user space vs kernel space is an artificial and meaningless distinction. it's like mercedes claiming that they can control the sales of oil filters, but not of seat-covers designed to fit mercedes seats because the oil filter is essentially part of the engine. it's a nonsense argument based in linus optimistic wishful thinking.
From what i get of linus' posts, he seems to take an (from his standpoint) overly optimistic view of what "derived" works are.
By his definition, if X was created primarily to work with the linux kernel, then it is a derived work, and therefore falls under his copyright regimen of choice (GPL). this is like saying that if you make a super efficient oil filter that was clearly designed exclusively for mercedes engines, then mercedes can tell you how to sell it.
while mercedes clearly has the right to protect its trademarks and copyrights, as long as the oil filter maker doesn't pass it off as anything but an aftermarket job, his business is secure. this is true whether the aftermarket add-on fits onto an easily identifiable interface (the little bit that the oil filter screws on to) or not (those places that hack up a whole mercedes and turn it into a stretch limousine or something - though the latter may well run into trademark issues if they are not careful).
yes, software is not like physical items in many instances. but, in this one, it is.
Given that Apple has said they barely break even at 0.99/song, and Microsoft says they plan a lower price point, it looks like Microsoft is going to eat costs to gain market share.
Is this based on your belief that 99c of raw materials goes into a piece of music, or merely your complete lack of understanding behind the economics of these sort of businesses?
rest of particularly dumb post, complete with ant-microsoft conspiracybabble, snipped.
the academic wouldn't be making a career for himself by saying that "everything is just fine." While i'm not saying that this/is/ the case, one must not forget that each side potentially has motivations beyond simple reporting of fact.
Right there is why I don't think it will catch on. People don't like the idea of paying until the end of time for something they have bought.
I've bought home gym equipment in the past. i have no trouble paying a gym a monthly fee for access to more equipment that i could reasonably store in my home.
Oh wait.. maybe i should have chosen an example that slashdotters could relate to..
If you want to create a new mail system, you'd need the following to succeed:
A system that is in fact well designed, user-friendly and effective on a large scale.
A BSD-licenced server implementation that can work on all the major platforms.
Good post, Kjella. #1 is a given. #2, however, is your politics creeping into the game.
Your point about the fact that a systemic change is toughter than an individual change is spot-on. However, i propose that what's really needed for #2 is not one particular technology nor one particular license, but:
2. A community that recognizes that the problem as both a technological and social one (not that "SMTP is not broken" idiot from a previous reply who will argue also that a broken door lock is not broken because it does, indeed, let the owners into the car), sets forth clear and open STANDARDS to which implementations can be designed (not an implementation per se) based on #1, and then, critically, will have the influence and momentum to declare a cut-off date - I suggest 3-4 years in the future, at which point the existing SMTP based systems will be declared "officially obsolete."
Ideally, the system designed in #1 will have reasonable transitional capabilities - like the fact that early web servers had lots of configuration options for your existing gopher junk.
In the real world, badly-designed car locks would make cars easier to steal. To combat this problem, people would insist that a) the locks be re-engineered to be better and b) people who steal cars be treated as criminals who, when caught, get strict punishments.
In the bizarro world of the internet, we likewise have broken locks. Email, specifically, is like a car with really, really shitty locks on it. However, instead of knowing about this problem for many years now and a few (some equally bad) proposals for fixing it, the main mode of dealing with the problem is:
threads on slashdot where everybody bitches about how bad the locks are or what jerks the thieves are
general discussion that technological problems need strictly technological solutions. even if this we're true (it's not), the fact of the matter is that lack of effective communication is a social problem.
is this worth a saving of $10 (~2%) ? Or even $60 (~12%) given that, whatever you say about MS, Office (and all the other applications) are highly more likely to work better on XP than any emulated environment?
Maybe for some corporate customers, but I doubt it. Even as a small business owner, I wouldnt take the risk.
False, fair use IS defined in the 1976 copyright act
In a sense you are right, but, in another, more accurate sense, you are very, very wrong.
Fair use is "defined" only as a set of general principles. They have to be (and are) reinterpreted just as circumstances change, just as I said. Nowhere in the copyright act of 1976 does it say that "photocopying 2 pages is ok, 3 is not."
