Suppose, I give you money for something. And you say, "you can't lend it, give it away, sell it, copy it for your own use, etc, etc". So you're in fact controlling what I do with what I bought from you, even after I already gave you money for it.
This is, in fact, the case when you "buy" software. That's what pretty much every modern EULA agreement says -- that's why it's an End User License Agreement, as opposed to simply a receipt. The common usage of "buying" software, I think, is what causes people to repeatedly misunderstand this. You don't buy the software, you buy a license to use it. It's like land: when you think you're buying land, you're actually buying the use rights of that land. It still, in every practical sense, belongs to the government, and they can and will seize it if you, for example, refuse to pay your taxes on it. They can also (via zoning laws) tell you what to do with it even after you've already paid for it.
Is this acceptable or legitimate? Those are two different questions. Under our legal structure it is legitimate, in both cases. Whether it's acceptable has to be answered by each of us for her/himself alone.
I have no problem with ripping off someone I think is overcharging anyway, but then I am (according to one AC, at least) a "gun-toting neo-Nazi anarchist redneck freak." Whether you retire and live as a hermit, or rip off the bastards, or march on Washington with a pitchfork and a torch, that's up to you. The one thing absolutely not worth anyone's time is complaining about the greed of others, because that's built in with the capitalist underpinnings of our economy and nothing can be done about it.
Them's the breaks, unfortunately, and unless we revamp intellectual property laws pretty significantly them's gonna stay the breaks.
You seem to suffer a minor misunderstanding of the difference between "right" and "permission." No one has ever, in this country, had the right to make any kind of reproduction of anything produced by anyone else without the permission of the creator. Rights are granted by the government; permissions are granted by other people.
If you look at the license agreements that came with a lot of older software, most of them came with a clause that explicitly grants permission to make a backup copy. Absent that statement, you have no right to make that backup copy. That's a consequence of the current structure of our copyright laws and the fact that those laws are the ones that currently apply to software.
The equivalent situation is, suppose you buy a book. Unless the publisher explicitly grants you permission, you do not have the right to photocopy every page just in case something happens to your original copy; nor do you have the right to photocopy every page and use the copied material to prevent wear and tear on the original. The only permission that you have with the book that you don't necessarily have with software is the right to give it away. (That is a cause for concern, yes, but it's not "scary.")
If you want to obey the law and maintain ethical correctness, and also want to have backups of all your software, the only available path is to not buy software that you're not permitted to copy for backup purposes. If you'd like to see that changed, write to the companies that don't allow you to make backups and tell them that's why you won't buy their products. If you think the law is morally wrong, crack the software and make backups anyway. If you honestly believe in a "right to make a backup copy," crack the software, make the copy, tell the company, and challenge them to prosecute.
So, as long as there's any chance your precious children will be exposed to anything you haven't taught them, you need laws that'll let you crush whoever exposed them to it? And you can call others morons?
The key is to not be intimidated by these morons, and to be a blackbelt willing to break bones
Yup. That's the hallmark of the truly intelligent. Violence is the first resort when someone says something you don't like. If you really think you're ethically right there, why not just carry a gun and threaten to shoot people for swearing? You'd be in exactly the same ethical waters, and you'd run afoul of the same laws.
I would have treated it as a learning experience. Show the children what kind of people use that type of language, and make sure to paint 'em as slack-jawed droolers. Instead, you showed the kids that daddy was afraid of and felt threatened by these little, little people, and that the right way to deal with threats is by bullying them away. If it were up to me, you'd be executed for child abuse and/or criminal stupidity.
Now, if you own up to it and say that you think having ideas different from yours is enough to kill people over, fine. Just so long as you remember that's the most you can do to a free man.
For me, I'm not about to use violence or legal coercion to force people to say only things I like in only ways of which I approve. I don't particularly care whose children are being exposed to that insidious virus called speech, because if there's something I might say you want your children to reject, it's your job to inoculate them.
