Jack Valenti from within the CEO's office at Disney headquarters).
Point well taken, and thank you for engaging in rational debate rather than flattery or vilification -- the
However, I have to take issue to an extent. Economic power has no direct influence over legislation/legislators who are already elected. But it is virtually (along with lawsuits -- which is why I oppose tort reform unless it happens after election/election-finance reform and tighter controls on the runaway capitalist fraud machine we call the American economy) the only power an individual has over corporations.
Any type of economic opt-out-ism, as you rightly pointed out, is of (possibly very) limited value (possibly not). But combined with public advocacy -- like this, and hopefully someday to a wider audience; corresponding w/ elected officials to try to educate/enlighten them, direct political pressure via support (financial and manpower) of alternate candidates, and any other legal means, it may be the best an individual can do (I hold out some slim hope for organized efforts like GeekPAC but the lack of any public progress reports is frustrating).
Anyway, I'm not at the point of buying a rifle and organizing a militia, and I don't have the money to buy politicians. Nor do I think illegal activity or violence are the answer. So until the hordes (even the Software Engineer hoardes, who are fairly well represented here) decide to join w/ me and constitue an overwhelming economic force to precipitate change, unfortunately ranting in fora like this, writing my representatives, and not buying shit sold by companies trying to dominate me are among my only options.
You're willing to bet $1000 that I care more about seeing every crease in Hugh Grant's smarmy grin than our democracy? If Representative Goodlatte actually wrote that post, our democracy is in serious danger. So much so that I think it's nearly fair to say that it's a complete sham.
I have not been this disillusioned with American politics in over a decade.
I switched parties (from Independant to republican) so I could vote for McKain in the primary in my state, only to have the corporate-and-soft-money machine of the Bush campaign screw him in South Carolina before my state's primary even happened.
Now, McKain/Feingold has passed, and the corporatae stooges at the FEC gutted it. I'm willing to wait a couple of years to see if McKain succeeds in his vows to go to court to overturn the FEC's rules as obvious executive flouting of Congress's power, and to fight to have the FEC commisioners replaced with people with even a shred of integrity.
In the meantime, you can keep up your anonymous posting lamely equating your brand of limp-dick cynicism with growing up to like asparagus. People like you not only piss me off, but are fucking up our country bigtime. Nobody even vaguely remembers what the word "sacrifice" means anymore, apparently.
If shit doesn't start to get better, I'll not only stop buying the corporate crap that has apparently come to be our country's entire raison-d'etre (rather than individual liberty): I'll refuse to work or contribute positively to our economy at all; I'll agitate for a general strike; I'll hoof it all over this fat, lazy country to help save it from its complacent self by contributing time to the campaigns of any political candidate I can find with some integrity and vision; I'll do everything legal in my power to disrupt this whole stinking, corrupt system, to deprive these cynical "this Lear jet is my bonus for laying off 30,000 workers at a time of record profits for my company" evil scumbags of their livelihood. Get it?
Make your bet, but you'll lose your $1000.
Is exactly what I will do if legislation like Berman's and all of the other stupid, dinosaur-Entertainment-cartel-protection-racket legislation passes.
As a professional in the IT industry and as an American citizen (NOT CONSUMER!), I care so much more about the usurpation of the American political process by and transfer of control over my rights regarding my personal property to big (mostly global) corporations than I do about what you mischaracterize as "piracy" -- piracy is commercial activity, passing out tapes for free on the streetcorner is not, and may even be protected under the Audio Home Recording act -- THAT I SIMPLY WON'T SPEND ANY MONEY ON ENTERTAINMENT AGAIN!
Read this, Rep. Goodlatte -- if that is really who you are -- over the past 5 years my income has been significantly higher than the national mean, due to my profession. I have spent an enormous amount of money on entertainment, computers and consumer electronics.
But with each step further into my home that the Entertainment industry attempts to exert power, my consumption has dropped and will continue to.
I do not, AND WILL NEVER own a DVD player thanks to CSS, region coding and other corporate attempts to control my private behavior.
I do not, AND NEVER WILL own an HDTV thanks to the broadcast flag and rules and legislation being proposed which seem to be designed to make things like the Linux computer which so empowered me (by, for instance, providing me with a learning platform which I used to leverage myself into this income bracket in the first place) illegal.
When ALL TV broadcasts are digital and protected, I won't be watching TV, and I'll just be one high-income but UNREACHABLE to advertisers "permanently potential consumer" thanks to you. Ask GM, Proctor and Gamble, and Pepsico how they feel about that. I will also be unable to view your campaign ads or those of like-minded fools who run for office in my district.
When ALL movies are only rentable on DVD (about 50% are only on DVD at my local Blockbuster now), I'll stop renting movies, AND MPAA MEMBER COMPANIES will stop receiving that much more of my large income -- as a frame of reference, I currently rent about 3 movies a week. By then, maybe even my wife will be so incensed that I'll be able to convince her of what I've been unsuccesful at convincing her in the past -- that we should stop going to movies alltogether.
If it gets to the point where music is only available on media or devices that are likewise crippled, I'll DISCONTINUE ALL MUSIC PURCHASES. I've already greatly curtailed my previously prodigious music buying behavior due to my outrage at this whole DRM regime bullshit.
