D'oh! I wasn't sure I remembered the correct spelling myself and did a Google search to check it, which turned up enough hits that I figured I was ok. But yours is the correct one.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I'd rather it was done gracefully (possibly by having a plain text site for those people below a certain level), but I want the new tech to be used.
So you'll be buying new computers, and OS upgrades, for everyone who's running a secondhand 486 or P90 or other box not new enough to run the OSes required by the newest browers?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Hmm, that's interesting. So if someone posts a message and says "This is kiddie porn", we shouldn't believe them?
Sexual fantasies are all about fiction. If some perverted person posts a story in alt.sex.stories entitled "How I Raped My Neighbor's Great-Grandmother", we could conclude that this person had very strange and disturbing tastes, far outside our social norms. We would not, however, take it as a factual account, without some other evidence.
That's what a lot of child porn viewing is about - a fantasy. Yes, a strange and disturbing fantasy, and I would gladly break the neck of anyone who tried to force such a fantasy onto any young kid I know. But so long as it remains in their brain, their fantasies are none of my business.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
why dont you go into detail instead of get all pissed off
Sigh.
"Ok, children, gather 'round. Old Tom's gonna tell you about some old school technology. Back before the web, we had something called USENET..."
"USENET?! Isn't that nothing but spam?"
"Well, maybe so these days, Junior. But once upon a time, it was the way to get information around. And in fact, one of its main principles is coming back around these days. See, USENET is basically a peer-to-peer network.
"If I wanted to post to, say, alt.sex.goats, why, I write up my post and send it off to my local NNTP server, asking the server `Please post this to alt.sex.goats.' Now, the server has no way of knowing whether my post has anything to do with goat sex or not. That's why USENET fell to the spammers...damn Cantor and Siegal...green cards...
"Sorry. Mind starts to wander when you're actually old enough to remember USENET. Anyway, the NNTP server holds on to the message and makes it available for anyone else who uses that server and reads alt.sex.goats. And - now here's the clever part - other NNTP servers connect to this one every so often, and say `Give me all your new messages.' Then my post gets copied to the inquiring server. Then other servers will ask that one for new messages, and my post will get propaged around the world!
"(Way, way back when, some of that propagation happened over dial-up lines, via the UUCP. But that's really old school tech.)
"There's no central server, no central authority, and no one owns or controls a newsgroup. (Yeah, there's moderation, but that's more of a convention that a real technical feature.) All that NNTP servers know about messages are what the author provides, including the newsgroups name. And there's cancelation messages that other people can send out to say `ignore that message', but they're inherently no more authoritative than the messages themselves.
"All right, you whippersnappers, that's enough. If you want more, use that new-fangled web thing and go search Google or something."
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Just have a look at your ISP's newsgroups list. grep it for young, lolita, pre-teen, child, etc. and you'll see 30+ groups.
And how is the ISP admin to know that a photo titled "16 year old" isn't actually 18? Or a Photoshop composite?
The cops should be out finding people who are actually sexually abusing children, not stomping on free speech in the name of preventing people from looking at pictures -real or faked - of that abuse.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
This forces ISPs to log all the
sites that their customers are accessing and the police can gain the records at any time without a warrant. Only people with something to hide need fear anything.
Are you trolling, or are you really that fscking dense?
"Only people with something to hide need fear," indeed. I suppose you would have no objection to the government reading your mail, searching your house, or performing full body cavity searches, without at least a warrant?
"People with something to hide" often includes anyone with opinions contrary to those of the current regime. Go do a little research on the US COINTELPRO operation in the 1960s. Read about about the unjustified raids on groups protesting at the WTO and World Bank meetings.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
It cannot be the hoster of the content, because that puts the material beyond the reach of the law; there is nothing to stop someone from hosting child pornography Outer Mongolia and hence avoiding the law.
China: "There is nothing to stop someone from hosting pro-democracy material in Outer Mongolia and hence avoiding the law."
The fact that national borders stop laws but not communication is a good thing, not a bad thing.
The best way forward is to make someone pay, Otherwise the Internet will become a lawless, chaotic domain that will undermine our lives.
The best way forward is for people to get over the idea that someone is looking at stuff they don't like.
Yes, child sexual abuse is horrible. Find the people who do it and lock them up. But don't use the spectre of "child pornography" to restrict free speech.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
However, once it is initally released, the software can be easily developed by anyone who can submit their work back to the team that owns the project. In this way
bugfixes can become quickly available, new features can be quickly, if unofficially added, etc.
