If the manufacture of a certain part requires a mold
But the manufacture of a single part doesn't require a mold.
Breakfast isn't cheaper for me if I buy a new stove, refrigerator, and frying pan every morning.
But it is cheaper if you only have to make breakfast once, and then you can instantly replicate it for free from then on.
Yes, the per vehicle (or per breakfast) charge will go up, but the total cost will clearly go down, and it will go down even when you ignore the cost of supplies.
Consider your breakfast example. If you only have to make breakfast once, there's no need for a refrigerator.
Leeching. People will hack their devices to simply refuse to answer routing requests. This is what's happening, basically, on p2p networks...and believe it or not, accounting/policing it is almost impossible without a centralized system.
Unless the leech happens to live next door. Then accounting is as simple as exchanging a private key, and policing is as simple as calling the police... umm... if your neighbor routes the call, that is:)
Then there's the problem of radio interference, interference between competing repeaters
Interference wouldn't really be as bad a problem as you make it out to be. As long as everyone on the used frequencies is using the same protocol, you just reduce power (or switch frequencies) when the interference gets too high.
freeloader problem--your privately designed cell phones will be replaced with bandwidth suckers that don't do replays. No controlling body, so can't stop it.
No need for the portable devices to do relaying. Just make sure all the wired nodes do it. This might not cover non-populated highways, so maybe you'll have to pay a little bit if you want coverage there.
How do you make sure your neighbor is relaying? Knock on his door and exchange a private key.
no "backbone"
That's a much bigger problem, and the only solution require redoing the entire web, to make it distributed.
I've never had my cell phone service go out while I was at my home. That would require 2 or 3 towers falling simultaneously. Nothing wrong with using one pipe if it's a wireless one.
If you're going to make such a network, then you'd have to change the entire structure of the web first. Right now we have thousands of people all trying to connect to slashdot at once. That means slashdot has to have a large pipe. You can't just route it through the 5 people who happen to live nearby. You could use 5 links, but they'd still have to be huge. It's much easier to spread out the data hierarchicaly.
Now if we got rid of the web, and used something like freenet or bittorrent (a cross between the two?), then maybe such a scheme could work.
It certainly would be inefficient to use omni antennas as far as electricity is concerned. But from a cost perspective the maintenance costs of wires probably outweighs the savings in electricity.
As was mentioned by others, the economics then becomes a bit of a problem. But unlike a virtual network overtop of the internet, here we have locality in our favor. Private keys could be transferred physically, so if there were any problems with abuse we'd know who to contact first. Of course, there would have to be a lot of laws passed, basically forcing everyone to provide a certain amount of bandwidth to each of their neighbors free of charge, but once those laws were set up most people would probably play fair.
Finally, despite what many of us learned in our internet technologies classes, IPv4 doesn't handle dynamic routing very well. In fact, in practice it doesn't really handle it at all. For this reason as well as the first, this is really only going to work on a citywide area, at least for the forseeable future.
The device, which looks a little like the metal detectors used in airports, works because different types of body tissue resonated in different ways when exposed to a fluctuating frequency of microwaves given off by the device.
I may not trust my employees, but I trust the public a whole heckuva lot less.
You don't trust employees not to go against your explicit demands and install a rouge access point. Frankly, I find it hard to see how you can trust someone less than that.
Depending on you personal philosophy perhaps, but you do not have the right to enforce your views on others. Likewise, you do not have the right to determine what is just and unjust for other people.
What, only judges have that right?
In any case, copying doesn't enforce my views on others. And it doesn't determine anything about what is just or unjust for other people.
Perhaps you could try to convince others that the law(s) are unjust but it is quite a different thing to dictate to others your brand of truth and justice.
What am I dictating? It's those with the copyrights that are trying to dictate.
So it seems that your personal philosophy includes adhering to the laws only when you are not going to be held accountable for breaking them.
Not exactly. Sometimes I might be held accountable for breaking a law but I'll break it anyway. Speeding, for example. Other times I won't be held accountable, but I still won't break the law.
Not a very high horse to be on when determining the justice of laws and I might add, morally repugnant.
The law has very little to do with morality.
You have because you are disobeying the laws of the land (just or not).
Everyone breaks the law.
You are trampling under your feet the fabric that holds society together.
Oh please. The head of the MPAA has himself admitted that he has committed copyright infringment. Everyone does it. You live in some kind of fantasy world.
Who are you to decide which laws are just and unjust?
I'm a human. We all have the right, and IMHO, the duty, to decide what is just and what is unjust.
Is that not what the courts are for?
Absolutely not. That's what congress is supposed to do. But that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to disagree. The law is the law, and in many cases the mere fact that there is a law is enough to prevent me from doing something (after all, I pay my taxes and stop at red lights even when it's the middle of the night and I can see perfectly clearly that no one is coming). But other laws are more easily broken, or have less severe consequences. Speeding, drug use, using Kazaa, etc. At that point people have to make a moral decision, whether or not to break the law, or follow it anyway.
If the system is to truly work, the people who live in a civil society *must* adhere to the laws setup by that society.
