PlanetLab is not "Intel's prototype". Intel did not start the project, and has never been in control of it. PlanetLab is primarily an academic project that receives funding from a number of corporations, including HP, Google, AT&T, France Telecom, and Intel.
The steering committee consists of faculty members from four universities along with one representative from HP and one from Intel. The research staff is composed mainly of people from Princeton along with at least one from Berkeley.
The reporter really overplayed the significance of the bot. This is just something I whipped up in the past couple days because it would be handy to have.
John Bethencourt (one of the developers of GameGrid)
Right. The client/server communication is still UDP. The server/server communication is actually TCP. The latency of TCP was a concern, but it has turned out to be very acceptable in this case.
TCP is pretty much par for the course in grid computing. I've haven't heard of any grid technologies that use UDP. The concept of `grid' is really pretty high level, with lots of attention toward resource discovery and fault tolerance and so on. There are other areas of distributed computing that are more focused on low-latency parallel systems that may use UDP.
John Bethencourt (one of the developers of GameGrid)
Yes, that's a typo. We said 50 milliseconds. 50 us is ludicrous if you understand what is happening. 50 ms is actually pretty decent though. Quake II only generates server frames every 100 ms, so if the transfer occurs between them, it's essentially perfect.
John Bethencourt (one of the developers of GameGrid)
Despite the fact that none of these robots does anything useful (with the exception of the mine clearing one) that couldn't be done better and cheaper without the robot, I still love them. Whenever I see new, advanced robots - especially humanoid ones - I'm just overwhelmed with awe. These things are so cool. They're dazzling.
If I had the means to buy one of those very expensive new robots, I would do it without hesitation. I would consider it a reasonable decision. "But they don't serve any practical purpose!", you think. News flash: the practical matters in my life are pretty much taken care of. I could work part-time at McDonald's and have more than enough money to feed myself and have a place to live. All activities and expenses beyond that are impractical. Basic survival takes almost zero effort in modern society. The question is "What do you do with the rest of your life?". I know my answer. I want robots.
One more thought: you know how in Civilization III cities of one civilization can spontaneously switch their allegiance to another when they are consumed by the other civilization's "culture" (artistic and technological achievements, attitudes, etc.)? That's how I feel. There is a part of me that wants to permanently move to Japan because of their wonderful appreciation for robots and technology in general. I don't plan to, because there are a lot of things I like about the US too, but I would like to visit Japan some day.
It's especially easy to hide stuff when there are millions of programmed people out there who, through their own assertion, wouldn't accept a Free Energy machine until somebody plunks one down in their living room and gives a demonstration. And even then, they'd almost certainly remain skeptical until the Voice Of Authority, (A Talking Head on CNN), tells them that it's okay to believe now, because its existence has been made official.
Ok, I'll do my best to resist my programming for a moment while you explain to
me this secret source of free energy. Precisely what is it? Who is
developing it? Why are they hiding it? Facts please, no vague generalizations.
Incidentally, I don't watch CNN or even own a TV. I spend most of my time
reading books. From where am I receiving this `conditioning' that makes
me into a `drone'?
The meme is designed to marginalize the harnessing of Free Energy (both in the forms described above, and through devices that exist but which the public is not allowed to know about), so that the Powers That Be can maintain their positions at the top of the food chain.
Get real. No one (e.g., the government, giant corporations, `The Man', the `military-industrial complex') is trying hide some source of Free Energy through some conspiracy. If we had some source of Free Energy, no one would be able to hide it or even try to.
While the sources of energy you mentioned are very nice, in most situations they simply aren't as cost effective as, say, a coal plant. So much for being free. "But coal plants use up fossil fuels that we can't regenerate so we're going to run out!", you say. If we do run out (or come close), then the sources of energy you mentioned will naturally become the most economical, and we will switch over. There's no reason to force people to switch over now and spend more money in the meantime. Anyway, I really doubt it will get to that point at all. At the rate technology is changing, I expect us to be in a much different situation long before we run out of fossil fuels.
Someone once tried to steal my palm m100. I was sitting in a bus in the seat
right next to the rear door. I was leaning back with my elbows propped on my
stomach, holding the palm up to read from its screen. A somewhat rough looking
kid (he was about 12 or so) went to exit the bus at a stop. As he walked by
me through the door, he quickly snatched the pda out of my hands and bolted.
