Why would you put that on that national news so everyone can see who is reponsible?;)
Me, I'd be crawling into a box and hiding, not giving comments about it to the media.
(Seriously though, he'll still have to mention Avsim on his CV, unless he wants to explain a 13 year gap in his life - he'll just have to hope that there isn't too much publicity about his company and what's happened.)
I see the pro-Apple censorship moderation is back on form - heaven forbid you ask an honest question! The fact that honest debate is modden down rather than answered doesn't exactly make their point of view look very robust...
The difference is that people don't run around screaming that those kids are magically immune to any disease, or that no disease could ever harm them. Companies don't claim that no disease affects their child, whilst other children do get diseases. We acknowledge that those illnesses are a risk.
Right, fair enough, in which case we're back to the obvious point that no one's bothered to exploit it due to a lack of users. It's not because OS X is free of risks, because we both agree there are vulnerabilities.
It doesn't matter, they're still harder to find due to being less common. You're also assuming that a hacker can take over 100% of machines he finds, which is unreasonable. It's not like they just round up the machines, they have to get their malware spread to machines - firstly it's easier to spread viruses with a vastly more common platform, secondly, you have much better penetration. Supposing I am only able to take over 1% of machines I attempt it on - suddenly having to find all those Macs seems a lot more work.
but the fact that (as you say) there aren't a proportionate amount to the size of the userbase does seem to imply decent security.
Not at all, that's a non-sequitur. Why are you assuming there would be a linear relationship between users and exploits?
If anything I would think it highly likely to be non-linear - if the vast majority of virus writers prefer to target the most popular platform (which does not seem unreasonable), then that means they choose Windows. That's true whether Windows's market share is 80%, 90%, or 99%, you could still end up with almost all viruses being written for it.
Nice try, but those sites are torrent search engines, and not hosting copyrighted material. And before you reply - whether you think that distinction matters is irrelevant, the point is that this is a difference that people evidently do feel is important, therefore there is no inconsistency in their views.
Even if some of those torrents were for binary only GPL software, I doubt that people would suddenly change their views and demand for TPB to be shut down and people thrown in prison. Your claims of double standards are unsupported by any evidence.
Why not debate what people are actually saying, rather than making up straw men?
By "much closer", you concede "not actually the same thing".
han, for example, the right to sell pornography is to petitioning the government for redress of grievances
Similarly, one might claim that buses are much closer to cars, than rhinoceroses are to bananas. But no one would claim cars and buses are the same thing, and whether making an analogy between them is fair or relevant depends on what's being compared.
Indeed, had the 10 Commandments been a "living and breathing document", the "Thou shall not copy thy neighbor's work without permission" would've been found in there long ago.
Leaving aside the authority or relevance of a document that occupies itself mainly with religious instructions such as "Thou shalt not worship other mythical beings", by "would've been found in there", you concede "it wasn't in there". Why was that, do you think? "If it was updated, it would've including this which wasn't in there to start with," you assert - even if that hypothetical scenario was true, how does that make copying and stealing the same thing?
Are stealing and adultery the same thing too, since they're also both in the Ten Commandments? What about worshipping other gods?
FWIW, I do believe there should be some kind of copyright law, but these kind of arguments are ridiculous, and do more harm to the argument than good in my opinion.
This is irrelevant to the principle, and you know it.
How is it irrelevant to claims about copyright infringement? Aren't you aware of the "home taping" claims that were made?
Fair enough - though I'm not sure if there are many people, if any, who claim it would be sufficient to have only Wikipedia and no other books. It smells like a straw man, or at best criticising a weak rarely held viewpoint...
There is more than one person on Slashdot, perhaps they have different views?
The call for legal action on the GPL apply to commercial companies, or in some cases perhaps to derivative works being distributed. I'm sure that if a commercial company was pirating, people wouldn't have much sympathy here.
But if a random person is giving someone a binary of a GPL program without offering them the source, even though it violates the law, I doubt many people here will care.
I realize that the Wikipedia is very cool and much better than my books in many ways, but I don't think we're ready for it to be the only source of information.
No one claims Wikipedia should be the only source of information - in fact, Wikipedia explicitly disallows original research, and instead is meant to reference other sources. Even if you offered your "synthesized information" to Wikipedia for free, it most likely wouldn't be the appropriate place to put it (just as with any encyclopedia).
I'm not sure what your concern is with Wikipedia, as you seem to be repeating this point? I don't see how it's related to the issue of piracy for your book. If you mean that only free material will remain - well yes, it would be bad, not because free material is of poorer quality, but simply because of less material being available. Whether downloading copyrighted material results in less material being produced is of course a matter of much debate here on Slashdot.
