On the flipside, I would like to warn people who do know some mathematics that they probably won't like this book. As a student of Mathematics (if very much a beginner) I found this book mostly frustrating, with long passages on the obvious stuff and no explanations where I got curious.
Which I guess goes for any reading of pop-science within one's own field. I'll just have to study for a few more years until I can understand tackle the true texts on the subject. No shortcuts in life...
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Technology has been solving our social problems since its very inception, and shall continue to do so at an even greater rate. Nothing has been more important to the social solutions of freedom and democracy then the technology of information (going back to the original printing press, and even written language as a whole).
In the case of privacy technology does offer a number of things that will help us. Secure communications and anonymous information access and sharing (go read about the mixmaster) have been made possible, and if there is call for it will become prevailent and easy to use.
The problem is that the very technological innovations that help our privacy are exactly those under most attack by society. People advocate non-technological solutions to these issues not because they do it better, but because they offer less absolute privacy, privacy that can be fucked with given a court order or if enough people want to. With technology you have a situation of all or nothing, which society (in the form of our governments, but also companies and orgs (like RIAA, who would attack a truely free forum the second it came into being)) doesn't seem ready for.
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Heh, AltaVista (av.com) also tailored their ads according to what you search for. And they didn't check the modifiers. So if you searched for something like: "paisely box -xxx", you'd get porn ads. Is that pitiful, or what? I think they fixed that eventually, but they still try to use your searches to show ads. (no, america, if you search for "mp3", they don't show you porn.;)
I still remember a run in I had with a guy on IRC who was complaining vocally in a channel about Altavista running porn ads. He shut up pretty fast when he found out that the reason that he was seeing those adds but not the rest of us:-).
Morality, thy name is hipocracy...
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Yes, you said that already. I understand all this: profits from sure selling artists are used to fund risky artists, the companies do this because most of their sure selling artists were risky artists at one time or another. The current system does work to produce new music, some of it even innovative, no doubt, only its effiency can be doubted (and we really have no reference to compare it too).
Now you understand the core question here: the current system is not sustainable in the information society. Anyone who advocates for the continued use of copyrights is going to have to answer to how you are going to police them in the connected future without turning the Internet into a police state. You can argue yourself silly about how well the current system works today in it will do you no good: instead you should be asking yourself how well it will work in 10 years when most people have broadband connectivity and will be able to download an album illegally in minutes...
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
While there is some value to a simple objective test of how fast Quake3 will run on the best system that can be put together, what Tom offers is comparisons between different processors. If these comparisons largely depend on the graphics card (and possibly its drivers) instead of the processor, then you are not getting the whole picture.
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
In true Tom style, he goes ahead and sticks a geometry accelerating Nvidia GeForce card in the computer he uses to test the 3d performance of the processor (effectively testing the card rather than the processor). Tom has been nutorious for always choosing setups that create bottlenecks in the wrong places, in fact, his 3d-card tests are usually the best places to look for processor performance, and vice versa...
You would think that the most respected source for this sort of tests on the Internet could get it right for once.
Also, since this is Slashdot we are about to get a hundred posts saying something along the lines of: Processor speed doesn't matter, its X (replace x for "harddisk read/write","bus speed","cache memory" etc). Don't believe them. Yes, there are applications where these things matter more (specifically server activity in most cases), but for 90% of us the only applications where speed is an issue at all any more are the 3d apps where it is all about processor speed (except in the case of geometry acceleration as covered above).
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Probably 100,000 Linux users read the story about the Linux version being pulled from the UT cd. I'm willing to bet you Brandon got less than 50 hatemails.
We will never get away from that half a promille of the Linux users who behave like children (mostly because, well, they are children).
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
No, you are totally wrong here. If the record companies were knowingly putting out music that they don't expect to profit off, I will go buy a stock in Sony and then sue the fuck out of them. Public companies do not, should not, and can not act benevolently.