And you know what? That's all fine by me. I own a guitar and a computer that can record music; I'll make my own music, and probably even give it away -- PROBABLY BECOMING ONE OF JUST MANY PROVIDING COMPLETELY FREE COMPETING PRODUCT for "consumers" to choose over that of your corporate pimps.
I have friends who own conventional and digital flim equipment.
I have a computer with which to compose and disseminate my views.
Unless you plan on making all means for individual citizens to produce their own entertainment and their own news media, you'll eventually fulfill the exact opposite goal of all this legislation; you'll help impoverish the very companies you're trying to protect. Let's see if they continue to fund your campaigns then!
Our forefathers died for (and grandfathers fought world wars for) freedom, NOT FOR DISNEY!
But I guess you can't tell the difference.
But so as not to be merely flaming you (and with all due seriousness and respect), let me deal with your points individually again:
- Formal specs or IT AIN'T WORTH IT -
Puleeaase. This is great, maybe, if you work in a company that does shrinkwrap software, you have no real direct link to your customers anyway, and a great marketing department to convince your users that what you came up with for "what they want" based on the little bit of focus-group-based market research you did is really what they want.But the VAST majority of software projects are internal to a company or are bespoke software developed on a contract basis. In those cases, getting the requirements exactly right is very important, because you actually have a contract that states that you will meet the customer's goals, the goals are explicit but often conflicting and from multiple interested parties w/in the client, and they almost always change before the project ends. So your assertion basically reads, "90% of software shouldn't be written and companies should stick w/ phones and pencils."
- It just formalizes the lazy practices of programmers -
Well, if programmers are lazy (Larry Wall says they are, and he's pretty smart), then you better design your software processes (and programming languages -- Thanks Larry!) to accommodate or explictly capitalize on that. All of the Agile Methodologies are somewhat premised on the fact that people are the ones that write software, so you better choose a methodology which capitalizes on their stengths and mitigates their weaknesses.- 50% to 90% of software projects fail because of embracing fly-by-night "technologies" like this -
Well, last I heard is that the "canonical" figure is that 78% of software projects fail because of a variety of by now well-understood (by everyone but people making decisions on software projects, apparently) factors such as a) requirements change (that's right, there was an IRON-CLAD spec, but it changed repeatedly); b) unrealistic and inflexible project deadlines set before the project was initiated; and c) poor developer morale, growing exponentially over time because of the cumulative effect of a) and b).So, all of the Agile Methodologies attempt to address these things. You may not agree with the details of how they do it.
But I doubt most of the software-using world will agree with "lets stop writing almost all software," either.
Right. If we really wanted an informed electorate, we'd teach critical thinking skills directly ("Every 'fact' is just an opinion you aquired from sources you considered authoritative or reliable -- the more the better, and if you're lucky you can check them against your own experience or reason -- which may be faulty" and its corollary "Don't automatically believe information or trust someone's motives.") instead of "remember these 'important facts', the most important of which is 'everything your parents, teachers and civic leaders say is correct!'"
Design Patterns have 2 useful qualities, IMHO:
- it provides a shared language to talk about design at a somewhat more abstract level than individual classes from the problem/solution domains
- most of the patterns in the GoF book are aimed at reducing coupling between/cohesion within modules
Its the second of these that helps to make code more maintainable, because it means that changes don't have to propagate wildly throughout the system.However, you still need to write terse, elegant code with terse, meaningful comments for others to navigate your code, whether you use design patterns or not.
That's great, but until those dynamic languages gain legitimacy to business managers, who are usually the particular losers who pick the technologies for a project -- and who use whatever "everybody else" uses (i.e. "no one ever got fired for using Java") -- then patterns are an indispensable way to work around inherent limitations in popular languages which make decoupling harder.
Your assertion that slowing progress is unjustifiable except in the face of a "recognized" looming catastrophe begs the question "recognized by whom?"
For instance, the general consensus among climatologists, from an outsider's point of view at least, is that climate change is occuring and human activity is a primary cause (not neccesarily the only one). Even Bush's own administration just admitted it, but Bush dismisses his own administration's report!
I guess my argument boils down to: if you're driving forward, and someone says that there is a sudden dropoff ahead, do you keep driving fast because you can't see the dropoff yourself (realizing that at that speed, once you do see it, you won't be able to stop in time)? Yes, driving slow is frustrating and takes longer to get where you're going. But when you don't know the road, it's also vastly safer.
I have long been interested in what the philosophical framework is for property rights in the West, in particular with regard to limited, vital resources. I can't understand why we sacrifice the future of our species on the altar of production and trade.
If anyone out there knows of any comprehensive treatments of the history of property rights which doesn't have an axe to grind, I'd love to hear of it.
Yes, the cost per NIC will be $10,000. However, that'll be partially subsidized by a tax on all computer, electronics, and software purchases.
Boy, I bet those babys will be a joy to design. And market. And dirt cheap, to boot!
Of course, it's possible that we'll all be mandated by law to switch to TCP-DRM/IP-DRM and UDP-DRM/IP-DRM and all other protocols will be outlawed. Patent lawyers, start your engines!
Meanwhile, I'll be programming in the Cayman Islands.
For text-based files, require them to be XML, and that the Schemas be published.
For binary files, specs already have to be precise (whether the spec is published or not) for reliable operation. And as far as extension goes, mandate that any extensions to the file format be made using specific extension semantics imposed by the format itself (i.e., reserved bits w/ a standards body allocating those bits to registered extensions, mandated publication of the semantics of the extensions, etc).