Jesus Christ, who claimed to be God and proved it by rising from the dead, clearly told us...
Well in that case, the flying spaghetti monsters under people's beds have told of their existence, and proven it with their invisibility. Or so someone said to me.
After all, just because something is untestable by science with its limitations does not necessarily mean that it doesn't exist, right?
It does. The soul of a computer is its software which has come from the mind of its creators
So if software can replicate the "soul" (whatever that is, you still haven't defined it?), you agree there's no problem in replicating intelligence in computers?
What happens if I implement software in hardware? Conversely, what if I emulate hardware in software? This doesn't seem a useful definition, as it means there is no well defined distinction between what's a "soul", and what's the "brain". (I would go further and point out that's because no such distinction between the two exists.)
The ONLY reason that software cannot be transmitted faster than the speed of light, is that software must be impressed on a physical carrier which is limited to the speed of light. Software or information in themselves have no such limitation.
Information can't be transmitted faster than the speed of light. That's special relativity, which applies also to physical objects.
Claiming that you're talking about some other concept of "information" that is not subject to these laws, but that for information to ever be used, it must be "impressed on a physical carrier" which is subject to these laws, sounds like meaningless word games. You could make the same claim about physical objects ("a spaceship isn't subject to physical laws, it's just that when it moves, it must be impressed on a physical carrier"...)
The role of a soul in the development of A.I. is certainly an interesting question... as it supposes that there is something more to intelligence than simply the assembly of raw pieces and parts that make up the hardware.
They way in which raw pieces are put together is certainly important, but that doesn't mean there is a requirement for anything supernatural.
Certainly there seems to be a fine point that you can define something as "alive" and when it is "dead".
"Living" is not quite the same thing as the idea of sentience or intelligence - I mean, plants and bacteria are alive, but I don't think anyone would say they are intelligent or sentient.
I advance that in the process of really finding out how the mind works and what can create a genuine intelligence, that some basic building block will be discovered that will ultimately be called a "soul" at least in terms of what makes the thing work.
So what is a "soul" anyway? Do animals have souls? What about plants or bacteria? When does a soul "enter" a person - if it's at conception, what about identical twins?
Unless you have a well-defined meaning of "soul", the whole concept is meaningless. You can't come along after science has discovered the root of sentience, and go "Aha, that's what we meant by a soul!" and claim you were right all along!
By that reasoning, I'm going to claim that cancer can be cured by something that will ultimately be called a "flibble", and when cancer is cured, I'll claim I was right all along...
When we finally figure this out, the ancient philosophers (including Jesus of Nazareth, Paul of Tarsus, and the others mentioned in the New Testament and elsewhere) may end up being proven correct in principle but off as to the fine detailed points. Certainly I wouldn't consider the New Testament to be a scientific roadmap when it wasn't written to be one.
Okay, what philosophies of theirs will turn out to be right? I want details such as falsifiable predictions, not undefined terms like "souls".
Still, the idea that there could be something that would be labeled a soul in a clinical sense when organizing and creating artificially intelligent machines is something that may have some value for objective discussions.
For it to be objective, the first thing we need is a definition of "soul" (that isn't a meaningless circular definition such as "the thing which causes intelligence").
I thought with the departure of Jacqui smith, this diabolical scheme was being abolished?
Sadly that was Government spin. The "not compulsory" simply means that they're not currently planned to be mandatory for everyone, however, they will still be mandatory for a range of people, in particular anyone wanting a driving licence or passport. I.e., soon you will no longer be able to get a passport on its own, you'll have to get one combined with the ID card, with all that entails such as the massively increased cost (over £120 including processing fees), and your fingerprints and other details going on the national identity register database.
So, that is a problem with central information systems, it has nothing to do with ID or cards.
Yes, that is exactly the point - note that no one criticising the scheme seems to have a problem with plastic cards or the concept of ID in general.
Also, I would point out that this issue is tied to the concept of ID - in that in a few years' time, it will no longer be possible to get a passport on its own (which is useful as a form of ID in general, and obviously required for travel), you'll have no choice but to sign up for the combined ID card, with all that entails.
How is a NI number a "gigantic, interlinked database that will go with the card, which will track everything I do, and be accessible by almost every public worker you can imagine."?
I also don't have to pay £60-£120 every 10 years for my NI number - I got the card sent free when I was 16, and I put it in a drawer and forget about it.
Anyway, what's all the fuss about the British National Identity Card Scheme and National Identity Register database?
Fixed that for you. The issue isn't with "ID card" in general (which can mean many different things), but with specific schemes.
Do the cards in Portugal:
* Cost £60 for a standalone card, or £120+ for a version that works as a passport? (Estimated costs including the necessary £30 processing fees for a private company to take your fingerprints etc.)