I agree with your sentiment entirely, as a should-case. I have no faith in it, however, as a would-case. How many dads put the Hustler under the bed and are angry or surprised to find out their kids are reading it? To filch another comic's line, the problem with this country is that half the poeple in it are dumber than average.
A responsible parent can already make the decision of whether to have porn in the house and readily available to the children, even in the case of the Internet/computer. A responsible parent can learn firewalls, allow-list filtering, and a truly secure operating system -- or at least one that requires non-trivial attempts to crack, such that those attempts can be traced.
I fully support the idea that adults who want to view these materials have a legitimate right. I pretty much agreed with the general thrust of your post. My only quibble, really, was technical.
Actually, that's a separate point. I (and you) do, indeed, have a right to be stupid -- my cousin likes to tease me about the time I actually said that "the government is interfering with the right of the people to be stupid."
As far as gun-toting, no, I don't carry. Neo nazi? Hell, no. How do you get that out of me complaining that the government is too strong? Anarchist . . . well, not really. Probably closer to Libertarian. Redneck not at all. My background is electronics, nuclear power, and computer science. (I was an honorary redneck for about a year in Raleigh, sittin' on the sidewalk and drinkin' PBR, but the occasional Labatt Blue at the hockey game is the closest I come to that now.)
Freak? By your standards, almost certainly. I keep my hair cut at about the length it was when I was in the Navy, shave daily (well, sometimes I let it slide over the weekend), wear nice clothes and conservative dress shoes to work even though I can get away with t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Guess that makes me a great big ol' freak, huh?
Ad-hominem is the last resort of those who have no valid point. Do you have any point at all?
The fact that donations can make this happen demonstrates that the people who want a Net badly enough will pay for it, allowing hundreds of times more people to use it for Free. This is going to be the new textbook example of the free-rider problem.
Random idea - state sets up a secure site where people enter their drivers license number or whatnot and get a "I can have porn" cookie put on their hard drive.
Interesting idea, *horrible* implementation.
A compliant browser wouldn't let the porn site read the state's cookie. It's third party.
A cookie's just a text file. It would be too easy to duplicate, giving millions of machines the same cookie and circumventing your intent.
Computers today are not always "dad's computer" and "mom's computer" and "the kids' computer." If this cookie is on "the family computer" there's no point in using the scheme, because the kids will still have access.
Cookies are not the right technology for this. Perhaps a state-run "Adult-Pass" system would be closer to workable, with adequate privacy safeguards. Say, just a database containing driver's license numbers and dates of birth. A compliant site could ask for both, and check that the two numbers match. (Prevents just making up a "well-formed" DL number and going with the statistical likelihood that the true owner is 18 or older, that's why not just ask for the number.)
However, that would only be my suggestion if I thought the law should be what it is, which I don't.
You want freedom? You think you want freedom? Okay, sure, everybody's in favor of all the freedoms in the constitution, in theory. But welcome of step two of the divorce of theory from practice.
Step one was when some misguided fuck thought it was okay to outlaw assault weapons. Like it or not, every american citizen should own one. ". . . a necessity to the security of a free state . . . " refers to security from oppression by the government. So first thing we do is, let's take all the weapons. (Sorry, Shakespeare.)
Step two, now that they can't shoot back, we start taking away their rights to talk about it. Just like with guns, we start with taking away the things the fewest people will miss. That gets the rest of 'em used to it. And when we come for you, there'll be nobody left.
Alright, FUCK THE CHILDREN. (Sorry, George Carlin.) Okay, sure, some parents are too stupid, ignorant, uncaring, or whatever to teach their children how to use the Internet safely. Sure, those kids are suffering because of that, in ways that I'd start taking people apart with a butterknife and a blowtorch if they tried it on my children. But dammit, DON'T TAKE AWAY MY RIGHTS BECAUSE SOMEONE ELSE IS STUPID!
</rant>
Okay, I think in principle I agree with the person to whom I'm replying on this particular issue. On the other hand, I think its passage was probably a good enough excuse for people in Michigan to march on Lansing with pitchforks and torches. Americans are just way too complacent about losing their inalienable [sic] constitutional rights.
