devices to allow people to steal satellite TV signals.
You cannot steal a radio signal. (Not even if you italicize it.)
Receiving a broadcast is even farther from stealing than making copies. You send photons into my house, bub, what I do with 'em is my concern.
If you shout at your neighbor up the street, and someone in between listens, that's not theft. If you're shouting financially valuable information, that doesn't change the lack of criminality. If you're shouting in code and the man in the middle breaks your code, still no theft. If you use light flashes instead of shouting, still no theft. And if you use radio pulses instead of visible light - still no theft.
Now, under the interstate commerce clause, the feds may have the power to prevent certain electronic devices from be sold across state lines. But let's get it absolutely straight - there was no theft, attempted theft, or potential theft here.
...you might feel differently about the importance of the importance of testing their effects (particularly the long-term effects of prolonged use!) and regulating their use.
I have no problem with the FDA, or anyone else, testing their effects. (Well,I have issues about animal testing, and there are other research ethical issues that can arise, but that's outside the scope of this discussion.) Gathering and publishing accurate data is a good thing. Nor do I have any issue with them educating the public, or regulating the production of products to ensure that something sold as "100mg of Qwertyian" really is 100mg of Qwertyian.
Regulating the use of a drug, however, means stepping into people's private lives. Keep you laws off my body, thank you very much.
There's no warning on the label!
My box of "Traditional Medicinals Breathe Easy " tea has several paragraphs of warnings on the box. So responsible manufacturers are taking appropriate steps.
Mah Huang" aka ephedra sinica, a natural herbal supplement, the active ingredient of which is ephedrine -- which is no less harmful than crank.
Uh, ephedrine is much weaker than methamphetamine. That's why people go through the trouble of making meth - often using ephedrine as a base. (Which is a large part of the reason the Drug Warriors get so bent out of shape about ephedrine.)
pseudephedrine is the manufactured ingredient, the main ingredient in Sudafed, a leading decongestant
Exactly. Taking a little Mah Huang tea or a little Sudafed to clear your sinuses is generally safe. I prefer the tea, since you're also getting soothing warm liquids and herbs usually contain secondary substances that help balance out the action; I also find the use of herbs more aesthetically appealing. YYMV.
Taking large doses of either to get "high", or taking it constantly as a weight loss drug, is stupid. But it's your body and none of the government's business.
some "natural organics" can be quite dangerous (tobacco, psilocybin mushrooms, peyote buttons...)
Psilocybin is quite safe, it's estimated that it would take several pounds of mushrooms to cause an overdose. Peyote is pretty safe, though I did read one account of a fatality from vomiting-related bleeding in an alcoholic man. (By "safety", I refer to the pharmacological actions of the drugs. Taking a psychdelic drug can result in a very intense experience, for which one should be psychologically prepared - treat all drugs, from chocolate to morphine, with respect. And don't do stupid things like drive while under the influence of any drug.)
Tattoos (and other body mods) mean different things to different people. For some it's cultural identification, for some it's ritual significance, for others it's just the latest trend.
(But I do agree that when planning a tattoo, one should take into account how it will fade and age.)
I've been using a CLEC, Cavalier Telecom, for my home phone for over a year now. Quite happy with it, just signed up for their DSL service and so far so good. The service has been good, but the best thing it simply that they're not Verizon...
Human ingenuity and technological innovation allow us to accomplish increasingly more with fewer raw materials.
In theory, perhaps to some degree. That doesn't change the fact there there is an upper limit, or that in practice we're just burning through resources faster and faster without doing much to improve our quality of life.
We're a long way from running out of resources.
In the past few years we've seen significant problems with resources including fresh water, oil, biodiversity, topsoil and arable land, and landfill space.
And there's lots of room in space.
Since there's still no practical way to get significant numbers of people there or exploit resources in space, that's about as helpful as having lots of room in Farieland.
You're perfectly free to go off and commune with nature and abandon decadent products like indoor plumbing and antibiotics.
Oh, please. Could you fall any deeper into the fallacy of the excluded middle?
That doesn't make you morally superior to those of us who appreciate how modern technology improves our lives.
I never clamied "moral superiority". And I appreciate technology that improves our lives. But I also critize technology when it's used to annoying or destructive ends, or when the cost outweighs the benefits.