* Require taking of biometrics including fingerprints?
* Is it tied to a national database storing a range of information about everyone?
The British card seems to be a cheap piece of shit.
Indeed, although note it's far from cheap - the scheme is costing billions, and will require people to individual pay far more than any other form of ID that we already have (e.g., passports - which used to cost only about £30 a few years ago before they started converting it into the ID card. Now it's at £70, in a few years, it'll be £93 plus £30 processing fees).
In that case, prove to me that the computer doesn't have a soul?
You see, if you can make up meaningless undefined and unfalsifiable terms like "soul", I can just as easily claim that software has souls too.
Your distinction of software versus hardware doesn't really make much sense, since software can emulate any hardware. You could implement a computer and software entirely in hardware. Alternatively, you could implement on any simpler turing machine, emulating hardware in software. Software versus hardware is simply how we create computers, and doesn't really relate to the brain - the brain is a combination of what computers do in both software and hardware.
Software is not subject to the usual laws of physics, such for example gravity. Because software is not a material object, it can be transmitted at the speed of light and can be endlessly copied.
Physics can describe everything, including software. Software is information, and is certainly capable of being described by scientific laws. The fact that it can be transmitted no faster than the speed of light, for example.
Even if computer hardware could be made as complex as the human brain, it would still have to be programmed.
One part I do agree with - yes, we could have computers that have as much processing power and memory as the brain, but are not at all intelligent. We still need to understand how to implement AI.
The Bible characterizes a person as being essentially a living spirit or soul, living in a physical body. It tells us that someday, after we die physically, the software of the soul will be loaded into a new more capable body which lives forever. We have to take all this on faith at the present time, because we do not yet have access to the world that exists beyond the physical.
You mean, it's a bunch of made up hocus pocus, no one knows if it's true, in the same sense that no one knows if invisible flying spaghetti monsters live under my bed.
Yes, exactly. It's not the minority of professional criminals I care about when talking about gun laws. It's everyone else I care about - from the violent thugs who like to randomly pick a fight (but not out of any rational intent to profit, and hence there's no reason why they would illegally get hold of guns), through issues such as drunken disputes or road rage, to crimes of passion, as you say. The population can't be neatly divided up into only "innocent law abiding person who never does anything stupid or illegal" and "profession gangsters who get guns from their illegal connections".
There are perhaps some good reasons for allowing gun ownership (the most important one is defence against the state). But the idea that they make you better off against crime is rather dubious - all it means is more idiots walking around carrying guns.
Further to my earlier reply, I think another difference between software and physical products is that "bug" pretty gets used to describe anything that the software won't do, whether or not it's really a defect. This isn't the case with physical products - hell, we don't even have the word "bug" for physical products.
Consider, if I drive a car along a road, and it stops, or blows up, it's a bug. What if I drive it over a hole, or in muddy conditions, and I get stuck? Most people would say tough luck, it's a limitation of the car's capabilities. Yet when it comes to software, any situation where it breaks down, even if it's one the company never considered or tested, is a "bug".
In fact, even stupid or intentional malicious input is seen as a bug if it causes the software to misbehave. With physical products, if I take an axe to my car, they're not liable for it not working. If a thief breaks in, they're not liable (unless perhaps it's shown that it was a defect, e.g., the locks weren't working). But with software - if a hacker can exploit software with malicious input that it was never meant to handle, and where the software company never intended it to survive such an attack, it's seen as a "bug".
I think much of this is due to the fact that people see software as something that should be easy - it's only lines of code, not something that's difficult to construct like a physical product, so they think surely it should be easy to make, and fix any problems? In fact, the reverse is true.
Countless times I've seen physical products that flaws that allowed them to be easily broken, yet the assumption is always that you'd be stupid to do it. With software, the philosophy is that it should be so good that the user can't break it if they try.
Frankly, forcing Microsoft to produce a bug-free OS sounds a great idea. (They'd go bankrupt trying. How much better do you want??)
Let's imagine how it might work out, if companies were required to produce bug free software:
* Microsoft would focus on fixing bugs rather than features. At first that might sound great, but not if it means paying hundreds of pounds for each version of Windows, when there's little in the way of new features, and you're just getting bug fixes that used to be free in service packs.
* You won't be able to buy XP. Not anywhere. Unless you're lucky and find a copy on Ebay.
* If this applied to freeware too, then it would kill open source, indie and hobby programming and so on overnight. If not, then perhaps that might sound great for Linux, since it can ship without being subject to the same constraints? Except this would limit them to non-commercial distribution - so no Linux being sold on shops, let alone being shipped on netbooks, PCs etc. Linux would never have any chance of being anything more than a fringe geek OS.
For instance, in my State, contracts to purchase a car that are "AS-IS" are not legal. You can write those terms into the contract and the buyer can sign it, but if she turns around and sues you the Court won't give effect to that part of the contract.
