Assuming you don't live in destitute conditions, it seems more reasonable to say that real viruses don't kill you, except of course for the pathological (pardon the pun) exceptions.
Consider smallpox and cold.
Smallpox of course does kill, but it's not around.. where is it? I don't see it, my neighbors and friends don't see it. Nobody sees it, except for biologists.
Smallpox is laughed at by the other viruses. It has the strength of Hercules, but what does it do with it? It pops up once every few generations and shows its strength, but is usually gone in a flash. Lame.
The common cold, on the other hand, is everywhere.. I have it right now, some of my neighbors and friends have it.. it's spreading like wild-fire!
The cold is a great virus.. it's like the star of the viruses.. it tries its hardest not to get the host sick, becuase a sick host stays home, and then the cold can't get to new hosts.
The real benefit of sanitation, plumbing in particular, is the quarantine of hosts infected by loser viruses. Viruses that devastate poor river villages in the tropics aren't a threat in the rich cities because of sanitation... a couple of people get the virus, stay home (to recover or die), and few others get exposed.
If you want to make better viruses, save us some time and make them cool, like the cold, instead of lame, like smallpox... we'll both be happier for it.
Like you say, you're not lawyers, and neither am I, but that's no excuse for being ignorant of basic law, especially when advocating an action based on it's legality, effectiveness and unstoppability.
IANAL, but the guys who write Black's Law Dictionary are. Read their definition of conspiracy. Specifically, it sounds like you are advocating "civil conspiracy":
"Civil conspiracy. The essence of a "civil conspiracy" is a concert or combination to defraud or cause other injury to person or property, which results in damage to the person or property of plaintiff." - Black's Law Dictionary
when you say:
"Since each Votester peer only sends a few messages (such as once per day, or once per hour, etc.) no individual peer can be considered to be engaging in illegal harassment, hacking, denial of service, etc. Rather it is only the totally decentralized, emergent activity of the entire group that results in large volumes of messages and requests being received by target addresses. Therefore no individual is liable." - Your proposal
New Zealand government sent letters to people who had chosen "Jedi" as their religion that they shouldn't have abused the census system, and that Jedi isn't considered a religion, even though a significant number of people chose it (IIRC 2%x5%).
Well, what's wrong with using a little how r u doing 2day? in school? Just because it's government supported doesn't mean it has to be uncreative.. will the world start spinning the other direction and gravity reverse if chat-room speak invades our precious children's minds?
If people want to learn to speak with each other, they'll learn how.. but by getting them all to speak the same we're just enhancing our culture's already monolithic character. Boooring.
It's amazing to see cultural normalization - ahem - education work its crafty art.
It was the worst day of my life.. my now fiance had gone to work downtown that morning and I had slept in.. I work with people on West coast and in New Zealand, and work doesn't start until later.
Well, I was awakened with phone calls.. my friend mistook my early morning groggly voice for grief, and said "oh my god, is Sarah OK?" . "What? why?", I said. "You haven't heard? The Trade Center is gone.. it's just gone.. two planes crashed into them and they fell over"
Well, the first minutes after that were a delirium.. I think for a full minute I was frozen after I realized that the TV was out and the phone lines were too.. what could I do?
Well, Sarah worked close to the Trade Center, but fortunately, she'd been re-routed in her commute, and later that day I got ahold of her and then finally got her home. The only good news of the day was that many people had the same experience. The bad news of the day.. well.. it's hard to call that news even.. more like the Bad of that day..
The first week we were glued to the TV.. I've long been interested in history and politics, and it was clear that this event would be one of the most significant historical events of my life.. I was still in shock from that morning, really, and needed as much information as possible.. I didn't want to feel powerless again.
That didn't last long though.. I quickly realized that the trajectory of TV was going away from information and towards politicization. I'd always thought this was the general case with TV, but here it's ugly head was reared up again, and at the worst of times.
I stopped watching TV, and slowly stopped reading new papers. I stopped reading slashdot, and everything. I stopped listening to music, and reading.
Finally, after a few months of quiet-time, long walks outside, time with family and friends, and many quiet reflective hours, I started reading again. Just light stuff at first, but finally, books about the Middle East, books about modern politics, books questioning the standard lines of argument. And slashdot again, and kuro5hin, and emails with others that were starting to do the same.
Well, now a year later I have finally started paying attention to the news again, and all I can say is, it's sickening.
What's happening in our government and in our country's foreign policy is.. well, you'll have to decide. But, consider that you don't have a voice in it.. Bush was ready to make war without any sort of democratic process, much less a popular process. Judging from the comments here today, it's obvious why. Most people want to know why things got to be this way. Most people want to keep them from happenning again. Seemingly, the only ones in the world who answer "Evil" and "Conquer Evil through War" to those questions the same ones who could be included in the blame, and who stand to benefit most: our government. Notice the rest of the world.. really almost every nation of the UN answers: "Your foreign policy created a monster" and "Deal with it ethically and legally".
Our governments answers sound too simple intentionally. They're meant to play off of our desire for security and simplicity in our lives again. Please, see what other opinions are out there and if they're substantiated. If we commit attrocities to others in some sort of simplistic reaction to a situation we helped create.. well, we won't have those simple peaceful lives.
I've taken off of work today to spend time with my fiance.. to reflect and mourn. Maybe we'll see you in the streets.
Oh, I bet Lessig could image it getting worse...
on
Shrinkwrapped Books
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· Score: 1
Now with the help of shrink-wrapped books, can the rest of us?:)
If I have a just excellent Pizza recipe, should I keep it a secret? If I decide to let people eat the pizza, is keeping it secret still ok? What if they want to know if they're allergic to something in it, or they want to know if they like the ingredients...
I assume it would be best to tell them the ingredients, but then they could just go and make the same great pizza themselves, or maybe improve the recipe, or even tell their friends! Is this OK? How can the food market ever go on if this happens?
Is there any distinction between sharing a recipe with commercial vs. non-commercial entities? Maybe the commercial people will "take the recipe private", and not "give back to the community" any improvements they make (e.g. like using a different yeast, or the ratio of sauce to cheese).