Right. But consider large, complex, and specialized software projects - I don't mean stuff you find shrinkwrapped at Best Buy, or downloadable off a web site, I'm thinking of the software that runs things like phone system. That sort of work can't really be carried out by J. Random Hacker in his basement. (Do you have a telephone switch in your basement?)
Instead of free (as in beer) patches that you and I make to "scratch our itches", telephone companies would be asking for bids for free (as in speech) patches and improvements from the likes of IBM or Lucent. So there wouldn't be people working just "as they see fit", there would be sustained well-managed efforts with real money changing hands, as well as all the usual free software benefits.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Our government doesn't touch Nike's corporate decisions. That's a private sector thing there bud not a government problem.
Of course it does. Like all corporations, Nike exists at all because of an act of government. Then our government makes trade policy decisions that allow this "artificial person" created by U.S. law to have overseas subsidiaries and employ non-U.S. citizens. Then trade policy - tariffs, regulations, etcetera - are set up in such a way as to favor these large corporations.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
The hallmark of the open source philosophy is that there be a group, or bazaar, of developers who all work at a project as they see fit.
No. There's nothing at all about open source or free software processes that dictates such a model.
There's absolutely no reason that open source software can't be produced by people working in a more typical development environment - the only difference is that instead of handing the customer a tape or CD with just binaries at the end of the development contract, they also get source and freedom to do with it as they please. In this case, the "bazaar" is not composed of individual developers, but of companies vying for development contracts.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Yes these kids in third world countries aren't making as much as we would be making shoes but what other jobs can they get out there?
Ideally, instead of working for American capitalists who sell to well-off Western consumers and trickle a tiny percentage down to those who do the actual work, they'd be working for locally owned businesses that sold to those well-off consumers.
In a sane world, our trade policy would have the goal of helping local people in developing nations set up their own industries, instead of helping the owners of Nike increase their profits.
(Actually, the same problem applies at the local level, where cities undertake huge development efforts and give large tax breaks to get corporations to relocate or open new offices, instead of helping locally-owned businesses grow.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
The motivation behind the expression has no bearing on whether a piece of music is 'good' or not.
I did not mean "music that is written for the joy of it is good (in the sense of quality) music."
I meant that "the creation of music that is good is motivated (mainly) by the joy of creation."
Sorry for any ambiguity.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
You people are all for LESS
GOVERNMENT MORE FREEDOM except when it helps you. You want the goverment to tell people how to
run their business?
Um, the government is all ready telling them how to run their business. It says, "We're going to create these things called copyrights," and goes from there.
Getting government out of the picture would mean eliminating copyright. Which might be a very good idea - replace it with royalty rights on for-profit use, instead.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Art will not die because it is shared. Anyone who tells you otherwise is not interested in art.
Bravo!
The stated purpose of copyright is to promote progress in the arts. Comparing the industry-crafted dreck at the top of the charts to what I hear talented creative people playing for nearly free, it's clearly failing in that goal.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
It's ridiculous! If I create something, as the creator I have the right to do what I like with it.
That doesn't follow at all. If I create a gun, I don't have the right to fire it at my neighbor's house.
"But I was only refering to intellectual creations, to ideas!" you complain. Ok, yes, you have the right to do what you want with your ideas. The question is, do you have a right to prevent others from doing what they want once you express them?
You don't have any natural right to prevent me from copying, quoting, or modifying your work. You may have commerical rights, or other artificial legal rights, but they have no deep moral basis.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
You might hate to admit it, but the majority of music is produced with the intention of making money off of it.
Yes, the majority of pop music is produced with an eye to the bottom line. That's why it sucks.
Good music is written for the joy of it. Of course, if we want more good music, we have to let those with talent get paid for it, so that they can afford guitars and amps and minidisc recorders, and have more time for music and have to spend less time at day jobs. However, that doesn't mean that a state-enforced pay-per-copy scheme is practical, moral, or on sound legal footing.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I understand your motivation, but are you aware that a solar cell takes more energy to manufacture than it will produce over its working life?
Not true. It takes from one to several years to break even, depending on the technology, but the claim that they take more energy than they put out is pure FUD.
Also, if you're far enough away from the grid it can actually be cheaper to install a photovoltaic system than to run copper and get on the grid.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
So you'd support say...microsoft, sun, apple, any company, or any person taking code that is say, open sourced, and integrating it into their products, which of course will be closed source, and making money off of it? That my friend, is also what intellectual property laws protect against.
No, they don't, and I'm getting tired of hearing this bogus argument.
The GPL protects your freedom to use, share, and modify software. Only intellectual property laws prevent you from using or sharing software - without those laws, there's no need for the GPL to protect those freedoms. So the only issue is modifying, for which you need (or at least, very much want) source.