Of course you can - I can happily sell a device that looks just like a car, with wheels, can be driven, but make it clear that this is not intended to be driven on roads. If you do so, that's your problem.
Another example, I cannot rent an apartment or house "AS-IS", I am required by law that my rentals conform to a general standard of habitability.
Housing is a very special case (for good reasons - housing is limited, and it also makes good sense to give people rights for what is their home). On top of that, it's specifically renting that is an issue.
However, if I sell a tatty old tent, or shed, or whatever else, you can't sue me because it doesn't live up to some expected measure of housing.
You can't sell food without a warranty of non-contamination or edibility
But I can damn well sell a substance that would be inedible, and it's your own fault if you eat it.
The only issue here is to do with expectation of use - are the current disclaimers enough, or would they have to go further, and state that the software should not be used at all? Is there an issue with referring to it as "software"? (Perhaps calling something a "car" implies it can be driven on the road, OTOH, one can clearly use the term if it's otherwise clear it's not intended for that purpose, e.g., a toy car.)
Yes, you can't sign or agree away rights allowed under law, but since these disclaimers aren't contracts or agreements, that's not an issue. They're disclaimers - no different to the disclaimer that says that the "car" you bought is not intended to be driven on roads. If that's allowed for physical products, why should software be held to a different standard?
The problem is that for that warranty to be effective, the parties had to agree.
Right - they don't agree, there's no warranty.
Either this clause in unenforceable because their is no agreement
Even the GPL itself points out that this does not trump what liabilities may be dictated by law. It's just making it clear that no warranty is being offered. It's not an agreement, it's for informative purposes. As you say yourself, an agreement is only needed if there is a warranty being given.
"Delicious candy may contain succulent lead, eat at own risk, non-toxicity not warrantied" would not make selling tainted food any less problematic.
Well it's all in the labelling isn't it - a court would argue that the wording still implies it's food ("candy"), it's meant to be eating ("delicious", "succulent") and that it's probably safe. Supposing instead you wrote:
"Substance that may contain lead" - if someone came along and ate it, would you be liable? I don't think so.
Products are sold for an intended purpose. If I drive a car on a road and it blows up, they're liable. If I drive it into the sea, they're not liable. If I buy a toy buggy and drive it on a road, they're not liable.
You see, the idea that software companies are held to a different standard to car companies (as the article claims) is a myth. Both are free to describe what purpose their product may be used for - it's just that for various reasons, companies are willing to sell you products to drive on the road, but very few companies are willing to sell you software that is guaranteed to work (they do exist though - if you're prepared to pay ten times the price).
Furthermore, I'm not sure your original example is correct - consider that putting "may contain nuts" is apparently enough to remove their liability should someone die from a nut allergy, whether or not the company has any clue that the product contains nuts.
If the broad "there is no warranty" messages are not enough to avoid liability, then the answer is simple: we have software licences that say "this software should not be used in any situation where any injury or loss may occur" (or perhaps, at all), or "this software may contain bugs". The point is that they'll all end up doing that, and we'll be in exactly the same situation as we are now. Obviously despite the warning, you'll still use the software - you'd still rather do the equivalent of eating a substance that may contain lead, because you're too cheap to pay the money that's needed to fund extensively tested bug-free products.
And if software companies were held to an higher standard than car companies, and not allowed to explain how their software may be used, then all that will happen is you can kiss goodbye to cheap software. Software prices will rocket, and it'll be fine for commercial software companies who can now charge loads of money. Well, assuming the industry doesn't collapse.
That's presumably why he explicitly stated free as in beer, to make it clear that the issue isn't with open source software.
I mean, if someone is selling open source software, then why should they be treated differently to closed source commercial software? (Though as the letter suggests, there are worrying grey areas - it seems unfair if a hobby developer is liable because he runs an ad on the download website.)
but newspapers and large news sites don't just publish news, they edit and check it (at least in theory).
Heh. You really believe that?
Take Slashdot, for example.
Just because there exist other sites that have bad editorial doesn't mean that the newpapers and large news sites do check their facts, or are lacking bias. Furthermore, Slashdot summaries often are updated when people point out mistakes or bias. On top of that, the edits are clearly made, so you can see that the edit was made. In the mainstream media, on the rare occasions that they do acknowledge a mistake and fix it, the edit is done so that you have no idea that an edit was ever made.
At least with the BBC you can be reasonably sure they checked their facts and tried to present it in a more or less neutral way.
The BBC News is one of the better ones. But then, they're funded by a licence fee, so wouldn't be affected by the industry going out of business anyway.