Fair Use - The right set forth in Section 107 of the United States Copyright Act, to use copyrighted materials for certain purposes, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:
the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
I encourage you to pay attention to #1, which is often the basis for re-evaluation of fair use: the purpose and character of the use.
no, i don't get it at all. as the costs of publising goes down, the ease by which somebody *else& can re-publish your stuff goes down similarly, and thus you have no more incentive to create intellectual work thab before.
i didn't mention nor do i believe anything about an "assured profit".. this is bullshit on your part.
think that my "republish" argument is not true? I dare you to find a more mocked and flamed academic paper regarding IP and economics in the last few years than boldrin and levine, which basically argued on your lines. oh, i know, academics are in on your conspiracy too.
Let's say that universal self-publishing is a reality today. That is to say, something comes out of my brain, and I have the ability to instantly deliver it in retail form to any customer on the face of the planet. Furthermore, I have the ability to instantly and sufficiently market the product without any third party intermediary.
Explain to me again how tihs makes "copyright... less of an issue?" Because if *I* can so instantly publish my work, so can *every other bastard out there* (publish MY work), and thus I need reason to believe that I alone can appropriate the rents from my creation.
In the case of player pianos, the publishers didnt want copyright because
they already *had* a way to appropriate rents (the fact that they had the rare ability (know-how + mechanism) to make and distribute physical rolls and
presumably there was sufficent competition in supply OR so little competition amongst player piano roll manufacturers that they felt that the artists didn't need incentive.
Now let's talk about this **AA "is scared of" statement. I totally agree with you--the interent makes self-publishing easier, which is great for artists.
However, however crap you may think moderm popular music may be, the fact of the matter is that today's intermediaries (read: record companies) provide services that are seen as valuable. by whom? BY THE ARTISTS... otherwise, with the rise of this new 'self-publish' internet, well fewer of them would be seeking a contract with a **AA publisher.
Clearly, there is still a massive clamor. Therefore, the **AA constituent companies must be providing a service that is seen as valuable, despite the emergence of the internet.
Incidentally: I challenge you to find a mechanism by which an artist has a chance at the exposure and money that a top riaa artist can get without going through a riaa constituent company. yes, selling cds off a web-page or offering free samples on kazaa are all good baby steps, but they don't get you anywhere near world-class exposure or wealth at this stage. even groups like phish (today's grateful dead) recognize this despite a very strong and dedicated fan base.
hence, artists continue to sign on the bottom line.
The result is that big publishers have all the power (rest of cospiratorial rant snipped).
The internet and related technologies are MASSIVE enablers of self-publishing on a level never seen before. Want to reach potentially billions of listeners? you can do it from your bedroom with zero third party support- when else could this be done before?
And yet,
despite such technological advances
despite supposed mass hatred of **AA
the intermediaries survive. how can this be?
Proposed Answer 1: Random conspiratorial rantings mingled with statements such that the average listener/reader/watcher is an idiot who wouldn't know good music/books/video if it bit them on the ass
Proposed Answer 2: Basic economics- supply and demand. The intermediaries do perform a scarce and valuable service that artists, whose services are inimatble and common as far as the market is concerned, view as valuable.
Too many slashdotters such as yourself jump on #1, when #2 is clearly right.
The rest of your post is pure nonsense rants, but this one struck my attention:
When the founding fathers of this country made 14 year copyrights, they did so because publishing was expensive...
This is completely incongruous to your argument. If publishing is expensive / difficult, then short or no copyright is necessary. You don't really need to copyright battleship designs that much. Now that copying is easier / cheaper, it is understandable that terms are longer.. sheesh.. at least keep your logic straight.
Whoever came up with this idea is clever. But, he/she similarly totally misunderstands the point of copyright laws by playing "bright lining" games (as do, in my experience, many slashdot readers).
(the term "bright lining" means doing some activity with a full knowledge of where the law or regulation is and doing something right up to this regulation, this living up to the letter of the law, though, the implication is, not the spirit.)
Copyright is a socially constructed concept. Basically, copyrightholders are entitled to a monopoly of sorts for a limited time on their work. most people agree that the primary reason for this is to encourage more creation of works.