Lemme tell ya, if you think we can share, then I think you and Richard Stallman (one of the great software chefs) should get together, because he's having a tough time convincing people of this. I turns out that in the software world, people have a lot of difficulty deciding how best to treat recipes, sharing, and even the resulting meals.. you know, Do you own the meal once you buy it? etc. etc.
If you could help us out on this, we'd try realllly hard to make better recipe sharing software!
I found it refreshing because it's very easy to get down, or confused, about the state of affairs today. A maniacal humorous take is just the right subjective approach. In Terry Gilliam's Brazil, there's like 10 lines of serious social criticism.. but the whole work is extrememly effective as a warning.
I think the people here, esp. the coders, didn't like the message because it involved so many threads that they can usually ignore. The idea that the inequity of software relationships can be seen from a much larger perspective, and somehow tie in with all of this messy political stuff, like diamond miners in South Africa... well, it's just frightening. Coders aren't diamond miners, after all! We're powerful important people. We aren't used by the man! The man loves us.. he gives us better TV to watch and dental plans.
Just this weekend on/. a great piece was posted, called "Reclaiming the commons". It was long and mainly about non-geek issues. Yet one of the/. editors highly recommended it. Why? It's not News for Nerds. It wasn't about the Sony P3's new chip. Why was it posted?
Bruce Sterling hit the nail right on the head. The geeks, he is telling us, along with everyone else are going to have to become dissidents, and then activists.
Because this is a real time of reckoning about freedom and how we may want to change the way we govern ourselves; we all should be prepared. Bruce Sterling's speech is a humorously contrarian introduction, aimed at geeks. But don't stop there.
Go and eat at an urban McDonalds, get a copy of US News & World Report, watch some MTV skin-flick or FOX News, or try not using your ss# for a while, or try tracking your vote to any actual political action (or comparing your vote to a company dollar), and top it all off with a visit to the local garbage dump, 'cause it's gonna smell better there.
Then go and read the commons article. Then read opensecrets.org, or cryptome.org, or the books "Understanding Power" (Chomsky) or "Empire" (Hardt & Negri) or the Declaration of Independence. Not that you have to sign-up with any political party, but these things will change your mind about how the world works, and your role in it.
At the end of doing all of this myself, I didn't needed to be preached to anymore. It's not just the software debate. It's not just the music debate. It's not just the accounting debate. It's the way of the world that is systematically confused. "The American Dream": this Ad sponsored by Pepsi and Brittney Spears' bouncing boobs. Is this really what it's supposed to be like?
I'm reading all I can and planning for a better way of life.
I'm trying to build a net radio station that is totally free and redistributable. I use free software (linux, icecast, liveice) to broadcast music, and only broadcast music that is licensed to the public under the EFF's Open Audio License, OpenMusic.com's Open Music License or even the GPL. I broadcast 100 songs by 10 artists, 24/7. Not the most exciting playlist, but it's up and running.
Of course I'd like to find more music to play that is already under these licenses (I've scoured openaudioregistry.org, but other suggestions welcome), but I'm also trying to convince artists, both friends and strangers, to release the music on these licenses. Usually, a band has a web-site or posts their music to mp3.com and they advertise it as "free!", but after a couple of emails, it's clear that the artists don't use free in the same way I do. Most of the artists that I talk to have either forgotten, or have never encountered, the idea of art truly free to the public. When I describe the ideas of public domain, copyright, licensing, etc. their eyes glaze over (you actually can see it over email!) and they inform me that they hate "lawyer talk".
Given your experience, maybe you can offer some insight here.
How do you appeal to an artist to take their hard work and donate it to the public and in a meaningfully legal way?
I see your point, and at times it is in effect, but I think you may underestimate peoples' reactions to activists.
The "other standards" that apply are usually what activists are questioning by their activity. If things normal processes were OK, you could really just send in your enlightened opinions, and they would receive their due review.
However, it seems that's exactly what isn't happening. That was supposed to be a closed, under-the-radar meeting.. now that it has exposure, those corp/gov people can't be happy. And to know that they can't just slime their way into the pockets of the activists is one of the key reasons why.
I dunno, I was just concerned that the main reaction to those people showing up at a basically hostile conference was "you guys weren't representing us well". I thought they did a fine job.
You're typecasting. Not surprising. You'd be surprised to see me in person.
And I do know how to address my audience.. I drew you out of the wordwork, didn't I?
It looks like Stallman knows how to address his audience.. Jack Valenti didn't look all too happy to have him there. In fact, I'm sure it further angered him that Stallman didn't have Armani on. If there was any fashion insight that should have been modded up, that was it.
What people in this thread don't get is that the goal is not to convince corporate/government of th e need to protect consumers, because indeed, they do not care. The goal is to scare them.
Corporate/Government thinks it can get away with whatever it wants these days. Did you see their call for public comment? I posted there (did you?). It was a 2x2 box on a web-page, and according to the article that was posted, they shutdown the EFF and the public that did show up.
Why would the EFF lawyer still show up if she knew she couldn't say anything to them? Because it wasn't a debate, it was a show of force.
Something else that's been proven time and time again, if you're interested, is that when people put down their daily work to show up at boring corp/gov meetings, you're going to have a tough fight... and for what it's worth, cheers to Stallman for this minor victory... got IBM and Intel to speak up apparently (they know that geeks need to be appeased, whether the geeks have Armani or not).
it's all free music, each song released under 1 of 3 licenses currently in use for "open" music. This guy, Tompox, a performance artist in France, even releases his under the GPL.. not surprisingly, he's a big Stallman nut.
Check out:
http://www.openmusicregistry.org/
to find artists using this. Also, if I'm lucky, I'll be getting a lot of independent artists singed up soon, esp. older underground music. Check the site for updates.
If anyone has music under these licenses, write me at pablo@reeltwo.com.. I'll play it on that station.
The reason nerds are cool is that it doesn't matter what they look like. It matters what they say.
If you want to fit in, or convince others to, go hang out at a high-school dance.