Even the BBC News have problems. Only the other week there was a story claiming "First use" of a new UK law criminalising possession of adult images. In the second paragraph of the story, it turns out that "First use" was actually the weasel worded believed to be the first use. In the last paragraph, they admit that their only source of is some woman (who was the mother of a murdered woman who was in the news calling for the law, but she is no legal expert or authority on such matters). So there was no fact checking, a reliance on a dodgy source, and presenting one person's belief as fact.
And they were wrong.
It took me, a non-journalist, to point out the mistake and get the article fixed (I provided news stories of other cases - including an earlier one from the BBC themselves. They can't even check against their own stories!)
And note that I specify BBC News specifically. Other parts of the BBC (including the radio) sometimes have programmes on news topics that are full of bias.
It's also common for the BBC to reproduce Government-spin press releases as news, without any fact checking or seeking out alternate points of view. Then there is the common trend where papers copy stories off of each other, without any fact checking. Or the plagiarism from Wikipedia, without checking if the relevant information has a reference on Wikipedia, nor citing Wikipedia as the source.
And that's before we get to the likes of the tabloids.
Talking of citations, how many times do you see a source in the news? It's extremely rare. Yet here on Slashdot, the non-journalists always give sources, often several. On the rare occasions a story appears without any sources, it's rightly criticised.
Except it was Apple who changed Itunes to lock out the Palm Pre, so for your analogy to work, I'd say it's still Apple that the issue is with, not Palm.
(I mean, by default it's obviously Apple's job with this battery issue - but if hypothetically it turned out that MS had intentionally modified Windows to drain the battery on Macs, there'd be an uproar about their action!)
IIRC, you can switch that off, and instead have a more usual homepage for new tabs.
and that it isn't tracking them for me to helpfully find other related websites.
All websites keep track of the websites you've visted - it's called a History. Do you have evidence that Chrome remembers sites, even after clearing the history or whatever?
Also, Microsoft doesn't play by the same rules Apple does, so not only is your argument is a slipery slope, it's also a strawman. Monopolies have to abide by the rules of anti-trust laws. Apple doesn't.
That's a straw man. Where did the OP say they weren't legally allowed to? As I said in my other post, you confuse legality with criticism - either that, or you're keen to make up a straw man in this thread. The issue of being a monopoly is also therefore irrelevant, and there was no straw man in the OP's post.
The point he made was that if this was seen as acceptable behaviour (i.e., they didn't get bad publicity and criticism), then other companies may follow, which would be bad. Not illegal, but bad for consumers.
Incidentally, he also never claimed that Apple were censoring the net, so that's another straw man - he clearly was talking about the possibility of MS doing so.
Their rules are made known when downloading the SDK and paying the 99$ fee.
Users have to download and SDK and pay a fee now?
It would only be a "BIG PROBLEM" (tm) if they were the only game in town. Vote with your wallet.
Yes, and this is the point I addressed with: "And yes, not buy their Iphone - and how will people know not to buy the Iphone? That's right, with stories like this."
Not everything is as black and white as being pigeon-holed into "BIG PROBLEM (tm)" and "NOT BIG PROBLEM (tm)". I could go to just about every story on Slashdot and say "But this isn't a BIG PROBLEM (tm)". What's the point?
However, reading most of the comments here, it seems like people aren't actually complaining more than trying to insinuate that Apple is acting against some ethical or legal code.
Yes, this is why no platform has any software with naughty words in it. And Microsoft are so liable for every Windows application out there.
Oh wait, they're not. The issue with it being on their store wouldn't be an issue, if they allowed the platform to use software from anywhere, like every other platform on the planet.
You are missing the point - the big problem is that Iphone can only use software that is on the app store, therefore Apple's decisions on what's allowed on the store are equivalent to Apple deciding what apps are allowed on the platform, and that is the issue. No one cares about simply not being hosted on a store.
Now sure, Apple are still free to make a locked down platform if the like. Equally, people are free to criticise Apple for doing so. And yes, not buy their Iphone - and how will people know not to buy the Iphone? That's right, with stories like this.
No, you don't get to decide what goes in my journal. But if Slashdot decide to disallow naughty words - whilst that would be their "right" - people would clearly still have the right to criticise them over that decision. No one's claiming that Apple don't have a legal right - that's a straw man. Saying "But but, they have a right" could apply to most of the stories that make Slashdot (or the news in general). Most of the time, that's not the issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Jesus Christ, who claimed to be God and proved it by rising from the dead, clearly told us ...
Well in that case, the flying spaghetti monsters under people's beds have told of their existence, and proven it with their invisibility. Or so someone said to me.
After all, just because something is untestable by science with its limitations does not necessarily mean that it doesn't exist, right?
It does. The soul of a computer is its software which has come from the mind of its creators
So if software can replicate the "soul" (whatever that is, you still haven't defined it?), you agree there's no problem in replicating intelligence in computers?
