So photocopying a book isn't theft, because the "real" property isn't actually stolen?
Hmm... Lets see.
While you say "government" defined ideas as property, I believe is it more correct that "copyright" is merely the patent on ideas as reproduced. The theory of property and rights already existed, governments were formed to provide a framework to defend those rights.
My labor, the source of all property and ownership, is spent on producing "ideas" exactly the same as my labor is spent producing "carvings", or "instructions", or "baskets", or "paintings".
Since I own what I produce, I can transfer it as I see fit. Patent/Copyright is the legal protection of my property, that it will retain those properties and conditions under which I agreed to transfer posession of that property for a limitted time so that I benefit from it.
You can agree or disagree with my opinions, but you cannot deny that those were the intentions of the people who formed the government, and wrote the constitution that defines patent and copyright, since that's what they said they were trying to do.
The abuse of copyright, as has been mentioned as effectively kept Disney Corp a perpetual sole source license on that mouse, is what is causing all these problems. Physical patent and "copyright" have diverged, creating a false distinction between the two.
The "Pirates of Penzance" that Gilbert and Sullivan were complaining about in their opera were software pirates, who were copying their sheet music and reselling it. It was theft then, it's theft now.
Considering the software cracks that make software more usable, you have hit upon one reason that I prefer open source software to closed source.
Taking someones property against their will is theft, I don't care if it's taxes, or software piracy, or mugging, or even real on-the-ocean-using-ships-and-guns piracy.
Where does the money come from to PAY those programmers? From software sales. Reductions in those sales, because of theft of simply no one buying, means those programmers don't get paid.
It's amazing the otherwise intellegent people who think "money" grows on trees, or that they're obligated to receive a sallary. Wake up! Command economies don't work!
I said "investigation", not "punishment". Thousands of private investigators would love to know how they make their livings if I'm wrong.
Even prosecution is not a monopoly held by government, you can bring suit against anyone for anything. Examining trial records even show murder trials in which the plaintiff is't any government at all, but the family and friends of the deceased.
You can tell the BSA to go away, exactly the same way you can tell the cops to go away: unless they have a warrant. And the BSA gets a warrant the same way the cops do, on oath of affirmation of a crime being comitted, specifying the places to be searched and the property to be seized.
Do a little investigation yourself, look up "Special Police Power." You will discover that the one single "power" that the cops have that you as a private citizen does not, is the "power" to arrest someone for a misdemeanor. Yep, seriously.
The reason that it seems that police have all those neat powers like shooting people, marching into places and wrecking things, and getting away with it, is because they are not prosecuted.
A police officer only has to demonstrate, like the Rodney King 5 successfully did, that they were "following established procedures", and they are personally off the hook. You and I have no such procedural immunity. Remember that the district attorneys and the police work for the same branch of government, and get paid by the same people in the same way. One hand washes the other, and it takes fear of not getting re-elected before the hacks put pressure on anyone to actually "do something".
Perfectly working copies of Win95 existed many months before Win95 was officially released. The most intellegent move MS ever made, enlisting thousands of independent voluntary beta testers. The testers (I worked in such a company at the time) were sent updated CD's to "try, and file bug reports against." We just had to promise to destroy the disk upon official release.
So, someone alters the banner that says "Beta Build 451", makes lots of copies, and says in triumph "Look At Me! I Have Win95 Early!"
Lots of thieves get caught because their egos get too big, they get sloppy thinking they can't be caught.
Why isn't this investigation being run by the software producers who are being ripped off? As if the Fed.Gov has some kind of monopoly on investigation?
Oh well, that's my only gripe in this one. I don't like many "big software companies" business practices, but that doesn't mean I'm going to try to make money by stealing their stuff.
The GPL'd, BSD'd and other widely available software is easier to get and better anyway.
Who would want to pirate WinXP anyway?
I hope they release the patch to correct the WinXP licensing code, however, so that legitimate users can upgrade their machines without falling into the "You're using a different machine, I won't run" bug.
Don't wait for some "installer" that other people say is easy, just install the system. If you've used any kind of *nix, you won't be weirded out by the install of Debian. At worst, you might choose to go with the defaults until you know more about your hardware.
