"And it passed: http://techlawjournal.com/censor/19990624.htm and allowed to stand by the Supreme Court. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/149865.html."
E-Rates passed. CIPA passed. E-Rates was approved by the Supremes. CIPA hasn't even finished its first round in court. They are 2 separate things, and while CIPA is a parasite on E-Rates, E-rates has been around for about 2 years, while CIPA is only about 2 months old.
Here's the federal law on the subject: http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/copyright.act.chapt1b.html#17usc111(c)
(1) Subject to the provisions of clauses (2), (3), and (4) of this subsection, secondary transmissions to the public by a cable
system of a primary transmission made by a broadcast station licensed by the Federal Communications Commission or by an
appropriate governmental authority of Canada or Mexico and embodying a performance or display of a work shall be subject to
compulsory licensing upon compliance with the requirements of subsection (d) where the carriage of the signals comprising the
secondary transmission is permissible under the rules, regulations, or authorizations of the Federal Communications Commission.
TechLawyer said: "Otherwise, I can't for the life of me figure out what possible interest Hatch could have in this issue, one way or another."
Well, it turns out that Orrin Hatch is a musician himself. He's produced at least 7 CDs. He already knows about how the recording industry screws artists. He also realizes that laws like the DMCA is being abused by the RIAA and the MPAA, and that fair use rights are being harmed. In short, he's out to protect his constituents.
Remember that just because Hatch is socially conservative and Republican (and, IMO, wrong about many social issues), doesn't mean that he's a corporate stooge. In fact, Democrats tend to support strong copyrights at least as much as Republicans, because Democrats are the party of the media - this is a hold over from a time when they actually believed in Freedom of Speech.
For those of you who think this is totally crazy and without precedent, let me ask you if you have cable TV. If so, you already benefit from compulsory licensing - cable providers pay a government-decided rate to broadcasters in order to transmit their content. So, Comcast pays ABC (or, possibly, your local ABC subsidiary, I don't know the specifics) so that you can get local news on cable. Before compulsory licensing, you couldn't get this.
In order to have rights, a creature
must also be responsible (this is why talk of animal rights is so much crap.
Likewise, children are clearly not responsible, so human rights do not apply to them. The U.S. Already recognizes this to some extent (children cannot vote), but we must take further steps to further this fundamental principle. First, we must repeal the child-labor statutes. Second, we must explicitly legalize the beating of children. How can children expect to avoid punishment for all of the myriad inconveniences they cause because of some liberal concept like "children's rights". No, it is clear that until children can get a job and support themselves, they do not have the right to protection from beatings and the like. Free Tony Lamont Bragg Sr.!
Pixar has a patent on the stochastic dither multi-sample antialias. They've enforced it before.
Uh-oh. POV-Ray uses it. Shh, don't tell Pixar. Wait, you used to work for Pixar... But, that was a zillion years ago. How long 'till the patent expires?
OK, kids can't buy guns or carry them. The point was that they can't legally use them as SB intended. Was it wrong for you to carry the gun? Maybe. If you were a kid like some kids I know, yes. If you were a kid like my brother, probably not.
Yes, I agree with you that schools are more dangerous for queer kids. Yes, this is wrong. Yes, teachers often don't give a shit. This is wrong too. My main point was that kids cannot buy guns with which to defend themselves.
Depends where you go to school. But, yes, it's not only students that are homophobic. At a certain point, it is more effective to go to the media. And, sometimes, nothing helps, and you're just stuck, which sucks and causes tons of people off themselves every year. Fortunately, it's easier now than it ever was to meet people over the net who are like you and who will be understanding, etc. I think the next generation will have it easier, which is how I interpet Kafka's statement "there is hope, but not for us"
"I'm part of a persecuted minority in this country due to my sexual orientation, but I'll take my.45 over hate-crime legistlation any day of the week."
Kids can't own guns. You wouldn't want them to. I'm all for individual rights and personal responsibility, but kids don't have responsibility. (Not that I believe an arbitrary age cut-off is a good thing - that's a separate issue).