I like technology as much as anyone. But technology without wisdom is like power tools and explosives in the
hands of small children.
He's victim to a common fallacy -- that there's a finite amount of stuff in the world
Um, I hate to break it to you, but that's not a fallacy.
There really is a finite amount of stuff in the world. Raw materials, land area, energy, and labor are all limited quantities.
It's unimaginable to him that if we "discard our possessions and live more simply", the people who make and sell drink-pouring robots will be going without possessions too, as will whoever depends on them for a living.
So we should all keep mindlessly consuming more and more stuff, burying the planet in our shit, working longer and harder to buy things we never really wanted in the first place, so that people who make drink-pouring robots can keep their jobs? No.
The problem is a fundamental flaw in our economic theory. We must realize that endless growth is not only not desirable, but not even possible. Endlessly growing production requires endlessly growing consumption, which means either an endlessly growing population (impossible on a finite planet) or a population whose lives become endlessly devoted to consumption.
...the same goons that make you buy a license to play music from the jukebox that you own,or over the sound system.
Nothing goonish about it. You only have to pay mechanical royalties if you're using music to attract customers. It's no different than if you had a live band playing - you're using the songwriter's work to make money, and they ought to get a cut.
If you're still writing individual letters separately by the time you sit written exams, you'll write at about half the speed of someone with good joined-up handwriting.
I stopped writing cursive and started printing in 7th or 8th grade. It's much faster and easier for me. I never had any problems with written exams. YMMV.
If one of my less technically inclined siblings bought a Lindows machine from Wal*Mart, you can be sure after a few days or weeks of using it for emailing stuff back and forth (excel, word, ppt, whatever)
Why in the world are you e-mailing spreadsheets and Word docs around between family members?
Y'see why Gandhi's position was the indisputable moral high ground? Because of how badly the British treated them.
You keep using this word, "indisputable". I do not think it means what you think it means.
One more time: if it was indisputable, there would be no dispute, no contention, no disagreement, certainly no beatings and killings. The people responsible for bashing in the heads of protestors obviously disputed the idea of Indian independance.
Perhaps from a modern perspective, it might seem "indisputable", to all but a few cranks. But the course of history often seems obvious after the fact, an illusion of perspective.
His moral high ground was "Free India from Britsh rule." Not "The Indians are great at self-rule."
Self-rule has nothing to do with it. If "Free India from Britsh rule" was indisputable, the British rulers wouldn't have been beating and killing Indian subjects. Indeed, they would never have formed the East India Company.
Where do you see yourself in the Political Spectrum?
Until we get past the idea of a "spectrum", we're stuck.
Politics is a multi dimensional space.
Plot me somewhere between the Greens and the Libertarians. I often self-indentify as a libertarian socialist. If we get into theory, I'll talk about Zenarchy :
ZEN is Meditation. ARCHY is Social Order. ZENARCHY is the Social Order which springs from Meditation.
As a doctrine, it holds Universal Enlightenment a prerequisite to abolition of the State, after which the State will inevitably vanish. Or - that failing - nobody will give a damn.
I'm in favor of personal liberty, including the repeal of laws against drug use, prostitution, or pretty much any act between consenting competent adults. I advocate economics based on the free exchange of labor rather than state-created property, ecological protection, the right to self-defense including the RKBA, smaller government, private property as a means of promoting personal freedom rather than as a core value, and the recognition of natural resources as the common property of all humans present and future.
I advocate smaller and decentralized government. But I recognize that government is a vector quantity, with direction as well as magnitude - to say you want a smaller government is no more informative than to say you want to drive at 50 mph instead of 100 mph. It's a safer journey, but which direction are you headed?
I want a smaller military and a less agressive foreign policy, dedicated to defending the U.S. rather than to imperialism and neocolonialism. Maybe even, as the Founders intended, eliminating the standing army.
I believe that we must see that everyone has basic access to basic necessities of food, shelter, and public health, that the cost of this is our ante for organizing as a civilization (as well as fundamental to our long-term self interest).
