I can see where this discussion is going, and I'd like to contribute one thought before it gets crowded. I'll try to be brief, since I have class in five hours and I've yet to sleep...
A lot of folks, here and elsewhere, have been comparing the "intelligence" of human infants, or fetuses (not that I want to open that can of worms,) to the "intelligence" of other animals. They reason that since some animals are as intelligent as some humans, either those animals deserve more rights and protection, or those humans deserve less.
You've been watching too much "Star Trek". On "Star Trek", they neatly separate every species into a "sentient" category or a "non-sentient" category, and thereby decide whether it's morally okay to eat them. Science fiction has always reasoned that since we have a moral obligation towards our fellow man, we are equally obligated towards anyone who thinks like a human.
Here's my proposal: We have a moral obligation to protect humans not because they are "intelligent", or "sentient", or "conscious", but rather because they are human. Therefore, we will always be bound to protect any organism that is genetically human, even if said creature is less self-aware than the chicken that supplied my dinner tonight.
I apologize if this isn't all that coherent. (I don't know if I'll have the nerve to re-read it later today.) I just wanted to get the idea out there.
I find this funny, because the speakers on the original iMac were described with the same glowing words as those on the, um, new iMac. (Don't get me started on Apple's naming system... I worked tech support at an all-mac college...) Those were Bose speakers. Despite the big name, the original iMac's speakers are generally regarded as its second most hated component (after the mouse, of course.)
I wouldn't expect much from these either.
Not that I'm knocking small speakers. My Cambridge Soundworks set are the best speakers that I've ever heard, and they make a decent geek status symbol as well.
The US already has a doomsday device of sorts in the form of its fleet of nuclear submarines. If the commanders of these subs lose contact with the US, they are supposed to launch their missles and take out the enemy.
Well, that sort of exemplifies the difference between the popular perception of "doomsday machines", and what they are actually for. (And again, this is all theory, I have no idea if this is what the powers-that-be are actually thinking.)
I don't know if the bit about the submarines is true (I think they only do that after a launch order has been issued, and at that point MAD really isn't a factor.) However, I believe that the Russians have publically admitted that some of their outlying missle bases are rigged to launch automatically if a full scale nuclear attack is detected. (This came up in an article about Y2K preparations, but that's another issue...) They claim that this system is intended to prevent an enemy from quickly taking out their command center, then attacking without fear of retaliation. Seems like there are better ways of doing that, though...
The real use of a doomsday machine is to take the decision to launch out of human hands. As I explained in my previous message, no human being intelligent enough to control a nuclear arsenal would ever retaliate against a nuclear attack. Nonetheless, they have to convince the world that the will retaliate, or else there is no (well, much less) disincentive to launch a first strike. So you do whatever you can to prevent anyone from interfering with your retalation; hence the doomsday machine.
Actually, MAD doesn't work. And it's not what has kept us kept us from getting vaporized for the last 50 years. I'm going out on a bit of a limb here, but try my logic:
The idea of MAD is that no country will ever nuke another country when there is a potential for nuclear retaliation, because since country A has no way to prevent that retaliation, so they may as well be nuking themselves. In order for this to work, country A has to be guaranteed that country B will in fact retaliate if attacked. It's not clear that they would, and in fact it's pretty unlikely.
Think about it. Let's say Russia launches a volley of ICBMs at us... er, the USA... right now. In a few minutes (hopefully), Bill Clinton will be asked to launch a counter-attack. He can't prevent the USA from being wiped out, no matter what he does. He can decide to take Eurasia down with us, certainly killing hundreds of millions of people, quite possibly wiping out the entire human race. (You know, nuclear winter and all.) Or he can do nothing.
I'm reasonably sure that Clinton doesn't want to destroy the world. I'm also sure that, propaganda notwithstanding, Boris Yeltsin, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosovic, or any other "world leader" wouldn't want that responsibility either. I'd even be pretty surprised if Hitler would be that evil, and he was a pretty rotten guy. Therefore, the threat of retaliation is not sufficient to prevent nuclear war.
There is a way around this, and as a matter of fact I strongly suspect that Russia, and perhaps even the USA, has implemented it. But I've got to run, so I don't have time to explain it... Would somebody else do me a favor and bring up "doomsday machines"?