If I were still in HS, and I were threatened on account of my sexual orientation or for any other reason, you can bet I would tell a teacher. That's what they're there for. School is a place for learning, where you ought to be able feel safe, concentrate on classes, etc. Not everything people say should be taken seriously, but most people can tell the difference. If you don't feel safe, you're not going to be able to focus fully on school - and you ought not to be required to live like that. So, if you want to solve it with your.45, that's fine for you (an adult). But, a kid doesn't have that option. Even if they did, a kid did have a.45, still might prefer not to use it (as a threat), since the other guy might have a bazooka.
Go is not core wars. Nor is a MUD. Nor is StarCraft, which obviously can't be botted effectively, or their AI wouldn't suck. So, what you're really saying is "The world outside of Quake is boring".
Original: In a well-designed client/server game, a "smartened up" client with a human controlling it should, in general, be able
to defeat a "smartened up" client that is running on autopilot. [...] If not, then your game suffers from a defect -- it
doesn't require human-level intelligence to win.
Reply to original:
You haven't solved any problems here, you've simply narrowed the scope of what you consider "legitimate" games to
some arcane variant of Core Wars, where you're no longer playing a game directly, but rather trying to program and
drive the smartest robot. This could be fun, but surely there's more to life than this one kind of game!
Rebuttal to reply:
Design a client that improves your skill at "Go". Or at a Role-Playing game which requires Role-playing (as opposed to roll-playing i.e. hack and slash).
"First, I take exception to being called an idiot."
OK, I apologize.
"But the technology to implement a reasonable means of authentication and adherence to loanrules is certainly not outside our grasp."
Here is where you are disagreeing with Schneier. Read this:
http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0005.html #T rustedClientSoftware
He says: >>The common thread in all of these "solutions" is that they postulate a situation where the owner ofa file can control what happens
to that file after it is sent to someone else. It's complete nonsense. <<
The reason for this should be obvious - if you can view it, you can copy it. There's no way to prevent this, short of a police state - and even then, it will be circumvented.
Re: getting a card: I don't know what happens if your township lacks a library.
Worldforge has Acorn at 0.3. It's no more "completed" than any Free Software project is "completed", but it works.
Here's a link to get you started: http://www.worldforge.org/website/rules/acorn/
Also, Nevrax is commercial, so they have a better base of programmer time than most non-commercial efforts.
It was worse than that. He didn't kill himself over shame, but over persecution. The government forced him to take estrogen and other drugs to reduce his sex drive, which made him miserable. Interestingly, he also did it in such a way that his mother could believe it was an accident - he wanted to spare her the shame.
There's no music specifically mentioning Alan Turing (as compared to about 20 songs mentioning Margaret Thatcher), but when I think of him, I think of this:
"And when the clergy take a vote all the gays
will pay again / 'Cause there's more than one kind of criminal white collar." --The Indigo Girls, "Trouble"
>>I'm still not entirely sure what all the uproar is about, though. The technology is very much in place to enable e-books to be loaned for a specific period of time. It's a simple matter of patron authentication and timed decryption or access, not altogether unlike the much reviled Divx format. Really, I think it's much ado about nothing. <<
You are an idiot. As the DeCSS case has shown, this technology does not work and can never work.
For details from one of the world's most famous security experts, see: http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-9911.html#D VDEncryptionBroken
Also, in my state (PA), any citizen can get a card at any library, at no charge. Usually, they must first get one from their local library.
Flabdabb Hubbard said: "What will happen if the notoriously poor quality control standards of 'open source' reach the hardware level ?"
What are you talking about? Free Software is often of quality as good as or better than proprietary software. Some companies (such as Red Hat) have put out poor products such as RH7.0 (but, remember, the file handle leak was caused by a piece of new Red Hat software which had not been released and subjected to the standard Free Software "many eyes"). This ought not to reflect poorly on the movement as a whole - the software they chose (such as the notorious beta compiler) was simply not the best of free software.