If you want a political voice, spend your time on facts and figures. Looking in the mirror once on the way out the door is optional.
Richard Stallman is known for being rude, but guess what, people who go to political meetings and walk away complaining about rudeness weren't paying attention to the issues. Jack Vallenti looked very dapper, but guess what, he's THE MAN, with THE $$$.
On the other hand, there are modelling agencies.. THE MAN uses them to put pretty pictures on the TV screen so that people obsess over appearances instead of the using-this-drug-may-cause-every-known-human-ailmen t substance. I guess to the extent that the goal is to reach TV Land, yeah, get some models, or at least but some Armani.
But the people in those pictures had a different goal. Please don't taint the work of the people who actually showed up and butted in their opinions, right or wrong, to a bunch of see-no-evil hear-no-evil speak-no-evil government trade assoc. flunkies.
Damn.. I'm turning into a stinking slashdot ranter.
I guess my objection is that war is one of the very worst things, only to be used as a last resort, and that America is instead using it as a primary action.
I object to our unilateral engagement of Afghanistan.
I object to the overtures of unilateral engagement of Iraq.
We live in a world of peace-loving people and war-loving governments, and to the extent that war making becomes more virulent, as in robotic killing, our government and our people become more distant from each other, and we take a step back as a humanity.
The proper reaction to Sep 11 was appeal to the UN for legal sanction, followed by military action - hopefully with, but potentially without, UN sanction - in a limited strike against Al Quaeda.
This should have been followed with ultimate sanctions against Iraq and other obvious enemies, and a further appeal to the UN for police intervention there, again with military action following.
I believe our government is pursuing a policy of vigilanty revenge. Secondary politics aside, we have a world court, and we didn't appeal to it. This is wrong.
So, when I see us make these mistakes, and then further news of our increasing military potency, my response is criticism. I don't agree with the deaths of Sep 11, or the deaths of revenge now being propagated.
Believe me, if I could not pay my taxes to this war, I would not, and I would have a clear conscience. Instead, I argue against this policy and it's collateral developments.
Developers need to make Linux the best OS. If you build it and they will come.
MS lists some aspects that Windows is better for the server market. Now, whether or not they are right, they are at least making the argument. The simplist way to counter is to better them, so that there can be no creidble argument, at exactly these points.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/Embedded/sak/ev al uation/compare/advantage.asp
Most IT managers reading this are going to whither, and have second thoughts about Linux.
The front page of linux.com should have a response to this exact feature set. And if Linux isn't competitive, guess what development should look like?
The same goes for the home market. Go and take a look at Apple. They've really got their shit together. If Linux can offer a GUI with as much simplicity and clean integration, it will make inroads there too, perhaps with younger. Apple's "switch" campaign could be a great long-term theme for linux.com.
Lastly, money doesn't have much to do with Linux. People like it because it's free, and developers code for it as a community -- not commercial -- effort. Focusing on cash support may actually work against Linux. Dependence on cash is a great weakness of businesses. Why should Linux take it on, esp. when it can't come close to the cash position of Apple, much less Microsoft?
It sounds uncool. New and better ways to kill each other is a bad thing.
What do you think the point of these systems is? Wargames? Scientific research?
Since we're all paying into it, we have to justify it with "oh, look, it's got MPEG-4.. there's another example of those military dollars helping out us common joes."
How about "Hm, it will be easier for our Army to become a police force in foreign countries and impose our Government's will where it isn't wanted. It will be more understandable when we get news reports of collateral damage, because some programmer forgot to put in the innocense filter. Maybe I should find a way to stop paying these people money to build these things. Maybe someday we won't spend our money on discovering new ways to kill each other."
Copyright in America is demonstrably not a public concern.
Fritz Hollings says "over 10 million people" are "stealing" copyrighted works. Well, usually that would be called a riot, and that nobody is treating is such is telling.
Copying a digital file is not stealing. Robbing somebody of a physical object is.
Before you sit to consider the benefits of better copyright protection, please first ensure the validity of the current concept of copyright.
When I explain Disney's very long copyright on Mickey Mouse to people in my family, and then proceed to explain Disney's use of the Grimm Brother fairy-tales to make their business, it is clear to everyone that Disney isn't playing fair. Why should we then ensure Disney's ability to lock-down our use of "their" material?
Why should a music and film industry with increasingly less art and increasingly more commerce be "protected"?
Make copyright 7 years, decommercialize the arts and seed the public domain for good.
"But the continued influence of the far left, which some mistakenly dismiss as inconsequential, can weaken our collective will to protect ourselves from our enemies."
People take it seriously (both for and against it) because it's an influential book, because a lot of people look at our politics and don't like them, and it hypothesizes why our they work the way they do, and how they might develop.
Of course it's a leftish book. Kissinger's "Diplomacy" is a rightish book, with as much damning critique from the other direction (to counter Negri's terroism claims above, consider the accusations against Kissinger for war crimes in Vietnam). But it's missing the point to derride either of these for their influence. A critique of them should be directed at their content.
I posted because this book, along with the comic I mentioned, presciently capture the spirit of the Falun Gong satellite hack.. both help identify the amazing subversion of such an act. It's hard to conceive of the forces at play when subversives take on government, especially in such a massive event; so, I'm thankful to to have help in thinking about it and thought I'd spread the word.
The same is true for the Sep. 11 attacks. They were a catastrophe beyond my comprehension at the time. To have some way to understand them is helpful. The mainstream media dwells on the attrocity, whereas I want to understand their history. Why did they happen? Will something like this happen again? Who really wins/loses?
Empire gives a context which makes sense, especially compared to the "American" point of view that the perpetrators are "evil" and are "our enemy". That's the kind of gross nationalistic simplification that allows us to enter war instead of just ensuring security. I knew on the day of the attacks that the real risk was retaliation. We totter on the brink, and nobody wants to reason.