The reason for the companies agressively funding new bands is just the high level competition: they are always scared shitless to pass up on the next thing. I love your example of using Christina Aguilera as the new artist, since she is the perfect example of the bad side. Everything but a young creative talent who got a chance, she is more the result of record company thinking "Hey, we ought to put out a star like Britney Spears since that worked so well."
As far as classical and jazz recordings go, they simply budget the very, very low. Producing cds is so cheap (and even studio technology nowadays), that minus promotion putting out album that only sells 10,000 copies can still be a good idea. Here in Sweden there is a thriving Swedish language music scene, yet only a little under 9 million people in the world are possibly interested in that. They generally sell as little or less than American classical cds, but it is still possible to make a profit off that.
Interestingly, many people consider Beck to be one of the most important artists of the ninetees. You know why? Because he had a hit with "Looser" before he signed a record deal, and then afterwards played the companies against one another (instead of falling for the spiced up rip off offers most new artists get, for example TLC who got so little they went bankrupt the year that "Crazy, Sexy, Cool" sold 10 million copies) and got complete control over his music from square one. NiN and Pearl Jam are, interestingly, other examples of bands that were lucky enough to get good deals (NiN are on their own label) that have allowed them a lot more freedom then most bands have. And your right about these bands not making the most money (Pearl Jam haven't had a monster hit since Ten, and NiN have never been real profitable) for the studios. Artist like N'sync and Britney Spears, who the companies can sell 10 million bland albums by, throw them a few scraps (cars and fucks and glittery parties), and then throw them back in the studio to record more music on the companies terms are.
We are moving into the information age. Making information, replicating information, and spreading information is not so remarkable any more. The companies that have done the latter two can not expect that they can keep a profitable monopoly over it any more (as someone at the base of this string said "they'll have to wake up and realize its all just bits"), and the people that have done the former have to understand that the dynamics of their role is about to change: greatly.
You cannot stop the world, no matter how much you like it.
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Much of what you say is true. Artist do have to be fed somehow, and the current system DOES work to create creativity and innovation, at least to some extent. There is no doubt a lot of good music drowning in the one hundred times more plentiful crappy music (though you are wrong when you speak of the margins being used for unprofitable artists, music companies only sign artist for profit, though sometimes the gamble turns out wrong (and trust me, you will get dropped)).
If things were all equal, I think I might vote for keeping the current system. But things are not all equal. Copyrights are at odds with the information society, and some of the things that the industries dependant on them are doing are clearly dangerous to liberty on the Internet and our society.
On a free Internet, piracy is going to become easier and easier, and more people ARE going to do it. There is no solution to this bar wing clipping the very nature of the Net or trying to make the punishments high enough, and lock up enough kids, that people will keep away from it by fear.
As such, we have to start looking for options. When I talk about the endless Backstreet clones of the music industry it is not because I think that is reason enough to kill it: but because I think people need to be reminded that the current system is not perfect. Many people simply take IP for granted to the point where they believe it to be a right: it is not a right, it is a construction, and far from the ideal solution to its problem (fostering creation and innovation) at that.
Of course we will need to feed our artists. But there other ways to do this. I cannot tell the future, but I am convinced that as long as there is demand for their art in society they will be fed. Perhaps it will be sponsorship (if an artist endorses Pepsi, it is there interest that as many people be listening to him as possible), perhaps it will be along the lines of opensource (where art evolves independant of one single person needing to be paid), or perhaps artists will be more at the mercy of benevolant fans (if 500,000 people download your album, and 10% send you one dollar, you are making a decent living). Perhaps it will be all of the above. Or none. But whatever we do, we need to recognize that not stepping on our liberties in the process is the most important thing of all.
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
The GPL is a copyright workaround. It does require the existance of copyrights, but it is only necessary because intellectual property exists.
Yes, without copyrights I couldn't keep Microsoft from using my code in propriatory software, but do you think Microsoft would be around if there were no copyrights? And if they did, would they have any reason not to open their software that they couldn't charge for anyways?