You will be surprised how well those "defaults" work, I believe.
Ok, that's it, rather take years to wibble through figuring out how to put Debian into a loopback device on a windows machine, I'll just install http://www.DragonLinux.org/ and install apt.
What a wonderful thought! Gee, I'm glad I've got a nailed up ISDN line...
Exactly. And for lots of other reasons that I wish Microsoft could let themselevs become aware of.
From your tone, it seems you thought I was asking "why would anyone still be using 95", when what I was trying to point out was how Microsoft cannot seem to recognize all the good reasons people are still using it.
Win95 was the last version of Windows I could make work the way I wanted it to.
It's also the last version I will ever have bought.
I don't blame MS for moving it into the dustbin of history, but I believe they should be asking themselves what it is about their later products that people would still be using Win95.
If Microsoft, as a corporation, were capable of asking themselves such questions, they wouldn't be Microsoft.
Newer! Slower! Bigger! Less Modular! More Microsoft!
Bob-
You can't beat a government mandated monopoly
on
Why ADCo?
·
· Score: 1
Local telco's and cables are, almost everywhere, mandated (and regulated) as local monopoly providers. No one is allowed to compete.
Those few places I've heard of with no cable monopoly have lower cable access prices, and better service. Funny thing, that.
Where, if anywhere, is the local telephone service unregulated?
You ask about hardware. Personally, if I had to buy new, I'd do the oldest trick in PC fabrication: parts. Get a no-name mini-tower case, cheap video, a motherboard with and an ethernet card on board (intel, 3com, whatever), AMD Athalon 1GHz, an IDE CD to initially boot on, 256MB of ram and a 4-gig hard drive.
No floppy, no frills, no useless mouse/keyboard/monitor packages to store in a closet.
The only real requirement is that they must not require a keyboard be connected on a reboot. I admit my own server has a dusty keyboard on top of it just in case it reboots, which it hasn't done since I upgraded the kernel (check netcraft) 450 days ago.
You can get them cheap, nothing is cutting edge. The RedHat should/will detect and use the ethernet and video "cards" without a problem. No games, no Xwindows, no need for massive disk drives. I expect a 1-gig drive would do the job, but with the price of disks you might not *find* a 1-gig disk any more.
I fully expect you could build these for less than $350 a copy. Maybe you can get a bulk order discount from your local parts house, too.
If you want to experiment, try a 2-CPU motherboard in one box to play with, and see just how much speed you can get out of it. Then just add it to your cluster. You have very little invested in "proprietary hardware" if you do decide to upgrade/replace anything in the future, too.
I love clusters, especially because you can use any old PC that can run Linux. Of course, the administrative overhead of adding a node might drain more than a K5-133MHz system would add to your composit throughput, but it means hardware takes a looooong time to become obsolete. Good thing in an educational environment.
Along with all the other calls for "taking control of your audio input with headphones" and such, I must suggest one of the most effective things I ever tried: Stand up.
Most if not all cubicle desks are latched into the vertical. Put them at 44 inches, or whatever is comfortable for you, and get a bar-stool style chair. Adjust the so you can comfortably work standing up, and sitting down, or with your butt half on the chair, whatever is most comfortable at that moment.
The human spine evolved for movement, walking, not sitting for long periods of time. This setup allows you to adjust your position constantly, exercising your lower back, legs, etc.
Of course, being in a Japanese company means that I don't get to have a cubicle to work with for the forseeable future myself, and I can really feel the difference.
So try the most ergonomic position of all. Stand up for yourself!
I think the misguided and idiotic Federal ITAR laws that banned the export of cryptography as "arms" is a perfectly good working model.
Crypto allows you to be secure in your documents and information. Guns allow you to be secure in your person and effects. Both also can be misused for criminal action by criminals, just like anything and everything else ever invented or imagined.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
IPv6 sucks. It's an awful, complex and burdensom answer to a simple problem, just like any government project.
IPSEC is being developed indepent of government, if you like it then use it. Advocate it, but do not force its use.
IPSec will "improve" network security in some ways, but all communications being in binary would be even better! Imagine how hard it would be if no one could read your mail, because it's saved in a code, maybe the ASCII code! Or EBSIDIC even!