But my point is, imagine a commercial software developer asking Slashdot about piracy, and then dropping a comment about "Imagine if we all had to rely on Linux!"? Yes, I think that commercial material is very important too (after all, I use Windows myself), but this comment doesn't come across well, and just reads as an insult to free information.
But at the same time, he sneaked in an irrelevant jab at Wikipedia... so that'll make him popular here what with all the "but you couldn't possibly trust Wikipedia in the slightest" hate here;)
Heaven forbid, how will we survive without people like him to synthesise knowledge.
(Wikipedia is a tertiary source that references other sources, and explicitly disallows original research, so it complements rather than replaces other sources, anyway.)
Re:Will they ever be truly give-away items?
on
Flash Drive Roundup
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· Score: 1
Thanks for the info - I was aware of such things, though I've always found such filesystems to be rather unreliable, leaving me with unreadable discs, or just crashing (come to that, I've found CD RWs in general to be a bit unreliable). Maybe things have improved since I last tried a few years ago, but I'm glad that a combination of wireless, the Internet and flash drives means I no longer have to worry about it:)
Re:Will they ever be truly give-away items?
on
Flash Drive Roundup
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· Score: 1
Yes - it's interesting that the floppy drive was never replaced entirely by one single item (which partly explains why it hung around for so long). I'd happily give away a CD/DVD, but the writing process is still a bit more of a pain than it was for floppies (well, on platforms like the Amiga at least, unlike PCs which always seemed to freeze everything else as soon as you wrote to a disk...), with no rewrite ability (unless you have a more expensive RW disc, and even then you can only reformat and start from scratch). Flash drives are more convenient, but as you say not quite at the stage where you could happily give them away - even though prices per GB will always fall, I suspect that their minimum price will always be above what floppy disks used to cost.
It's probably the wide availability of the Internet, and home wireless connections, that have replaced floppies in terms of quickly transferring files to someone.
They are close to the perfect method for distribution of free computer programs/art/etc. Who needs AOL discs anymore!
Although prices may be cheap, it's unclear you will be able to get them to the order of a few pence, comparable to CDs and DVDs. Flash drives are useful because you can easily rewrite to them of course, but I'm not sure they will outdo CDs or DVDs for distribution anytime soon.
And what makes you think that they aren't lobbying for those things too? I would have thought it pretty obvious that people with those views are also in favour of legalised prostitution. What's more, this whole thread was started with someone having a debate on the legality on prostitution, not whether craigslist should have these ads.
Let's take another look at plague3106's post that you first replied to:
Instead of blasting CL for allowing the ads, they should be rethinking the law making the ads illegal in the first place. It's not like legalizing this would lead to the collapse of society
Now that, to me, sounds like someone suggesting we should legalise prostitution, rather than calling for craigslist to allow illegal services. So nevermind "You missed my point", you missed the entire argument.
Anyhow, the argument of "it shouldn't be allowed because it's illegal" is a weak and circular one. Yes, of course it would be better if the law was changed, but until that happens, that doesn't mean that people should be obedient to an unjust law.
Also, the Craigslist section is not just prostitution, but covers legal erotic services too (they're replacing it with a new category that will allow them to keep the legal services).
So because they exist, we should have ads for Chinese brothels in glossy magazines? On TV?
If it's non-abusive between consenting adults, sure (well, where the ads are allowed is another debate - I'm not saying they have to be shown on TV primetime before the watershed, just that it shouldn't be criminalised). If it's abuse, then no, just like any other known rapist who was advertising on a site.
I don't really believe in anything so simplistic
There is nothing simplistic about not locking people up for consensual acts - that state of affairs should be the default. What is simplistic is the idea that we can blame society's ills on simple things like drugs or prostitution, and that having laws against them will magically make everything better.
A long list of things that are not prostitution, but other things - I could make the same list of abuses for cases that don't involve money, but that doesn't mean all sex should be criminalised.
The problem I have is not with prostitution per se
Right, so we are in agreement - there is no need to suggest that anyone is in favour of rape, slavery or other violence.
but with half-assed attempts to decriminalize prostitution that contribute to making the situation worse.
Sure, I agree we shouldn't have half-assed attempts. Let's legalise it properly.
But until prostitution is really and honestly legalized, for Craigslist to allow posting of prostitution ads now is to support the sex trade as it exists right now, and I can't say I'm really for that.
Unless you can cite cases where Craigslist has directly led to such abuse, this is unfounded and illogical. You might as well say "As long as Craigslist allows personal ads, it's supporting sex as it exists right now - including all the rape, abuse and broken relationships, and I can't say I'm really for that". It's a nonsense argument. Even if a rapist was found to be using a personal ads site, we clearly wouldn't say that all personal ads are bad, or that the site supported rape, unless you had evidence that they knew and supported the rapist. To suggest otherwise is a libellous allegation.