I was up and out of the bus in a flash and he only got a few steps away before
I caught him. Looking scared, he quickly turned around and held out the pda
for me. I took it back and was happy.
I can't help but agree with LibertineR (although I admit he sounds quite frustrated).
Because you can afford it?
See, that's just what he's talking about. We have all these anti-yuppie, `haves and have-nots' sentiments that have absolutely nothing to do with the issue.
Bikes, blades and boards are not allowed, so why SHOULD the segway?
This is open to debate, but I think that Segways would be less of a problem on the sidewalks than bikes, blades, and boards. Segways only go a bit faster than jogging speed, so they are slower than the other mentioned modes of transportation. Also, Segways appear to be much more maneuverable and easier to stop than bikes, blades, and boards.
I like the thought you've put into this, but I disagree. I suspect it is possible to overcome the forced voting problem in an online voting protocol.
What you need is a way to make it look like you voted without actually voting. Here's the general idea:
Take your favorite academic voting protocol. Perhaps it involves signing something with a private key that is stored, encrypted with a passphrase, on your computer. When your abusive husband Bob is looking over your shoulder as you vote, you type in the wrong passphrase. The private key should be silently decrypted as garbage, and the signature should come out wrong. Then whatever entity is receiving the signed packet should detect it as invalid and silently ignore it.
When considering online voting protocols, you should just add the requirement that it is possible to cast `fake' votes in a way indistinguishable to people observing you.
This sort of thing could be really significant - today democracy isn't working as well as it should because people feel out of touch with the decision making process, Labour/Conservative, who can tell the difference? They both privatise everything.
It's funny that you equate privatization with democracy not working. Has it occurred to you that some people (e.g., me) think privatization is a good thing?
Wow, you are such a hot shot. Do you actually think your script could make you enough money to live on?
There are huge financial companies out there that employ dozens of mathematicians with Ph.D's to statistically analyze the stock market. Even they can't make money appear out of thin air.
Great idea, but you aren't the first person to think of it. (Don't you hate it when that happens?):) Do some google searches for `trust metric' and `reputation learning'. Read the O'Reilly book `Peer to Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies'.
Unfortunately, it's not easy to implement such a system. Who keeps track of the (meta)moderation? How do you know the people keeping track of the moderation aren't cheating? How do you know the people keeping track of *them* aren't cheating? Answering these questions is an open area of research. Check out Raph Levien's work.
If we make a working system, however, it would useful for a lot more than filtering out bogus files. Many newer, more scalable network designs are vulnerable to fragmentation by malicious nodes (e.g., Chord), so the nodes themselves could have a reputation as well. Also, a system like this could be used to alleviate the free-loading problem. Nodes that share more get a better reputation, and other nodes treat them better (e.g., higher priority downloads).
Anyway, this a very interesting subject. A friend of mine (Mathew Hammer) and I have been looking into it a lot lately. I agree: technology *can* beat this!
I've always loved that Indiana Jones quote. I've had people (usually Christians) ask if I believe in `absolute truth'. I'm usually hesitant to say yes because `truth' is such a loaded word. I prefer to say I believe in absolute facts, i.e., there is some sort of unchanging reality out there (of course, it may not be knowable, and is certainly not provable).
With all its associated feelings and connotations, the word `truth' is really annoying.
Incidentally, I'm currently reading Candide and Micromegas by Voltaire. Despite being a philosopher, Voltaire was really anti-philosophy in many ways. He despised people who viewed the world through the glasses of their own philosophical system. His ideal person was someone who was `candid', or naive, someone who simply observed facts, rather than `truths'.
Instead of trying to make thousands of transactions a day totaling only a few pennies or less (which is what ads result in if you're lucky), I propose a simpler system; a small yearly fee (less than $10USD) which works out to a micropayment per day. Memberships and subscriptions tend to cost more money for a smaller period of time.
So how is this different from regular subscription websites? It's cheaper?
I think micropayments are definitely the Right Idea for the web, but I
don't see how they could be properly implemented using current payment systems.