Oh, that's right, everything is already encoded in binary, it's just easy to decrypt. When crackers have access to a trusted machine on one end of an IPSec tunnel, the machines on the other end of the tunnel are then open to attack. IPSec secures lines, not hosts, and it not any kind of answer alone. Just like binary.
It's already illegal, and has been for a thousands of years, to enter someones home without permission, or their car, or their property. Cracking a computer is no different, it is just tresspassing.
It is already illegal, and has been for thousands of years, to destroy or deface someones property. Computer data is no different, it is just property.
It is already illegal, and has been for thousands of years, to defraud people with false promises, or pretend to be someone, or to make up things about people to hurt them and their reputations. To do such things with a computer is no different, it is just fraud.
Get the idea? Hundreds of millions of different laws do not protect anyone just because they threaten action. Having the state intrude into private matters just because they're on a computer is no more welcome than having the state put a microphone on the dinner table because someone might mention "bomb".
In the same way, once the police have a warrant, on probable cause and attested to by oath or affirmation, specifying the particular place to be searched and the information to be gathered, I don't care if it's a computer, a cardboard box or a fiber-optic cable.
The best thing Congress could do is first to repeal all those exceptions that ensure they are not subject to the laws they pass for everyone else.
Then enforce the bill of rights. All of them.
One of the funniest events in Congress occurred back in the early 1990's, when they were debating another of those "anti terrorist" bills. One congressman submitted an amendment to the bill which was simply the text of the 4th amendment to the constitution.
The amendment was loudly and vigorously defeated as it "would gut the teeth out of this important legislation!"
There is a very important moral to that story if you look for it.
Debian's greatest strength is that it's easily kept up to date, with new and debuged packages, etc. I prefer it for personal use and on servers that I need to keep up to date for security fixes.
But since what you're running is computational efforts, on a static cluster, using consistant tools, you could use anything. The kernel is still just the kernel, what makes it RedHat or Debian is the rest of the packages that you're not using anyway.
And most of all, you already have experience with RedHat.
Ah! Thank you, finally I understand what is meant by references to a "karma whore". Live and learn!
I've been pleased to know several home-schooled people, and even did some algebra tutoring for them. I have never seen more reasonable, socially adept, and fast learning people in my life.
Those that bash homeschooling cannot use anything but ad hominim and strawman arguments, because if they actually looked at the subject they would have to abandon their prejudice.
@Home's real product is/was its caching system, making it possible for people to actually get the vast speeds that so-called broadband promises but cannot deliver alone.
As I've said before, the fastest pipe does no good if it's only getting water from a trickling spring.
Their caching techniques will remain, @Home has made its contribution to the infrastructure knowledge base of this I-net thing, and we all move on.
If there is a market, someone will step in to fill it. If it is cheaper for Comcast, ATT, Cox Cablevision and Big Bob's Bait, Tackle & Routing to buy some level of service from an "@Home" style of super ISP, then such a thing will happen again.
@Home's failure doesn't get me down. I worked with many of those same people at different times, the people and their skills remain alive and well and ready to move on to the next project.
Reading through his speach, I must agree with his most salient point: Over use of copyright, and copyright that never ends, is a real enemy.
What happens if copyright, just like patent, is returned to its constitutional "limited time"? Say 7 years.
What were you using, reading, buying in 1994 that the company/writer is still making money off of today? And I mean real money, not penny-ante "residules" for M*A*S*H re-runs.
I assert that it's *squat*. Except for massive self-serving multinational corps like Disney who thrive on no one ever, EVER using an idea that they bought with out their permission, the actual individuals who do the work and write the stories and invent this wonderful shared culture have already made their money and moved on to new projects in that "limited time" that patent and copyright were designed to protect.
As if I'm going to use Win3.1 today just because it wouldn't be a crime to copy it? Get real.
Slashdot Mirror
So photocopying a book isn't theft, because the "real" property isn't actually stolen?
Hmm... Lets see.
While you say "government" defined ideas as property, I believe is it more correct that "copyright" is merely the patent on ideas as reproduced. The theory of property and rights already existed, governments were formed to provide a framework to defend those rights.