Oh, I don't mean to dispute Russia's point, though... Anti-nuke devices would obviously tip the balance. As I said in another thread, they're really just a new, more powerful weapon of mass destruction. But since we can't prevent the bad guys from getting them, we have to get our own.
This is exactly why this technology should not be implemented by any nation!!
Of course. Neither should nuclear weapons. Or conventional weapons, for that matter. But we have them anyway, because we have no way of ensuring that other nations will not have them. It's the old "prisoner's dilemma", which is why arms races exist in the first place.
Folks just have to realize that anti-nuke devices are just as powerful a weapon, if not more so, than ICBMs.
"I'd like to see technology like this developed and turned over to the United Nations with a set policy that any nuclear missle originating in any country going to any country will automatically be blocked."
Unless it's really needed, of course. I mean, if the threat of nuclear war could be eliminated, then who wouldn't support using one or two nukes to stop Saddam from taking babies out of incubators, or to stop Slobodan from torturing helpless old women? I'm sure the UN would be happy to turn off their defense system when it is deemed "necessary".
So in other words, you're giving the UN control over the world's nuclear weapons. I'm sure Slashdot readers can carry this train of thought the rest of the way...
"I don't see why you couldn't have hundreds of seperate neural nets each reporting on whether one word was said."
You could do this, but you would be diverging considerably from the way the human brain actually works. And considering that the human brain is currently the best speech-processing device we know of (notwithstanding this experiment, which sounds awfully limited to me), that's probably a bad idea.
Think about it: humans have, what, about a 10,000 word vocabulary? (Yes, there are a lot of different ways of measuring vocabulary, but that's a reasonable figure.) I'm willing to accept that somebody could combine 10,000 eleven-node neural nets to approximate the same vocabulary. But the average human would have no trouble recognizing a word like "picklemobile", or "Vulcanophone", or "Rodmania", even though he has never heard these words before. (Hopefully.) Or any of the millions of possible proper names, although I'm not sure that that's a fair example. (And no, the examples that I gave cannot be dismissed as simple compounding or affixation, as far as I remember from linquistics. As a matter of fact, if anybody can explain to me what the hell is going on in "picklemobile", please let me know...)
I don't mean to knock neural nets. I think they're on the right track, but they need to be moving towards more complexity and structure, not less. Maybe have one net for phonology, one for syntax processing, one for vocabulary, etc., and then link them using conventional computation. In other words, more like the way we do it.
First of all, a lot of the folks here are complaining that this is just a pointless publicity stunt. Well, yes. And the point of a publicity stunt is to draw publicity, which is also (mostly) the point of advertising. Even if only a few people ever actually see the rocket with the Pizza Hut logo on it, many, many more will hear or have already heard the news reports about it. Pizza Hut has been in the news more in the past few days than any other time that I can remember, and I'm sure we'll hear even more about it when they actually launch the thing. Hell, they even got Slashdot talking about them!
Second point: Pizza Hut isn't necessarily just looking for publicity, at least not direct publicity. This rocket is carrying components of the ISS; PH can now legitimately claim that they are "sponsoring" the ISS, and space exploration in general. I doubt that they can write it off as a charitable contribution on their taxes, but I for one am willing to give them credit for helping to advance science. It seems to me that big corporations used to do this sort of thing a lot... Westinghouse scholarships, for example. (A bad example, but I can't think of any others.)
Oh, one more little thing... Some posters have reacted with horror to PH's supposed plan to "paint" their logo on the moon with a laser. Assuming this story is true at all, I'm sure they didn't plan to carve their logo into the moon, but rather to project it, probably only for a minute or so. (Think of the power required...) While I'm not sure I like this idea either, it's not as patently evil as it seemed at first.
While I'm on-topic... Seeing the price tag in the headline written in scientific notation really gave me warm fuzzies. Slashdot rocks.:-)
The article also says that the law is intended to "catch those writing, making available, or spreading computer viruses..." Note the "or".
While you're probably correct about the intent of the law, it's the letter of the law that matters. (I can think of countless laws that are enforced in a manner that diverges considerably from their original "intent".)