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
People were making art before there was copyright law, and they will continue to do so after it is gone. The situation is different in every industry (music, books, software), but Linux stands as proof that it is possible to create great informational entities for motivations other than appropriation.
Every time I hear "this will kill the music industry" I tend to think "good riddance". I'm simply not sure that there should be a music _industry_, I tend to prefer the idea of music as art. At worst, we may see Stephen King, Jackie Collins, Backstreet Boys, and Britney Spears, replaced by say (the horror) another Sophocles, Shakespeare, Mozart, and Bach. Watch me weep.
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
What ever happened to using a neural signal inhibitor to pick up the walking signals in the spinal collumn nerve cells and translating them into computer instructions?
We have pretty good beta of it going here at [echelon system autocensoring error 431 - no replacement known for this forbidden term] based on stuff the aliens bought left us. And it seems you can use it for a full 2 weeks before you loose your physical motoring skills completely!
The device also has great application within torture and teledildonics (what can I say, we don't get that many woman here at [echelon system autocensoring error 431 - no replacement known for this forbidden term]).
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Yes, Quake could push a child on the edge of destructive agression over the edge. So could Masters of the Universe or Tom & Jerry. So can a game of cowboys & indians. So could a bad day. So could seemingly nothing in some cases. It all depends HOW marginal the child is, and probably if a child has been driven to that point, there is something else that is very wrong.
I believe that there are adults (if you wish to call them that) who should not be playing these games. But we cannot deny the freedoms of everybody else for the sake of the exceptions: they must be handled as the individuals they are.
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Re:I don't know about you...
on
Happy Odd Day!
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· Score: 2
Actually, I think we will.
I mean consider all the wonderful things coming out of medicine lately to serve our immortality. We have head-transplants for when your body gets old (I know they can't reconnect the nerves yet, but they are making great progress towards that with handicapped people like Reeves), we have human-cloning so that we can make headless versions of ourselfs (they have isolated the gene which makes a body grow a head), they have medicines that show signs towards stimulating regrowth of brain-cells so we don't end up braindead after a few hundred years, and truely effective cancer treetments are just around the corner.
Who says we need to die just because everyone else did?
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Let's put this another way. Theft. Is it right for me to break into my neigbour's house and steal their posessions? No. So is it legal for me to do so? No. Yet, by extension, you are arguing that I should have the freedom to do that while my neigbour should protect their freedom to retain their posessions by hiring a policeman to stand outside their door or keeping them all locked in safes when they'r not being used. Which is patently ludicrous.
The extension does not (yet) cross the border from the world of mathematics and information to that of physics and meat. The analogy with the car is just as flawed as the same analogy regarding intellectual property (that copying a cd is like stealing a car). Fact is, it is mathematically possible to secure my communications, it is not mathematically possible to secure my car. In one case, the law is necessary, easily verified (you will know if your car has been stolen) and enforceable through finite effort, in the other it is the opposite of all that. I do see a possible future where it may be possible to apply mathematical laws to our physical world, and while I look forward to and strive towards it, I concede that it is far off.
We are (almost) all agreed that we have a right to private communications unless there is strong grounds of suspicion that we might be using such communications to facilitate illegal acts. So why on earth should the various law enforecment agencies have the right to intercept my communications, which they currently do?
Most of the things that Echelon allegedly does are clearly not legal (such as the NSA keeping tabs on Americans). I have no doubt in my mind that they laugh in the face of the laws and consitution. What makes you think that this law will be any different? Which will be your method of ensuring this? Enforcing it?
I am against it simply because we could spend all our money trying to enforce obedience to this law, start spy agencies to spy on our spies ad inifinum and still not be sure that it is working: or simply encrypt our communications and be sure of it at no cost and ten seconds time spent.
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Like everyone else in this discussion (it seems) I just finnished All Tomorrows Parties, but I was only moderately impressed with it. To me this book did not offer much more than its predecessor Iduro, which I thought was rather disapointing.