So anyways, Empire is a good read so far.. I'm about halfway through and as an undereducated political philosopher, it provides not only a compelling perspective of the world of Empire, but also synthesizes many pieces of European political development since Medeiveal times. As to whether or not it's correct.. well, I'm a computer scientist, and almost everything they say doesn't hold water in my book. In fact, I'm inspired to test out their ideas with some simulations (e.g. fmc.sf.net)
Channel Zero by Brian Wood is a great graphic novel that has a subplot similar to this.. Just change the setting to NYC under Giuliani, and the Falun Gong to a totally disaffected super-hacker-chic trying to wake-up the general populace to the insanity and brutality of the city government.
The recent political philosophy work "Empire" by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri cites this condition as a hallmark of the new world order of Empire, centered of course in America, but nonetheless active in all sovereign governments working by or towards the power of capitalism. In the long run, China probably qualifies here.
Note their characterization, and how it compares to the Falun Gong and to Channel Zero:
"[These events] are educational lessons in the classroom of administration and the chambers of government -- lessons that demand repressive instruments. The primary lesson is that such events cannot be repeated if the processes of capitalist globalization are to continue. These struggles, however, have their own weight, their own specific intensity, and moreover they are immanent to the procedures and developments of imperial power. They invest and sustain the process of globalization themselves. Imperial power whispers the names of the struggles in order to charm them into passivity, to construct a mystified image of them [e.g. slashdot], but most important to discover which processes of globalization are possible and which are not. In this contradictory and paradoxical way the imperial processes of globalization assume these events, recognizing them as both limits and opportunities to recalibrate Empire's own instruments. The processes of globalization would not exist or whould come to a halt if they were not continually both frustrated and driven by these explosions of the multitude that touch immediately on the highest levels of imperial power." [Empire, Pp. 59]
CMU's computer science department is top-notch. Their Software Engineering Institute is the home of software process, which has the goal of turning computer programming into an engineering discipline (e.g. measurable, repeatable) instead of an art (e.g. "wow, great hack").
They also have one of the best robotics departments, with a heavy emphasis on industrial robotics applications, embedded systems, etc. (as opposed to MIT's Rodney Brook's COG behavior work).
In fact, CMU as a whole has a very heavy slant towards Industrial Application. Their business school turns out poor managers, but good Operations Researchers. The Humanities Department is known for its Social Policy Theory.
Give CMU millions and you get back real, usable results.
Also, it's in Pittsburgh.. ya know, Da 'Burgh. Stillers!
It's probably a very strategic move into the space of mac info/rumors sites, ~because~ those sites have a dedicated following like/., but with a splintered offering of niche info. In other words, Can/. rule the mac weblog space?
Slashdot was probably asking themselves "Why not use our brand and slashcode to bring a superior geek news site to a community that has demonstrated their desire for this kind of content."
The problems you bring up are going to be issues/. will have to deal with or risk dissolving its brand.
P.S. I used to visit macosrumors everyday, then they posted a link to this new site "Slashdot"... 1997?
It is stealing. The answer: don't claim ownership
on
The Crime of Sharing
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· Score: 2, Informative
The buck stops with the artists.
An artist has the choice to sell out or be free.
Selling out means imposing a copyright on their work and then transferring the copyright to a large, monolithic, investment-driven organization that will surprise nobody in its mercilless drive to squeeze a buck out of the work.
Being free means playing music, writing prose, etc., without attaching any strings. Period.
If you're the Backstreet Boys, you sell out, because it'll take a huge branding campaign and monopolistic distribution to saturate tween minds to the point of addiction before anyone would listen to, much less pay for your music.
If you're actually a true force of creativity, you stay free, as selling out would hurt the health of your work. This used to (rightly) be called "Alternative" or "Underground". You give your work to the public domain and don't charge, except maybe for shows and equipment, and then only to cover costs and go out for a movie.
Us users, on the other end, should reward the artists and ignore the rest.
Vote with your Voice. Vote with your Feet. And Vote with your Wallet.
Tierra was by Tom Ray, a pioneer in the AL field. It was a great idea, but failed to turn around with interesting biodiversity. You'd create creatures, they'd optimize themselves, some variants and parasites would evolve, but then things would simmer down within a few hours and you'd be in a steady state for ever.
Network Tierra was Ray's response to this. It was supposed to allow a "Cambrian explosion" of biodiversity, by providing tons of (networked computer) space for the little creatures to explode into, and then specialize, in. This led to interesting migration behavior, and one of my all-time favorite web-pages http://www.isd.atr.co.jp/~ray/pubs/images/index.ht ml, but it too failed to spark that je ne sais quois, that spark of life.
Anyways, it did spark Avida and the Digital Life Lab at Cal Tech. Avida is essentially a deeper look at the fundamentals behind AL. In Tierra, I think the design philosophy was something like "make it look a lot like a living ecological system and the life-force will appear out of the ether", and actually, Tierra was a great leap forward beyond more mundane genetic programming a la John Koza.
Avida, on the other hand, is much more systematic in exploring the parameter space (which is large and sensitive) for setting up an AL system. This turned out to be fruitful, as Adami found that only when certain, very narrow, environmental conditions were met would the little creatures start outsmarting that Creationist boogeyman, the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Turns out that Tierra didn't have spatiality (needed to be more restrictive on who could sleep with who) and mutation rates (some power law math that's way over my head) set right.
But the real punch-line to this whole story is that the direct beneficiary of these insights in Microsoft! Hah!
Microsoft was funding Adami's work because Windoze crashed too much. They were searching for a way of programming, in this case using closed instruction sets like Avida's (another deep topic), that would be inherently robust to problems like seg faults and illegal instructions.... e.g. Adami's instruction set was engineered so that little programs (creatures) couldn't crash the Avida VM when they mutated into new, unknown programs.. or in Windoze's case, when a coder did something stoopid. It's funny that MS was researching this, since releatively low-tech solutions such as protected memory and QA take care of this. (not to mention Java:)
freality.com
p.s. Since when do research experiments post crowd-pleasing previews? That's for Hollywood.
Slashdot Mirror
Assuming you don't live in destitute conditions, it seems more reasonable to say that real viruses don't kill you, except of course for the pathological (pardon the pun) exceptions.