Of course I don't have access to the actual bill, but according to the article, it is clear that simply writing a virus is a crime.
I'm as thrilled to hear of this as any self-respecting geek would be... I'd probably buy one even it's just a dressed up pocket calculator.
But one thing concerns me... Does anyone notice the European bias in this story? For example, the plans to support GSM? I have a funny feeling that they're not planning on releasing this device in the states, at least not initially.
I hope I don't have to buy some imported, untranslated British version...
I don't know how you think its fair for people to be marked down for redundancy.
This is an excellent point. (I was waiting for the next article on moderation to bring it up, but you beat me to it.:-)) It seems to me that 95% of redundant comments exist because
A: The poster didn't see the other comments on the subject, because they hadn't appeared on the page yet, or they were posted while he was typing his comment.
B: The poster didn't see the other comments because he reads at a higher threshold.
C: The poster double-posted because of some browser glitch.
None of these have any bearing on the poster's ability to moderate effectively or post productive comments, which is what karma is supposed to measure.
So the solution, if it's at all possible, is to not count "Redundant" against karma. Sinking the comment is perfectly appropriate, but it shouldn't have long-term effects.
You're thinking of the wrong "ROM". Linux or BeOS could run fine without the "ROM file" that is loaded into RAM when the computer starts up. (This code used to be in ROM, up until the iMac, hence the confusion.)
However, a Mac without anything in firmware (which is what this story refers to,) would be very much dead.
True, but the new ROM-in-RAM only replaces about 1/2-3/4 of the old Apple ROM (judging by its size). Even in new Macs, the firmware does a lot more than the firmware in most PCs.
So the comment that it would be much more difficult to reverse-engineer than the ROM on a PC still holds.
An M2 logs in and is presented with a page which contains 10 moderated comments (and hopefully the article which they're commenting on)
I really hope this isn't what Rob meant... as far as I'm concerned, nobody should be forced to moderate (let alone meta-moderate) a comment without having read the story, the links, and the other comments in the thread that the comment is from.
Now, you could put all this information into one page (ten times!), but it seems to me it would be much simpler to have meta-moderation work on a point system like moderation.
"General lameness in science/technology..the writers obviously don't know or care about sci/tech, and the fact that they write scripts and fill in techie-sounding words later shows their disdain/lack of interest in science - which is pretty sad given it's a sci-fi show."
My respect for Star Trek (except the original) declined rapidly as I grew up, but I think the nail in the coffin was when I read a little of the script for "Insurrection" online. Here's a quote:
"...they inject something into the rings that starts a [TECH] reaction. After it's over, the planet will be unlivable for generations."
There's the science behind Star Trek. (It's not an isolated example, by the way, the script is full of it.)
Yep, the same thought just dawned on me a few hours ago.
However, although I know how the GPL works in theory, I'm not sure how well it holds up in reality. Granting someone the irrevocable right to license something from you is easy, but I'm not sure that it's possible to irrevocably grant someone the right to sub-license that product, which is what the GPL attempts to do. (This is what prevents a corporation from doing what AOL has tried to do with Tik: release it under the GPL, then change your mind and try to squash it. Since at least one person out there downloaded Tik under the terms of the GPL, he should be able to distribute it under those terms regardless of what AOL thinks. In theory...)
Besides, even if a license like the GPL holds up, it may yet spark lots of messy court battles. It would be nice to be able to accomplish the same thing with an unimpeachable, rubber-stamp process.
(By the way, I know that I have distorted the Tik situation somewhat... consider it a hypothetical example.)
(I just got to play with moderator access for the first time, and I'm not sure if that will prevent me from posting this... I hope I don't type all this out for nothing.)
I haven't been following the whole Linux trademark scene too closely, but my understanding of it is that everyone is terrified that someone will successfully trademark it, and then prevent all those open source products from using it. (Thus pretty well destroying Linux.)
Well, it seems to me there's a perfect long-term solution: Why doesn't somebody in Washington amend IP law to allow someone to register an anti-trademark, or an anti-copyright, or an anti-patent?