My labor, the source of all property and ownership, is spent on producing "ideas" exactly the same as my labor is spent producing "carvings", or "instructions", or "baskets", or "paintings".
Since I own what I produce, I can transfer it as I see fit. Patent/Copyright is the legal protection of my property, that it will retain those properties and conditions under which I agreed to transfer posession of that property for a limitted time so that I benefit from it.
You can agree or disagree with my opinions, but you cannot deny that those were the intentions of the people who formed the government, and wrote the constitution that defines patent and copyright, since that's what they said they were trying to do.
The abuse of copyright, as has been mentioned as effectively kept Disney Corp a perpetual sole source license on that mouse, is what is causing all these problems. Physical patent and "copyright" have diverged, creating a false distinction between the two.
The "Pirates of Penzance" that Gilbert and Sullivan were complaining about in their opera were software pirates, who were copying their sheet music and reselling it. It was theft then, it's theft now.
Considering the software cracks that make software more usable, you have hit upon one reason that I prefer open source software to closed source.
Bob-
Go do your homework.
Taking someones property against their will is theft, I don't care if it's taxes, or software piracy, or mugging, or even real on-the-ocean-using-ships-and-guns piracy.
Where does the money come from to PAY those programmers? From software sales. Reductions in those sales, because of theft of simply no one buying, means those programmers don't get paid.
It's amazing the otherwise intellegent people who think "money" grows on trees, or that they're obligated to receive a sallary. Wake up! Command economies don't work!
Bob-
I said "investigation", not "punishment". Thousands of private investigators would love to know how they make their livings if I'm wrong.
Even prosecution is not a monopoly held by government, you can bring suit against anyone for anything. Examining trial records even show murder trials in which the plaintiff is't any government at all, but the family and friends of the deceased.
You can tell the BSA to go away, exactly the same way you can tell the cops to go away: unless they have a warrant. And the BSA gets a warrant the same way the cops do, on oath of affirmation of a crime being comitted, specifying the places to be searched and the property to be seized.
Do a little investigation yourself, look up "Special Police Power." You will discover that the one single "power" that the cops have that you as a private citizen does not, is the "power" to arrest someone for a misdemeanor. Yep, seriously.
The reason that it seems that police have all those neat powers like shooting people, marching into places and wrecking things, and getting away with it, is because they are not prosecuted.
A police officer only has to demonstrate, like the Rodney King 5 successfully did, that they were "following established procedures", and they are personally off the hook. You and I have no such procedural immunity. Remember that the district attorneys and the police work for the same branch of government, and get paid by the same people in the same way. One hand washes the other, and it takes fear of not getting re-elected before the hacks put pressure on anyone to actually "do something".
Bob-
Perfectly working copies of Win95 existed many months before Win95 was officially released. The most intellegent move MS ever made, enlisting thousands of independent voluntary beta testers. The testers (I worked in such a company at the time) were sent updated CD's to "try, and file bug reports against." We just had to promise to destroy the disk upon official release.
So, someone alters the banner that says "Beta Build 451", makes lots of copies, and says in triumph "Look At Me! I Have Win95 Early!"
Lots of thieves get caught because their egos get too big, they get sloppy thinking they can't be caught.
Bob-
Why isn't this investigation being run by the software producers who are being ripped off? As if the Fed.Gov has some kind of monopoly on investigation?
Oh well, that's my only gripe in this one. I don't like many "big software companies" business practices, but that doesn't mean I'm going to try to make money by stealing their stuff.
The GPL'd, BSD'd and other widely available software is easier to get and better anyway.
Who would want to pirate WinXP anyway?
I hope they release the patch to correct the WinXP licensing code, however, so that legitimate users can upgrade their machines without falling into the "You're using a different machine, I won't run" bug.
Bob-
Don't wait for some "installer" that other people say is easy, just install the system. If you've used any kind of *nix, you won't be weirded out by the install of Debian. At worst, you might choose to go with the defaults until you know more about your hardware.
You will be surprised how well those "defaults" work, I believe.
Bob-
Ok, that's it, rather take years to wibble through figuring out how to put Debian into a loopback device on a windows machine, I'll just install http://www.DragonLinux.org/ and install apt.
What a wonderful thought! Gee, I'm glad I've got a nailed up ISDN line...