Consider smallpox and cold.
Smallpox of course does kill, but it's not around.. where is it? I don't see it, my neighbors and friends don't see it. Nobody sees it, except for biologists.
Smallpox is laughed at by the other viruses. It has the strength of Hercules, but what does it do with it? It pops up once every few generations and shows its strength, but is usually gone in a flash. Lame.
The common cold, on the other hand, is everywhere.. I have it right now, some of my neighbors and friends have it.. it's spreading like wild-fire!
The cold is a great virus.. it's like the star of the viruses.. it tries its hardest not to get the host sick, becuase a sick host stays home, and then the cold can't get to new hosts.
The real benefit of sanitation, plumbing in particular, is the quarantine of hosts infected by loser viruses. Viruses that devastate poor river villages in the tropics aren't a threat in the rich cities because of sanitation... a couple of people get the virus, stay home (to recover or die), and few others get exposed.
If you want to make better viruses, save us some time and make them cool, like the cold, instead of lame, like smallpox... we'll both be happier for it.
Like you say, you're not lawyers, and neither am I, but that's no excuse for being ignorant of basic law, especially when advocating an action based on it's legality, effectiveness and unstoppability.
IANAL, but the guys who write Black's Law Dictionary are. Read their definition of conspiracy. Specifically, it sounds like you are advocating "civil conspiracy":
"Civil conspiracy. The essence of a "civil conspiracy" is a concert or combination to defraud or cause other injury to person or property, which results in damage to the person or property of plaintiff." - Black's Law Dictionary
when you say:
"Since each Votester peer only sends a few messages (such as once per day, or once per hour, etc.) no individual peer can be considered to be engaging in illegal harassment, hacking, denial of service, etc. Rather it is only the totally decentralized, emergent activity of the entire group that results in large volumes of messages and requests being received by target addresses. Therefore no individual is liable." - Your proposal
Interesting account of previous x86 work at Apple:
New Zealand government sent letters to people who had chosen "Jedi" as their religion that they shouldn't have abused the census system, and that Jedi isn't considered a religion, even though a significant number of people chose it (IIRC 2%x5%).
Well, what's wrong with using a little how r u doing 2day? in school? Just because it's government supported doesn't mean it has to be uncreative.. will the world start spinning the other direction and gravity reverse if chat-room speak invades our precious children's minds?
If people want to learn to speak with each other, they'll learn how.. but by getting them all to speak the same we're just enhancing our culture's already monolithic character. Boooring.
It's amazing to see cultural normalization - ahem - education work its crafty art.
It was the worst day of my life.. my now fiance had gone to work downtown that morning and I had slept in.. I work with people on West coast and in New Zealand, and work doesn't start until later.
Well, I was awakened with phone calls.. my friend mistook my early morning groggly voice for grief, and said "oh my god, is Sarah OK?" . "What? why?", I said. "You haven't heard? The Trade Center is gone.. it's just gone.. two planes crashed into them and they fell over"
Well, the first minutes after that were a delirium.. I think for a full minute I was frozen after I realized that the TV was out and the phone lines were too.. what could I do?
Well, Sarah worked close to the Trade Center, but fortunately, she'd been re-routed in her commute, and later that day I got ahold of her and then finally got her home. The only good news of the day was that many people had the same experience. The bad news of the day.. well.. it's hard to call that news even.. more like the Bad of that day..
The first week we were glued to the TV.. I've long been interested in history and politics, and it was clear that this event would be one of the most significant historical events of my life.. I was still in shock from that morning, really, and needed as much information as possible.. I didn't want to feel powerless again.
That didn't last long though.. I quickly realized that the trajectory of TV was going away from information and towards politicization. I'd always thought this was the general case with TV, but here it's ugly head was reared up again, and at the worst of times.
I stopped watching TV, and slowly stopped reading new papers. I stopped reading slashdot, and everything. I stopped listening to music, and reading.
Finally, after a few months of quiet-time, long walks outside, time with family and friends, and many quiet reflective hours, I started reading again. Just light stuff at first, but finally, books about the Middle East, books about modern politics, books questioning the standard lines of argument. And slashdot again, and kuro5hin, and emails with others that were starting to do the same.
Well, now a year later I have finally started paying attention to the news again, and all I can say is, it's sickening.
What's happening in our government and in our country's foreign policy is.. well, you'll have to decide. But, consider that you don't have a voice in it.. Bush was ready to make war without any sort of democratic process, much less a popular process. Judging from the comments here today, it's obvious why. Most people want to know why things got to be this way. Most people want to keep them from happenning again. Seemingly, the only ones in the world who answer "Evil" and "Conquer Evil through War" to those questions the same ones who could be included in the blame, and who stand to benefit most: our government. Notice the rest of the world.. really almost every nation of the UN answers: "Your foreign policy created a monster" and "Deal with it ethically and legally".
Our governments answers sound too simple intentionally. They're meant to play off of our desire for security and simplicity in our lives again. Please, see what other opinions are out there and if they're substantiated. If we commit attrocities to others in some sort of simplistic reaction to a situation we helped create.. well, we won't have those simple peaceful lives.
I've taken off of work today to spend time with my fiance.. to reflect and mourn. Maybe we'll see you in the streets.
Now with the help of shrink-wrapped books, can the rest of us? :)
Hi Alton, first off, Great show!
Question: How should we share recipes?
If I have a just excellent Pizza recipe, should I keep it a secret? If I decide to let people eat the pizza, is keeping it secret still ok? What if they want to know if they're allergic to something in it, or they want to know if they like the ingredients...
I assume it would be best to tell them the ingredients, but then they could just go and make the same great pizza themselves, or maybe improve the recipe, or even tell their friends! Is this OK? How can the food market ever go on if this happens?
Is there any distinction between sharing a recipe with commercial vs. non-commercial entities? Maybe the commercial people will "take the recipe private", and not "give back to the community" any improvements they make (e.g. like using a different yeast, or the ratio of sauce to cheese).