Now, I think science is good, and I think teaching children is good, and I think this article is good for that, sure. Anyone really expecting it to be anything more than that, though, is just plain deluded. I mean, c'mon, you can't possibly write a serious article about the current thinking on black holes without using the words "accretion disk," "Cherenkov radiation," or "spacetime curvature."
In short, there's nothing there that's not available in a children's book of 25 years ago. I could probably, with a little effort, even dig up the children's book I read all of that in about 25 years ago.
This is a semantic quibble. Read "know a single fact" as "obtain a single reply to a single query" and the point stands. In hardware terms, there is a finite minimum amount of time required for a transistor to change state, corresponding to a finite minimum period of an electronically generated square wave, corresponding to a finite maximum theoretically obtainable value of clock speed.
In the meantime, there are plenty of purely practical concerns to be dealt with long before we reach Planck time. How fast can a bus get before its capacitive reactance goes to zero? What about the propagation delay of a straight conductor? We're already having trouble finding ways to dissipate heat from the processors we have, and haven't even discussed whether there's a theoretical limit to that rate.
Perhaps a more important question than the Planck-time limit is the radiant-heat-transfer limit. How densely can we pack devices on a chip before we become unable to provide cooling to all of them? For a three-dimensional chip, as already posited by a previous poster, it becomes even more important.
Still, Planck time is a valid concern, similar to the light-speed barrier in discussions of space travel. Just as there is a minimum duration for a trip to Alpha Centauri based on the assumption that the speed of light is the maximum speed of the ship, there is a minimum time for execution of an instruction based on the assumption that Planck-time is the minimum duration of a clock cycle. (Actually, for a full cycle, probably two times that. One for high, one for low.
Quantum computers? What, where the location in memory cannot be said to even have a particular value until it is examined?
$cat --help
Usage: cat [--flag[,--flag...]]
IMPORTANT: 'cat --schroedingers ' is very much in a beta stage. If 'cat' dies, will become irreversibly fragmented. Since 'cat' returns no value, the only way to determine if 'cat' died is to attempt to open the file.
I think we can do without quantum computers for a while.
Slashdot Mirror
This is, in fact, the case when you "buy" software. That's what pretty much every modern EULA agreement says -- that's why it's an End User License Agreement, as opposed to simply a receipt. The common usage of "buying" software, I think, is what causes people to repeatedly misunderstand this. You don't buy the software, you buy a license to use it. It's like land: when you think you're buying land, you're actually buying the use rights of that land. It still, in every practical sense, belongs to the government, and they can and will seize it if you, for example, refuse to pay your taxes on it. They can also (via zoning laws) tell you what to do with it even after you've already paid for it.
Is this acceptable or legitimate? Those are two different questions. Under our legal structure it is legitimate, in both cases. Whether it's acceptable has to be answered by each of us for her/himself alone.
I have no problem with ripping off someone I think is overcharging anyway, but then I am (according to one AC, at least) a "gun-toting neo-Nazi anarchist redneck freak." Whether you retire and live as a hermit, or rip off the bastards, or march on Washington with a pitchfork and a torch, that's up to you. The one thing absolutely not worth anyone's time is complaining about the greed of others, because that's built in with the capitalist underpinnings of our economy and nothing can be done about it.
Them's the breaks, unfortunately, and unless we revamp intellectual property laws pretty significantly them's gonna stay the breaks.
Since the predicate absolutely cannot be compelled in a society like our own, your statement evaluates to, "a society like our own cannot function."
I'm not disagreeing with anything you say. I'm just pointing that out because I think it's an important point for everyone to recognize.
You seem to suffer a minor misunderstanding of the difference between "right" and "permission." No one has ever, in this country, had the right to make any kind of reproduction of anything produced by anyone else without the permission of the creator. Rights are granted by the government; permissions are granted by other people.
If you look at the license agreements that came with a lot of older software, most of them came with a clause that explicitly grants permission to make a backup copy. Absent that statement, you have no right to make that backup copy. That's a consequence of the current structure of our copyright laws and the fact that those laws are the ones that currently apply to software.
