Yes, and there is a simple solution: Put a levy on pollution and return the money to the people as a dividend on a per-capita basis. Increase the levy/dividend until the amount of pollution is low enough to be environmentally sustainable. CAPTCHA: iceberg.
I was thinking more along the lines of a federal carbon tax to be levied on fossil fuels directly, which would offset (in theory, at least...) some existing tax such as individual and/or corporate income tax. If done properly, that would be economically efficient by making polluters pay the cost of the pollution, and would therefore counteract the fact that the users of fossil fuels currently pay only the cost of the fuel itself and not the actual total cost, including the cost to the global environment. That would make alternative energy sources such as renewables like wind and solar relatively more cost effective both in a total-cost-to-the-user sense and in a total-cost-to-the-planet sense. (The latter may already be true - I'm not sure.)
Fair enough. I just wish Mr. Stallman would coin a new word for whatever it is he means by "freedom." Like so much of the terminology he co-opts, I have a hard time wrapping my head around his concepts when he uses words for them that mean something different than the meanings we were all taught in grade school. For example, in grade school, "free" meant "free, as in the lunch poor kids got" (we didn't drink beer back then - well, maybe once...) and "freedom" mean something like "the ability to do what you want to the maximum extent practical."
You folks never fail to disappoint me. Every time I express this general point of view, my post gets marked as a "Troll." Did anybody ever consider that I might just be expressing my honest opinion? It amazes me that folks who are all enthused about the abstract concept of "software freedom" don't really much care about a more concrete thing "freedom of speech."
Sorry, my bad. I should have read your response more carefully. Then again, as Bill Clinton said, "It all depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is.";-)
If I may adapt the quote above from Mr. Orwell, I think you just said "Freedom is Licensing Restrictions."
I don't think licensing restrictions are necessary bad - let's just not adopt doublethink along the way. Then again, I fully respect your freedom to doublethink as much as you want.;-)
Which reminds me: here's something from "Life of Brian" that stuck in my mind when I saw it the other day:
[the members of "The People's Front of Judea" are sitting in the amphitheatre; Stan has just announced that he wants to be a woman and wants to be called "Loretta," and is explaining why]
Stan: I want to have babies.
Reg: You want to have babies?!?!
Stan: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
Reg: But... you can't HAVE babies!
Stan: Don't you oppress me!
Reg: I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?
So, I don't want to use proprietary software, I just want the right to use proprietary software, even if I can't use proprietary software. Waitaminute...I actually do that all the time. So it looks like the "Reg" in my own story hasn't actually succeeded in oppressing me...
Let's not give Mr. Stallman too much credit, here. I believe George Orwell thought of it first:
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
For example, it's a pretty short trip from Orwell's "Freedom is Slavery" to Stallman's "Freedom means not using proprietary software." For many more such gems, search for the word "freedom" on his Wikiquote page.
An interesting point. I never thought about it before, but in the American context, I always thought of "peers" as "ordinary people." In our system, I think that turns into randomly selected people. In Snowden's case, I assume that ordinary people would apply the principles of law (as they understand them) as well as common sense to the situation. This sort of thing, along with the process of jury selection in which attorneys from both sides participate, is intended to achieve "fairness" in the legal sense of the term.
I find it hard to believe that such an elaborate and venerable system such as this could or would be subverted by the U.S. government in the specific case of Mr. Snowden just to put him in jail. Frankly, even if the system is that corrupt and evil (which I don't believe, unlike the many conspiracy theorists here) Snowden simply isn't worth it. The damage has been done and is unlikely to be replicated in a future such case, so there's really no percentage in persecuting him - except in the minds of the many conspiracy theorists here.
Your example is a poor one, because you're legally obligated to get out of the way of the ambulance, and there is a legal principle that if you violate one law to comply with a more important one, then you have broken no law. It would have been against the law NOT to move out of the way, if you saw that a safe place to move your care that was out of the ambulance's way.
Very interesting. I was unaware of that at the time (and up until now), but I merely applied common sense to the situation. My point remains, though: if Snowden "did the right thing" what does he have to fear? I guess I still believe that the system mostly works as advertised, though it's clear that many folks here have the converse belief. And if I'm completely wrong, he can become a martyr of some kind for whatever "cause" he represents, and further whatever "ideals" led him to break the law in the first place.