That's because we were already happily using Opera long before it became trendy to switch from IE.
(I really don't get the Opera-hate here on Slashdot - so much for a community that allegedly is supposed to embrace alternative non-Microsoft products. And don't give me the "not open source" whine, if that really mattered, then OS X wouldn't be praised like it is here.)
Anyhow, the usage share of Opera on the desktop is comparable to that of Linux on the desktop - so I guess you'll be telling Linux users to go back to their corner too, right?
OOI, do you think that Ceres, all the other spherical KBOs and so on, should be planets too?
I don't think there's anything wrong with such a definition - we have hundreds of moons, some only about a kilometer in diameter, so why not for planets too? But what was inconsistent, and needed to be fixed, was having Pluto a planet, whilst everything else of similar (or even larger) size was not a planet.
Aside from being an unfounded accusation, it wouldn't really make sense anyway. Intel still have European offices, employ Europeans, have European shareholders, and are very much a part of the economy. So if this really was some money-making scheme on the part of the Government, why not fine European companies too (as in fact they do)? Or if they were worried about the affect on European companies, then they'd surely share that concern over Intel too.
I don't think the point is that it's wrong, more the hypocrisy of Disney: they make use of the works of other people who are long dead, but they want the work that the company owns - including derivative works that they created out of other people's works - to remain in copyright indefinitely. Even though Mickey Mouse was also created by people who are presumably dead now.
Imagine if all the authors of those fairy tales had lobbied the Governments to extend copyrights indefinitely? None of those Disney stories would have been possible.
Eh? Nice straw man. I suspect that people concerned over street view most certainly are worried about the police too.
It might be fair to criticise the Greece Government if they allow their police to photograph everyone - however I don't know what things are like over there.
preventing you from videotaping
Well at least that's consistent. What's inconsistent is places like the UK where we have CCTV and police filming us ("no expectation of privacy in a public place"), but where people get arrested or deterred for filming police officers or even buildings (I guess buildings have more rights than people in a public place?)
google streetview of a public area
Yes, just as the police filming would be in public too; there's no need to emphasise that point just for Google.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would you put that on that national news so everyone can see who is reponsible? ;)
Me, I'd be crawling into a box and hiding, not giving comments about it to the media.
(Seriously though, he'll still have to mention Avsim on his CV, unless he wants to explain a 13 year gap in his life - he'll just have to hope that there isn't too much publicity about his company and what's happened.)
I see the pro-Apple censorship moderation is back on form - heaven forbid you ask an honest question! The fact that honest debate is modden down rather than answered doesn't exactly make their point of view look very robust...
The difference is that people don't run around screaming that those kids are magically immune to any disease, or that no disease could ever harm them. Companies don't claim that no disease affects their child, whilst other children do get diseases. We acknowledge that those illnesses are a risk.
Right, fair enough, in which case we're back to the obvious point that no one's bothered to exploit it due to a lack of users. It's not because OS X is free of risks, because we both agree there are vulnerabilities.
It doesn't matter, they're still harder to find due to being less common. You're also assuming that a hacker can take over 100% of machines he finds, which is unreasonable. It's not like they just round up the machines, they have to get their malware spread to machines - firstly it's easier to spread viruses with a vastly more common platform, secondly, you have much better penetration. Supposing I am only able to take over 1% of machines I attempt it on - suddenly having to find all those Macs seems a lot more work.
Honest question, why are Apple releasing security updates if there are no security exploits in their software?
but the fact that (as you say) there aren't a proportionate amount to the size of the userbase does seem to imply decent security.
Not at all, that's a non-sequitur. Why are you assuming there would be a linear relationship between users and exploits?
If anything I would think it highly likely to be non-linear - if the vast majority of virus writers prefer to target the most popular platform (which does not seem unreasonable), then that means they choose Windows. That's true whether Windows's market share is 80%, 90%, or 99%, you could still end up with almost all viruses being written for it.
Nice try, but those sites are torrent search engines, and not hosting copyrighted material. And before you reply - whether you think that distinction matters is irrelevant, the point is that this is a difference that people evidently do feel is important, therefore there is no inconsistency in their views.
Even if some of those torrents were for binary only GPL software, I doubt that people would suddenly change their views and demand for TPB to be shut down and people thrown in prison. Your claims of double standards are unsupported by any evidence.
Why not debate what people are actually saying, rather than making up straw men?