When people talk in terms of "it's legally okay to copy a song from the radio" or "it's legally okay to copy three pages, but not the whole book", then they are basically referring to PRAGMATIC copyright interpreations and rulings based on past technological and social circumstance. as technology and social circumstance change, it may become necessary to change (usually tighten) what is allowed in order to best preserve the spirit and intention of copyright, which, again, is to encourage authors.
here's a really obvious sign of when the spirit of copyright is broken--i call it the "extrapolation" argument. basically, somebody takes an existing interpretation and tries to "scale it up":
sharing music with your kid sister is ok, so sharing music with everybody's kid sister is (Napster)
photocopying one page is ok, so let's set up a distributed system via amazon's new full-text thing by which everybody downloads one page and somehow they are combined again (slashdot/amazon)
MIT has a blanket license for analog music / copying music from existing analog sources of music is ok (radio - unscheduled recordings, includes ads, not complete songs), so let's play a clever trick by which people can get whatever they want in a high quality, but analog format (MIT)
All three of these will work, in the short term. And all three will generate stricter interpretations and a clamp-down, because they are so clearly against the spirit of the socially beneficial copyright law (oh, shut up already, completely-anti-copyright anarcho-libertarians - go and do a little historical research about every attempt to do away with copyrights and patents completely). The end result of this will be stricted interpretations and more bitching and whining on slashdot. What is the root cause of this? The evil RIAA and MPAA? Yes, they occasionally go overboard (the mickey mouse extension act is pretty egregious), but generally they are in the right.
The root cause is those who think that they're being clever by bright-lining copyright interpretations without realizing that they are interpretations that are subject to reasonable modification as circumstances warrant, not god-given cast-in-stone truths. or, in other words, more technological sense than social understanding.
Impressive academic reference to rivalrous goods. I surmise, threfore, that you are an academic with your head up your ass.
Are you saying that it is not possible to lease a car?
the contract is what the contract is. If you don't like the contract, don't agree to it. if the process of "agreeing" to the contract is suspect, then let an AG or a court sort it. but please don't tell me that i can't lease or otherwise give you temporary, limited use of a physical item. that's bullshit.
Richard feynman was a great man. His lectures on physics are amazing.
But as far as challenger goes, he was being a pompous self-righteous ass.
He singlehandedly invented the idea of a "management culture" at NASA. he found a few examples of places where risk numbers were inappropriately glazed over and then proceeded to paint the entire NASA management community with this paintbrush that made them look like retards. well, they weren't retards. the bulk of managers well understood the realistic risks of the shuttle but worked to maximize net of the occasionally conflicting goals of getting shuttles up and safety. remember what all of slashdot said after columbia -- "keem em flying! those people know the risks! there are hundreds of more volunteer astronauts who'd be just as happy to go given the same risks.. sign me up!" the fact of the matter is that politically you can't necessarily put the real probabilities for failure down on paper in public places--even if you know them--they are just sort of understood and so have to be for a variety of reasons, often connected to funding.
feynman didn't understand this, or rather, more likely chose not to understand this subtle nuance either because he was himself such a high IQ that he didn't understand the political dynamic or he saw it as a wonderful opportunity to express that he had a 14 incher. i admire the man greatly, but he was an asshole too.
now, let's talk about "read their reports." that's the problem - data was too often lost in reports. let's go back to challenger - on the day of the infamous "late night" pre launch meeting, the engineers did an absolute SHIT job of conveying their actual impressions of risk. they had an incredibly poorly done regression analysis of temperature and o-ring erosion and they conveyed it in a shit way. yes, the managers might have had "go fever", but it was their job to put every engineer who came up with a launch-breaking objection through a reasonable ringer to make sure that their objection should be eligible to be elevated. lest we forget, your engineers with their blessed reports - those thiokol engineers were so easily bullied that they SIGNED A DOCUMENT the night before challenger launched essentially rescinding their objections. yes, maybe the managers pushed hard, but god damn it, to put the blame squarely on them is bullshit.
For each time interval from initial design to infinity, some engineer is complaining that it's not safe enough and that a more expensive solution or complete redesign is necessary.
For each complaint, managers, who are not technically illiterate, but not as "into it" as the engineers, need to evaluate risk based on imperfect information.
Usually, system robustness and other factors dominate. the system is just fine. the engineer's complaints fade into obscurity, even though "deep down" the engineer knows he was right.