The character of Laney, with his ability to spot patterns in the data flows of society, is very fascinating, but Gibson doesn't build on him at all in this book, leaving just a more insane version of what we saw in Iduro. I have always enjoyed the depth and variation of Gibsons characters, but lately he has been falling into some pretty bad stereotypes. In Iduro he had the girl who tells people she is a street fighter in Mexico City on the Internet and turns out to be an invalid, and in this one he has crypto-cracking street kid (if Bruce Willis beat you to it, you know you're not quite original). Which is a shame because the Silencio is otherwise a pretty cool character (though Alex Garland wrote the part a lot better in his recent _The Tesseract_ (a must-read)).
I also never hooked onto the idea of the Iduro. While liking the idea of a fictionous idol attaining an identity, I feel Gibson treats her like just another Pinnochio figure. And what is the meaning (spoiler ahead) with making a great event out of the emergent system making herself human in a Lucky Dragon nanofax system? Isn't the great event of the future rather the opposite, that man is gaining ever greater ability to turn itself into the immortal iduro?
Finally, while I don't mind (in fact, I like) a book that doesn't tie all the ends together, I sort of feel that a book tagged as the conclusion to a triology should. While fun reading, as always with Gibson, this book really left me more with a feeling of "what now?" than "wow".
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
What? I thought Paul Allen had nothing to do with Microsoft anymore? Isn't he just really rich because he was smart enough to keep his MS stock after Gates backstabbed him or something?
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
I don't presume myself to be automatically more intelligent than others either, but I do automatically regard myself as more computer literate than the average person based on simple experience. That isn't disciminatory in the least, nor arrogant as I'm not making claims to be the best, merely above average. Considering I'm a Computer Science undergraduate with A-level and GCSE computer qualifications, I think I'm justified in making that claim. Now, I say again - you and I know what we're doing broadly. Our very presence on this site suggests that as a possibility, certainly our participation in this thread suggests marginally more knowledge about this sort of topic than most. Would we gain from this sort of rule? Sure, everyone would. Our gain would be less, though, as we're more capable of using the available barrier technologies. But imagine your example average user again. Do they know this sort of thing is possible? Unlikely, based on my experience. Are they going to know what to do to protect themselves, should they desire such protection? Equally unlikely.
Don't underestimate the market. Were there a broad public interest in secure communications, it would not be as difficult to send secure email as it is today. You cannot get around the fact that the problem here is not one of computer litteracy but one of attitude, people just don't care. Maybe that is because they are under the illusion that they are not being spied on, but my suggestion of simply ending the hypocracy on this subject goes a lot farther towards solving that then passing another, unenforceable, law.
I made my mother get an account on Hushmail so I could communicate with at least moderate security (of course she is using an export netscape, so) for discussing matters that call for it. She had absolutely no problem doing that, but we continue using normal email for most communications, because we just don't care if people are reading.
As for me, I do not agree that I would have anything to gain from it. Another hypocritical unenforceable law for our overbaring behemoth governments to not give a shit about, is not something I consider positive.
I'm sorry if you think I'm being elitist or arrogant here - I'd consider that I'm mostly trying to defend civil liberties, and this seems to be a way to do it. You, on the other hand, are suggesting that the government and their agencies should be permitted to eavesdrop on our private communications whenever they want for whatever purpose they want, and it's up to us to protect ourselves should we desire. Which I would see as being on a similar level to suggesting that we abolish the police force and hire private security to cover ourselves, though on a knowledge rather than financial elite.
In theory, I do believe that (private security over authoritarian forced upon policing), but I am also pragmatic in my anarchism. I am not naive enough to believe that we can just tear down the disfunctional mal-implemented system of society we have built around us (sort of like a bad routine in software, it isn't working but instead of fixing it we have implemented exception after conditional after hack for every new problem) and expect that something new and working would pop instead. But that does not mean I cannot say no to further movement in the direction of laws to patronise over us rather than being honest and giving the individual responsibility (and don't fool yourself: responsibility == freedom) in a matter where it is so readily available.