What happens if I implement software in hardware? Conversely, what if I emulate hardware in software? This doesn't seem a useful definition, as it means there is no well defined distinction between what's a "soul", and what's the "brain". (I would go further and point out that's because no such distinction between the two exists.)
The ONLY reason that software cannot be transmitted faster than the speed of light, is that software must be impressed on a physical carrier which is limited to the speed of light. Software or information in themselves have no such limitation.
Information can't be transmitted faster than the speed of light. That's special relativity, which applies also to physical objects.
Claiming that you're talking about some other concept of "information" that is not subject to these laws, but that for information to ever be used, it must be "impressed on a physical carrier" which is subject to these laws, sounds like meaningless word games. You could make the same claim about physical objects ("a spaceship isn't subject to physical laws, it's just that when it moves, it must be impressed on a physical carrier"...)
The role of a soul in the development of A.I. is certainly an interesting question... as it supposes that there is something more to intelligence than simply the assembly of raw pieces and parts that make up the hardware.
They way in which raw pieces are put together is certainly important, but that doesn't mean there is a requirement for anything supernatural.
Certainly there seems to be a fine point that you can define something as "alive" and when it is "dead".
"Living" is not quite the same thing as the idea of sentience or intelligence - I mean, plants and bacteria are alive, but I don't think anyone would say they are intelligent or sentient.
I advance that in the process of really finding out how the mind works and what can create a genuine intelligence, that some basic building block will be discovered that will ultimately be called a "soul" at least in terms of what makes the thing work.
So what is a "soul" anyway? Do animals have souls? What about plants or bacteria? When does a soul "enter" a person - if it's at conception, what about identical twins?
Unless you have a well-defined meaning of "soul", the whole concept is meaningless. You can't come along after science has discovered the root of sentience, and go "Aha, that's what we meant by a soul!" and claim you were right all along!
By that reasoning, I'm going to claim that cancer can be cured by something that will ultimately be called a "flibble", and when cancer is cured, I'll claim I was right all along...
When we finally figure this out, the ancient philosophers (including Jesus of Nazareth, Paul of Tarsus, and the others mentioned in the New Testament and elsewhere) may end up being proven correct in principle but off as to the fine detailed points. Certainly I wouldn't consider the New Testament to be a scientific roadmap when it wasn't written to be one.
Okay, what philosophies of theirs will turn out to be right? I want details such as falsifiable predictions, not undefined terms like "souls".
Still, the idea that there could be something that would be labeled a soul in a clinical sense when organizing and creating artificially intelligent machines is something that may have some value for objective discussions.
For it to be objective, the first thing we need is a definition of "soul" (that isn't a meaningless circular definition such as "the thing which causes intelligence").
I thought with the departure of Jacqui smith, this diabolical scheme was being abolished?
Sadly that was Government spin. The "not compulsory" simply means that they're not currently planned to be mandatory for everyone, however, they will still be mandatory for a range of people, in particular anyone wanting a driving licence or passport. I.e., soon you will no longer be able to get a passport on its own, you'll have to get one combined with the ID card, with all that entails such as the massively increased cost (over £120 including processing fees), and your fingerprints and other details going on the national identity register database.
In fact, despite the alleged climbdown, only recently did MPs approve the £1000 fines for failing to notify the authorities of a change in details.
Don't be misled - ID cards are still going forward.
So, that is a problem with central information systems, it has nothing to do with ID or cards.
Yes, that is exactly the point - note that no one criticising the scheme seems to have a problem with plastic cards or the concept of ID in general.
Also, I would point out that this issue is tied to the concept of ID - in that in a few years' time, it will no longer be possible to get a passport on its own (which is useful as a form of ID in general, and obviously required for travel), you'll have no choice but to sign up for the combined ID card, with all that entails.
How is a NI number a "gigantic, interlinked database that will go with the card, which will track everything I do, and be accessible by almost every public worker you can imagine."?
I also don't have to pay £60-£120 every 10 years for my NI number - I got the card sent free when I was 16, and I put it in a drawer and forget about it.
Anyway, what's all the fuss about the British National Identity Card Scheme and National Identity Register database?
Fixed that for you. The issue isn't with "ID card" in general (which can mean many different things), but with specific schemes.
Do the cards in Portugal:
* Cost £60 for a standalone card, or £120+ for a version that works as a passport? (Estimated costs including the necessary £30 processing fees for a private company to take your fingerprints etc.)
* Require taking of biometrics including fingerprints?
* Is it tied to a national database storing a range of information about everyone?
* Include £1000 fines for failing to notify the Government of a change of personal details such as name, address, gender, or for failing to report a lost or damaged card (e.g., see http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/06/id-cards-legislation-fines-tories , http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1537752/1000-fine-for-failing-to-update-identity-cards.html , http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7742619.stm )?