But, occasionally, something goes wrong. Instantly, the managers become know-nothing literature-major innumerate MBAs. The engineer who picked the "winning" flaw gains fame.
Therefore, claiming that something will go wrong with the ISS is a good way as any to win the lottery.
The problem MUST be that managers are unschooled in dynamic systems theory, right? Because they don't understand complexity, probability, and risk---right?
But wait, that's wrong! Today's managers ARE trained in those things - i mean, that is the very basis of being a technical manager today! what's the problem then?
could it be that the engineers are trained in engineering and don't know how to effectively communicate and QUANTIFY their risk assessments?
nobody at/. will agree to this, but imho, that view is easily at least half right.
Really? I always thought of a microchip as something with, well, ICs in it or something. From what I'm understanding from the (very very short) article, this works via simple physical chemistry - polymer layers erode over time thus 'time releasing' what's under the next layer. presumably there are different thickness polymer layers depending on how often the medication needs to be delivered.
Unless I'm really missing something here, I fail to see how this qualifies as a microchip in the sense that we commonly refer to it as.
Do us all a favor: look up the word "Bayesian" from my post and do a little research on what smart people say are the medium and long term weaknesses of such filters before you make yourself look like any more of a fool, ok? Also, while you're at it, why don't you go and do a little research and understand that a) the isp-to-end-user pipe isn't the only problem and that b) this effectively means that ISPs filter emails with the very real potential for false positives.
Your responses really do make you look foolish. I'm ever the more amazed that you were able to make a good comment about slashdot spam articles given how little you apparently actually know about spam.
Your observation about the slashdot stupid spam story phenomenon is a good one.
Your last paragraph, however, shows that nevertheless you completely don't get it, and, by completely, I mean that you really sound as clueless as can be on the topic of spam.
Let's see how many standard spam-thread replies are required for your two sentences of nonsense at the end.
SPAM is an arms race - single tools don't work, because eventually they will be beaten, as has happened to ALL tools as yet, including bayesian filters.
SPAM tools such as you suggest are basically for the 3l337. you are basically saying "spam is not my problem if *I* can avoid it. this is a) antisocial and b) bs, because...
your note does not in any way address those billions of dollars of bandwidth wasted before spam gets to your personal box.
if you stop 99% of spam now, by a rough guesstimate of what the parent article alluded to, you can roughly expect to get 100 times more spam than you currently do in 2.5 years time. ergo, problem not solved.
you still haven't worked on the issue of spam definition.
In short, any article, post, or message that claims that Product X is an acceptable solution to SPAM just doesn't get it.
I'd like to start over and remake the internet. With people who RESPECT copyrights, for an atmosphere where intellectual work is treated equitably, so that we can build real empires of information, education, and entertainment, rather than play lowest common denominator games of today. I'd like an internet where a small software development shop can compete against large shops and make a fair profit without today's reality that any software that becomes popular gets pirated en masse, ultimately benefitting only the established names. I'd like a world where a musician can sell their songs for a fair price on the internet without middlemen knowing that their monetay success will be a linear product of the number of fans the quality of their music attracts.
I'd like an internet without the "geektelligencia" going 180 degrees the wrong way and bitching and whining about copyrights, when they should be the first one to see their value and fight vigorously to protect them.
Slashdot Mirror
user space vs kernel space is an artificial and meaningless distinction. it's like mercedes claiming that they can control the sales of oil filters, but not of seat-covers designed to fit mercedes seats because the oil filter is essentially part of the engine. it's a nonsense argument based in linus optimistic wishful thinking.
By his definition, if X was created primarily to work with the linux kernel, then it is a derived work, and therefore falls under his copyright regimen of choice (GPL). this is like saying that if you make a super efficient oil filter that was clearly designed exclusively for mercedes engines, then mercedes can tell you how to sell it.
while mercedes clearly has the right to protect its trademarks and copyrights, as long as the oil filter maker doesn't pass it off as anything but an aftermarket job, his business is secure. this is true whether the aftermarket add-on fits onto an easily identifiable interface (the little bit that the oil filter screws on to) or not (those places that hack up a whole mercedes and turn it into a stretch limousine or something - though the latter may well run into trademark issues if they are not careful).
yes, software is not like physical items in many instances. but, in this one, it is.
does anybody know of academic studies on software piracy? I'd be interested in reading some if people had some pointers.