If everyone always followed the law all the time, that would be one thing. I mean, the system would work, for some definition of work. The United States would still be part of England, of course, since we would continue to pay the ever increasing taxes that they imposed on us.
But if that's what you call working, then I don't want the system to work.
Otherwise, society breaks down and we revert to a natural state of all against all.
I have a different viewpoint. I think there are certain things that are part of natural law, which are immoral to break. If I could murder someone and get away with it, I wouldn't. I think most people feel the same way as I do on this point.
But more clearly, people break the law all the time. And we haven't broken down into a natural state of all against all.
I support the enforcement of all laws (even the unjust ones) until such time as they are no longer laws.
I support the enforcement of these laws too. After all, I agree with Abraham Lincoln that the best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly. I'm just not going to follow these unjust laws if I don't think they're going to be enforced.
If you don't like the way society works, go find one you do like or make one yourself.
Ah, but you are the one who doesn't like the way society works. I'm perfectly fine with having these laws against stupid things like downloading from Kazaa as long as I don't get my ass thrown in jail for doing it.
Otherwise, get back in line and quit mucking it up for the rest of us.
I haven't mucked up anything for anyone by downloading something from Kazaa. Before napster I didn't buy music at all. So there's no loss on your part or anyone elses, just a gain on mine.
On a serious note, why not let the RIAA charge some cost on those "music" CDRs, or any device made SAYING that it can be used to copy music?
They already do. Audio CD-Rs are covered under the Audio Home Recording Act. That's why they (generally) cost more!
One of the problems, I guess, is that tapes are ONLY for music
Same for tape players
Actually, my Apple IIe (at least, the one I used to have, it's gone now) can store and retrieve data from a casette tape using a tape player. It's still taxed though, because the primary purpose of the cassette tape is to record music.
Like I said, most of the costs are the costs of mass production. That wouldn't apply if you could just make a single prototype and then instantly copy it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but who makes that decision?
Just as with an ethernet hub, each individual station makes a decision. It's really not very hard to program in some sort of backoff mechanism.
What if there were more than one interfering with each other?
That could easily be determined.
Pretty much everything involved in treating cancer is "bad for you."
Yeah, but this is just detection, not treatment.
If the manufacture of a certain part requires a mold
But the manufacture of a single part doesn't require a mold.
Breakfast isn't cheaper for me if I buy a new stove, refrigerator, and frying pan every morning.
But it is cheaper if you only have to make breakfast once, and then you can instantly replicate it for free from then on.
Yes, the per vehicle (or per breakfast) charge will go up, but the total cost will clearly go down, and it will go down even when you ignore the cost of supplies.
Consider your breakfast example. If you only have to make breakfast once, there's no need for a refrigerator.
So,,,you're advocating massive Tesla coils...every 20 feet, for power?
No, gasoline and batteries. :)
Leeching. People will hack their devices to simply refuse to answer routing requests. This is what's happening, basically, on p2p networks...and believe it or not, accounting/policing it is almost impossible without a centralized system.
Unless the leech happens to live next door. Then accounting is as simple as exchanging a private key, and policing is as simple as calling the police... umm... if your neighbor routes the call, that is :)
Then there's the problem of radio interference, interference between competing repeaters
Interference wouldn't really be as bad a problem as you make it out to be. As long as everyone on the used frequencies is using the same protocol, you just reduce power (or switch frequencies) when the interference gets too high.
freeloader problem--your privately designed cell phones will be replaced with bandwidth suckers that don't do replays. No controlling body, so can't stop it.
No need for the portable devices to do relaying. Just make sure all the wired nodes do it. This might not cover non-populated highways, so maybe you'll have to pay a little bit if you want coverage there.
How do you make sure your neighbor is relaying? Knock on his door and exchange a private key.
no "backbone"
That's a much bigger problem, and the only solution require redoing the entire web, to make it distributed.
I've never had my cell phone service go out while I was at my home. That would require 2 or 3 towers falling simultaneously. Nothing wrong with using one pipe if it's a wireless one.
If you're going to make such a network, then you'd have to change the entire structure of the web first. Right now we have thousands of people all trying to connect to slashdot at once. That means slashdot has to have a large pipe. You can't just route it through the 5 people who happen to live nearby. You could use 5 links, but they'd still have to be huge. It's much easier to spread out the data hierarchicaly.
Now if we got rid of the web, and used something like freenet or bittorrent (a cross between the two?), then maybe such a scheme could work.
It certainly would be inefficient to use omni antennas as far as electricity is concerned. But from a cost perspective the maintenance costs of wires probably outweighs the savings in electricity.
As was mentioned by others, the economics then becomes a bit of a problem. But unlike a virtual network overtop of the internet, here we have locality in our favor. Private keys could be transferred physically, so if there were any problems with abuse we'd know who to contact first. Of course, there would have to be a lot of laws passed, basically forcing everyone to provide a certain amount of bandwidth to each of their neighbors free of charge, but once those laws were set up most people would probably play fair.
