You also have no control over the governments of the states you do not live in, nor in your own state the towns that you do not live in.
Your argument cuts both ways.
-russ
Re:The question is not whether there is a problem
on
Information Poisoning
·
· Score: 2
"WE DO" not control the government. Government is controlled by special interests. That is the only possibility in a democracy. Now, if you're lucky enough to be one of these special interests, government works for you. If not, you have to take what you get. If that bothers you sufficiently, then you become a special interest.
Anybody who's out to help themselves using government action has enough interest in doing so. Anybody who's just helping the general interest finds that the entire cost falls on themselves, and the entire gain falls across all of society. So only special interests accomplish anything in a democracy.
-russ
He says that although government sucks, at least it's on our side, whereas corporations have only their own interests. What he's missing is that in the race to earn profits, corporations have to please people. Only by pleasing people can corporations earn money. The ones that don't, lose money and go out of business. Government action doesn't have that feedback mechanism. It only has voting, and we only vote once a year. You vote for a corporation every time you buy or don't buy their products.
-russ
The question is not whether there is a problem
on
Information Poisoning
·
· Score: 3
The question is not whether there is a problem. The question is whether you can solve it using government. The answer for most problems is "no".
-russ
Of course you can trust it, silly person! You can read the source code. The real question is why anyone trusts closed-source financial systems. Yes, I know: the reputation of the author. But that applies to open source as well, so it's nothing special.
-russ
Re:Yet Heroin will NEVER be legalized
on
"Traffic"
·
· Score: 2
By that measure, water is equally lethal.:)
-russ
Re:Yet Heroin will NEVER be legalized
on
"Traffic"
·
· Score: 3
Silly question: why didn't everyone die a century ago when they were legal?
-russ
Nobody says drug abuse is good.
on
"Traffic"
·
· Score: 4
Nobody says drug abuse is good. We're just saying that throwing resources at turning drug abusers into criminals is a waste of the resources because you can't stop drug abuse in that manner. Much better to put those resources into helping drug abusers put their lives in order.
-russ
Putting a drug dealer in jail....
on
"Traffic"
·
· Score: 5
If you put a murderer in jail, you have removed a killer from society. If you put a drug dealer in jail, you have created a job opening.
That, in two sentences, is why a war on drugs cannot work. It is too expensive to control the behavior of third parties. You can control the behavior of people who interact with you at a reasonable cost, but you cannot control the behavior of people who interact with other people. Neither of them will cooperate with you.
-russ
Linux is about choice. You should be able to have a graphical login, AND see the last line of the boot messages at the same time. Or else you hit return and you get the boot messages. I don't know if the boot prompt actually does this, but it should.
-russ
Besides which, the Constitution is an agreement between the people and the Federal government on what the government will be allowed to do. Unfortunately, people have stopped enforcing the Constitution on our government, and our government is fully aware of that.
Corporations have nothing to do with Constitutional freedoms.
-russ
But it gives you something to wave at the judge and say "I was damaged to the tune of $50K".
Shrink-wrap licenses have nothing to do with the GPL. The code is copyrighted. Absent a license, you have no right to redistribute it. The GPL is the only thing that grants you that permission. If you refuse to agree, you have no permission.
A shrink-wrap license, on the other hand, claims that you have no right to use something you have purchased if you do not agree to the license. If you *really* didn't agree, why did they take your money?
-russ
That's not the point. The US Federal court system will not enforce treble damages unless you have registered the work with the US Copyright Office.
-russ
Yes, it's copyrighted by default, but the US courts let you sue for triple the damages if you have registered the copyright with the US Copyright Office.
-russ
Actually, it was quite easy to prove a violation. The CEO basically admitted that they'd stolen the code (although he was just *full* of justifications). Could have gotten thousands of dollars if I'd known what I know now. Also helps to know a copyright lawyer, hehe.
-russ
You have almost no recourse if you have not registered the copyright on your software. It only costs a few bucks, and you have to disclose the first fifteen and last fifteen pages of your source code like that's any big deal. Once you have a registered copyright, you can sue the bastards for treble actual damages PLUS statutory damages.
-russ
p.s. been there, done that.
I'll second what Bruce said. You want to reward the activity, not necessarily the people. So make it even easier the next time. Commit to sending some of those extremely valuable and rare pre-production prototypes to free software developers (presumably but not necessarily the same people who helped you this time). Put your hardware documentation up on the web in a.PDF file.
That should be step #0, even before you think about rewarding the current effort. If you think that what happened now was good, then Make Sure It Happens Again. Even better, make a big stink about it. Tell everyone "Hey, we worked with free software developers [insert names here], and we got these drivers for it."
Because there's still a lot of advocacy needed. For example, I bought an IOMagic digital camera. Serial port interface. No hardware documentation, though.
-russ
Kurt is only saying things that are true, but it's the way he's saying them. In this case, he gave CBAS the idea that SSH doesn't protect people's passwords from MITM attacks. In reality, SSH, when carefully used, is perfectly secure. For better or worse, this existing implementations don't insist that you use it carefully. For example, before accepting a host key, ssh could ask you for its fingerprint. How do you get its fingerprint? You get it from the host in some secure manner; perhaps by logging into the console.
-russ
Slashdot Mirror
Well, yeah, that's exactly what's *wrong* with a strong federal government. I'm glad you're starting to see the problem.