Is this based on your belief that 99c of raw materials goes into a piece of music, or merely your complete lack of understanding behind the economics of these sort of businesses?
rest of particularly dumb post, complete with ant-microsoft conspiracybabble, snipped.
the academic wouldn't be making a career for himself by saying that "everything is just fine." While i'm not saying that this /is/ the case, one must not forget that each side potentially has motivations beyond simple reporting of fact.
frankly, i never thought that the MIPS Simulator was that much of a headache. I mean, the instruction set was pleasantly simple.. a toy, really.
I've bought home gym equipment in the past. i have no trouble paying a gym a monthly fee for access to more equipment that i could reasonably store in my home.
Oh wait.. maybe i should have chosen an example that slashdotters could relate to..
If you want to create a new mail system, you'd need the following to succeed:
- A system that is in fact well designed, user-friendly and effective on a large scale.
- A BSD-licenced server implementation that can work on all the major platforms.
Good post, Kjella. #1 is a given. #2, however, is your politics creeping into the game.Your point about the fact that a systemic change is toughter than an individual change is spot-on. However, i propose that what's really needed for #2 is not one particular technology nor one particular license, but:
2. A community that recognizes that the problem as both a technological and social one (not that "SMTP is not broken" idiot from a previous reply who will argue also that a broken door lock is not broken because it does, indeed, let the owners into the car), sets forth clear and open STANDARDS to which implementations can be designed (not an implementation per se) based on #1, and then, critically, will have the influence and momentum to declare a cut-off date - I suggest 3-4 years in the future, at which point the existing SMTP based systems will be declared "officially obsolete."
Ideally, the system designed in #1 will have reasonable transitional capabilities - like the fact that early web servers had lots of configuration options for your existing gopher junk.
In the bizarro world of the internet, we likewise have broken locks. Email, specifically, is like a car with really, really shitty locks on it. However, instead of knowing about this problem for many years now and a few (some equally bad) proposals for fixing it, the main mode of dealing with the problem is:
- Linux - say, $50
- Crossover Office - $59.99
- MS-Office - $400
Option 2:- WinXP Home Edition - $120
- MS-Office - $400
is this worth a saving of $10 (~2%) ? Or even $60 (~12%) given that, whatever you say about MS, Office (and all the other applications) are highly more likely to work better on XP than any emulated environment?Maybe for some corporate customers, but I doubt it. Even as a small business owner, I wouldnt take the risk.
False, fair use IS defined in the 1976 copyright act
In a sense you are right, but, in another, more accurate sense, you are very, very wrong.
Fair use is "defined" only as a set of general principles. They have to be (and are) reinterpreted just as circumstances change, just as I said. Nowhere in the copyright act of 1976 does it say that "photocopying 2 pages is ok, 3 is not."
Fair Use - The right set forth in Section 107 of the United States Copyright Act, to use copyrighted materials for certain purposes, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:
- the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
- the nature of the copyrighted work;
- the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
- the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
I encourage you to pay attention to #1, which is often the basis for re-evaluation of fair use: the purpose and character of the use.i didn't mention nor do i believe anything about an "assured profit".. this is bullshit on your part.
think that my "republish" argument is not true? I dare you to find a more mocked and flamed academic paper regarding IP and economics in the last few years than boldrin and levine, which basically argued on your lines. oh, i know, academics are in on your conspiracy too.
Let's say that universal self-publishing is a reality today. That is to say, something comes out of my brain, and I have the ability to instantly deliver it in retail form to any customer on the face of the planet. Furthermore, I have the ability to instantly and sufficiently market the product without any third party intermediary.
Explain to me again how tihs makes "copyright ... less of an issue?" Because if *I* can so instantly publish my work, so can *every other bastard out there* (publish MY work), and thus I need reason to believe that I alone can appropriate the rents from my creation.
In the case of player pianos, the publishers didnt want copyright because
- they already *had* a way to appropriate rents (the fact that they had the rare ability (know-how + mechanism) to make and distribute physical rolls and
- presumably there was sufficent competition in supply OR so little competition amongst player piano roll manufacturers that they felt that the artists didn't need incentive.