This combination seems to confuse the hell out of many people. "You sound like a liberal! Oh, but wait, you're against gun control!" (Gun control isn't a left/right issue, think of the Black Panthers and Mulford Act gun control law Reagan signed as California governor. And how is leaving the police, the agents of "The Man", the only ones with guns a liberal idea?) "You sound like a libertarian! But you say you're against capitalism?" ("Libertarian" was orginally a socialist term. Captialism requires a large, strong government to create and enforce property rights on economic resources. "Anarcho-capitalism" is inherently contradictory.)
I say that the networks have been doing a piss poor job of serving the public interest. I think the only interests they're serving are their own.
No argument there...
I say we reclaim our spectrum from them and redistribute it in a fashion that will be of much greater use (as this/. thread suggests).
While the idea may be somewhat popular with/. geeks, no way it would be supported by the Average American.
Remember that about one quarter of Americans don't even have a PC at home - but everyone, minus a few cranks:-), has at least one TV. (Just kidding about cranks, I have a few TV-free friends.)
To get broad enough support, whatever new plan we might develop has to ensure that John Q. Public can still get his daily Simpsons rerun on his 1975 vintage Zenith set.
Do you think that it is a good idea to trust the NSA not to put in back-door/spy-ware type code to enable them to snoop my personal information?
The NSA has done a lot of reputable work on building trusted systems - if I recall correctly, it was the NSA that published the Rainbow Series. I worked on an NSA-funded project to develop a trusted OS (Trusted Mach) for several years.
There seems to be several distinct groups within NSA. The infosec guys are generally ok; so are the foreign intel linguists. It's the crypto people who worry me.
I would trust an open source OS from the NSA. I would have some trepidation about a closed source one. I wouldn't use a crypto algorithm designed by them for anything interesting.
You've got to ask yourself, what would you DO with that extra 2 or 3 hours? I'm pretty sure I'd just waste it myself.
Now that's pathetic.
What could you do with two or three extra hours a day, 10-15 hours a week??? Read books. Watch films. Learn to play guitar. Study a martial art. Spend time with friends. Take a class at your local college. Write poetry. Play with the dog. Play volleyball. Volunteer for some cause you think is important.
If you can't find an interested way to spend that time, you are in serious need of a life transfusion.
You'd rather spend all that time stuck in your car? Ugh.
I find a half-hour commute to be just on the edge of bearable. I'd slit my wrists if I to drive 90 minutes each way every day just to go sit in front of a computer, especially when there's a perfectly good computer less than five meters from my bed.
I know molecular biology and I know that there is *no* way that nucleic acid will be able to remain intact in space, exposed to vacuum, temperature extremes and radiation.
Bacteria - which contain nucleic acids, obviously - can survive on the moon. Viruses are even simpler and hardier.
why is it helpful to generate bad feelings over the authors of that software saying that there is a commercial version available for anyone that doesn't want to wait a year.
The GNU project is intended to be a complete Free Software system. Turning part of it into an advertisement for proprietary software isn't compatible with that.
RMS should just fuck off and leave the rest of us to get on with the fight for programmers' and users' rights.
Uh-huh. And how many movements have you started?
RMS can be a pain in the ass, sure. That's true of most idealists. But he's had more of an effect on the politics and economics of software than just about anyone.
Slashdot Mirror
You cannot steal a radio signal. (Not even if you italicize it.)
Receiving a broadcast is even farther from stealing than making copies. You send photons into my house, bub, what I do with 'em is my concern.
If you shout at your neighbor up the street, and someone in between listens, that's not theft. If you're shouting financially valuable information, that doesn't change the lack of criminality. If you're shouting in code and the man in the middle breaks your code, still no theft. If you use light flashes instead of shouting, still no theft. And if you use radio pulses instead of visible light - still no theft.
Now, under the interstate commerce clause, the feds may have the power to prevent certain electronic devices from be sold across state lines. But let's get it absolutely straight - there was no theft, attempted theft, or potential theft here.
I have no problem with the FDA, or anyone else, testing their effects. (Well,I have issues about animal testing, and there are other research ethical issues that can arise, but that's outside the scope of this discussion.) Gathering and publishing accurate data is a good thing. Nor do I have any issue with them educating the public, or regulating the production of products to ensure that something sold as "100mg of Qwertyian" really is 100mg of Qwertyian.