With freely copyable software, companies can't make much money by on a pay-per-copy scheme. They have to provide a service, in which case market forces very very strongly drive you to an open source model.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Trading copyrighted songs is
illegal whether you like the music industry or not.
So what?
Having oral sex is illegal in the state of Maryland. If you visit our fine state and your SO is feeling amorous, will you limit your pleasure on the basis that "it's the law"?
When the state intrudes into areas in which it has no business, breaking the law is not wrong. The state has no business interfering in the consensual non-commercial exchange of information.
I hate McDonalds, but you don't see me breaking into their restaurants at night, stealing their "beef" patties and giving them away on the street the next day.
Copying is not theft.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
In a company, programmers have to follow the dictacts of those above, and 'those above' have to follow the dictacts of the shareholder and the
consumer. This forces them to do be innovative.
Feh. With the rare exception of research groups like Bell Labs (does Lucent do any R & D these days?) and Xerox PARC, company programmers are generally forced to be anything but innovative. Management wants it done the same way the other guys do it.
Innovation comes when smart people get to play around with stuff. This happens when they get paid to do so (in university and corporate research groups), or when they're independantly "scratching an itch" (free software). It rarely happens in mainstream software development.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
The idea that something needs to be done in a less than optimal way just to create jobs is the kind of mentality that ran the Soviet
Union, not the United States.
Let me introduce you to the very very American concept of "planned obsolescence".
But then again, I suppose that's not designed so much to create jobs as to create profits.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
For example - someone discovers a lump of gold in the ground, sells it, and makes money. Who became "poor" to make
this happen?
First: they don't make money. They trade money. Absent either the state printing more dollars, or counterfeiting, every monetary transaction is zero-sum. (Of course, wealth is not money. Wealth can be created from raw materials by labor - but both labor and material resources are limited.)
Second: who became poor? If this lump of gold was found in North America, probably some American Indian nation. Always remember that the state creates mineral rights, and other similar property rights, by force.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Slashdot Mirror
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Sexual fantasies are all about fiction. If some perverted person posts a story in alt.sex.stories entitled "How I Raped My Neighbor's Great-Grandmother", we could conclude that this person had very strange and disturbing tastes, far outside our social norms. We would not, however, take it as a factual account, without some other evidence.
That's what a lot of child porn viewing is about - a fantasy. Yes, a strange and disturbing fantasy, and I would gladly break the neck of anyone who tried to force such a fantasy onto any young kid I know. But so long as it remains in their brain, their fantasies are none of my business.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
"Ok, children, gather 'round. Old Tom's gonna tell you about some old school technology. Back before the web, we had something called USENET..."
"USENET?! Isn't that nothing but spam?"
"Well, maybe so these days, Junior. But once upon a time, it was the way to get information around. And in fact, one of its main principles is coming back around these days. See, USENET is basically a peer-to-peer network.
"If I wanted to post to, say, alt.sex.goats, why, I write up my post and send it off to my local NNTP server, asking the server `Please post this to alt.sex.goats.' Now, the server has no way of knowing whether my post has anything to do with goat sex or not. That's why USENET fell to the spammers...damn Cantor and Siegal...green cards...
"Sorry. Mind starts to wander when you're actually old enough to remember USENET. Anyway, the NNTP server holds on to the message and makes it available for anyone else who uses that server and reads alt.sex.goats. And - now here's the clever part - other NNTP servers connect to this one every so often, and say `Give me all your new messages.' Then my post gets copied to the inquiring server. Then other servers will ask that one for new messages, and my post will get propaged around the world!
"(Way, way back when, some of that propagation happened over dial-up lines, via the UUCP. But that's really old school tech.)
"There's no central server, no central authority, and no one owns or controls a newsgroup. (Yeah, there's moderation, but that's more of a convention that a real technical feature.) All that NNTP servers know about messages are what the author provides, including the newsgroups name. And there's cancelation messages that other people can send out to say `ignore that message', but they're inherently no more authoritative than the messages themselves.
"All right, you whippersnappers, that's enough. If you want more, use that new-fangled web thing and go search Google or something."
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
And how is the ISP admin to know that a photo titled "16 year old" isn't actually 18? Or a Photoshop composite?
The cops should be out finding people who are actually sexually abusing children, not stomping on free speech in the name of preventing people from looking at pictures -real or faked - of that abuse.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Are you trolling, or are you really that fscking dense?
"Only people with something to hide need fear," indeed. I suppose you would have no objection to the government reading your mail, searching your house, or performing full body cavity searches, without at least a warrant?