Now let's talk about this **AA "is scared of" statement. I totally agree with you--the interent makes self-publishing easier, which is great for artists.However, however crap you may think moderm popular music may be, the fact of the matter is that today's intermediaries (read: record companies) provide services that are seen as valuable. by whom? BY THE ARTISTS... otherwise, with the rise of this new 'self-publish' internet, well fewer of them would be seeking a contract with a **AA publisher.
Clearly, there is still a massive clamor. Therefore, the **AA constituent companies must be providing a service that is seen as valuable, despite the emergence of the internet.
Incidentally: I challenge you to find a mechanism by which an artist has a chance at the exposure and money that a top riaa artist can get without going through a riaa constituent company. yes, selling cds off a web-page or offering free samples on kazaa are all good baby steps, but they don't get you anywhere near world-class exposure or wealth at this stage. even groups like phish (today's grateful dead) recognize this despite a very strong and dedicated fan base.
hence, artists continue to sign on the bottom line.
publcation (net) costs nothing if you make money on what you sell. hence, the cost of publication is basically irrelevant.
next you're going to tell me that the fact that pencils and paint are cheaper now than before, that copyright needs to be abolished.
If the internet had existed in 1776 the US would have no copyright laws at all. Abject stupidity, that last statement.
The internet and related technologies are MASSIVE enablers of self-publishing on a level never seen before. Want to reach potentially billions of listeners? you can do it from your bedroom with zero third party support- when else could this be done before?
And yet,
- despite such technological advances
- despite supposed mass hatred of **AA
the intermediaries survive. how can this be?Proposed Answer 1: Random conspiratorial rantings mingled with statements such that the average listener/reader/watcher is an idiot who wouldn't know good music/books/video if it bit them on the ass
Proposed Answer 2: Basic economics- supply and demand. The intermediaries do perform a scarce and valuable service that artists, whose services are inimatble and common as far as the market is concerned, view as valuable.
Too many slashdotters such as yourself jump on #1, when #2 is clearly right.
The rest of your post is pure nonsense rants, but this one struck my attention:
When the founding fathers of this country made 14 year copyrights, they did so because publishing was expensive...
This is completely incongruous to your argument. If publishing is expensive / difficult, then short or no copyright is necessary. You don't really need to copyright battleship designs that much. Now that copying is easier / cheaper, it is understandable that terms are longer.. sheesh.. at least keep your logic straight.
(the term "bright lining" means doing some activity with a full knowledge of where the law or regulation is and doing something right up to this regulation, this living up to the letter of the law, though, the implication is, not the spirit.)
Copyright is a socially constructed concept. Basically, copyrightholders are entitled to a monopoly of sorts for a limited time on their work. most people agree that the primary reason for this is to encourage more creation of works.
When people talk in terms of "it's legally okay to copy a song from the radio" or "it's legally okay to copy three pages, but not the whole book", then they are basically referring to PRAGMATIC copyright interpreations and rulings based on past technological and social circumstance. as technology and social circumstance change, it may become necessary to change (usually tighten) what is allowed in order to best preserve the spirit and intention of copyright, which, again, is to encourage authors.
here's a really obvious sign of when the spirit of copyright is broken--i call it the "extrapolation" argument. basically, somebody takes an existing interpretation and tries to "scale it up":
- sharing music with your kid sister is ok, so sharing music with everybody's kid sister is (Napster)
- photocopying one page is ok, so let's set up a distributed system via amazon's new full-text thing by which everybody downloads one page and somehow they are combined again (slashdot/amazon)
- MIT has a blanket license for analog music / copying music from existing analog sources of music is ok (radio - unscheduled recordings, includes ads, not complete songs), so let's play a clever trick by which people can get whatever they want in a high quality, but analog format (MIT)
All three of these will work, in the short term. And all three will generate stricter interpretations and a clamp-down, because they are so clearly against the spirit of the socially beneficial copyright law (oh, shut up already, completely-anti-copyright anarcho-libertarians - go and do a little historical research about every attempt to do away with copyrights and patents completely). The end result of this will be stricted interpretations and more bitching and whining on slashdot. What is the root cause of this? The evil RIAA and MPAA? Yes, they occasionally go overboard (the mickey mouse extension act is pretty egregious), but generally they are in the right.The root cause is those who think that they're being clever by bright-lining copyright interpretations without realizing that they are interpretations that are subject to reasonable modification as circumstances warrant, not god-given cast-in-stone truths. or, in other words, more technological sense than social understanding.