FH continues: "Anyway, companies like Sun have tried this with sparc international, (no doubt someone will whinge about the license) but this is essentially an open source CPU."
I have no idea what the license was, but it's almost certainly not anything like open source. Open source does *NOT* mean "you can look at the source code". It has a *SPECIFIC* meaning, which you can find at www.opensource.org. This *is* important. That you make this mistake indicates a deep lack of understanding of Free Software and Open Source software.
Now, if a bug is found in BIND, do you really want every script kitty trying to make a name for
himself to HACK ROOT on the ROOT NAMESERVERS for the ENTIRE INTERNET? Does
this sound like a good plan to you? Wouldn't you rather, since the entire internet depends on
them, that they get a chance to be patched up first?
Has it happened yet? No. So, what's wrong with the current model?
"as if Intel will kill its cash cow pentium line."
No, instead, they bought ARM, and continued making and promoting their products to kill that line?
Also, linux *is* good for embedded systems - juts not super-tiny embedded systems. There's a continuum from microwave to supercomputer. Linux fills some range of that, and that range intersects with the range of systems that we cll "embedded".
All that I said was that the economy is not zero sum, not that it is bad. With a UID as low as yours, I would expect you to have learned by now to read the fucking post.
"There are flaws in my statements that don't cover high-end CAD applications. And I'm as aware of hot-key+mouse combos in Gimp as I am of key+mouse combos in MacOS... they're common. "
I actually had forgotten that aspect of MacOS, as I haven't used it for 6 months. Actually, the "order-is-important" bit was kinda the most interesting (at least in some ways).
"They're also not enough. Think of the evil side of this, where every application has its own keys+mouse combos to remember."
What would you suggest that ctrl-drag-alt do in Word that would be analagous to what it does in Gimp? What about in a shell (which, I know, you don't want to exist)? What about in Outlook? MaxAmp? One only remembers the accelerators for frequently used commands - if you're going to be using it enough for an accelerator memorization to be a speed-up, then it's worth remembering - else, it's in a menu (although Gimp may be deficient in this - it's got a few serious UI flaws (but not the ones most people cite)). Also, most apps are consistent in shortcuts for common things (cut, paste, save). Except on Unix, where there are 5 classes of apps: emacs-like, vi-like, motif, gnome/kde/windows, and pine-like. 3 of these are dying, fortunately.
"You said that you're not sure a computer could handle as many as 4 inflections or more, especially with ambient noise.
We have more computing power than ever before- we have only to eliminate the bottlenecks and use this power to do something revolutionary instead of doing the same old same old in 10 seconds less. "
If you code it, they will come. VR is *hard*. People often have to ask each-other to repeat things, and computers are stupider than people (now, anyway).
"I'm ready for a leap forward."
So am I. But, I would like one which is possible. Show me some meat along with your blue sky, then we'll talk.
"The fact that there is a quantifiable input for the poet or blacksmith or computer programmer absolutely does not mean that they are involved in zero sum games."
True. I should have explained this better. Newton's 2nd law does, I think.
"There is a problem with valuation of shared goods. Things other than individual property (clean air and water, for example) are not well handled in our economy. "
Economists believe that the economy is not a zero-sum game, because they can show that a person on his own can create value where there was none before. They are not looking at the whole system, however. Consider the case of a blacksmith. He takes raw iron from the earth, refines it, and shapes it into useful tools. His source of value is not just his muscles - it's the earth that produced the iron, and the earth which bore the food on which he has nourished himself, and the sun which created that pre-historic vegetation which is how his coal. It is not value from nothing, it is value taken from the past (coal), and also out of the future (in the form of pollution).