Bob-
...that Sumo is broadcast on ESPN, live.
"Sport" is in the mind of the beholder. or It's all subjective anyway. Or something anyway.
The South Koreans have been "playing computer games" for money for years.
Bob-
Exactly. And for lots of other reasons that I wish Microsoft could let themselevs become aware of.
From your tone, it seems you thought I was asking "why would anyone still be using 95", when what I was trying to point out was how Microsoft cannot seem to recognize all the good reasons people are still using it.
Of such little things are flame wars made.
Bob-
Win95 was the last version of Windows I could make work the way I wanted it to.
It's also the last version I will ever have bought.
I don't blame MS for moving it into the dustbin of history, but I believe they should be asking themselves what it is about their later products that people would still be using Win95.
If Microsoft, as a corporation, were capable of asking themselves such questions, they wouldn't be Microsoft.
Newer! Slower! Bigger! Less Modular! More Microsoft!
Bob-
Local telco's and cables are, almost everywhere, mandated (and regulated) as local monopoly providers. No one is allowed to compete.
Those few places I've heard of with no cable monopoly have lower cable access prices, and better service. Funny thing, that.
Where, if anywhere, is the local telephone service unregulated?
I'm serious. Please post any examples.
Bob-
You ask about hardware. Personally, if I had to buy new, I'd do the oldest trick in PC fabrication: parts. Get a no-name mini-tower case, cheap video, a motherboard with and an ethernet card on board (intel, 3com, whatever), AMD Athalon 1GHz, an IDE CD to initially boot on, 256MB of ram and a 4-gig hard drive.
No floppy, no frills, no useless mouse/keyboard/monitor packages to store in a closet.
The only real requirement is that they must not require a keyboard be connected on a reboot. I admit my own server has a dusty keyboard on top of it just in case it reboots, which it hasn't done since I upgraded the kernel (check netcraft) 450 days ago.
You can get them cheap, nothing is cutting edge. The RedHat should/will detect and use the ethernet and video "cards" without a problem. No games, no Xwindows, no need for massive disk drives. I expect a 1-gig drive would do the job, but with the price of disks you might not *find* a 1-gig disk any more.
I fully expect you could build these for less than $350 a copy. Maybe you can get a bulk order discount from your local parts house, too.
If you want to experiment, try a 2-CPU motherboard in one box to play with, and see just how much speed you can get out of it. Then just add it to your cluster. You have very little invested in "proprietary hardware" if you do decide to upgrade/replace anything in the future, too.
I love clusters, especially because you can use any old PC that can run Linux. Of course, the administrative overhead of adding a node might drain more than a K5-133MHz system would add to your composit throughput, but it means hardware takes a looooong time to become obsolete. Good thing in an educational environment.
Bob-
Along with all the other calls for "taking control of your audio input with headphones" and such, I must suggest one of the most effective things I ever tried: Stand up.
Most if not all cubicle desks are latched into the vertical. Put them at 44 inches, or whatever is comfortable for you, and get a bar-stool style chair. Adjust the so you can comfortably work standing up, and sitting down, or with your butt half on the chair, whatever is most comfortable at that moment.
The human spine evolved for movement, walking, not sitting for long periods of time. This setup allows you to adjust your position constantly, exercising your lower back, legs, etc.
Of course, being in a Japanese company means that I don't get to have a cubicle to work with for the forseeable future myself, and I can really feel the difference.
So try the most ergonomic position of all. Stand up for yourself!
Bob-
Defund the FCC as the restrictive luddites they are, and let people enforce traditional right-of-ways the way it's been done for milenia.
"We've been using 88.5GHrz for 3 years, and they stepped on it."
Jury: Yep, case to the defendent.
"Their transmitter has been out of adjustment as much as 3% this year, trashing the other transmitters in the area."
Jury: Yep, case to the plaintiff.
Get the idea? The FCC is a socialist New Deal dinosaur that should be put out of our misery.
Bob-
I think the misguided and idiotic Federal ITAR laws that banned the export of cryptography as "arms" is a perfectly good working model.