The British card seems to be a cheap piece of shit.
Indeed, although note it's far from cheap - the scheme is costing billions, and will require people to individual pay far more than any other form of ID that we already have (e.g., passports - which used to cost only about £30 a few years ago before they started converting it into the ID card. Now it's at £70, in a few years, it'll be £93 plus £30 processing fees).
In that case, prove to me that the computer doesn't have a soul?
You see, if you can make up meaningless undefined and unfalsifiable terms like "soul", I can just as easily claim that software has souls too.
Your distinction of software versus hardware doesn't really make much sense, since software can emulate any hardware. You could implement a computer and software entirely in hardware. Alternatively, you could implement on any simpler turing machine, emulating hardware in software. Software versus hardware is simply how we create computers, and doesn't really relate to the brain - the brain is a combination of what computers do in both software and hardware.
Software is not subject to the usual laws of physics, such for example gravity. Because software is not a material object, it can be transmitted at the speed of light and can be endlessly copied.
Physics can describe everything, including software. Software is information, and is certainly capable of being described by scientific laws. The fact that it can be transmitted no faster than the speed of light, for example.
Even if computer hardware could be made as complex as the human brain, it would still have to be programmed.
One part I do agree with - yes, we could have computers that have as much processing power and memory as the brain, but are not at all intelligent. We still need to understand how to implement AI.
The Bible characterizes a person as being essentially a living spirit or soul, living in a physical body. It tells us that someday, after we die physically, the software of the soul will be loaded into a new more capable body which lives forever. We have to take all this on faith at the present time, because we do not yet have access to the world that exists beyond the physical.
You mean, it's a bunch of made up hocus pocus, no one knows if it's true, in the same sense that no one knows if invisible flying spaghetti monsters live under my bed.
Yes, exactly. It's not the minority of professional criminals I care about when talking about gun laws. It's everyone else I care about - from the violent thugs who like to randomly pick a fight (but not out of any rational intent to profit, and hence there's no reason why they would illegally get hold of guns), through issues such as drunken disputes or road rage, to crimes of passion, as you say. The population can't be neatly divided up into only "innocent law abiding person who never does anything stupid or illegal" and "profession gangsters who get guns from their illegal connections".
There are perhaps some good reasons for allowing gun ownership (the most important one is defence against the state). But the idea that they make you better off against crime is rather dubious - all it means is more idiots walking around carrying guns.
Yeah, it all started when they brought in laws that meant that only criminals can have nuclear weapons. A mad law. It's a slippery slope, I tell you.
Further to my earlier reply, I think another difference between software and physical products is that "bug" pretty gets used to describe anything that the software won't do, whether or not it's really a defect. This isn't the case with physical products - hell, we don't even have the word "bug" for physical products.
Consider, if I drive a car along a road, and it stops, or blows up, it's a bug. What if I drive it over a hole, or in muddy conditions, and I get stuck? Most people would say tough luck, it's a limitation of the car's capabilities. Yet when it comes to software, any situation where it breaks down, even if it's one the company never considered or tested, is a "bug".
In fact, even stupid or intentional malicious input is seen as a bug if it causes the software to misbehave. With physical products, if I take an axe to my car, they're not liable for it not working. If a thief breaks in, they're not liable (unless perhaps it's shown that it was a defect, e.g., the locks weren't working). But with software - if a hacker can exploit software with malicious input that it was never meant to handle, and where the software company never intended it to survive such an attack, it's seen as a "bug".
I think much of this is due to the fact that people see software as something that should be easy - it's only lines of code, not something that's difficult to construct like a physical product, so they think surely it should be easy to make, and fix any problems? In fact, the reverse is true.
Countless times I've seen physical products that flaws that allowed them to be easily broken, yet the assumption is always that you'd be stupid to do it. With software, the philosophy is that it should be so good that the user can't break it if they try.
Frankly, forcing Microsoft to produce a bug-free OS sounds a great idea. (They'd go bankrupt trying. How much better do you want??)
Let's imagine how it might work out, if companies were required to produce bug free software:
* Microsoft would focus on fixing bugs rather than features. At first that might sound great, but not if it means paying hundreds of pounds for each version of Windows, when there's little in the way of new features, and you're just getting bug fixes that used to be free in service packs.
* You won't be able to buy XP. Not anywhere. Unless you're lucky and find a copy on Ebay.
* If this applied to freeware too, then it would kill open source, indie and hobby programming and so on overnight. If not, then perhaps that might sound great for Linux, since it can ship without being subject to the same constraints? Except this would limit them to non-commercial distribution - so no Linux being sold on shops, let alone being shipped on netbooks, PCs etc. Linux would never have any chance of being anything more than a fringe geek OS.