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
I find it smarter to put "Go ahead and moderate me down for daring to say this" somewhere in my mail so as to come across as a martyr.
Oh, and I bet I will get moderated down for speeking the truth on this issue, but I will always be ready to give of my karma to serve the readers of slashdot!
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Slashdot Mirror
On the flipside, I would like to warn people who do know some mathematics that they probably won't like this book. As a student of Mathematics (if very much a beginner) I found this book mostly frustrating, with long passages on the obvious stuff and no explanations where I got curious.
Which I guess goes for any reading of pop-science within one's own field. I'll just have to study for a few more years until I can understand tackle the true texts on the subject. No shortcuts in life...
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Technology has been solving our social problems since its very inception, and shall continue to do so at an even greater rate. Nothing has been more important to the social solutions of freedom and democracy then the technology of information (going back to the original printing press, and even written language as a whole).
In the case of privacy technology does offer a number of things that will help us. Secure communications and anonymous information access and sharing (go read about the mixmaster) have been made possible, and if there is call for it will become prevailent and easy to use.
The problem is that the very technological innovations that help our privacy are exactly those under most attack by society. People advocate non-technological solutions to these issues not because they do it better, but because they offer less absolute privacy, privacy that can be fucked with given a court order or if enough people want to. With technology you have a situation of all or nothing, which society (in the form of our governments, but also companies and orgs (like RIAA, who would attack a truely free forum the second it came into being)) doesn't seem ready for.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Heh, AltaVista (av.com) also tailored their ads according to what you search for. And they didn't check the modifiers. So if you searched for something like: "paisely box -xxx", you'd get porn ads. Is that pitiful, or what? I think they fixed that eventually, but they still try to use your searches to show ads. (no, america, if you search for "mp3", they don't show you porn.
I still remember a run in I had with a guy on IRC who was complaining vocally in a channel about Altavista running porn ads. He shut up pretty fast when he found out that the reason that he was seeing those adds but not the rest of us
Morality, thy name is hipocracy...
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Yes, you said that already. I understand all this: profits from sure selling artists are used to fund risky artists, the companies do this because most of their sure selling artists were risky artists at one time or another. The current system does work to produce new music, some of it even innovative, no doubt, only its effiency can be doubted (and we really have no reference to compare it too).
Now you understand the core question here: the current system is not sustainable in the information society. Anyone who advocates for the continued use of copyrights is going to have to answer to how you are going to police them in the connected future without turning the Internet into a police state. You can argue yourself silly about how well the current system works today in it will do you no good: instead you should be asking yourself how well it will work in 10 years when most people have broadband connectivity and will be able to download an album illegally in minutes...
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
While there is some value to a simple objective test of how fast Quake3 will run on the best system that can be put together, what Tom offers is comparisons between different processors. If these comparisons largely depend on the graphics card (and possibly its drivers) instead of the processor, then you are not getting the whole picture.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
In true Tom style, he goes ahead and sticks a geometry accelerating Nvidia GeForce card in the computer he uses to test the 3d performance of the processor (effectively testing the card rather than the processor). Tom has been nutorious for always choosing setups that create bottlenecks in the wrong places, in fact, his 3d-card tests are usually the best places to look for processor performance, and vice versa...
You would think that the most respected source for this sort of tests on the Internet could get it right for once.
Also, since this is Slashdot we are about to get a hundred posts saying something along the lines of: Processor speed doesn't matter, its X (replace x for "harddisk read/write","bus speed","cache memory" etc). Don't believe them. Yes, there are applications where these things matter more (specifically server activity in most cases), but for 90% of us the only applications where speed is an issue at all any more are the 3d apps where it is all about processor speed (except in the case of geometry acceleration as covered above).
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Probably 100,000 Linux users read the story about the Linux version being pulled from the UT cd. I'm willing to bet you Brandon got less than 50 hatemails.