Lemme tell ya, if you think we can share, then I think you and Richard Stallman (one of the great software chefs) should get together, because he's having a tough time convincing people of this. I turns out that in the software world, people have a lot of difficulty deciding how best to treat recipes, sharing, and even the resulting meals.. you know, Do you own the meal once you buy it? etc. etc.
If you could help us out on this, we'd try realllly hard to make better recipe sharing software!
Cheers!
If I can find primes in polynomial time, can I do 3-sat in p too?
I found it refreshing because it's very easy to get down, or confused, about the state of affairs today. A maniacal humorous take is just the right subjective approach. In Terry Gilliam's Brazil, there's like 10 lines of serious social criticism.. but the whole work is extrememly effective as a warning.
/. a great piece was posted, called "Reclaiming the commons". It was long and mainly about non-geek issues. Yet one of the /. editors highly recommended it. Why? It's not News for Nerds. It wasn't about the Sony P3's new chip. Why was it posted?
I think the people here, esp. the coders, didn't like the message because it involved so many threads that they can usually ignore. The idea that the inequity of software relationships can be seen from a much larger perspective, and somehow tie in with all of this messy political stuff, like diamond miners in South Africa... well, it's just frightening. Coders aren't diamond miners, after all! We're powerful important people. We aren't used by the man! The man loves us.. he gives us better TV to watch and dental plans.
Just this weekend on
Bruce Sterling hit the nail right on the head. The geeks, he is telling us, along with everyone else are going to have to become dissidents, and then activists.
Because this is a real time of reckoning about freedom and how we may want to change the way we govern ourselves; we all should be prepared. Bruce Sterling's speech is a humorously contrarian introduction, aimed at geeks. But don't stop there.
Go and eat at an urban McDonalds, get a copy of US News & World Report, watch some MTV skin-flick or FOX News, or try not using your ss# for a while, or try tracking your vote to any actual political action (or comparing your vote to a company dollar), and top it all off with a visit to the local garbage dump, 'cause it's gonna smell better there.
Then go and read the commons article. Then read opensecrets.org, or cryptome.org, or the books "Understanding Power" (Chomsky) or "Empire" (Hardt & Negri) or the Declaration of Independence. Not that you have to sign-up with any political party, but these things will change your mind about how the world works, and your role in it.
At the end of doing all of this myself, I didn't needed to be preached to anymore. It's not just the software debate. It's not just the music debate. It's not just the accounting debate. It's the way of the world that is systematically confused. "The American Dream": this Ad sponsored by Pepsi and Brittney Spears' bouncing boobs. Is this really what it's supposed to be like?
I'm reading all I can and planning for a better way of life.
I'm trying to build a net radio station that is totally free and redistributable. I use free software (linux, icecast, liveice) to broadcast music, and only broadcast music that is licensed to the public under the EFF's Open Audio License, OpenMusic.com's Open Music License or even the GPL. I broadcast 100 songs by 10 artists, 24/7. Not the most exciting playlist, but it's up and running.
Of course I'd like to find more music to play that is already under these licenses (I've scoured openaudioregistry.org, but other suggestions welcome), but I'm also trying to convince artists, both friends and strangers, to release the music on these licenses. Usually, a band has a web-site or posts their music to mp3.com and they advertise it as "free!", but after a couple of emails, it's clear that the artists don't use free in the same way I do. Most of the artists that I talk to have either forgotten, or have never encountered, the idea of art truly free to the public. When I describe the ideas of public domain, copyright, licensing, etc. their eyes glaze over (you actually can see it over email!) and they inform me that they hate "lawyer talk".
Given your experience, maybe you can offer some insight here.
How do you appeal to an artist to take their hard work and donate it to the public and in a meaningfully legal way?
I see your point, and at times it is in effect, but I think you may underestimate peoples' reactions to activists.
The "other standards" that apply are usually what activists are questioning by their activity. If things normal processes were OK, you could really just send in your enlightened opinions, and they would receive their due review.
However, it seems that's exactly what isn't happening. That was supposed to be a closed, under-the-radar meeting.. now that it has exposure, those corp/gov people can't be happy. And to know that they can't just slime their way into the pockets of the activists is one of the key reasons why.
I dunno, I was just concerned that the main reaction to those people showing up at a basically hostile conference was "you guys weren't representing us well". I thought they did a fine job.
You're typecasting. Not surprising. You'd be surprised to see me in person.
And I do know how to address my audience.. I drew you out of the wordwork, didn't I?
It looks like Stallman knows how to address his audience.. Jack Valenti didn't look all too happy to have him there. In fact, I'm sure it further angered him that Stallman didn't have Armani on. If there was any fashion insight that should have been modded up, that was it.
What people in this thread don't get is that the goal is not to convince corporate/government of th e need to protect consumers, because indeed, they do not care. The goal is to scare them.
Corporate/Government thinks it can get away with whatever it wants these days. Did you see their call for public comment? I posted there (did you?). It was a 2x2 box on a web-page, and according to the article that was posted, they shutdown the EFF and the public that did show up.
Why would the EFF lawyer still show up if she knew she couldn't say anything to them? Because it wasn't a debate, it was a show of force.
Something else that's been proven time and time again, if you're interested, is that when people put down their daily work to show up at boring corp/gov meetings, you're going to have a tough fight... and for what it's worth, cheers to Stallman for this minor victory... got IBM and Intel to speak up apparently (they know that geeks need to be appeased, whether the geeks have Armani or not).
Check out my radio station (don't /. it please):
www.freality.com/music.html
it's all free music, each song released under 1 of 3 licenses currently in use for "open" music. This guy, Tompox, a performance artist in France, even releases his under the GPL.. not surprisingly, he's a big Stallman nut.
Check out:
http://www.openmusicregistry.org/
to find artists using this. Also, if I'm lucky, I'll be getting a lot of independent artists singed up soon, esp. older underground music. Check the site for updates.
If anyone has music under these licenses, write me at pablo@reeltwo.com.. I'll play it on that station.