But, you may say, what about "intellectual property" (ignoring the issues of its correctness). It consumes no resources to produce, right? Wrong. Even a poet needs dead trees to write on, ink to write with, feathers or plastic for a pen. And, to produce value from this work, she needs the machinery of modern society - the printing presses and glue factories and fleets of trucks for distribution. Computer programmers who distribute their work online consume only the smallest bit of electricity in its distribution, but chip-making plants are highly toxic - we (for I am one of these programmers), too, are taking resources from the future to pay for today.
This can not, and will not last forever. When we have destroyed our air, our forests, and our rivers, we will see this "zero-sum game" for what it really is: a shell game.
You said: q# The mouse knows one word with modifier states. That word is "click." it can be modified with "right-", "double-" "middle-" or even "scroll-wheel". #
You have obviously never used high-end CAD or modelling software. In a typical CAD app, R-drag (that's the letter R on the keyboard) will rotate an object. S-drag (letter S) will scale it.
Even in GIMP, shift, control, and alt affect the meaning of a drag. Further, *position is important* - that is, shift-drag is different from drag-shift, which is different from ctrl-drag-(let go of ctrl)-shift. That's even more like a natural language (other than Latin)...
You continued:
q# But let's get forward thinking-- voice-controlled (and I mean, good voice controlled, not viavoice or dragon from two years ago) and gesture oriented. #
With voice control, you input text. If you wish to count inflection, you probably have 2 more bits (4 more choices) of reliably detectable input. Well, Chinese has 4 inflections, and I'm not sure a computer, especially with any kind of ambient noise, could pick up more. Now, with typing, you have shift, ctrl, alt, and "95" (which is what I call the little flying window button. I'm ignoring the "menu button", which is just a synonym for right-click). Unlike inflections, these can be *combined*, giving 16 "inflections". Further, these are on the letter level, rather than the word level. Clearly, keyboards give you more power than voice, not less.
Me: "Corel did, but they weren't contributing anything."
AC: "Corel _did_ contribute a _lot_ to the wine project"
True, I had forgotten about this. I guess what I meant was that they were not strongly committed to Free Software - they were a traditional software company, not a Free Software company.
Slashdot Mirror
"And it passed: http://techlawjournal.com/censor/19990624.htm and allowed to stand by the Supreme Court. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/149865.html." E-Rates passed. CIPA passed. E-Rates was approved by the Supremes. CIPA hasn't even finished its first round in court. They are 2 separate things, and while CIPA is a parasite on E-Rates, E-rates has been around for about 2 years, while CIPA is only about 2 months old.
Here's the federal law on the subject: http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/copyright.act .chapt1b.html#17usc111(c)
(1) Subject to the provisions of clauses (2), (3), and (4) of this subsection, secondary transmissions to the public by a cable
system of a primary transmission made by a broadcast station licensed by the Federal Communications Commission or by an
appropriate governmental authority of Canada or Mexico and embodying a performance or display of a work shall be subject to
compulsory licensing upon compliance with the requirements of subsection (d) where the carriage of the signals comprising the
secondary transmission is permissible under the rules, regulations, or authorizations of the Federal Communications Commission.
TechLawyer said: "Otherwise, I can't for the life of me figure out what possible interest Hatch could have in this issue, one way or another."
Well, it turns out that Orrin Hatch is a musician himself. He's produced at least 7 CDs. He already knows about how the recording industry screws artists. He also realizes that laws like the DMCA is being abused by the RIAA and the MPAA, and that fair use rights are being harmed. In short, he's out to protect his constituents.
Remember that just because Hatch is socially conservative and Republican (and, IMO, wrong about many social issues), doesn't mean that he's a corporate stooge. In fact, Democrats tend to support strong copyrights at least as much as Republicans, because Democrats are the party of the media - this is a hold over from a time when they actually believed in Freedom of Speech.
For those of you who think this is totally crazy and without precedent, let me ask you if you have cable TV. If so, you already benefit from compulsory licensing - cable providers pay a government-decided rate to broadcasters in order to transmit their content. So, Comcast pays ABC (or, possibly, your local ABC subsidiary, I don't know the specifics) so that you can get local news on cable. Before compulsory licensing, you couldn't get this.