Regulating the use of a drug, however, means stepping into people's private lives. Keep you laws off my body, thank you very much.
My box of "Traditional Medicinals Breathe Easy " tea has several paragraphs of warnings on the box. So responsible manufacturers are taking appropriate steps.
Uh, ephedrine is much weaker than methamphetamine. That's why people go through the trouble of making meth - often using ephedrine as a base. (Which is a large part of the reason the Drug Warriors get so bent out of shape about ephedrine.)
Exactly. Taking a little Mah Huang tea or a little Sudafed to clear your sinuses is generally safe. I prefer the tea, since you're also getting soothing warm liquids and herbs usually contain secondary substances that help balance out the action; I also find the use of herbs more aesthetically appealing. YYMV.
Taking large doses of either to get "high", or taking it constantly as a weight loss drug, is stupid. But it's your body and none of the government's business.
Psilocybin is quite safe, it's estimated that it would take several pounds of mushrooms to cause an overdose. Peyote is pretty safe, though I did read one account of a fatality from vomiting-related bleeding in an alcoholic man. (By "safety", I refer to the pharmacological actions of the drugs. Taking a psychdelic drug can result in a very intense experience, for which one should be psychologically prepared - treat all drugs, from chocolate to morphine, with respect. And don't do stupid things like drive while under the influence of any drug.)
Right. Those Maori - so insecure.
Tattoos (and other body mods) mean different things to different people. For some it's cultural identification, for some it's ritual significance, for others it's just the latest trend.
(But I do agree that when planning a tattoo, one should take into account how it will fade and age.)
I've been using a CLEC, Cavalier Telecom, for my home phone for over a year now. Quite happy with it, just signed up for their DSL service and so far so good. The service has been good, but the best thing it simply that they're not Verizon...
In theory, perhaps to some degree. That doesn't change the fact there there is an upper limit, or that in practice we're just burning through resources faster and faster without doing much to improve our quality of life.
In the past few years we've seen significant problems with resources including fresh water, oil, biodiversity, topsoil and arable land, and landfill space.
Since there's still no practical way to get significant numbers of people there or exploit resources in space, that's about as helpful as having lots of room in Farieland.
Oh, please. Could you fall any deeper into the fallacy of the excluded middle?
I never clamied "moral superiority". And I appreciate technology that improves our lives. But I also critize technology when it's used to annoying or destructive ends, or when the cost outweighs the benefits.
I like technology as much as anyone. But technology without wisdom is like power tools and explosives in the hands of small children.
Um, I hate to break it to you, but that's not a fallacy.
There really is a finite amount of stuff in the world. Raw materials, land area, energy, and labor are all limited quantities.
So we should all keep mindlessly consuming more and more stuff, burying the planet in our shit, working longer and harder to buy things we never really wanted in the first place, so that people who make drink-pouring robots can keep their jobs? No.
The problem is a fundamental flaw in our economic theory. We must realize that endless growth is not only not desirable, but not even possible. Endlessly growing production requires endlessly growing consumption, which means either an endlessly growing population (impossible on a finite planet) or a population whose lives become endlessly devoted to consumption.
Nothing goonish about it. You only have to pay mechanical royalties if you're using music to attract customers. It's no different than if you had a live band playing - you're using the songwriter's work to make money, and they ought to get a cut.
Lactose intolerance is the norm in many parts of the world.
I stopped writing cursive and started printing in 7th or 8th grade. It's much faster and easier for me. I never had any problems with written exams. YMMV.
Why in the world are you e-mailing spreadsheets and Word docs around between family members?
You keep using this word, "indisputable". I do not think it means what you think it means.
One more time: if it was indisputable, there would be no dispute, no contention, no disagreement, certainly no beatings and killings. The people responsible for bashing in the heads of protestors obviously disputed the idea of Indian independance.
Perhaps from a modern perspective, it might seem "indisputable", to all but a few cranks. But the course of history often seems obvious after the fact, an illusion of perspective.
Self-rule has nothing to do with it. If "Free India from Britsh rule" was indisputable, the British rulers wouldn't have been beating and killing Indian subjects. Indeed, they would never have formed the East India Company.