Crypto allows you to be secure in your documents and information. Guns allow you to be secure in your person and effects. Both also can be misused for criminal action by criminals, just like anything and everything else ever invented or imagined.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Bob-
IPv6 sucks. It's an awful, complex and burdensom answer to a simple problem, just like any government project.
IPSEC is being developed indepent of government, if you like it then use it. Advocate it, but do not force its use.
IPSec will "improve" network security in some ways, but all communications being in binary would be even better! Imagine how hard it would be if no one could read your mail, because it's saved in a code, maybe the ASCII code! Or EBSIDIC even!
Oh, that's right, everything is already encoded in binary, it's just easy to decrypt. When crackers have access to a trusted machine on one end of an IPSec tunnel, the machines on the other end of the tunnel are then open to attack. IPSec secures lines, not hosts, and it not any kind of answer alone. Just like binary.
Bob-
It is already illegal, and has been for thousands of years, to destroy or deface someones property. Computer data is no different, it is just property.
It is already illegal, and has been for thousands of years, to defraud people with false promises, or pretend to be someone, or to make up things about people to hurt them and their reputations. To do such things with a computer is no different, it is just fraud.
Get the idea? Hundreds of millions of different laws do not protect anyone just because they threaten action. Having the state intrude into private matters just because they're on a computer is no more welcome than having the state put a microphone on the dinner table because someone might mention "bomb".
In the same way, once the police have a warrant, on probable cause and attested to by oath or affirmation, specifying the particular place to be searched and the information to be gathered, I don't care if it's a computer, a cardboard box or a fiber-optic cable.
The best thing Congress could do is first to repeal all those exceptions that ensure they are not subject to the laws they pass for everyone else.
Then enforce the bill of rights. All of them.
One of the funniest events in Congress occurred back in the early 1990's, when they were debating another of those "anti terrorist" bills. One congressman submitted an amendment to the bill which was simply the text of the 4th amendment to the constitution.
The amendment was loudly and vigorously defeated as it "would gut the teeth out of this important legislation!"
There is a very important moral to that story if you look for it.
Bob-
Debian's greatest strength is that it's easily kept up to date, with new and debuged packages, etc. I prefer it for personal use and on servers that I need to keep up to date for security fixes.
But since what you're running is computational efforts, on a static cluster, using consistant tools, you could use anything. The kernel is still just the kernel, what makes it RedHat or Debian is the rest of the packages that you're not using anyway.
And most of all, you already have experience with RedHat.
Bob-
I've been pleased to know several home-schooled people, and even did some algebra tutoring for them. I have never seen more reasonable, socially adept, and fast learning people in my life.
Those that bash homeschooling cannot use anything but ad hominim and strawman arguments, because if they actually looked at the subject they would have to abandon their prejudice.
Bob-
Where did you get yours?
Bob-
Good, then the product was working.
Bob-
As I've said before, the fastest pipe does no good if it's only getting water from a trickling spring.
Their caching techniques will remain, @Home has made its contribution to the infrastructure knowledge base of this I-net thing, and we all move on.
If there is a market, someone will step in to fill it. If it is cheaper for Comcast, ATT, Cox Cablevision and Big Bob's Bait, Tackle & Routing to buy some level of service from an "@Home" style of super ISP, then such a thing will happen again.
@Home's failure doesn't get me down. I worked with many of those same people at different times, the people and their skills remain alive and well and ready to move on to the next project.
How's Juniper stock doing, anyway?
Use it up, wear it out, make do or do without.
Bob-
But wait, there's more! This posting is "off topic", so the ignorant and falicious knee-jerk rant will be the only one anyone sees.
Moderation is a double edged sword.
Bob-
What happens if copyright, just like patent, is returned to its constitutional "limited time"? Say 7 years.
What were you using, reading, buying in 1994 that the company/writer is still making money off of today? And I mean real money, not penny-ante "residules" for M*A*S*H re-runs.
I assert that it's *squat*. Except for massive self-serving multinational corps like Disney who thrive on no one ever, EVER using an idea that they bought with out their permission, the actual individuals who do the work and write the stories and invent this wonderful shared culture have already made their money and moved on to new projects in that "limited time" that patent and copyright were designed to protect.
As if I'm going to use Win3.1 today just because it wouldn't be a crime to copy it? Get real.
Bob-