The equivalent situation is, suppose you buy a book. Unless the publisher explicitly grants you permission, you do not have the right to photocopy every page just in case something happens to your original copy; nor do you have the right to photocopy every page and use the copied material to prevent wear and tear on the original. The only permission that you have with the book that you don't necessarily have with software is the right to give it away. (That is a cause for concern, yes, but it's not "scary.")
If you want to obey the law and maintain ethical correctness, and also want to have backups of all your software, the only available path is to not buy software that you're not permitted to copy for backup purposes. If you'd like to see that changed, write to the companies that don't allow you to make backups and tell them that's why you won't buy their products. If you think the law is morally wrong, crack the software and make backups anyway. If you honestly believe in a "right to make a backup copy," crack the software, make the copy, tell the company, and challenge them to prosecute.
So, as long as there's any chance your precious children will be exposed to anything you haven't taught them, you need laws that'll let you crush whoever exposed them to it? And you can call others morons?
Yup. That's the hallmark of the truly intelligent. Violence is the first resort when someone says something you don't like. If you really think you're ethically right there, why not just carry a gun and threaten to shoot people for swearing? You'd be in exactly the same ethical waters, and you'd run afoul of the same laws.
I would have treated it as a learning experience. Show the children what kind of people use that type of language, and make sure to paint 'em as slack-jawed droolers. Instead, you showed the kids that daddy was afraid of and felt threatened by these little, little people, and that the right way to deal with threats is by bullying them away. If it were up to me, you'd be executed for child abuse and/or criminal stupidity.
Now, if you own up to it and say that you think having ideas different from yours is enough to kill people over, fine. Just so long as you remember that's the most you can do to a free man.
For me, I'm not about to use violence or legal coercion to force people to say only things I like in only ways of which I approve. I don't particularly care whose children are being exposed to that insidious virus called speech, because if there's something I might say you want your children to reject, it's your job to inoculate them.
I agree with your sentiment entirely, as a should-case. I have no faith in it, however, as a would-case. How many dads put the Hustler under the bed and are angry or surprised to find out their kids are reading it? To filch another comic's line, the problem with this country is that half the poeple in it are dumber than average.
A responsible parent can already make the decision of whether to have porn in the house and readily available to the children, even in the case of the Internet/computer. A responsible parent can learn firewalls, allow-list filtering, and a truly secure operating system -- or at least one that requires non-trivial attempts to crack, such that those attempts can be traced.
I fully support the idea that adults who want to view these materials have a legitimate right. I pretty much agreed with the general thrust of your post. My only quibble, really, was technical.
Actually, that's a separate point. I (and you) do, indeed, have a right to be stupid -- my cousin likes to tease me about the time I actually said that "the government is interfering with the right of the people to be stupid."
As far as gun-toting, no, I don't carry. Neo nazi? Hell, no. How do you get that out of me complaining that the government is too strong? Anarchist . . . well, not really. Probably closer to Libertarian. Redneck not at all. My background is electronics, nuclear power, and computer science. (I was an honorary redneck for about a year in Raleigh, sittin' on the sidewalk and drinkin' PBR, but the occasional Labatt Blue at the hockey game is the closest I come to that now.)
Freak? By your standards, almost certainly. I keep my hair cut at about the length it was when I was in the Navy, shave daily (well, sometimes I let it slide over the weekend), wear nice clothes and conservative dress shoes to work even though I can get away with t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Guess that makes me a great big ol' freak, huh?
Ad-hominem is the last resort of those who have no valid point. Do you have any point at all?
TANSTAAFL
The fact that donations can make this happen demonstrates that the people who want a Net badly enough will pay for it, allowing hundreds of times more people to use it for Free. This is going to be the new textbook example of the free-rider problem.
Interesting idea, *horrible* implementation.
A compliant browser wouldn't let the porn site read the state's cookie. It's third party.
A cookie's just a text file. It would be too easy to duplicate, giving millions of machines the same cookie and circumventing your intent.