To register an "anti-trademark", you'd have to prove your claim to the mark just the same as you would for a normal trademark. However, instead of granting you exclusive rights to the mark, an "anti-trademark" would ensuring that the mark remains in public domain, with the force of U.S. law guaranteeing that no individual could ever claim it.
The concept could be extended to copyrights and patents... Essentially, you'd end up with a standardized, easily enforceable BSD-style license. (Of course, it wouldn't be compatible with the GPL, which ironically relies heavily on traditional copyrights.)
This is just a pipe dream... It would take years to be made into law, and I have no idea what you'd have to go through to get it recognized internationally. But could it work?
Just to be fair, I guess I'll put on my politician's hat and answer this:
AOL absolutely has the right to keep their protocol proprietary, and in fact I think that MS's use of AOL's servers via OSCAR is tantamount to theft of services.
However, at a time when Bill Gates is called the antichrist just because he wants to keep some of his IP to himself, we need to apply the same standards of morality to everyone. AOL could have kept their email system proprietary, too, (way back in, what, 1991?), but to do so would have been a disservice to their customers as well as the rest of the Internet. If there was ever a situation calling for a little good will on the part of AOL, this is it.
But coming from a guy who always rooted for the Empire just because their Star Destroyers were so cool, I still think this buffer overflow gimmick is genius.:-)
As much as as the libertarian in me is disgusted by the lengths that AOL has gone to keep AIM proprietary, my overwhelming reaction to this story is: Man, the guys who came up with this are gods! If this buffer overflow really works as described, and is intentional, this is the coolest hack I've seen in a long time.
To my knowledge, all of the AIM alternatives (other than Microsoft's) use the TOC protocol, which is a simplified, open (at least, it used to be open), and slightly crippled version of the OSCAR protocol that AIM and Microsoft use. It's actually lots of fun to play with, writing little Tcl scripts to automate IMing and stuff...
But Tik and GAIM users should be thankful that Micrsoft went to the trouble of reverse-engineering OSCAR instead of just using TOC, because if they had, I'm sure TOC would be gone by now.
The CyberPatrol folks are essentially selling a list of sites that they claim are "offensive". By putting your site on that list, (even if their poorly written software forced them to include it), they're publicly asserting that your site contains offensive material. You've obviously been damaged by this.
Isn't that grounds for a libel suit? That may not be a realistic solution for an individual, but I'm sure countless websites have been wrongfully blocked... it would make a hell of a class action lawsuit, wouldn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
I can see where this discussion is going, and I'd like to contribute one thought before it gets crowded. I'll try to be brief, since I have class in five hours and I've yet to sleep...
A lot of folks, here and elsewhere, have been comparing the "intelligence" of human infants, or fetuses (not that I want to open that can of worms,) to the "intelligence" of other animals. They reason that since some animals are as intelligent as some humans, either those animals deserve more rights and protection, or those humans deserve less.
You've been watching too much "Star Trek". On "Star Trek", they neatly separate every species into a "sentient" category or a "non-sentient" category, and thereby decide whether it's morally okay to eat them. Science fiction has always reasoned that since we have a moral obligation towards our fellow man, we are equally obligated towards anyone who thinks like a human.
Here's my proposal: We have a moral obligation to protect humans not because they are "intelligent", or "sentient", or "conscious", but rather because they are human. Therefore, we will always be bound to protect any organism that is genetically human, even if said creature is less self-aware than the chicken that supplied my dinner tonight.
I apologize if this isn't all that coherent. (I don't know if I'll have the nerve to re-read it later today.) I just wanted to get the idea out there.
I find this funny, because the speakers on the original iMac were described with the same glowing words as those on the, um, new iMac. (Don't get me started on Apple's naming system... I worked tech support at an all-mac college...) Those were Bose speakers. Despite the big name, the original iMac's speakers are generally regarded as its second most hated component (after the mouse, of course.)
I wouldn't expect much from these either.
Not that I'm knocking small speakers. My Cambridge Soundworks set are the best speakers that I've ever heard, and they make a decent geek status symbol as well.
I don't know if the bit about the submarines is true (I think they only do that after a launch order has been issued, and at that point MAD really isn't a factor.) However, I believe that the Russians have publically admitted that some of their outlying missle bases are rigged to launch automatically if a full scale nuclear attack is detected. (This came up in an article about Y2K preparations, but that's another issue...) They claim that this system is intended to prevent an enemy from quickly taking out their command center, then attacking without fear of retaliation. Seems like there are better ways of doing that, though...