"People with something to hide" often includes anyone with opinions contrary to those of the current regime. Go do a little research on the US COINTELPRO operation in the 1960s. Read about about the unjustified raids on groups protesting at the WTO and World Bank meetings.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
China: "There is nothing to stop someone from hosting pro-democracy material in Outer Mongolia and hence avoiding the law."
The fact that national borders stop laws but not communication is a good thing, not a bad thing.
The best way forward is for people to get over the idea that someone is looking at stuff they don't like.
Yes, child sexual abuse is horrible. Find the people who do it and lock them up. But don't use the spectre of "child pornography" to restrict free speech.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Newsgroups are not like websites. They can't peddle a damn thing.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Right. But consider large, complex, and specialized software projects - I don't mean stuff you find shrinkwrapped at Best Buy, or downloadable off a web site, I'm thinking of the software that runs things like phone system. That sort of work can't really be carried out by J. Random Hacker in his basement. (Do you have a telephone switch in your basement?)
Instead of free (as in beer) patches that you and I make to "scratch our itches", telephone companies would be asking for bids for free (as in speech) patches and improvements from the likes of IBM or Lucent. So there wouldn't be people working just "as they see fit", there would be sustained well-managed efforts with real money changing hands, as well as all the usual free software benefits.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
There's absolutely no reason that open source software can't be produced by people working in a more typical development environment - the only difference is that instead of handing the customer a tape or CD with just binaries at the end of the development contract, they also get source and freedom to do with it as they please. In this case, the "bazaar" is not composed of individual developers, but of companies vying for development contracts.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Ideally, instead of working for American capitalists who sell to well-off Western consumers and trickle a tiny percentage down to those who do the actual work, they'd be working for locally owned businesses that sold to those well-off consumers.
In a sane world, our trade policy would have the goal of helping local people in developing nations set up their own industries, instead of helping the owners of Nike increase their profits.
(Actually, the same problem applies at the local level, where cities undertake huge development efforts and give large tax breaks to get corporations to relocate or open new offices, instead of helping locally-owned businesses grow.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Sorry for any ambiguity.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Getting government out of the picture would mean eliminating copyright. Which might be a very good idea - replace it with royalty rights on for-profit use, instead.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
The stated purpose of copyright is to promote progress in the arts. Comparing the industry-crafted dreck at the top of the charts to what I hear talented creative people playing for nearly free, it's clearly failing in that goal.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
That doesn't follow at all. If I create a gun, I don't have the right to fire it at my neighbor's house.
"But I was only refering to intellectual creations, to ideas!" you complain. Ok, yes, you have the right to do what you want with your ideas. The question is, do you have a right to prevent others from doing what they want once you express them?
You don't have any natural right to prevent me from copying, quoting, or modifying your work. You may have commerical rights, or other artificial legal rights, but they have no deep moral basis.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Yes, the majority of pop music is produced with an eye to the bottom line. That's why it sucks.
Good music is written for the joy of it. Of course, if we want more good music, we have to let those with talent get paid for it, so that they can afford guitars and amps and minidisc recorders, and have more time for music and have to spend less time at day jobs. However, that doesn't mean that a state-enforced pay-per-copy scheme is practical, moral, or on sound legal footing.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Also, if you're far enough away from the grid it can actually be cheaper to install a photovoltaic system than to run copper and get on the grid.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
No, they don't, and I'm getting tired of hearing this bogus argument.
The GPL protects your freedom to use, share, and modify software. Only intellectual property laws prevent you from using or sharing software - without those laws, there's no need for the GPL to protect those freedoms. So the only issue is modifying, for which you need (or at least, very much want) source.
With freely copyable software, companies can't make much money by on a pay-per-copy scheme. They have to provide a service, in which case market forces very very strongly drive you to an open source model.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
So what?
Having oral sex is illegal in the state of Maryland. If you visit our fine state and your SO is feeling amorous, will you limit your pleasure on the basis that "it's the law"?
When the state intrudes into areas in which it has no business, breaking the law is not wrong. The state has no business interfering in the consensual non-commercial exchange of information.
Copying is not theft.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Innovation comes when smart people get to play around with stuff. This happens when they get paid to do so (in university and corporate research groups), or when they're independantly "scratching an itch" (free software). It rarely happens in mainstream software development.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
But then again, I suppose that's not designed so much to create jobs as to create profits.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Second: who became poor? If this lump of gold was found in North America, probably some American Indian nation. Always remember that the state creates mineral rights, and other similar property rights, by force.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/