It is much closer to stealing
By "much closer", you concede "not actually the same thing".
han, for example, the right to sell pornography is to petitioning the government for redress of grievances
Similarly, one might claim that buses are much closer to cars, than rhinoceroses are to bananas. But no one would claim cars and buses are the same thing, and whether making an analogy between them is fair or relevant depends on what's being compared.
Indeed, had the 10 Commandments been a "living and breathing document", the "Thou shall not copy thy neighbor's work without permission" would've been found in there long ago.
Leaving aside the authority or relevance of a document that occupies itself mainly with religious instructions such as "Thou shalt not worship other mythical beings", by "would've been found in there", you concede "it wasn't in there". Why was that, do you think? "If it was updated, it would've including this which wasn't in there to start with," you assert - even if that hypothetical scenario was true, how does that make copying and stealing the same thing?
Are stealing and adultery the same thing too, since they're also both in the Ten Commandments? What about worshipping other gods?
FWIW, I do believe there should be some kind of copyright law, but these kind of arguments are ridiculous, and do more harm to the argument than good in my opinion.
This is irrelevant to the principle, and you know it.
How is it irrelevant to claims about copyright infringement? Aren't you aware of the "home taping" claims that were made?
Fair enough - though I'm not sure if there are many people, if any, who claim it would be sufficient to have only Wikipedia and no other books. It smells like a straw man, or at best criticising a weak rarely held viewpoint...
I'm waiting for the "Imaginary property is stealing" memes - didn't you know that home photocopying is killing the book industry?
There is more than one person on Slashdot, perhaps they have different views?
The call for legal action on the GPL apply to commercial companies, or in some cases perhaps to derivative works being distributed. I'm sure that if a commercial company was pirating, people wouldn't have much sympathy here.
But if a random person is giving someone a binary of a GPL program without offering them the source, even though it violates the law, I doubt many people here will care.
I realize that the Wikipedia is very cool and much better than my books in many ways, but I don't think we're ready for it to be the only source of information.
No one claims Wikipedia should be the only source of information - in fact, Wikipedia explicitly disallows original research, and instead is meant to reference other sources. Even if you offered your "synthesized information" to Wikipedia for free, it most likely wouldn't be the appropriate place to put it (just as with any encyclopedia).
I'm not sure what your concern is with Wikipedia, as you seem to be repeating this point? I don't see how it's related to the issue of piracy for your book. If you mean that only free material will remain - well yes, it would be bad, not because free material is of poorer quality, but simply because of less material being available. Whether downloading copyrighted material results in less material being produced is of course a matter of much debate here on Slashdot.
But my point is, imagine a commercial software developer asking Slashdot about piracy, and then dropping a comment about "Imagine if we all had to rely on Linux!"? Yes, I think that commercial material is very important too (after all, I use Windows myself), but this comment doesn't come across well, and just reads as an insult to free information.
But at the same time, he sneaked in an irrelevant jab at Wikipedia ... so that'll make him popular here what with all the "but you couldn't possibly trust Wikipedia in the slightest" hate here ;)
Heaven forbid, how will we survive without people like him to synthesise knowledge.
(Wikipedia is a tertiary source that references other sources, and explicitly disallows original research, so it complements rather than replaces other sources, anyway.)
Thanks for the info - I was aware of such things, though I've always found such filesystems to be rather unreliable, leaving me with unreadable discs, or just crashing (come to that, I've found CD RWs in general to be a bit unreliable). Maybe things have improved since I last tried a few years ago, but I'm glad that a combination of wireless, the Internet and flash drives means I no longer have to worry about it :)
Yes - it's interesting that the floppy drive was never replaced entirely by one single item (which partly explains why it hung around for so long). I'd happily give away a CD/DVD, but the writing process is still a bit more of a pain than it was for floppies (well, on platforms like the Amiga at least, unlike PCs which always seemed to freeze everything else as soon as you wrote to a disk...), with no rewrite ability (unless you have a more expensive RW disc, and even then you can only reformat and start from scratch). Flash drives are more convenient, but as you say not quite at the stage where you could happily give them away - even though prices per GB will always fall, I suspect that their minimum price will always be above what floppy disks used to cost.
It's probably the wide availability of the Internet, and home wireless connections, that have replaced floppies in terms of quickly transferring files to someone.
They are close to the perfect method for distribution of free computer programs/art/etc. Who needs AOL discs anymore!
Although prices may be cheap, it's unclear you will be able to get them to the order of a few pence, comparable to CDs and DVDs. Flash drives are useful because you can easily rewrite to them of course, but I'm not sure they will outdo CDs or DVDs for distribution anytime soon.