We will never get away from that half a promille of the Linux users who behave like children (mostly because, well, they are children).
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
No, you are totally wrong here. If the record companies were knowingly putting out music that they don't expect to profit off, I will go buy a stock in Sony and then sue the fuck out of them. Public companies do not, should not, and can not act benevolently.
The reason for the companies agressively funding new bands is just the high level competition: they are always scared shitless to pass up on the next thing. I love your example of using Christina Aguilera as the new artist, since she is the perfect example of the bad side. Everything but a young creative talent who got a chance, she is more the result of record company thinking "Hey, we ought to put out a star like Britney Spears since that worked so well."
As far as classical and jazz recordings go, they simply budget the very, very low. Producing cds is so cheap (and even studio technology nowadays), that minus promotion putting out album that only sells 10,000 copies can still be a good idea. Here in Sweden there is a thriving Swedish language music scene, yet only a little under 9 million people in the world are possibly interested in that. They generally sell as little or less than American classical cds, but it is still possible to make a profit off that.
Interestingly, many people consider Beck to be one of the most important artists of the ninetees. You know why? Because he had a hit with "Looser" before he signed a record deal, and then afterwards played the companies against one another (instead of falling for the spiced up rip off offers most new artists get, for example TLC who got so little they went bankrupt the year that "Crazy, Sexy, Cool" sold 10 million copies) and got complete control over his music from square one. NiN and Pearl Jam are, interestingly, other examples of bands that were lucky enough to get good deals (NiN are on their own label) that have allowed them a lot more freedom then most bands have. And your right about these bands not making the most money (Pearl Jam haven't had a monster hit since Ten, and NiN have never been real profitable) for the studios. Artist like N'sync and Britney Spears, who the companies can sell 10 million bland albums by, throw them a few scraps (cars and fucks and glittery parties), and then throw them back in the studio to record more music on the companies terms are.
We are moving into the information age. Making information, replicating information, and spreading information is not so remarkable any more. The companies that have done the latter two can not expect that they can keep a profitable monopoly over it any more (as someone at the base of this string said "they'll have to wake up and realize its all just bits"), and the people that have done the former have to understand that the dynamics of their role is about to change: greatly.
You cannot stop the world, no matter how much you like it.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Much of what you say is true. Artist do have to be fed somehow, and the current system DOES work to create creativity and innovation, at least to some extent. There is no doubt a lot of good music drowning in the one hundred times more plentiful crappy music (though you are wrong when you speak of the margins being used for unprofitable artists, music companies only sign artist for profit, though sometimes the gamble turns out wrong (and trust me, you will get dropped)).
If things were all equal, I think I might vote for keeping the current system. But things are not all equal. Copyrights are at odds with the information society, and some of the things that the industries dependant on them are doing are clearly dangerous to liberty on the Internet and our society.
On a free Internet, piracy is going to become easier and easier, and more people ARE going to do it. There is no solution to this bar wing clipping the very nature of the Net or trying to make the punishments high enough, and lock up enough kids, that people will keep away from it by fear.
As such, we have to start looking for options. When I talk about the endless Backstreet clones of the music industry it is not because I think that is reason enough to kill it: but because I think people need to be reminded that the current system is not perfect. Many people simply take IP for granted to the point where they believe it to be a right: it is not a right, it is a construction, and far from the ideal solution to its problem (fostering creation and innovation) at that.
Of course we will need to feed our artists. But there other ways to do this. I cannot tell the future, but I am convinced that as long as there is demand for their art in society they will be fed. Perhaps it will be sponsorship (if an artist endorses Pepsi, it is there interest that as many people be listening to him as possible), perhaps it will be along the lines of opensource (where art evolves independant of one single person needing to be paid), or perhaps artists will be more at the mercy of benevolant fans (if 500,000 people download your album, and 10% send you one dollar, you are making a decent living). Perhaps it will be all of the above. Or none. But whatever we do, we need to recognize that not stepping on our liberties in the process is the most important thing of all.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
The problem is that religous people always fail to differentiate faith based on reason, and faith based on dogma.
the whole "You can't prove evolution, I can't prove creation, we are both acting on faith" thing.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
The GPL is a copyright workaround. It does require the existance of copyrights, but it is only necessary because intellectual property exists.