In order to have rights, a creature must also be responsible (this is why talk of animal rights is so much crap.
/bitter sarcasm >
Likewise, children are clearly not responsible, so human rights do not apply to them. The U.S. Already recognizes this to some extent (children cannot vote), but we must take further steps to further this fundamental principle. First, we must repeal the child-labor statutes. Second, we must explicitly legalize the beating of children. How can children expect to avoid punishment for all of the myriad inconveniences they cause because of some liberal concept like "children's rights". No, it is clear that until children can get a job and support themselves, they do not have the right to protection from beatings and the like. Free Tony Lamont Bragg Sr.!
<
Pixar has a patent on the stochastic dither multi-sample antialias. They've enforced it before.
Uh-oh. POV-Ray uses it. Shh, don't tell Pixar. Wait, you used to work for Pixar... But, that was a zillion years ago. How long 'till the patent expires?
OK, kids can't buy guns or carry them. The point was that they can't legally use them as SB intended. Was it wrong for you to carry the gun? Maybe. If you were a kid like some kids I know, yes. If you were a kid like my brother, probably not.
Yes, I agree with you that schools are more dangerous for queer kids. Yes, this is wrong. Yes, teachers often don't give a shit. This is wrong too. My main point was that kids cannot buy guns with which to defend themselves.
Depends where you go to school. But, yes, it's not only students that are homophobic. At a certain point, it is more effective to go to the media. And, sometimes, nothing helps, and you're just stuck, which sucks and causes tons of people off themselves every year. Fortunately, it's easier now than it ever was to meet people over the net who are like you and who will be understanding, etc. I think the next generation will have it easier, which is how I interpet Kafka's statement "there is hope, but not for us"
"I'm part of a persecuted minority in this country due to my sexual orientation, but I'll take my .45 over hate-crime legistlation any day of the week."
.45, that's fine for you (an adult). But, a kid doesn't have that option. Even if they did, a kid did have a .45, still might prefer not to use it (as a threat), since the other guy might have a bazooka.
Kids can't own guns. You wouldn't want them to. I'm all for individual rights and personal responsibility, but kids don't have responsibility. (Not that I believe an arbitrary age cut-off is a good thing - that's a separate issue).
If I were still in HS, and I were threatened on account of my sexual orientation or for any other reason, you can bet I would tell a teacher. That's what they're there for. School is a place for learning, where you ought to be able feel safe, concentrate on classes, etc. Not everything people say should be taken seriously, but most people can tell the difference. If you don't feel safe, you're not going to be able to focus fully on school - and you ought not to be required to live like that. So, if you want to solve it with your
Go is not core wars. Nor is a MUD. Nor is StarCraft, which obviously can't be botted effectively, or their AI wouldn't suck. So, what you're really saying is "The world outside of Quake is boring".
Original:
In a well-designed client/server game, a "smartened up" client with a human controlling it should, in general, be able to defeat a "smartened up" client that is running on autopilot. [...] If not, then your game suffers from a defect -- it doesn't require human-level intelligence to win.
Reply to original:
You haven't solved any problems here, you've simply narrowed the scope of what you consider "legitimate" games to some arcane variant of Core Wars, where you're no longer playing a game directly, but rather trying to program and drive the smartest robot. This could be fun, but surely there's more to life than this one kind of game!
Rebuttal to reply:
Design a client that improves your skill at "Go". Or at a Role-Playing game which requires Role-playing (as opposed to roll-playing i.e. hack and slash).
"First, I take exception to being called an idiot."
l #T rustedClientSoftware
OK, I apologize.
"But the technology to implement a reasonable means of authentication and adherence to loanrules is certainly not outside our grasp."
Here is where you are disagreeing with Schneier. Read this:
http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0005.htm
He says: >>The common thread in all of these "solutions" is that they postulate a situation where the owner ofa file can control what happens
to that file after it is sent to someone else. It's complete nonsense. <<
The reason for this should be obvious - if you can view it, you can copy it. There's no way to prevent this, short of a police state - and even then, it will be circumvented.