Disagree? reply, not mod down.
Are you saying that it is not possible to lease a car?
the contract is what the contract is. If you don't like the contract, don't agree to it. if the process of "agreeing" to the contract is suspect, then let an AG or a court sort it. but please don't tell me that i can't lease or otherwise give you temporary, limited use of a physical item. that's bullshit.
But as far as challenger goes, he was being a pompous self-righteous ass.
He singlehandedly invented the idea of a "management culture" at NASA. he found a few examples of places where risk numbers were inappropriately glazed over and then proceeded to paint the entire NASA management community with this paintbrush that made them look like retards. well, they weren't retards. the bulk of managers well understood the realistic risks of the shuttle but worked to maximize net of the occasionally conflicting goals of getting shuttles up and safety. remember what all of slashdot said after columbia -- "keem em flying! those people know the risks! there are hundreds of more volunteer astronauts who'd be just as happy to go given the same risks.. sign me up!" the fact of the matter is that politically you can't necessarily put the real probabilities for failure down on paper in public places--even if you know them--they are just sort of understood and so have to be for a variety of reasons, often connected to funding.
feynman didn't understand this, or rather, more likely chose not to understand this subtle nuance either because he was himself such a high IQ that he didn't understand the political dynamic or he saw it as a wonderful opportunity to express that he had a 14 incher. i admire the man greatly, but he was an asshole too.
now, let's talk about "read their reports." that's the problem - data was too often lost in reports. let's go back to challenger - on the day of the infamous "late night" pre launch meeting, the engineers did an absolute SHIT job of conveying their actual impressions of risk. they had an incredibly poorly done regression analysis of temperature and o-ring erosion and they conveyed it in a shit way. yes, the managers might have had "go fever", but it was their job to put every engineer who came up with a launch-breaking objection through a reasonable ringer to make sure that their objection should be eligible to be elevated. lest we forget, your engineers with their blessed reports - those thiokol engineers were so easily bullied that they SIGNED A DOCUMENT the night before challenger launched essentially rescinding their objections. yes, maybe the managers pushed hard, but god damn it, to put the blame squarely on them is bullshit.
"Information wants to be free..."
Unless I'm really missing something here, I fail to see how this qualifies as a microchip in the sense that we commonly refer to it as.
Your responses really do make you look foolish. I'm ever the more amazed that you were able to make a good comment about slashdot spam articles given how little you apparently actually know about spam.
Your last paragraph, however, shows that nevertheless you completely don't get it, and, by completely, I mean that you really sound as clueless as can be on the topic of spam.
Let's see how many standard spam-thread replies are required for your two sentences of nonsense at the end.
- SPAM is an arms race - single tools don't work, because eventually they will be beaten, as has happened to ALL tools as yet, including bayesian filters.
- SPAM tools such as you suggest are basically for the 3l337. you are basically saying "spam is not my problem if *I* can avoid it. this is a) antisocial and b) bs, because
...
- your note does not in any way address those billions of dollars of bandwidth wasted before spam gets to your personal box.
- if you stop 99% of spam now, by a rough guesstimate of what the parent article alluded to, you can roughly expect to get 100 times more spam than you currently do in 2.5 years time. ergo, problem not solved.
- you still haven't worked on the issue of spam definition.
In short, any article, post, or message that claims that Product X is an acceptable solution to SPAM just doesn't get it.I'd like to start over and remake the internet. With people who RESPECT copyrights, for an atmosphere where intellectual work is treated equitably, so that we can build real empires of information, education, and entertainment, rather than play lowest common denominator games of today. I'd like an internet where a small software development shop can compete against large shops and make a fair profit without today's reality that any software that becomes popular gets pirated en masse, ultimately benefitting only the established names. I'd like a world where a musician can sell their songs for a fair price on the internet without middlemen knowing that their monetay success will be a linear product of the number of fans the quality of their music attracts. I'd like an internet without the "geektelligencia" going 180 degrees the wrong way and bitching and whining about copyrights, when they should be the first one to see their value and fight vigorously to protect them.
x2 Special double slashdot paranoia bonus modifier.
Get your tinfoil hats now!