Until we get past the idea of a "spectrum", we're stuck.
Politics is a multi dimensional space.
Plot me somewhere between the Greens and the Libertarians. I often self-indentify as a libertarian socialist. If we get into theory, I'll talk about Zenarchy :
I'm in favor of personal liberty, including the repeal of laws against drug use, prostitution, or pretty much any act between consenting competent adults. I advocate economics based on the free exchange of labor rather than state-created property, ecological protection, the right to self-defense including the RKBA, smaller government, private property as a means of promoting personal freedom rather than as a core value, and the recognition of natural resources as the common property of all humans present and future.
I advocate smaller and decentralized government. But I recognize that government is a vector quantity, with direction as well as magnitude - to say you want a smaller government is no more informative than to say you want to drive at 50 mph instead of 100 mph. It's a safer journey, but which direction are you headed?
I want a smaller military and a less agressive foreign policy, dedicated to defending the U.S. rather than to imperialism and neocolonialism. Maybe even, as the Founders intended, eliminating the standing army.
I believe that we must see that everyone has basic access to basic necessities of food, shelter, and public health, that the cost of this is our ante for organizing as a civilization (as well as fundamental to our long-term self interest).
This combination seems to confuse the hell out of many people. "You sound like a liberal! Oh, but wait, you're against gun control!" (Gun control isn't a left/right issue, think of the Black Panthers and Mulford Act gun control law Reagan signed as California governor. And how is leaving the police, the agents of "The Man", the only ones with guns a liberal idea?) "You sound like a libertarian! But you say you're against capitalism?" ("Libertarian" was orginally a socialist term. Captialism requires a large, strong government to create and enforce property rights on economic resources. "Anarcho-capitalism" is inherently contradictory.)
If it was indisuptable, what was all the beating and killing of Indians about?
While the idea may be somewhat popular with /. geeks, no way it would be supported by the Average American.
Remember that about one quarter of Americans don't even have a PC at home - but everyone, minus a few cranks :-), has at least one TV. (Just kidding about cranks, I have a few TV-free friends.)
To get broad enough support, whatever new plan we might develop has to ensure that John Q. Public can still get his daily Simpsons rerun on his 1975 vintage Zenith set.
Ear plugs - the traveller's friend. Don't leave home without 'em.
The NSA has done a lot of reputable work on building trusted systems - if I recall correctly, it was the NSA that published the Rainbow Series. I worked on an NSA-funded project to develop a trusted OS (Trusted Mach) for several years.
There seems to be several distinct groups within NSA. The infosec guys are generally ok; so are the foreign intel linguists. It's the crypto people who worry me.
I would trust an open source OS from the NSA. I would have some trepidation about a closed source one. I wouldn't use a crypto algorithm designed by them for anything interesting.
Now that's pathetic.
What could you do with two or three extra hours a day, 10-15 hours a week??? Read books. Watch films. Learn to play guitar. Study a martial art. Spend time with friends. Take a class at your local college. Write poetry. Play with the dog. Play volleyball. Volunteer for some cause you think is important.
If you can't find an interested way to spend that time, you are in serious need of a life transfusion.
You'd rather spend all that time stuck in your car? Ugh.
I find a half-hour commute to be just on the edge of bearable. I'd slit my wrists if I to drive 90 minutes each way every day just to go sit in front of a computer, especially when there's a perfectly good computer less than five meters from my bed.
E-mail. It's better to put it in writing anyway.
That's not a bug, that's a feature! 90% of meetings are an absolute waste of time.
I had a full telecommute position for a few months - I'd love to find another.
I get my social interaction from my actual friends, from the people at my dojo, from the poets and musicians I see at open mic nights and the like.
OTOH, I've been in the office and not spoken to anyone the whole day.
Who do you work for, and are they hiring?
Bacteria - which contain nucleic acids, obviously - can survive on the moon. Viruses are even simpler and hardier.
The GNU project is intended to be a complete Free Software system. Turning part of it into an advertisement for proprietary software isn't compatible with that.
Uh-huh. And how many movements have you started?
RMS can be a pain in the ass, sure. That's true of most idealists. But he's had more of an effect on the politics and economics of software than just about anyone.