The reason nerds are cool is that it doesn't matter what they look like. It matters what they say.
n t substance. I guess to the extent that the goal is to reach TV Land, yeah, get some models, or at least but some Armani.
If you want to fit in, or convince others to, go hang out at a high-school dance.
If you want a political voice, spend your time on facts and figures. Looking in the mirror once on the way out the door is optional.
Richard Stallman is known for being rude, but guess what, people who go to political meetings and walk away complaining about rudeness weren't paying attention to the issues. Jack Vallenti looked very dapper, but guess what, he's THE MAN, with THE $$$.
On the other hand, there are modelling agencies.. THE MAN uses them to put pretty pictures on the TV screen so that people obsess over appearances instead of the using-this-drug-may-cause-every-known-human-ailme
But the people in those pictures had a different goal. Please don't taint the work of the people who actually showed up and butted in their opinions, right or wrong, to a bunch of see-no-evil hear-no-evil speak-no-evil government trade assoc. flunkies.
Damn.. I'm turning into a stinking slashdot ranter.
I guess my objection is that war is one of the very worst things, only to be used as a last resort, and that America is instead using it as a primary action.
I object to our unilateral engagement of Afghanistan.
I object to the overtures of unilateral engagement of Iraq.
We live in a world of peace-loving people and war-loving governments, and to the extent that war making becomes more virulent, as in robotic killing, our government and our people become more distant from each other, and we take a step back as a humanity.
The proper reaction to Sep 11 was appeal to the UN for legal sanction, followed by military action - hopefully with, but potentially without, UN sanction - in a limited strike against Al Quaeda.
This should have been followed with ultimate sanctions against Iraq and other obvious enemies, and a further appeal to the UN for police intervention there, again with military action following.
I believe our government is pursuing a policy of vigilanty revenge. Secondary politics aside, we have a world court, and we didn't appeal to it. This is wrong.
So, when I see us make these mistakes, and then further news of our increasing military potency, my response is criticism. I don't agree with the deaths of Sep 11, or the deaths of revenge now being propagated.
Believe me, if I could not pay my taxes to this war, I would not, and I would have a clear conscience. Instead, I argue against this policy and it's collateral developments.
Developers need to make Linux the best OS. If you build it and they will come.
v al uation/compare/advantage.asp
MS lists some aspects that Windows is better for the server market. Now, whether or not they are right, they are at least making the argument. The simplist way to counter is to better them, so that there can be no creidble argument, at exactly these points.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/Embedded/sak/e
Most IT managers reading this are going to whither, and have second thoughts about Linux.
The front page of linux.com should have a response to this exact feature set. And if Linux isn't competitive, guess what development should look like?
The same goes for the home market. Go and take a look at Apple. They've really got their shit together. If Linux can offer a GUI with as much simplicity and clean integration, it will make inroads there too, perhaps with younger. Apple's "switch" campaign could be a great long-term theme for linux.com.
Lastly, money doesn't have much to do with Linux. People like it because it's free, and developers code for it as a community -- not commercial -- effort. Focusing on cash support may actually work against Linux. Dependence on cash is a great weakness of businesses. Why should Linux take it on, esp. when it can't come close to the cash position of Apple, much less Microsoft?
Just put your time in and make it the best OS.
It sounds uncool. New and better ways to kill each other is a bad thing.
What do you think the point of these systems is? Wargames? Scientific research?
Since we're all paying into it, we have to justify it with "oh, look, it's got MPEG-4.. there's another example of those military dollars helping out us common joes."
How about "Hm, it will be easier for our Army to become a police force in foreign countries and impose our Government's will where it isn't wanted. It will be more understandable when we get news reports of collateral damage, because some programmer forgot to put in the innocense filter. Maybe I should find a way to stop paying these people money to build these things. Maybe someday we won't spend our money on discovering new ways to kill each other."
To the Conference,
Copyright in America is demonstrably not a public concern.
Fritz Hollings says "over 10 million people" are "stealing" copyrighted works. Well, usually that would be called a riot, and that nobody is treating is such is telling.
Copying a digital file is not stealing. Robbing somebody of a physical object is.
Before you sit to consider the benefits of better copyright protection, please first ensure the validity of the current concept of copyright.
When I explain Disney's very long copyright on Mickey Mouse to people in my family, and then proceed to explain Disney's use of the Grimm Brother fairy-tales to make their business, it is clear to everyone that Disney isn't playing fair. Why should we then ensure Disney's ability to lock-down our use of "their" material?
Why should a music and film industry with increasingly less art and increasingly more commerce be "protected"?
Make copyright 7 years, decommercialize the arts and seed the public domain for good.
Then you should enforce copyright all you want.
Well, your second attachment says why:
"But the continued influence of the far left, which some mistakenly dismiss as inconsequential, can weaken our collective will to protect ourselves from our enemies."
People take it seriously (both for and against it) because it's an influential book, because a lot of people look at our politics and don't like them, and it hypothesizes why our they work the way they do, and how they might develop.
Of course it's a leftish book. Kissinger's "Diplomacy" is a rightish book, with as much damning critique from the other direction (to counter Negri's terroism claims above, consider the accusations against Kissinger for war crimes in Vietnam). But it's missing the point to derride either of these for their influence. A critique of them should be directed at their content.
I posted because this book, along with the comic I mentioned, presciently capture the spirit of the Falun Gong satellite hack.. both help identify the amazing subversion of such an act. It's hard to conceive of the forces at play when subversives take on government, especially in such a massive event; so, I'm thankful to to have help in thinking about it and thought I'd spread the word.
The same is true for the Sep. 11 attacks. They were a catastrophe beyond my comprehension at the time. To have some way to understand them is helpful. The mainstream media dwells on the attrocity, whereas I want to understand their history. Why did they happen? Will something like this happen again? Who really wins/loses?
Empire gives a context which makes sense, especially compared to the "American" point of view that the perpetrators are "evil" and are "our enemy". That's the kind of gross nationalistic simplification that allows us to enter war instead of just ensuring security. I knew on the day of the attacks that the real risk was retaliation. We totter on the brink, and nobody wants to reason.