Re: getting a card: I don't know what happens if your township lacks a library.
Worldforge has Acorn at 0.3. It's no more "completed" than any Free Software project is "completed", but it works.
Here's a link to get you started: http://www.worldforge.org/website/rules/acorn/
Also, Nevrax is commercial, so they have a better base of programmer time than most non-commercial efforts.
It was worse than that. He didn't kill himself over shame, but over persecution. The government forced him to take estrogen and other drugs to reduce his sex drive, which made him miserable. Interestingly, he also did it in such a way that his mother could believe it was an accident - he wanted to spare her the shame.
There's no music specifically mentioning Alan Turing (as compared to about 20 songs mentioning Margaret Thatcher), but when I think of him, I think of this:
"And when the clergy take a vote all the gays
will pay again / 'Cause there's more than one kind of criminal white collar." --The Indigo Girls, "Trouble"
>>I'm still not entirely sure what all the uproar is about, though. The technology is very much in place to enable e-books to be loaned for a specific period of time. It's a simple matter of patron authentication and timed decryption or access, not altogether unlike the much reviled Divx format. Really, I think it's much ado about nothing. <<
D VDEncryptionBroken
You are an idiot. As the DeCSS case has shown, this technology does not work and can never work.
For details from one of the world's most famous security experts, see: http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-9911.html#
Also, in my state (PA), any citizen can get a card at any library, at no charge. Usually, they must first get one from their local library.
Flabdabb Hubbard said: "What will happen if the notoriously poor quality control standards of 'open source' reach the hardware level ?"
What are you talking about? Free Software is often of quality as good as or better than proprietary software. Some companies (such as Red Hat) have put out poor products such as RH7.0 (but, remember, the file handle leak was caused by a piece of new Red Hat software which had not been released and subjected to the standard Free Software "many eyes"). This ought not to reflect poorly on the movement as a whole - the software they chose (such as the notorious beta compiler) was simply not the best of free software.
FH continues: "Anyway, companies like Sun have tried this with sparc international, (no doubt someone will whinge about the license) but this is essentially an open source CPU."
I have no idea what the license was, but it's almost certainly not anything like open source. Open source does *NOT* mean "you can look at the source code". It has a *SPECIFIC* meaning, which you can find at www.opensource.org. This *is* important. That you make this mistake indicates a deep lack of understanding of Free Software and Open Source software.
Now, if a bug is found in BIND, do you really want every script kitty trying to make a name for himself to HACK ROOT on the ROOT NAMESERVERS for the ENTIRE INTERNET? Does this sound like a good plan to you? Wouldn't you rather, since the entire internet depends on them, that they get a chance to be patched up first?
Has it happened yet? No. So, what's wrong with the current model?
"as if Intel will kill its cash cow pentium line."
No, instead, they bought ARM, and continued making and promoting their products to kill that line?
Also, linux *is* good for embedded systems - juts not super-tiny embedded systems. There's a continuum from microwave to supercomputer. Linux fills some range of that, and that range intersects with the range of systems that we cll "embedded".
Your words, not mine.
All that I said was that the economy is not zero sum, not that it is bad. With a UID as low as yours, I would expect you to have learned by now to read the fucking post.
"There are flaws in my statements that don't cover high-end CAD applications. And I'm as aware of hot-key+mouse combos in Gimp as I am of key+mouse combos in MacOS... they're common. "
I actually had forgotten that aspect of MacOS, as I haven't used it for 6 months. Actually, the "order-is-important" bit was kinda the most interesting (at least in some ways).
"They're also not enough. Think of the evil side of this, where every application has its own keys+mouse combos to remember."