And what makes you think that they aren't lobbying for those things too? I would have thought it pretty obvious that people with those views are also in favour of legalised prostitution. What's more, this whole thread was started with someone having a debate on the legality on prostitution, not whether craigslist should have these ads.
Let's take another look at plague3106's post that you first replied to:
Instead of blasting CL for allowing the ads, they should be rethinking the law making the ads illegal in the first place. It's not like legalizing this would lead to the collapse of society
Now that, to me, sounds like someone suggesting we should legalise prostitution, rather than calling for craigslist to allow illegal services. So nevermind "You missed my point", you missed the entire argument.
Anyhow, the argument of "it shouldn't be allowed because it's illegal" is a weak and circular one. Yes, of course it would be better if the law was changed, but until that happens, that doesn't mean that people should be obedient to an unjust law.
Also, the Craigslist section is not just prostitution, but covers legal erotic services too (they're replacing it with a new category that will allow them to keep the legal services).
So because they exist, we should have ads for Chinese brothels in glossy magazines? On TV?
If it's non-abusive between consenting adults, sure (well, where the ads are allowed is another debate - I'm not saying they have to be shown on TV primetime before the watershed, just that it shouldn't be criminalised). If it's abuse, then no, just like any other known rapist who was advertising on a site.
I don't really believe in anything so simplistic
There is nothing simplistic about not locking people up for consensual acts - that state of affairs should be the default. What is simplistic is the idea that we can blame society's ills on simple things like drugs or prostitution, and that having laws against them will magically make everything better.
A long list of things that are not prostitution, but other things - I could make the same list of abuses for cases that don't involve money, but that doesn't mean all sex should be criminalised.
The problem I have is not with prostitution per se
Right, so we are in agreement - there is no need to suggest that anyone is in favour of rape, slavery or other violence.
but with half-assed attempts to decriminalize prostitution that contribute to making the situation worse.
Sure, I agree we shouldn't have half-assed attempts. Let's legalise it properly.
But until prostitution is really and honestly legalized, for Craigslist to allow posting of prostitution ads now is to support the sex trade as it exists right now, and I can't say I'm really for that.
Unless you can cite cases where Craigslist has directly led to such abuse, this is unfounded and illogical. You might as well say "As long as Craigslist allows personal ads, it's supporting sex as it exists right now - including all the rape, abuse and broken relationships, and I can't say I'm really for that". It's a nonsense argument. Even if a rapist was found to be using a personal ads site, we clearly wouldn't say that all personal ads are bad, or that the site supported rape, unless you had evidence that they knew and supported the rapist. To suggest otherwise is a libellous allegation.
That's because we were already happily using Opera long before it became trendy to switch from IE.
(I really don't get the Opera-hate here on Slashdot - so much for a community that allegedly is supposed to embrace alternative non-Microsoft products. And don't give me the "not open source" whine, if that really mattered, then OS X wouldn't be praised like it is here.)
Anyhow, the usage share of Opera on the desktop is comparable to that of Linux on the desktop - so I guess you'll be telling Linux users to go back to their corner too, right?
OOI, do you think that Ceres, all the other spherical KBOs and so on, should be planets too?
I don't think there's anything wrong with such a definition - we have hundreds of moons, some only about a kilometer in diameter, so why not for planets too? But what was inconsistent, and needed to be fixed, was having Pluto a planet, whilst everything else of similar (or even larger) size was not a planet.
Aside from being an unfounded accusation, it wouldn't really make sense anyway. Intel still have European offices, employ Europeans, have European shareholders, and are very much a part of the economy. So if this really was some money-making scheme on the part of the Government, why not fine European companies too (as in fact they do)? Or if they were worried about the affect on European companies, then they'd surely share that concern over Intel too.
I don't think the point is that it's wrong, more the hypocrisy of Disney: they make use of the works of other people who are long dead, but they want the work that the company owns - including derivative works that they created out of other people's works - to remain in copyright indefinitely. Even though Mickey Mouse was also created by people who are presumably dead now.
Imagine if all the authors of those fairy tales had lobbied the Governments to extend copyrights indefinitely? None of those Disney stories would have been possible.
Eh? Nice straw man. I suspect that people concerned over street view most certainly are worried about the police too.
It might be fair to criticise the Greece Government if they allow their police to photograph everyone - however I don't know what things are like over there.
preventing you from videotaping
Well at least that's consistent. What's inconsistent is places like the UK where we have CCTV and police filming us ("no expectation of privacy in a public place"), but where people get arrested or deterred for filming police officers or even buildings (I guess buildings have more rights than people in a public place?)
google streetview of a public area
Yes, just as the police filming would be in public too; there's no need to emphasise that point just for Google.