So anyways, Empire is a good read so far.. I'm about halfway through and as an undereducated political philosopher, it provides not only a compelling perspective of the world of Empire, but also synthesizes many pieces of European political development since Medeiveal times. As to whether or not it's correct.. well, I'm a computer scientist, and almost everything they say doesn't hold water in my book. In fact, I'm inspired to test out their ideas with some simulations (e.g. fmc.sf.net)
Channel Zero by Brian Wood is a great graphic novel that has a subplot similar to this.. Just change the setting to NYC under Giuliani, and the Falun Gong to a totally disaffected super-hacker-chic trying to wake-up the general populace to the insanity and brutality of the city government.
The recent political philosophy work "Empire" by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri cites this condition as a hallmark of the new world order of Empire, centered of course in America, but nonetheless active in all sovereign governments working by or towards the power of capitalism. In the long run, China probably qualifies here.
Note their characterization, and how it compares to the Falun Gong and to Channel Zero:
"[These events] are educational lessons in the classroom of administration and the chambers of government -- lessons that demand repressive instruments. The primary lesson is that such events cannot be repeated if the processes of capitalist globalization are to continue. These struggles, however, have their own weight, their own specific intensity, and moreover they are immanent to the procedures and developments of imperial power. They invest and sustain the process of globalization themselves. Imperial power whispers the names of the struggles in order to charm them into passivity, to construct a mystified image of them [e.g. slashdot], but most important to discover which processes of globalization are possible and which are not. In this contradictory and paradoxical way the imperial processes of globalization assume these events, recognizing them as both limits and opportunities to recalibrate Empire's own instruments. The processes of globalization would not exist or whould come to a halt if they were not continually both frustrated and driven by these explosions of the multitude that touch immediately on the highest levels of imperial power." [Empire, Pp. 59]
Memes need a name :)
CMU's computer science department is top-notch. Their Software Engineering Institute is the home of software process, which has the goal of turning computer programming into an engineering discipline (e.g. measurable, repeatable) instead of an art (e.g. "wow, great hack").
They also have one of the best robotics departments, with a heavy emphasis on industrial robotics applications, embedded systems, etc. (as opposed to MIT's Rodney Brook's COG behavior work).
In fact, CMU as a whole has a very heavy slant towards Industrial Application. Their business school turns out poor managers, but good Operations Researchers. The Humanities Department is known for its Social Policy Theory.
Give CMU millions and you get back real, usable results.
Also, it's in Pittsburgh.. ya know, Da 'Burgh. Stillers!
On the downside, the weather there sucks.
It's probably a very strategic move into the space of mac info/rumors sites, ~because~ those sites have a dedicated following like /., but with a splintered offering of niche info. In other words, Can /. rule the mac weblog space?
/. will have to deal with or risk dissolving its brand.
Slashdot was probably asking themselves "Why not use our brand and slashcode to bring a superior geek news site to a community that has demonstrated their desire for this kind of content."
The problems you bring up are going to be issues
P.S. I used to visit macosrumors everyday, then they posted a link to this new site "Slashdot"... 1997?
The buck stops with the artists.
An artist has the choice to sell out or be free.
Selling out means imposing a copyright on their work and then transferring the copyright to a large, monolithic, investment-driven organization that will surprise nobody in its mercilless drive to squeeze a buck out of the work.
Being free means playing music, writing prose, etc., without attaching any strings. Period.
If you're the Backstreet Boys, you sell out, because it'll take a huge branding campaign and monopolistic distribution to saturate tween minds to the point of addiction before anyone would listen to, much less pay for your music.
If you're actually a true force of creativity, you stay free, as selling out would hurt the health of your work. This used to (rightly) be called "Alternative" or "Underground". You give your work to the public domain and don't charge, except maybe for shows and equipment, and then only to cover costs and go out for a movie.
Us users, on the other end, should reward the artists and ignore the rest.
Vote with your Voice. Vote with your Feet. And Vote with your Wallet.
Tierra was by Tom Ray, a pioneer in the AL field. It was a great idea, but failed to turn around with interesting biodiversity. You'd create creatures, they'd optimize themselves, some variants and parasites would evolve, but then things would simmer down within a few hours and you'd be in a steady state for ever.
t ml, but it too failed to spark that je ne sais quois, that spark of life.
:)
Network Tierra was Ray's response to this. It was supposed to allow a "Cambrian explosion" of biodiversity, by providing tons of (networked computer) space for the little creatures to explode into, and then specialize, in. This led to interesting migration behavior, and one of my all-time favorite web-pages http://www.isd.atr.co.jp/~ray/pubs/images/index.h
Anyways, it did spark Avida and the Digital Life Lab at Cal Tech. Avida is essentially a deeper look at the fundamentals behind AL. In Tierra, I think the design philosophy was something like "make it look a lot like a living ecological system and the life-force will appear out of the ether", and actually, Tierra was a great leap forward beyond more mundane genetic programming a la John Koza.
Avida, on the other hand, is much more systematic in exploring the parameter space (which is large and sensitive) for setting up an AL system. This turned out to be fruitful, as Adami found that only when certain, very narrow, environmental conditions were met would the little creatures start outsmarting that Creationist boogeyman, the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Turns out that Tierra didn't have spatiality (needed to be more restrictive on who could sleep with who) and mutation rates (some power law math that's way over my head) set right.
But the real punch-line to this whole story is that the direct beneficiary of these insights in Microsoft! Hah!
Microsoft was funding Adami's work because Windoze crashed too much. They were searching for a way of programming, in this case using closed instruction sets like Avida's (another deep topic), that would be inherently robust to problems like seg faults and illegal instructions.... e.g. Adami's instruction set was engineered so that little programs (creatures) couldn't crash the Avida VM when they mutated into new, unknown programs.. or in Windoze's case, when a coder did something stoopid. It's funny that MS was researching this, since releatively low-tech solutions such as protected memory and QA take care of this. (not to mention Java
freality.com
p.s. Since when do research experiments post crowd-pleasing previews? That's for Hollywood.