Doesn't compile. Prepare to be sued!
For instance, in my State, contracts to purchase a car that are "AS-IS" are not legal. You can write those terms into the contract and the buyer can sign it, but if she turns around and sues you the Court won't give effect to that part of the contract.
Of course you can - I can happily sell a device that looks just like a car, with wheels, can be driven, but make it clear that this is not intended to be driven on roads. If you do so, that's your problem.
Another example, I cannot rent an apartment or house "AS-IS", I am required by law that my rentals conform to a general standard of habitability.
Housing is a very special case (for good reasons - housing is limited, and it also makes good sense to give people rights for what is their home). On top of that, it's specifically renting that is an issue.
However, if I sell a tatty old tent, or shed, or whatever else, you can't sue me because it doesn't live up to some expected measure of housing.
You can't sell food without a warranty of non-contamination or edibility
But I can damn well sell a substance that would be inedible, and it's your own fault if you eat it.
The only issue here is to do with expectation of use - are the current disclaimers enough, or would they have to go further, and state that the software should not be used at all? Is there an issue with referring to it as "software"? (Perhaps calling something a "car" implies it can be driven on the road, OTOH, one can clearly use the term if it's otherwise clear it's not intended for that purpose, e.g., a toy car.)
Yes, you can't sign or agree away rights allowed under law, but since these disclaimers aren't contracts or agreements, that's not an issue. They're disclaimers - no different to the disclaimer that says that the "car" you bought is not intended to be driven on roads. If that's allowed for physical products, why should software be held to a different standard?
The problem is that for that warranty to be effective, the parties had to agree.
Right - they don't agree, there's no warranty.
Either this clause in unenforceable because their is no agreement
Even the GPL itself points out that this does not trump what liabilities may be dictated by law. It's just making it clear that no warranty is being offered. It's not an agreement, it's for informative purposes. As you say yourself, an agreement is only needed if there is a warranty being given.
"Delicious candy may contain succulent lead, eat at own risk, non-toxicity not warrantied" would not make selling tainted food any less problematic.
Well it's all in the labelling isn't it - a court would argue that the wording still implies it's food ("candy"), it's meant to be eating ("delicious", "succulent") and that it's probably safe. Supposing instead you wrote:
"Substance that may contain lead" - if someone came along and ate it, would you be liable? I don't think so.
Products are sold for an intended purpose. If I drive a car on a road and it blows up, they're liable. If I drive it into the sea, they're not liable. If I buy a toy buggy and drive it on a road, they're not liable.
You see, the idea that software companies are held to a different standard to car companies (as the article claims) is a myth. Both are free to describe what purpose their product may be used for - it's just that for various reasons, companies are willing to sell you products to drive on the road, but very few companies are willing to sell you software that is guaranteed to work (they do exist though - if you're prepared to pay ten times the price).
Furthermore, I'm not sure your original example is correct - consider that putting "may contain nuts" is apparently enough to remove their liability should someone die from a nut allergy, whether or not the company has any clue that the product contains nuts.
If the broad "there is no warranty" messages are not enough to avoid liability, then the answer is simple: we have software licences that say "this software should not be used in any situation where any injury or loss may occur" (or perhaps, at all), or "this software may contain bugs". The point is that they'll all end up doing that, and we'll be in exactly the same situation as we are now. Obviously despite the warning, you'll still use the software - you'd still rather do the equivalent of eating a substance that may contain lead, because you're too cheap to pay the money that's needed to fund extensively tested bug-free products.
And if software companies were held to an higher standard than car companies, and not allowed to explain how their software may be used, then all that will happen is you can kiss goodbye to cheap software. Software prices will rocket, and it'll be fine for commercial software companies who can now charge loads of money. Well, assuming the industry doesn't collapse.
That's presumably why he explicitly stated free as in beer, to make it clear that the issue isn't with open source software.
I mean, if someone is selling open source software, then why should they be treated differently to closed source commercial software? (Though as the letter suggests, there are worrying grey areas - it seems unfair if a hobby developer is liable because he runs an ad on the download website.)
but newspapers and large news sites don't just publish news, they edit and check it (at least in theory).
Heh. You really believe that?
Take Slashdot, for example.
Just because there exist other sites that have bad editorial doesn't mean that the newpapers and large news sites do check their facts, or are lacking bias. Furthermore, Slashdot summaries often are updated when people point out mistakes or bias. On top of that, the edits are clearly made, so you can see that the edit was made. In the mainstream media, on the rare occasions that they do acknowledge a mistake and fix it, the edit is done so that you have no idea that an edit was ever made.
At least with the BBC you can be reasonably sure they checked their facts and tried to present it in a more or less neutral way.
The BBC News is one of the better ones. But then, they're funded by a licence fee, so wouldn't be affected by the industry going out of business anyway.