Yes, without copyrights I couldn't keep Microsoft from using my code in propriatory software, but do you think Microsoft would be around if there were no copyrights? And if they did, would they have any reason not to open their software that they couldn't charge for anyways?
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
People were making art before there was copyright law, and they will continue to do so after it is gone. The situation is different in every industry (music, books, software), but Linux stands as proof that it is possible to create great informational entities for motivations other than appropriation.
Every time I hear "this will kill the music industry" I tend to think "good riddance". I'm simply not sure that there should be a music _industry_, I tend to prefer the idea of music as art. At worst, we may see Stephen King, Jackie Collins, Backstreet Boys, and Britney Spears, replaced by say (the horror) another Sophocles, Shakespeare, Mozart, and Bach. Watch me weep.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
wow, chalk up another one for the speedy irony detection system. You are good man...
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
What ever happened to using a neural signal inhibitor to pick up the walking signals in the spinal collumn nerve cells and translating them into computer instructions?
We have pretty good beta of it going here at [echelon system autocensoring error 431 - no replacement known for this forbidden term] based on stuff the aliens bought left us. And it seems you can use it for a full 2 weeks before you loose your physical motoring skills completely!
The device also has great application within torture and teledildonics (what can I say, we don't get that many woman here at [echelon system autocensoring error 431 - no replacement known for this forbidden term]).
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
I have a theory here:
* Anonymous coward
* Middle of nowhere but won't say where
* Secret non-specific "government job"
* assigned to read geek publications
YOU ARE A MAN IN BLACK AREN'T YOU!
Admit it, the place in the middle of nowhere is Area 51.
We REALLY thought better of you then playing deathmath all day... Don't you have REAL rayguns? Real alien invaders to shoot?
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
He posted on Slashdot on a friday evening. I don't think not liking is the issue.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Quake can push a marginal child over the edge.
Yes, Quake could push a child on the edge of destructive agression over the edge. So could Masters of the Universe or Tom & Jerry. So can a game of cowboys & indians. So could a bad day. So could seemingly nothing in some cases. It all depends HOW marginal the child is, and probably if a child has been driven to that point, there is something else that is very wrong.
I believe that there are adults (if you wish to call them that) who should not be playing these games. But we cannot deny the freedoms of everybody else for the sake of the exceptions: they must be handled as the individuals they are.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Actually, I think we will.
I mean consider all the wonderful things coming out of medicine lately to serve our immortality. We have head-transplants for when your body gets old (I know they can't reconnect the nerves yet, but they are making great progress towards that with handicapped people like Reeves), we have human-cloning so that we can make headless versions of ourselfs (they have isolated the gene which makes a body grow a head), they have medicines that show signs towards stimulating regrowth of brain-cells so we don't end up braindead after a few hundred years, and truely effective cancer treetments are just around the corner.
Who says we need to die just because everyone else did?
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
The extension does not (yet) cross the border from the world of mathematics and information to that of physics and meat. The analogy with the car is just as flawed as the same analogy regarding intellectual property (that copying a cd is like stealing a car). Fact is, it is mathematically possible to secure my communications, it is not mathematically possible to secure my car. In one case, the law is necessary, easily verified (you will know if your car has been stolen) and enforceable through finite effort, in the other it is the opposite of all that. I do see a possible future where it may be possible to apply mathematical laws to our physical world, and while I look forward to and strive towards it, I concede that it is far off.
Most of the things that Echelon allegedly does are clearly not legal (such as the NSA keeping tabs on Americans). I have no doubt in my mind that they laugh in the face of the laws and consitution. What makes you think that this law will be any different? Which will be your method of ensuring this? Enforcing it?