Finally, despite what many of us learned in our internet technologies classes, IPv4 doesn't handle dynamic routing very well. In fact, in practice it doesn't really handle it at all. For this reason as well as the first, this is really only going to work on a citywide area, at least for the forseeable future.
Verizon can do it, if you can deal with 40-60kbps averages. $80/month (plus $0.20/minute for calls, or less if you use voice over IP).
Like this?
99% of tapes are used for music, and probably 30% of CDs.
And 99% of DeCSS is for copying dvds, but that doesn't stop slashdotters from pointing out the other 1%.
your plugging an access point into a switch which only allows one mac thus making it so only one computer can connect to the access point.
I thought the whole point was to not allow access points.
PageRank is patented, isn't it?
I thought microwaves were bad for you.
I could identify 100% of all cancers if you let me have unlimited false positives.
I could identify 100% of all cancers with zero false positives if you give me a stick of uranium.
I may not trust my employees, but I trust the public a whole heckuva lot less.
You don't trust employees not to go against your explicit demands and install a rouge access point. Frankly, I find it hard to see how you can trust someone less than that.
Depending on you personal philosophy perhaps, but you do not have the right to enforce your views on others. Likewise, you do not have the right to determine what is just and unjust for other people.
What, only judges have that right?
In any case, copying doesn't enforce my views on others. And it doesn't determine anything about what is just or unjust for other people.
Perhaps you could try to convince others that the law(s) are unjust but it is quite a different thing to dictate to others your brand of truth and justice.
What am I dictating? It's those with the copyrights that are trying to dictate.
So it seems that your personal philosophy includes adhering to the laws only when you are not going to be held accountable for breaking them.
Not exactly. Sometimes I might be held accountable for breaking a law but I'll break it anyway. Speeding, for example. Other times I won't be held accountable, but I still won't break the law.
Not a very high horse to be on when determining the justice of laws and I might add, morally repugnant.
The law has very little to do with morality.
You have because you are disobeying the laws of the land (just or not).
Everyone breaks the law.
You are trampling under your feet the fabric that holds society together.
Oh please. The head of the MPAA has himself admitted that he has committed copyright infringment. Everyone does it. You live in some kind of fantasy world.
not legally, you couldn't... except maybe in Texas.
And this is a bad thing how?
Who are you to decide which laws are just and unjust?
I'm a human. We all have the right, and IMHO, the duty, to decide what is just and what is unjust.
Is that not what the courts are for?
Absolutely not. That's what congress is supposed to do. But that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to disagree. The law is the law, and in many cases the mere fact that there is a law is enough to prevent me from doing something (after all, I pay my taxes and stop at red lights even when it's the middle of the night and I can see perfectly clearly that no one is coming). But other laws are more easily broken, or have less severe consequences. Speeding, drug use, using Kazaa, etc. At that point people have to make a moral decision, whether or not to break the law, or follow it anyway.
If the system is to truly work, the people who live in a civil society *must* adhere to the laws setup by that society.
If everyone always followed the law all the time, that would be one thing. I mean, the system would work, for some definition of work. The United States would still be part of England, of course, since we would continue to pay the ever increasing taxes that they imposed on us.
But if that's what you call working, then I don't want the system to work.
Otherwise, society breaks down and we revert to a natural state of all against all.
I have a different viewpoint. I think there are certain things that are part of natural law, which are immoral to break. If I could murder someone and get away with it, I wouldn't. I think most people feel the same way as I do on this point.
But more clearly, people break the law all the time. And we haven't broken down into a natural state of all against all.
I support the enforcement of all laws (even the unjust ones) until such time as they are no longer laws.
I support the enforcement of these laws too. After all, I agree with Abraham Lincoln that the best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly. I'm just not going to follow these unjust laws if I don't think they're going to be enforced.
If you don't like the way society works, go find one you do like or make one yourself.
Ah, but you are the one who doesn't like the way society works. I'm perfectly fine with having these laws against stupid things like downloading from Kazaa as long as I don't get my ass thrown in jail for doing it.
Otherwise, get back in line and quit mucking it up for the rest of us.
I haven't mucked up anything for anyone by downloading something from Kazaa. Before napster I didn't buy music at all. So there's no loss on your part or anyone elses, just a gain on mine.
On a serious note, why not let the RIAA charge some cost on those "music" CDRs, or any device made SAYING that it can be used to copy music?
They already do. Audio CD-Rs are covered under the Audio Home Recording Act. That's why they (generally) cost more!
One of the problems, I guess, is that tapes are ONLY for music
Same for tape players
Actually, my Apple IIe (at least, the one I used to have, it's gone now) can store and retrieve data from a casette tape using a tape player. It's still taxed though, because the primary purpose of the cassette tape is to record music.
Recording a song off the radio onto analog media is okay because Congress said it was. Why did they say it was?
Because they knew no one would follow the law if they didn't.
Where do you get this "piece of every tape goes to the RIAA" crap?
Here.
Like I said, most of the costs are the costs of mass production. That wouldn't apply if you could just make a single prototype and then instantly copy it.
In other words, once you've done your research, and made your first protoype, only then can one really start work on the manufacturing process
"if copying cars was as easy as copying music"