-russ
You also have no control over the governments of the states you do not live in, nor in your own state the towns that you do not live in.
Your argument cuts both ways.
-russ
"WE DO" not control the government. Government is controlled by special interests. That is the only possibility in a democracy. Now, if you're lucky enough to be one of these special interests, government works for you. If not, you have to take what you get. If that bothers you sufficiently, then you become a special interest.
Anybody who's out to help themselves using government action has enough interest in doing so. Anybody who's just helping the general interest finds that the entire cost falls on themselves, and the entire gain falls across all of society. So only special interests accomplish anything in a democracy.
-russ
He says that although government sucks, at least it's on our side, whereas corporations have only their own interests. What he's missing is that in the race to earn profits, corporations have to please people. Only by pleasing people can corporations earn money. The ones that don't, lose money and go out of business. Government action doesn't have that feedback mechanism. It only has voting, and we only vote once a year. You vote for a corporation every time you buy or don't buy their products.
-russ
The question is not whether there is a problem. The question is whether you can solve it using government. The answer for most problems is "no".
-russ
Somebody has to slaughter the vegetarians....
Of course you can trust it, silly person! You can read the source code. The real question is why anyone trusts closed-source financial systems. Yes, I know: the reputation of the author. But that applies to open source as well, so it's nothing special.
-russ
By that measure, water is equally lethal. :)
-russ
Silly question: why didn't everyone die a century ago when they were legal?
-russ
Nobody says drug abuse is good. We're just saying that throwing resources at turning drug abusers into criminals is a waste of the resources because you can't stop drug abuse in that manner. Much better to put those resources into helping drug abusers put their lives in order.
-russ
If you put a murderer in jail, you have removed a killer from society. If you put a drug dealer in jail, you have created a job opening.
That, in two sentences, is why a war on drugs cannot work. It is too expensive to control the behavior of third parties. You can control the behavior of people who interact with you at a reasonable cost, but you cannot control the behavior of people who interact with other people. Neither of them will cooperate with you.
-russ
The challenge is to do *all* of them. Look at the one for Eagle Bay, NY. How the heck are you going to get *there*??
-russ
Linux is about choice. You should be able to have a graphical login, AND see the last line of the boot messages at the same time. Or else you hit return and you get the boot messages. I don't know if the boot prompt actually does this, but it should.
-russ
Blue text on a black background is kewl and rad, but unreadable.
-russ
Besides which, the Constitution is an agreement between the people and the Federal government on what the government will be allowed to do. Unfortunately, people have stopped enforcing the Constitution on our government, and our government is fully aware of that.
Corporations have nothing to do with Constitutional freedoms.
-russ
But it gives you something to wave at the judge and say "I was damaged to the tune of $50K".
Shrink-wrap licenses have nothing to do with the GPL. The code is copyrighted. Absent a license, you have no right to redistribute it. The GPL is the only thing that grants you that permission. If you refuse to agree, you have no permission.
A shrink-wrap license, on the other hand, claims that you have no right to use something you have purchased if you do not agree to the license. If you *really* didn't agree, why did they take your money?
-russ
That's not the point. The US Federal court system will not enforce treble damages unless you have registered the work with the US Copyright Office.
-russ
Yes, it's copyrighted by default, but the US courts let you sue for triple the damages if you have registered the copyright with the US Copyright Office.
-russ
I don't; in fact I think it would quite enforcible. Too bad I didn't push the issue -- it could have been the first GPL court case.
-russ
Actually, it was quite easy to prove a violation. The CEO basically admitted that they'd stolen the code (although he was just *full* of justifications). Could have gotten thousands of dollars if I'd known what I know now. Also helps to know a copyright lawyer, hehe.
-russ
You have almost no recourse if you have not registered the copyright on your software. It only costs a few bucks, and you have to disclose the first fifteen and last fifteen pages of your source code like that's any big deal. Once you have a registered copyright, you can sue the bastards for treble actual damages PLUS statutory damages.
-russ
p.s. been there, done that.
I'll second what Bruce said. You want to reward the activity, not necessarily the people. So make it even easier the next time. Commit to sending some of those extremely valuable and rare pre-production prototypes to free software developers (presumably but not necessarily the same people who helped you this time). Put your hardware documentation up on the web in a .PDF file.
That should be step #0, even before you think about rewarding the current effort. If you think that what happened now was good, then Make Sure It Happens Again. Even better, make a big stink about it. Tell everyone "Hey, we worked with free software developers [insert names here], and we got these drivers for it."
Because there's still a lot of advocacy needed. For example, I bought an IOMagic digital camera. Serial port interface. No hardware documentation, though.
-russ
The Compaq iPAQ handheld also overuses its batteries. I wonder if power management isn't a problem across all Linux architectures?
-russ
Kurt is only saying things that are true, but it's the way he's saying them. In this case, he gave CBAS the idea that SSH doesn't protect people's passwords from MITM attacks. In reality, SSH, when carefully used, is perfectly secure. For better or worse, this existing implementations don't insist that you use it carefully. For example, before accepting a host key, ssh could ask you for its fingerprint. How do you get its fingerprint? You get it from the host in some secure manner; perhaps by logging into the console.
-russ
My only problem with it is hitting the [] and keys reliably. Otherwise, I like using my thumbs for most of the shifts and enter and backspace.
-russ