What would you suggest that ctrl-drag-alt do in Word that would be analagous to what it does in Gimp? What about in a shell (which, I know, you don't want to exist)? What about in Outlook? MaxAmp? One only remembers the accelerators for frequently used commands - if you're going to be using it enough for an accelerator memorization to be a speed-up, then it's worth remembering - else, it's in a menu (although Gimp may be deficient in this - it's got a few serious UI flaws (but not the ones most people cite)). Also, most apps are consistent in shortcuts for common things (cut, paste, save). Except on Unix, where there are 5 classes of apps: emacs-like, vi-like, motif, gnome/kde/windows, and pine-like. 3 of these are dying, fortunately.
"You said that you're not sure a computer could handle as many as 4 inflections or more, especially with ambient noise.
We have more computing power than ever before- we have only to eliminate the bottlenecks and use this power to do something revolutionary instead of doing the same old same old in 10 seconds less. "
If you code it, they will come. VR is *hard*. People often have to ask each-other to repeat things, and computers are stupider than people (now, anyway).
"I'm ready for a leap forward."
So am I. But, I would like one which is possible. Show me some meat along with your blue sky, then we'll talk.
"The fact that there is a quantifiable input for the poet or blacksmith or computer programmer absolutely does not mean that they are involved in zero sum games."
True. I should have explained this better. Newton's 2nd law does, I think.
"There is a problem with valuation of shared goods. Things other than individual property (clean air and water, for example) are not well handled in our economy. "
Or any market - see the "Tragedy Of The Commons".
Economists believe that the economy is not a zero-sum game, because they can show that a person on his own can create value where there was none before. They are not looking at the whole system, however. Consider the case of a blacksmith. He takes raw iron from the earth, refines it, and shapes it into useful tools. His source of value is not just his muscles - it's the earth that produced the iron, and the earth which bore the food on which he has nourished himself, and the sun which created that pre-historic vegetation which is how his coal. It is not value from nothing, it is value taken from the past (coal), and also out of the future (in the form of pollution).
But, you may say, what about "intellectual property" (ignoring the issues of its correctness). It consumes no resources to produce, right? Wrong. Even a poet needs dead trees to write on, ink to write with, feathers or plastic for a pen. And, to produce value from this work, she needs the machinery of modern society - the printing presses and glue factories and fleets of trucks for distribution. Computer programmers who distribute their work online consume only the smallest bit of electricity in its distribution, but chip-making plants are highly toxic - we (for I am one of these programmers), too, are taking resources from the future to pay for today.
This can not, and will not last forever. When we have destroyed our air, our forests, and our rivers, we will see this "zero-sum game" for what it really is: a shell game.
You said: q# The mouse knows one word with modifier states. That word is "click." it can be modified with "right-", "double-" "middle-" or even "scroll-wheel". #
You have obviously never used high-end CAD or modelling software. In a typical CAD app, R-drag (that's the letter R on the keyboard) will rotate an object. S-drag (letter S) will scale it.
Even in GIMP, shift, control, and alt affect the meaning of a drag. Further, *position is important* - that is, shift-drag is different from drag-shift, which is different from ctrl-drag-(let go of ctrl)-shift. That's even more like a natural language (other than Latin)...
You continued:
q# But let's get forward thinking-- voice-controlled (and I mean, good voice controlled, not viavoice or dragon from two years ago) and gesture oriented. #
With voice control, you input text. If you wish to count inflection, you probably have 2 more bits (4 more choices) of reliably detectable input. Well, Chinese has 4 inflections, and I'm not sure a computer, especially with any kind of ambient noise, could pick up more. Now, with typing, you have shift, ctrl, alt, and "95" (which is what I call the little flying window button. I'm ignoring the "menu button", which is just a synonym for right-click). Unlike inflections, these can be *combined*, giving 16 "inflections". Further, these are on the letter level, rather than the word level. Clearly, keyboards give you more power than voice, not less.
Me: "Corel did, but they weren't contributing anything."
AC: "Corel _did_ contribute a _lot_ to the wine project"
True, I had forgotten about this. I guess what I meant was that they were not strongly committed to Free Software - they were a traditional software company, not a Free Software company.