Likewise, I would stand up for the rights of Good and Right people like me to run stop lights in order to let ambulances get out of the way. And I don't care what all those Bad and Wrong people who run the system have to say about it - even if (as you say) they happen to agree with me.
I think you confuse morality with law. Hopefully, the two are harmonious, but they are not necessarily identical. I was specifically addressing the element of law rather than element of morality. The latter is much more subjective than the former, though neither can be judged truly objectively. From what I know of the case, Snowden did indeed break the law. Whether what he did was "moral" or "immoral" is for you and I each to decide for ourselves.
Of course, it's entirely defensible to assert the position that what he did both was moral and broke the law. For example, I once delibrately ran a stop light in a busy intersection in order to get out of the way of an ambulance with its lights on. I regarded that as both moral and law-breaking. However, I feared no legal consequences because I believed in what I had done so strongly that I felt I could defend any legal challenge to it. Why doesn't Snowden feel the same?
There might be a subtle difference this time: any trial involving Snowden would involve a judge and a "jury of his peers." In contrast, in the original situation that he exposed, Snowden acted as judge and jury. Forgive me if I believe a professional jurist and a panel of a defendant's peers to be better judges of the law than the defendant himself.
It's easy to be cynical when a system is discovered to be imperfect, but that doesn't mean that the entire baby should be thrown out with the bathwater. Some of us are quite grateful to have a baby which appears to be a better alternative than all the other similar babies one might consider. Of course, one can imagine a system where we appoint Snowden as the judge/jury/Congress/President/you-name-it, but I much prefer our current system of checks and balances, imperfect as it is.
Full disclosure: I say this from the perspective of someone who once held a security clearance and felt obligated to adhere to all the rules on the contract I signed for the privilege. Try as I might, it's hard for me to see Snowden or anyone else who explicitly breaks their word as any sort of hero or candidate for Giver of Law. YMMV.
Exactly. "Fair," in this context, involves the consistent and systematic application of the law to Snowden's case. The government is already required to do that, so asking for guarantees of fairness really doesn't mean much: they'll either follow the law or break it, regardless of what guarantees they make. "Sure we'll give you a fair trial, yeah, that's the ticket.."
However, since he evidently doesn't agree with the law, he presumably would deem any consistent and systematic application of it to be "unfair." (BTW, wouldn't it be nice if all of us could ignore any laws we regard as unfair, especially with tax time just around the corner?)
Therein lies his paradox: unless he is acquitted of all charges, he will believe he has been treated unfairly, ipso facto, QED, de gustibus non disputandum*.
*I threw in some Latin here to make it sound lawyerly.
Here's what I keep wondering: what legal framework compels Apple to change their OS on demand? This seems fundamentally different than the age-old POTS phone tap, in which the government was allowed to tap someone's phone under certain legal auspices by "tapping" into an existing system.
Here's an alternative. The government could offer Apple a contract to provide a custom version of iOS that has the required features. (The contract could potentially be classified.) If Apple accepts the contract, that's up to them (and their customers who care about it.) If they don't, end of story.
Regardless, it looks to me like whatever value is gained by decrypting one terrorist's phone isn't worth the value lost to the public if that sort of thing becomes common. As Benjamin Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
What is the difference between 10kB and 1MB in price or volume? The advantage of a minimal OS is it has less things in it therefore less things will break, so is more reliable but I don't see Linux as losing the reliability argument.
In my experience, it mostly comes down to what the difference is between on-chip memory and off-chip memory. I assume that nearly all basic IoT entities like your washing machine would use on-chip memory for reasons of both cost and size. And on-chip memory should be minimized to optimize cost and power. So, less is more, regardless of any sort of "less things will break" consideration. If I were a washing machine manufacturer, I wouldn't want to spend more than 50 cents on the whole thing.
Slashdot Mirror
...the groups are finding a shortage of qualified candidates for jobs such as malware writers, exploit developers, bot net operators, and mules.
Waitaminute! - I thought Dice recently sold off Slashdot to somebody else...
Yes, and there is a simple solution: Put a levy on pollution and return the money to the people as a dividend on a per-capita basis. Increase the levy/dividend until the amount of pollution is low enough to be environmentally sustainable. CAPTCHA: iceberg.