Computers today are not always "dad's computer" and "mom's computer" and "the kids' computer." If this cookie is on "the family computer" there's no point in using the scheme, because the kids will still have access.
Cookies are not the right technology for this. Perhaps a state-run "Adult-Pass" system would be closer to workable, with adequate privacy safeguards. Say, just a database containing driver's license numbers and dates of birth. A compliant site could ask for both, and check that the two numbers match. (Prevents just making up a "well-formed" DL number and going with the statistical likelihood that the true owner is 18 or older, that's why not just ask for the number.)
However, that would only be my suggestion if I thought the law should be what it is, which I don't.
You want freedom? You think you want freedom? Okay, sure, everybody's in favor of all the freedoms in the constitution, in theory. But welcome of step two of the divorce of theory from practice.
Step one was when some misguided fuck thought it was okay to outlaw assault weapons. Like it or not, every american citizen should own one. ". . . a necessity to the security of a free state . . . " refers to security from oppression by the government. So first thing we do is, let's take all the weapons. (Sorry, Shakespeare.)
Step two, now that they can't shoot back, we start taking away their rights to talk about it. Just like with guns, we start with taking away the things the fewest people will miss. That gets the rest of 'em used to it. And when we come for you, there'll be nobody left.
Alright, FUCK THE CHILDREN. (Sorry, George Carlin.) Okay, sure, some parents are too stupid, ignorant, uncaring, or whatever to teach their children how to use the Internet safely. Sure, those kids are suffering because of that, in ways that I'd start taking people apart with a butterknife and a blowtorch if they tried it on my children. But dammit, DON'T TAKE AWAY MY RIGHTS BECAUSE SOMEONE ELSE IS STUPID!
</rant>Okay, I think in principle I agree with the person to whom I'm replying on this particular issue. On the other hand, I think its passage was probably a good enough excuse for people in Michigan to march on Lansing with pitchforks and torches. Americans are just way too complacent about losing their inalienable [sic] constitutional rights.
Now, I think science is good, and I think teaching children is good, and I think this article is good for that, sure. Anyone really expecting it to be anything more than that, though, is just plain deluded. I mean, c'mon, you can't possibly write a serious article about the current thinking on black holes without using the words "accretion disk," "Cherenkov radiation," or "spacetime curvature."
In short, there's nothing there that's not available in a children's book of 25 years ago. I could probably, with a little effort, even dig up the children's book I read all of that in about 25 years ago.
This is a semantic quibble. Read "know a single fact" as "obtain a single reply to a single query" and the point stands. In hardware terms, there is a finite minimum amount of time required for a transistor to change state, corresponding to a finite minimum period of an electronically generated square wave, corresponding to a finite maximum theoretically obtainable value of clock speed.
In the meantime, there are plenty of purely practical concerns to be dealt with long before we reach Planck time. How fast can a bus get before its capacitive reactance goes to zero? What about the propagation delay of a straight conductor? We're already having trouble finding ways to dissipate heat from the processors we have, and haven't even discussed whether there's a theoretical limit to that rate.
Perhaps a more important question than the Planck-time limit is the radiant-heat-transfer limit. How densely can we pack devices on a chip before we become unable to provide cooling to all of them? For a three-dimensional chip, as already posited by a previous poster, it becomes even more important.
Still, Planck time is a valid concern, similar to the light-speed barrier in discussions of space travel. Just as there is a minimum duration for a trip to Alpha Centauri based on the assumption that the speed of light is the maximum speed of the ship, there is a minimum time for execution of an instruction based on the assumption that Planck-time is the minimum duration of a clock cycle. (Actually, for a full cycle, probably two times that. One for high, one for low.
Quantum computers? What, where the location in memory cannot be said to even have a particular value until it is examined? $cat --help Usage: cat [--flag[,--flag ...]]
IMPORTANT: 'cat --schroedingers ' is very much in a beta stage. If 'cat' dies, will become irreversibly fragmented. Since 'cat' returns no value, the only way to determine if 'cat' died is to attempt to open the file.
I think we can do without quantum computers for a while.