I am against it simply because we could spend all our money trying to enforce obedience to this law, start spy agencies to spy on our spies ad inifinum and still not be sure that it is working: or simply encrypt our communications and be sure of it at no cost and ten seconds time spent.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Like everyone else in this discussion (it seems) I just finnished All Tomorrows Parties, but I was only moderately impressed with it. To me this book did not offer much more than its predecessor Iduro, which I thought was rather disapointing.
The character of Laney, with his ability to spot patterns in the data flows of society, is very fascinating, but Gibson doesn't build on him at all in this book, leaving just a more insane version of what we saw in Iduro. I have always enjoyed the depth and variation of Gibsons characters, but lately he has been falling into some pretty bad stereotypes. In Iduro he had the girl who tells people she is a street fighter in Mexico City on the Internet and turns out to be an invalid, and in this one he has crypto-cracking street kid (if Bruce Willis beat you to it, you know you're not quite original). Which is a shame because the Silencio is otherwise a pretty cool character (though Alex Garland wrote the part a lot better in his recent _The Tesseract_ (a must-read)).
I also never hooked onto the idea of the Iduro. While liking the idea of a fictionous idol attaining an identity, I feel Gibson treats her like just another Pinnochio figure. And what is the meaning (spoiler ahead) with making a great event out of the emergent system making herself human in a Lucky Dragon nanofax system? Isn't the great event of the future rather the opposite, that man is gaining ever greater ability to turn itself into the immortal iduro?
Finally, while I don't mind (in fact, I like) a book that doesn't tie all the ends together, I sort of feel that a book tagged as the conclusion to a triology should. While fun reading, as always with Gibson, this book really left me more with a feeling of "what now?" than "wow".
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
What? I thought Paul Allen had nothing to do with Microsoft anymore? Isn't he just really rich because he was smart enough to keep his MS stock after Gates backstabbed him or something?
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Don't underestimate the market. Were there a broad public interest in secure communications, it would not be as difficult to send secure email as it is today. You cannot get around the fact that the problem here is not one of computer litteracy but one of attitude, people just don't care. Maybe that is because they are under the illusion that they are not being spied on, but my suggestion of simply ending the hypocracy on this subject goes a lot farther towards solving that then passing another, unenforceable, law.
I made my mother get an account on Hushmail so I could communicate with at least moderate security (of course she is using an export netscape, so) for discussing matters that call for it. She had absolutely no problem doing that, but we continue using normal email for most communications, because we just don't care if people are reading.
As for me, I do not agree that I would have anything to gain from it. Another hypocritical unenforceable law for our overbaring behemoth governments to not give a shit about, is not something I consider positive.
In theory, I do believe that (private security over authoritarian forced upon policing), but I am also pragmatic in my anarchism. I am not naive enough to believe that we can just tear down the disfunctional mal-implemented system of society we have built around us (sort of like a bad routine in software, it isn't working but instead of fixing it we have implemented exception after conditional after hack for every new problem) and expect that something new and working would pop instead. But that does not mean I cannot say no to further movement in the direction of laws to patronise over us rather than being honest and giving the individual responsibility (and don't fool yourself: responsibility == freedom) in a matter where it is so readily available.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
I find it smarter to put "Go ahead and moderate me down for daring to say this" somewhere in my mail so as to come across as a martyr.
Oh, and I bet I will get moderated down for speeking the truth on this issue, but I will always be ready to give of my karma to serve the readers of slashdot!
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
If having only one desktop would make it anything like CDE I would say THANK GOD we have a bunch of competing ones.
Drag and drop is nice, but it is not a must have feature. A desktop looking slightly more modern than Windows 2.11 (yes, I meant 2) sort of is...
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Interestingly, that these killings are happening even where games are strictly censored and contolled shows the futility of the tactic.
If people would only dare look at the real problem for once...
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.