I was thinking more along the lines of a federal carbon tax to be levied on fossil fuels directly, which would offset (in theory, at least...) some existing tax such as individual and/or corporate income tax. If done properly, that would be economically efficient by making polluters pay the cost of the pollution, and would therefore counteract the fact that the users of fossil fuels currently pay only the cost of the fuel itself and not the actual total cost, including the cost to the global environment. That would make alternative energy sources such as renewables like wind and solar relatively more cost effective both in a total-cost-to-the-user sense and in a total-cost-to-the-planet sense. (The latter may already be true - I'm not sure.)
See Jevons Paradox.
BTW, I just noticed that my "Troll" at top generated quite a lot of interesting discussion, including one comment (by someone else) that got a "5."
You're welcome.
Fair enough. I just wish Mr. Stallman would coin a new word for whatever it is he means by "freedom." Like so much of the terminology he co-opts, I have a hard time wrapping my head around his concepts when he uses words for them that mean something different than the meanings we were all taught in grade school. For example, in grade school, "free" meant "free, as in the lunch poor kids got" (we didn't drink beer back then - well, maybe once...) and "freedom" mean something like "the ability to do what you want to the maximum extent practical."
You folks never fail to disappoint me. Every time I express this general point of view, my post gets marked as a "Troll." Did anybody ever consider that I might just be expressing my honest opinion? It amazes me that folks who are all enthused about the abstract concept of "software freedom" don't really much care about a more concrete thing "freedom of speech."
(Note to "Moderators": Go ahead, make my day.)
Sorry, my bad. I should have read your response more carefully. Then again, as Bill Clinton said, "It all depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." ;-)
If I may adapt the quote above from Mr. Orwell, I think you just said "Freedom is Licensing Restrictions."
I don't think licensing restrictions are necessary bad - let's just not adopt doublethink along the way. Then again, I fully respect your freedom to doublethink as much as you want. ;-)
Which reminds me: here's something from "Life of Brian" that stuck in my mind when I saw it the other day:
[the members of "The People's Front of Judea" are sitting in the amphitheatre; Stan has just announced that he wants to be a woman and wants to be called "Loretta," and is explaining why]
Stan: I want to have babies. ... you can't HAVE babies!
Reg: You want to have babies?!?!
Stan: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
Reg: But
Stan: Don't you oppress me!
Reg: I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?
So, I don't want to use proprietary software, I just want the right to use proprietary software, even if I can't use proprietary software. Waitaminute...I actually do that all the time. So it looks like the "Reg" in my own story hasn't actually succeeded in oppressing me...
Let's not give Mr. Stallman too much credit, here. I believe George Orwell thought of it first:
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
For example, it's a pretty short trip from Orwell's "Freedom is Slavery" to Stallman's "Freedom means not using proprietary software." For many more such gems, search for the word "freedom" on his Wikiquote page.
All this talk about hijacking a car's HVAC system puts me into a cold sweat.
An interesting point. I never thought about it before, but in the American context, I always thought of "peers" as "ordinary people." In our system, I think that turns into randomly selected people. In Snowden's case, I assume that ordinary people would apply the principles of law (as they understand them) as well as common sense to the situation. This sort of thing, along with the process of jury selection in which attorneys from both sides participate, is intended to achieve "fairness" in the legal sense of the term.
I find it hard to believe that such an elaborate and venerable system such as this could or would be subverted by the U.S. government in the specific case of Mr. Snowden just to put him in jail. Frankly, even if the system is that corrupt and evil (which I don't believe, unlike the many conspiracy theorists here) Snowden simply isn't worth it. The damage has been done and is unlikely to be replicated in a future such case, so there's really no percentage in persecuting him - except in the minds of the many conspiracy theorists here.
Careful...you might start one of those rare "religious" arguments we have here on Slashdot. ;-)
Your example is a poor one, because you're legally obligated to get out of the way of the ambulance, and there is a legal principle that if you violate one law to comply with a more important one, then you have broken no law. It would have been against the law NOT to move out of the way, if you saw that a safe place to move your care that was out of the ambulance's way.
Very interesting. I was unaware of that at the time (and up until now), but I merely applied common sense to the situation. My point remains, though: if Snowden "did the right thing" what does he have to fear? I guess I still believe that the system mostly works as advertised, though it's clear that many folks here have the converse belief. And if I'm completely wrong, he can become a martyr of some kind for whatever "cause" he represents, and further whatever "ideals" led him to break the law in the first place.