The real use of a doomsday machine is to take the decision to launch out of human hands. As I explained in my previous message, no human being intelligent enough to control a nuclear arsenal would ever retaliate against a nuclear attack. Nonetheless, they have to convince the world that the will retaliate, or else there is no (well, much less) disincentive to launch a first strike. So you do whatever you can to prevent anyone from interfering with your retalation; hence the doomsday machine.
Actually, MAD doesn't work. And it's not what has kept us kept us from getting vaporized for the last 50 years. I'm going out on a bit of a limb here, but try my logic:
The idea of MAD is that no country will ever nuke another country when there is a potential for nuclear retaliation, because since country A has no way to prevent that retaliation, so they may as well be nuking themselves. In order for this to work, country A has to be guaranteed that country B will in fact retaliate if attacked. It's not clear that they would, and in fact it's pretty unlikely.
Think about it. Let's say Russia launches a volley of ICBMs at us... er, the USA... right now. In a few minutes (hopefully), Bill Clinton will be asked to launch a counter-attack. He can't prevent the USA from being wiped out, no matter what he does. He can decide to take Eurasia down with us, certainly killing hundreds of millions of people, quite possibly wiping out the entire human race. (You know, nuclear winter and all.) Or he can do nothing.
I'm reasonably sure that Clinton doesn't want to destroy the world. I'm also sure that, propaganda notwithstanding, Boris Yeltsin, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosovic, or any other "world leader" wouldn't want that responsibility either. I'd even be pretty surprised if Hitler would be that evil, and he was a pretty rotten guy. Therefore, the threat of retaliation is not sufficient to prevent nuclear war.
There is a way around this, and as a matter of fact I strongly suspect that Russia, and perhaps even the USA, has implemented it. But I've got to run, so I don't have time to explain it... Would somebody else do me a favor and bring up "doomsday machines"?
Oh, I don't mean to dispute Russia's point, though... Anti-nuke devices would obviously tip the balance. As I said in another thread, they're really just a new, more powerful weapon of mass destruction. But since we can't prevent the bad guys from getting them, we have to get our own.
Folks just have to realize that anti-nuke devices are just as powerful a weapon, if not more so, than ICBMs.
Unless it's really needed, of course. I mean, if the threat of nuclear war could be eliminated, then who wouldn't support using one or two nukes to stop Saddam from taking babies out of incubators, or to stop Slobodan from torturing helpless old women? I'm sure the UN would be happy to turn off their defense system when it is deemed "necessary".
So in other words, you're giving the UN control over the world's nuclear weapons. I'm sure Slashdot readers can carry this train of thought the rest of the way...
You could do this, but you would be diverging considerably from the way the human brain actually works. And considering that the human brain is currently the best speech-processing device we know of (notwithstanding this experiment, which sounds awfully limited to me), that's probably a bad idea.
Think about it: humans have, what, about a 10,000 word vocabulary? (Yes, there are a lot of different ways of measuring vocabulary, but that's a reasonable figure.) I'm willing to accept that somebody could combine 10,000 eleven-node neural nets to approximate the same vocabulary. But the average human would have no trouble recognizing a word like "picklemobile", or "Vulcanophone", or "Rodmania", even though he has never heard these words before. (Hopefully.) Or any of the millions of possible proper names, although I'm not sure that that's a fair example. (And no, the examples that I gave cannot be dismissed as simple compounding or affixation, as far as I remember from linquistics. As a matter of fact, if anybody can explain to me what the hell is going on in "picklemobile", please let me know...)
I don't mean to knock neural nets. I think they're on the right track, but they need to be moving towards more complexity and structure, not less. Maybe have one net for phonology, one for syntax processing, one for vocabulary, etc., and then link them using conventional computation. In other words, more like the way we do it.
Two points, actually.
