So suppose an individual with heavy hacking skills learned that high-level government officials were misleading the public with regards to a military undertaking.
Further suppose that individual hacks the proof out, and gives it to a reporter with the Washington Post.
Finally, suppose the reporter does the write-up and the editor lets it see print.
Now the hacker is a terrorist.
Now the reporter who refuses to disclose sources is harboring a terrorist.
There's a pretty simple rosponse to this. The researchers should hire a lawyer to draft a letter resembling the following:
"Hi, I'm counsel for researchers X and Y. We're offering you the sum of $1 American to license us all patents in this area. If you refuse our offer, you can expect to see the name of your company (and hence its stock price) dragged through the mud on broadcast television, at regular intervals, until you can't get venture capitol by panhandling at a busy intersection.
Don't think that any publicity is good publicity. Think "RAMBUS".
Then we'll take you to court and watch all your intellectual property become public domain.
Have a nice day."
slashdot a government server looking for articles about porn.
"Senator, we need more bandwidth."
"What? Why?"
"Too many people are looking to us for porn."
1) They don't want Americans looking at the IPO information.
2)They fired all their American staff, a couple months back...
I'm sure there's a connection here, but I'm just too thick to see it.
On the other hand, I had no problem paying for the boxed distro as long as I felt the money was actually going to the programmers and organization supporting them. I had even pondered buying a few shares for the same reason. Now, I'm more ambivalent. I -- get this: -- feel somewhat singled out because of my nationality.
Maybe it's time to move along to Debian after all...
-When was the last time you extended the instruction set of your nice, multigigaHertz x86-compatible processor?
-Added another platter to your Maxtor hard drive?
-Overspun your CD drive?
What this guy is worrying about happened about the time computing stopped being about vacuum tubes and patching cables.
C'mon, folks. Computers are (intended to be) tools. A tool that you can tweak for better performance was poorly designed to begin with (a point nicely expounded upon by Jef Raskin in The Humane Interface).
When was the last time you wanted to reshape the head on a hammer? Calibrate the springiness of the rubber in the soles of your shoes?
That's what the article is really talking about: the day when computers are so ubiquitous and mature that they become invisible.
Aside: also, it strikes me as unlikely that we'll ever see the new-computer-every-year schenario really take off. The.NET/MONO strategy seems poised to make that obsolete. Instead, you'll just be tapping into remote services via a local terminal. Once digital paper reaches the limits of naked-eye resolution, buying more will be pointless.
Furthermore, this also partially resolves the problem of obsolete hardware, as lower-priority tasks can be assigned to the decade old PentiumV 10GHz boxes sitting in a (very air-conditioned) warehouse in (now-balmy) Montana.
Umm, if I wanted that information, I'd ask the manufacturers of the DVD drives, SCSI cards, and other hardware I was interested in.
If I wanted to make sure that I wasn't just getting marketing hype, I'd by a couple of (10^n) shares of stock in the company, and have them send me a quarterly report.
Oh, wait... all these companies are already diversified into one another. This information is already theirs.
This is just paranoid fantasy. Score 4, insightful indeed.
"Yes, but we don't need much more than cursory testing of most genetically engineered products for the simple reason that you don't eat genes."
Unfortuneately, there's increasing evidence that bacteria *do* incorporate random genes from whatever they encounter in their environments. And hey! guess what's in your guts!
Do you *really* want modified bacteria inside you without testing? How about if those bacteria aren't part of the normal, natural ecosystem that is your intestines? How about if the genes in question are for drug resistance?
It takes a community browser and builds services on that infrastructure, almost as though the company had realized that software is not a product, not an end in itself, but rather a tool, in this case a means of distribution.
Isn't that how they're supposed to make money with open software?
Not at all, but not because of any licensing protection. To quote:
"The browser is a crown jewel. However, six months from now, you won't consider Netscape to be a browser company"
That's nowhere near a statement that they're dropping the browser. If anything, that's close to saying "the browser is *done*! We're going to start developing to it as a platform now!"
And hey, here's a surprise: that fits with the Mozilla roadmap! We should have been expecting this, and many people were.
From further on:
"Netscape is by no means a rejection of its software legacy, as components of its browser technology will continue to power new features of Netscape's media services aimed at office workers, small businesses and sophisticated Web users."
"Further, I urge you to not be overly cynical about our justice system. Yes, there are flaws which subject our legal system to manipulation and abuse and, yes, things move slowly and sometimes backward for periods, but I truly believe that our system is pretty good and eventually produces the correct results. "
I can't help feeling a little cynical about a process in which my participation is abridged due to my employment and (assumed) thought process.
I write code for a living. I think clearly and rationally. Apparently, these suffice for any lawyer in the US to exclude me from a jury.
I really can't say I trust a system that consistently leaves life and death decisions in the hands of those who are chosen for an inability to think for themselves. Of such pebbles are avalanches built. And lynch mobs.
Hm. This bodes ill for the DeCSS free-speech argument. The equivalent argument would be that compiling source renders the source itself functional, and thus free speech protections do not apply. It's only one step away from stripping copyright because of an author's intent. The idea that a text's use can change the nature of a text is deeply disturbing. What a mess.
Actually, I had the opposite thought: the results here could bolster the case for DeCSS (or vice versa).
Here, the courts say that a piece of functional content may still retain sufficient expressive value to be guarded by copyright.
