It seems to me that most laws are a tradeoff of our flerbage. For example, a law against murder takes away your right to kill, but also gives you the right not to be killed by others.
However, if IP laws really do exist for the reasons you describe (so that big business can give you the shaft), then you would get a right to start a business and attempt to shaft as many others as you want.
However, if you view it in a more friendly light, it would appear that the goal of IP laws isn't to shaft you, but rather to protect people who produce ideas instead of actual material things. So in exchange for losing your right to get all information for free, you gain the right to earn a living making and selling your ideas.
I think the main problem with your attack on IP is that you forget the advantages. Without the protection of the law, it would be impossible to many people who create ideas (such as programmers) to earn a living doing so. Even though the programmers right to be able to make a living from his/her trade isn't listed in the definition of flerbage, I still feel that it is important enough to defend.
While ESR is busy making new words such as 'flerbage', I suggest that we make a new word to replace pirate, so RMS will have to stop making pirate jokes. I'd like to nominate 'warez pup' to be that new word.
> Finally on this topic - most diseases/parasites are easily avoided by simple hygiene - boil your water, don't have unprotected sex...
While many of us geeks may lack basic hygiene, I don't think any of us are in too much danger of having sex.
It isn't fair to directly compare search engines to the yellow pages.
When you use the yellow pages you expect to find ads, because you're looking for a business. However, when you use a search engine you are often looking for information, and the objection is to the search engines taking advirtisments and then reporting them as containing whatever information you're looking for.
Slashdot Mirror
What? I think lots of developers want to make a porno os.
Bert is Evil
I would prefer a /bin/laden
chmod +x
shirt better.
It seems to me that most laws are a tradeoff of our flerbage. For example, a law against murder takes away your right to kill, but also gives you the right not to be killed by others.
However, if IP laws really do exist for the reasons you describe (so that big business can give you the shaft), then you would get a right to start a business and attempt to shaft as many others as you want.
However, if you view it in a more friendly light, it would appear that the goal of IP laws isn't to shaft you, but rather to protect people who produce ideas instead of actual material things. So in exchange for losing your right to get all information for free, you gain the right to earn a living making and selling your ideas.
I think the main problem with your attack on IP is that you forget the advantages. Without the protection of the law, it would be impossible to many people who create ideas (such as programmers) to earn a living doing so. Even though the programmers right to be able to make a living from his/her trade isn't listed in the definition of flerbage, I still feel that it is important enough to defend.
While ESR is busy making new words such as 'flerbage', I suggest that we make a new word to replace pirate, so RMS will have to stop making pirate jokes. I'd like to nominate 'warez pup' to be that new word.
> Finally on this topic - most diseases/parasites are easily avoided by simple hygiene - boil your water, don't have unprotected sex... While many of us geeks may lack basic hygiene, I don't think any of us are in too much danger of having sex.
You were worried about only having 1.5gb of ram? With all that space you should be able to make a decent sized swap partition instead.
Alas, if only you had a mini spycam, you might be able to watch where it came from...
It isn't fair to directly compare search engines to the yellow pages.
When you use the yellow pages you expect to find ads, because you're looking for a business. However, when you use a search engine you are often looking for information, and the objection is to the search engines taking advirtisments and then reporting them as containing whatever information you're looking for.