:-)
First of all, a lot of the folks here are complaining that this is just a pointless publicity stunt. Well, yes. And the point of a publicity stunt is to draw publicity, which is also (mostly) the point of advertising. Even if only a few people ever actually see the rocket with the Pizza Hut logo on it, many, many more will hear or have already heard the news reports about it. Pizza Hut has been in the news more in the past few days than any other time that I can remember, and I'm sure we'll hear even more about it when they actually launch the thing. Hell, they even got Slashdot talking about them!
Second point: Pizza Hut isn't necessarily just looking for publicity, at least not direct publicity. This rocket is carrying components of the ISS; PH can now legitimately claim that they are "sponsoring" the ISS, and space exploration in general. I doubt that they can write it off as a charitable contribution on their taxes, but I for one am willing to give them credit for helping to advance science. It seems to me that big corporations used to do this sort of thing a lot... Westinghouse scholarships, for example. (A bad example, but I can't think of any others.)
Oh, one more little thing... Some posters have reacted with horror to PH's supposed plan to "paint" their logo on the moon with a laser. Assuming this story is true at all, I'm sure they didn't plan to carve their logo into the moon, but rather to project it, probably only for a minute or so. (Think of the power required...) While I'm not sure I like this idea either, it's not as patently evil as it seemed at first.
While I'm on-topic... Seeing the price tag in the headline written in scientific notation really gave me warm fuzzies. Slashdot rocks.
So where can we get the t-shirts with the code for the Internet Worm on them?
(I always loved those "This Shirt is a Munition" shirts...)
The article also says that the law is intended to "catch those writing, making available, or spreading computer viruses..." Note the "or".
While you're probably correct about the intent of the law, it's the letter of the law that matters. (I can think of countless laws that are enforced in a manner that diverges considerably from their original "intent".)
Of course I don't have access to the actual bill, but according to the article, it is clear that simply writing a virus is a crime.
I'm as thrilled to hear of this as any self-respecting geek would be... I'd probably buy one even it's just a dressed up pocket calculator.
But one thing concerns me... Does anyone notice the European bias in this story? For example, the plans to support GSM? I have a funny feeling that they're not planning on releasing this device in the states, at least not initially.
I hope I don't have to buy some imported, untranslated British version...
This is an excellent point. (I was waiting for the next article on moderation to bring it up, but you beat me to it.
A: The poster didn't see the other comments on the subject, because they hadn't appeared on the page yet, or they were posted while he was typing his comment.
B: The poster didn't see the other comments because he reads at a higher threshold.
C: The poster double-posted because of some browser glitch.
None of these have any bearing on the poster's ability to moderate effectively or post productive comments, which is what karma is supposed to measure.
So the solution, if it's at all possible, is to not count "Redundant" against karma. Sinking the comment is perfectly appropriate, but it shouldn't have long-term effects.
You're thinking of the wrong "ROM". Linux or BeOS could run fine without the "ROM file" that is loaded into RAM when the computer starts up. (This code used to be in ROM, up until the iMac, hence the confusion.)
However, a Mac without anything in firmware (which is what this story refers to,) would be very much dead.
True, but the new ROM-in-RAM only replaces about 1/2-3/4 of the old Apple ROM (judging by its size). Even in new Macs, the firmware does a lot more than the firmware in most PCs.
So the comment that it would be much more difficult to reverse-engineer than the ROM on a PC still holds.
I really hope this isn't what Rob meant... as far as I'm concerned, nobody should be forced to moderate (let alone meta-moderate) a comment without having read the story, the links, and the other comments in the thread that the comment is from.
Now, you could put all this information into one page (ten times!), but it seems to me it would be much simpler to have meta-moderation work on a point system like moderation.
Huh. Isn't that actually what stainless steel is? Or maybe aluminum? Some rust-free metal.
Whatever metal I'm thinking of, it has a couple of molecules oxidized on the surface, which protects the ones underneath.
I thought that was pretty cool.
If the series is set in Star Trek's past, how can they invent a never-before-seen technology to save them at the end of the episode?
I'm glad somebody else remembers this, but it was the Preservers, not the Precursers.
"General lameness in science/technology..the writers obviously don't know or care about sci/tech, and the fact that they write scripts and fill in techie-sounding words later shows their disdain/lack of interest in science - which is pretty sad given it's a sci-fi show."