In the DeCSS case, the courts ruled that because the source code was functional, that it did not have sufficient expressive value to warrant 2600 publishing it or linking to it. (And for my money, that's one of the scariest parts of the DeCSS case.)
Not that our legal system forbids contradictory rulings, but you'd like to think that if both these cases made it to the Supreme Court in rapid succession, that the lawyers in one case would point this out.
Slashdot Mirror
Further suppose that individual hacks the proof out, and gives it to a reporter with the Washington Post.
Finally, suppose the reporter does the write-up and the editor lets it see print.
Now the hacker is a terrorist.
Now the reporter who refuses to disclose sources is harboring a terrorist.
Yeah, and the Federal Government couldn't possibly make your life hell with all those drug laws, either...
For that matter, what are they going to do? Flag every message that has a string of gibberish attached to it? Geek codes, anyone? Perl script?
Isn't this a better topic for conversation at kuro5hin?
... or do we have to wait a whole *two weeks* for 2.4.10?
"Hi, I'm counsel for researchers X and Y. We're offering you the sum of $1 American to license us all patents in this area. If you refuse our offer, you can expect to see the name of your company (and hence its stock price) dragged through the mud on broadcast television, at regular intervals, until you can't get venture capitol by panhandling at a busy intersection.
Don't think that any publicity is good publicity. Think "RAMBUS".
Then we'll take you to court and watch all your intellectual property become public domain. Have a nice day."
Less flippant. More veiled. Same eneral idea.
slashdot a government server looking for articles about porn. "Senator, we need more bandwidth." "What? Why?" "Too many people are looking to us for porn."
2)They fired all their American staff, a couple months back...
I'm sure there's a connection here, but I'm just too thick to see it.
On the other hand, I had no problem paying for the boxed distro as long as I felt the money was actually going to the programmers and organization supporting them. I had even pondered buying a few shares for the same reason. Now, I'm more ambivalent. I -- get this: -- feel somewhat singled out because of my nationality.
Maybe it's time to move along to Debian after all...
-Added another platter to your Maxtor hard drive?
-Overspun your CD drive?
What this guy is worrying about happened about the time computing stopped being about vacuum tubes and patching cables.
C'mon, folks. Computers are (intended to be) tools. A tool that you can tweak for better performance was poorly designed to begin with (a point nicely expounded upon by Jef Raskin in The Humane Interface).
When was the last time you wanted to reshape the head on a hammer? Calibrate the springiness of the rubber in the soles of your shoes?
That's what the article is really talking about: the day when computers are so ubiquitous and mature that they become invisible.
Aside: also, it strikes me as unlikely that we'll ever see the new-computer-every-year schenario really take off. The .NET/MONO strategy seems poised to make that obsolete. Instead, you'll just be tapping into remote services via a local terminal. Once digital paper reaches the limits of naked-eye resolution, buying more will be pointless.
Furthermore, this also partially resolves the problem of obsolete hardware, as lower-priority tasks can be assigned to the decade old PentiumV 10GHz boxes sitting in a (very air-conditioned) warehouse in (now-balmy) Montana.
If I wanted to make sure that I wasn't just getting marketing hype, I'd by a couple of (10^n) shares of stock in the company, and have them send me a quarterly report.
Oh, wait... all these companies are already diversified into one another. This information is already theirs.
This is just paranoid fantasy. Score 4, insightful indeed.
I see no mention of how long it took him to code any of these...
Unfortuneately, there's increasing evidence that bacteria *do* incorporate random genes from whatever they encounter in their environments. And hey! guess what's in your guts!
Do you *really* want modified bacteria inside you without testing? How about if those bacteria aren't part of the normal, natural ecosystem that is your intestines? How about if the genes in question are for drug resistance?
Commander... Big Mac?
Well under those circumstances, I'd spin the Windows version off as a separate product line, and sell it to Microsoft for millions.
I wonder how long it'll be before we see a Java:x86 port.
Oh... wait...
Isn't that how they're supposed to make money with open software?
Not at all, but not because of any licensing protection. To quote:
"The browser is a crown jewel. However, six months from now, you won't consider Netscape to be a browser company"
That's nowhere near a statement that they're dropping the browser. If anything, that's close to saying "the browser is *done*! We're going to start developing to it as a platform now!"
And hey, here's a surprise: that fits with the Mozilla roadmap! We should have been expecting this, and many people were.
From further on:
"Netscape is by no means a rejection of its software legacy, as components of its browser technology will continue to power new features of Netscape's media services aimed at office workers, small businesses and sophisticated Web users."
I can't help feeling a little cynical about a process in which my participation is abridged due to my employment and (assumed) thought process.
I write code for a living. I think clearly and rationally. Apparently, these suffice for any lawyer in the US to exclude me from a jury.
I really can't say I trust a system that consistently leaves life and death decisions in the hands of those who are chosen for an inability to think for themselves. Of such pebbles are avalanches built. And lynch mobs.
Actually, I had the opposite thought: the results here could bolster the case for DeCSS (or vice versa).
Here, the courts say that a piece of functional content may still retain sufficient expressive value to be guarded by copyright.
In the DeCSS case, the courts ruled that because the source code was functional, that it did not have sufficient expressive value to warrant 2600 publishing it or linking to it. (And for my money, that's one of the scariest parts of the DeCSS case.)
Not that our legal system forbids contradictory rulings, but you'd like to think that if both these cases made it to the Supreme Court in rapid succession, that the lawyers in one case would point this out.