Likewise, I would stand up for the rights of Good and Right people like me to run stop lights in order to let ambulances get out of the way. And I don't care what all those Bad and Wrong people who run the system have to say about it - even if (as you say) they happen to agree with me.
I think you confuse morality with law. Hopefully, the two are harmonious, but they are not necessarily identical. I was specifically addressing the element of law rather than element of morality. The latter is much more subjective than the former, though neither can be judged truly objectively. From what I know of the case, Snowden did indeed break the law. Whether what he did was "moral" or "immoral" is for you and I each to decide for ourselves.
Of course, it's entirely defensible to assert the position that what he did both was moral and broke the law. For example, I once delibrately ran a stop light in a busy intersection in order to get out of the way of an ambulance with its lights on. I regarded that as both moral and law-breaking. However, I feared no legal consequences because I believed in what I had done so strongly that I felt I could defend any legal challenge to it. Why doesn't Snowden feel the same?
There might be a subtle difference this time: any trial involving Snowden would involve a judge and a "jury of his peers." In contrast, in the original situation that he exposed, Snowden acted as judge and jury. Forgive me if I believe a professional jurist and a panel of a defendant's peers to be better judges of the law than the defendant himself.
It's easy to be cynical when a system is discovered to be imperfect, but that doesn't mean that the entire baby should be thrown out with the bathwater. Some of us are quite grateful to have a baby which appears to be a better alternative than all the other similar babies one might consider. Of course, one can imagine a system where we appoint Snowden as the judge/jury/Congress/President/you-name-it, but I much prefer our current system of checks and balances, imperfect as it is.
Full disclosure: I say this from the perspective of someone who once held a security clearance and felt obligated to adhere to all the rules on the contract I signed for the privilege. Try as I might, it's hard for me to see Snowden or anyone else who explicitly breaks their word as any sort of hero or candidate for Giver of Law. YMMV.
Exactly. "Fair," in this context, involves the consistent and systematic application of the law to Snowden's case. The government is already required to do that, so asking for guarantees of fairness really doesn't mean much: they'll either follow the law or break it, regardless of what guarantees they make. "Sure we'll give you a fair trial, yeah, that's the ticket.."
However, since he evidently doesn't agree with the law, he presumably would deem any consistent and systematic application of it to be "unfair." (BTW, wouldn't it be nice if all of us could ignore any laws we regard as unfair, especially with tax time just around the corner?)
Therein lies his paradox: unless he is acquitted of all charges, he will believe he has been treated unfairly, ipso facto, QED, de gustibus non disputandum*.
*I threw in some Latin here to make it sound lawyerly.
Here's what I keep wondering: what legal framework compels Apple to change their OS on demand? This seems fundamentally different than the age-old POTS phone tap, in which the government was allowed to tap someone's phone under certain legal auspices by "tapping" into an existing system.
Here's an alternative. The government could offer Apple a contract to provide a custom version of iOS that has the required features. (The contract could potentially be classified.) If Apple accepts the contract, that's up to them (and their customers who care about it.) If they don't, end of story.
Regardless, it looks to me like whatever value is gained by decrypting one terrorist's phone isn't worth the value lost to the public if that sort of thing becomes common. As Benjamin Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
If he works with "a team of the best hackers on the planet," surely the Long Island Medium must be among them...
(BTW, I bet even the nerds on the team make fun of her hair.)
What is the difference between 10kB and 1MB in price or volume?
The advantage of a minimal OS is it has less things in it therefore less things will break, so is more reliable but I don't see Linux as losing the reliability argument.
In my experience, it mostly comes down to what the difference is between on-chip memory and off-chip memory. I assume that nearly all basic IoT entities like your washing machine would use on-chip memory for reasons of both cost and size. And on-chip memory should be minimized to optimize cost and power. So, less is more, regardless of any sort of "less things will break" consideration. If I were a washing machine manufacturer, I wouldn't want to spend more than 50 cents on the whole thing.
Why do you comment on things you have no idea about?
What part of "Slashdot" don't you understand, boy?
Now, if only there was a catchy shorter version of the name.
I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Our new computer overlords think they're so smart...
Coincidentally, I just read that Joe Alaskey, the recent voice of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck has died. I don't know if he also did Foghorn Leghorn, but it wouldn't surprise me, Son, ah say, not one little bit.
It's just a joke, Son, ah say, a joke.
(A rooster can't go anywhare in this here barnyard without stepping into some kindda mess..)