Even the BBC News have problems. Only the other week there was a story claiming "First use" of a new UK law criminalising possession of adult images. In the second paragraph of the story, it turns out that "First use" was actually the weasel worded believed to be the first use. In the last paragraph, they admit that their only source of is some woman (who was the mother of a murdered woman who was in the news calling for the law, but she is no legal expert or authority on such matters). So there was no fact checking, a reliance on a dodgy source, and presenting one person's belief as fact.
And they were wrong.
It took me, a non-journalist, to point out the mistake and get the article fixed (I provided news stories of other cases - including an earlier one from the BBC themselves. They can't even check against their own stories!)
And note that I specify BBC News specifically. Other parts of the BBC (including the radio) sometimes have programmes on news topics that are full of bias.
It's also common for the BBC to reproduce Government-spin press releases as news, without any fact checking or seeking out alternate points of view. Then there is the common trend where papers copy stories off of each other, without any fact checking. Or the plagiarism from Wikipedia, without checking if the relevant information has a reference on Wikipedia, nor citing Wikipedia as the source.
And that's before we get to the likes of the tabloids.
Talking of citations, how many times do you see a source in the news? It's extremely rare. Yet here on Slashdot, the non-journalists always give sources, often several. On the rare occasions a story appears without any sources, it's rightly criticised.
Ahhh, the power of It Just Works.
It "just works", except if you want to use a dictionary (or develop an application)? I wouldn't call that working. "Works, Only Just" maybe.
Except it was Apple who changed Itunes to lock out the Palm Pre, so for your analogy to work, I'd say it's still Apple that the issue is with, not Palm.
(I mean, by default it's obviously Apple's job with this battery issue - but if hypothetically it turned out that MS had intentionally modified Windows to drain the battery on Macs, there'd be an uproar about their action!)
IIRC, you can switch that off, and instead have a more usual homepage for new tabs.
and that it isn't tracking them for me to helpfully find other related websites.
All websites keep track of the websites you've visted - it's called a History. Do you have evidence that Chrome remembers sites, even after clearing the history or whatever?
Also, Microsoft doesn't play by the same rules Apple does, so not only is your argument is a slipery slope, it's also a strawman. Monopolies have to abide by the rules of anti-trust laws. Apple doesn't.
That's a straw man. Where did the OP say they weren't legally allowed to? As I said in my other post, you confuse legality with criticism - either that, or you're keen to make up a straw man in this thread. The issue of being a monopoly is also therefore irrelevant, and there was no straw man in the OP's post.
The point he made was that if this was seen as acceptable behaviour (i.e., they didn't get bad publicity and criticism), then other companies may follow, which would be bad. Not illegal, but bad for consumers.
Incidentally, he also never claimed that Apple were censoring the net, so that's another straw man - he clearly was talking about the possibility of MS doing so.
Their rules are made known when downloading the SDK and paying the 99$ fee.
Users have to download and SDK and pay a fee now?
It would only be a "BIG PROBLEM" (tm) if they were the only game in town. Vote with your wallet.
Yes, and this is the point I addressed with: "And yes, not buy their Iphone - and how will people know not to buy the Iphone? That's right, with stories like this."
Not everything is as black and white as being pigeon-holed into "BIG PROBLEM (tm)" and "NOT BIG PROBLEM (tm)". I could go to just about every story on Slashdot and say "But this isn't a BIG PROBLEM (tm)". What's the point?
However, reading most of the comments here, it seems like people aren't actually complaining more than trying to insinuate that Apple is acting against some ethical or legal code.
Okay, link to some.
Yes, this is why no platform has any software with naughty words in it. And Microsoft are so liable for every Windows application out there.
Oh wait, they're not. The issue with it being on their store wouldn't be an issue, if they allowed the platform to use software from anywhere, like every other platform on the planet.
You are missing the point - the big problem is that Iphone can only use software that is on the app store, therefore Apple's decisions on what's allowed on the store are equivalent to Apple deciding what apps are allowed on the platform, and that is the issue. No one cares about simply not being hosted on a store.
Now sure, Apple are still free to make a locked down platform if the like. Equally, people are free to criticise Apple for doing so. And yes, not buy their Iphone - and how will people know not to buy the Iphone? That's right, with stories like this.
No, you don't get to decide what goes in my journal. But if Slashdot decide to disallow naughty words - whilst that would be their "right" - people would clearly still have the right to criticise them over that decision. No one's claiming that Apple don't have a legal right - that's a straw man. Saying "But but, they have a right" could apply to most of the stories that make Slashdot (or the news in general). Most of the time, that's not the issue.
Yes, this is why every other platform also doesn't allow dictionaries without any naughty words. It must be the fear of litigation.