My respect for Star Trek (except the original) declined rapidly as I grew up, but I think the nail in the coffin was when I read a little of the script for "Insurrection" online. Here's a quote:
"...they inject something into the rings that starts a [TECH] reaction. After it's over, the planet will be unlivable for generations."
There's the science behind Star Trek. (It's not an isolated example, by the way, the script is full of it.)
Yep, the same thought just dawned on me a few hours ago.
However, although I know how the GPL works in theory, I'm not sure how well it holds up in reality. Granting someone the irrevocable right to license something from you is easy, but I'm not sure that it's possible to irrevocably grant someone the right to sub-license that product, which is what the GPL attempts to do. (This is what prevents a corporation from doing what AOL has tried to do with Tik: release it under the GPL, then change your mind and try to squash it. Since at least one person out there downloaded Tik under the terms of the GPL, he should be able to distribute it under those terms regardless of what AOL thinks. In theory...)
Besides, even if a license like the GPL holds up, it may yet spark lots of messy court battles. It would be nice to be able to accomplish the same thing with an unimpeachable, rubber-stamp process.
(By the way, I know that I have distorted the Tik situation somewhat... consider it a hypothetical example.)
(I just got to play with moderator access for the first time, and I'm not sure if that will prevent me from posting this... I hope I don't type all this out for nothing.)
I haven't been following the whole Linux trademark scene too closely, but my understanding of it is that everyone is terrified that someone will successfully trademark it, and then prevent all those open source products from using it. (Thus pretty well destroying Linux.)
Well, it seems to me there's a perfect long-term solution: Why doesn't somebody in Washington amend IP law to allow someone to register an anti-trademark, or an anti-copyright, or an anti-patent?
To register an "anti-trademark", you'd have to prove your claim to the mark just the same as you would for a normal trademark. However, instead of granting you exclusive rights to the mark, an "anti-trademark" would ensuring that the mark remains in public domain, with the force of U.S. law guaranteeing that no individual could ever claim it.
The concept could be extended to copyrights and patents... Essentially, you'd end up with a standardized, easily enforceable BSD-style license. (Of course, it wouldn't be compatible with the GPL, which ironically relies heavily on traditional copyrights.)
This is just a pipe dream... It would take years to be made into law, and I have no idea what you'd have to go through to get it recognized internationally. But could it work?
Just to be fair, I guess I'll put on my politician's hat and answer this:
:-)
AOL absolutely has the right to keep their protocol proprietary, and in fact I think that MS's use of AOL's servers via OSCAR is tantamount to theft of services.
However, at a time when Bill Gates is called the antichrist just because he wants to keep some of his IP to himself, we need to apply the same standards of morality to everyone. AOL could have kept their email system proprietary, too, (way back in, what, 1991?), but to do so would have been a disservice to their customers as well as the rest of the Internet. If there was ever a situation calling for a little good will on the part of AOL, this is it.
But coming from a guy who always rooted for the Empire just because their Star Destroyers were so cool, I still think this buffer overflow gimmick is genius.
As much as as the libertarian in me is disgusted by the lengths that AOL has gone to keep AIM proprietary, my overwhelming reaction to this story is: Man, the guys who came up with this are gods! If this buffer overflow really works as described, and is intentional, this is the coolest hack I've seen in a long time.
To my knowledge, all of the AIM alternatives (other than Microsoft's) use the TOC protocol, which is a simplified, open (at least, it used to be open), and slightly crippled version of the OSCAR protocol that AIM and Microsoft use. It's actually lots of fun to play with, writing little Tcl scripts to automate IMing and stuff...
But Tik and GAIM users should be thankful that Micrsoft went to the trouble of reverse-engineering OSCAR instead of just using TOC, because if they had, I'm sure TOC would be gone by now.
IANAL, but...
The CyberPatrol folks are essentially selling a list of sites that they claim are "offensive". By putting your site on that list, (even if their poorly written software forced them to include it), they're publicly asserting that your site contains offensive material. You've obviously been damaged by this.
Isn't that grounds for a libel suit? That may not be a realistic solution for an individual, but I'm sure countless websites have been wrongfully blocked... it would make a hell of a class action lawsuit, wouldn't it?