Off the top of my head, I think a payment system suitable for micropayments
would need (at the minimum) the following properties:
implicit (yet secure) payments. The user should be able to configure their
(trusted) web browser to automatically make requested per-page micropayments to
a server if those payments are below a threshold (e.g., $0.001). The browser
can prompt the user for permission to make larger micropayments. It's very
important that the user does not need to intervene in the micropayment process
every time they request a document. Since a user can not read through the whole
source of the browser and anything else that might need to make payments,
perhaps the browser and other programs should call an external program to make
the payments, the user's `payment agent'. This would be a small program that
makes payments while following the user's policies and restrictions.
extremely low (or non-existent) per-transaction fees. If the provider(s) of
the payment system are charging $0.10 to the payment receiver for each
micropayment, it obviously won't work. This essentially implies the next
requirement.
contact with payment system provider(s) not required for every transaction.
If the server collecting micropayments must contact the provider(s) every time
a payment is collected, the system will not be feasible. The server should be
able to store up many micropayments and redeem them with the provider all at
once every day/week/month.
The digital cash folks have had many interesting ideas for payment systems that
may satisfy these properties. Here are some links to check out:
Creating a digital cash system that has all the properties we'd like is a damn
hard problem that hasn't be solved yet. However, cryptographic tools such as
one way functions and PKI are very powerful. I don't think we've fully
exploited their possibilities yet, so I'm still hopeful that a true digital
cash scheme will one day be created.
People always say that money doesn't bring happiness. This is true, but it is also true that a lack of money brings unhappiness.
On another note, I constantly hear stories of people who search for `meaning', `purpose', their `dreams', `true satisfaction', etc. all through their lives in so many places (money, prestige, relationships, power, religion, hedonism), only to be continually disappointed and unsatisfied. I've come to the conclusion that, for the most part, true happiness just isn't out there. It's simply in our nature to keep searching and pushing ourselves toward what we see as the next Great Thing.
I've resigned myself to the fact that I will probably never find any sort deep fulfillment. Here's hoping I at least won't be miserable.
The ninth and tenth amendments state precisely why the DNC or DNS (do not spam) lists are beyond the bounds of the government's power. `Powers delegated to the United States by the Constitution' are the rights the government has to regulate or control the activities of its citizens. The bill of rights lists activities which the government does not have the right to control. The ninth and tenth amendments say that, by default, the government does not have the right to control any activity not specifically mentioned.
The basic idea here is that when you have a `right' to do something, that means the government may not interfere with your doing it. That *does not* mean that government should pass laws to ensure you are capable of doing it. You have the right to communicate freely, so the government does not have the right to interfere with how you do so. If you have trouble communicating due to technological limitations of the medium (e.g., vulnerability to abuse), that does not mean the government should step in and control the use of the medium.
Finally, we are talking about regulating a business, not an individual. They are not the same, nor do they have the same rights.
I don't think this distinction is valid. What is a company other than a collection of people working together to make money? How is a collection of people working together to make money any different from a collection of people working together to do something else?
The bottom line is that i'm in my house, and people do not have the right to harrass me there. If i can't escape harrassment in my own home, where the hell can i?
Here's another way of looking at the situation. You don't have an inherent right to use, say, email. If people want to setup some communication system like email, that's fine, but if it doesn't work out (e.g., due to vulnerability to cheap mass advertising), that's just too bad. The government never guaranteed you email to begin (the citizens set this up themselves), so if it isn't worth using, don't use it. Better yet, make a superior system. This idea does not apply as much to the telephone system since the government already regulates that a great deal, but I think it's the right way of looking at communication systems in general.
Somehow, I have a feeling William Scarboro would be happier with a $1 donation for the source code to his family than a free giveaway of one of his greatest works.
You really think so? That doesn't make any sense to me. I've been programming for fun almost all my life and for money for a while now. I would like nothing more than to see source code I've written but was unable to release released under the GPL.
It sounds like you seem to think that releasing source code is somehow a loss for the person who wrote it. Pretty much all the programmers I know would be delighted to see their code (written for an employer) released.
Agreed. If people can't get along using some communication system they've established, that's not a problem suitable for government intervention. The government is not here to make everyone `play nice', and it would never be capable of accomplishing that anyway.
When people are, say, shooting each other, *that's* when the government needs to get things under control.
Imagine, if you will, a really annoying guy following you around the mall. You have every right to NOT be harrassed by him, and, likewise, you have every right to not be contacted by people you don't wish to be contacted by.
I don't see it that way. In the mall analogy, the obnoxious guy has the right to say whatever he wants to you, and you have the right to ignore him. What we need are better methods of ignoring spammers. Work on better filters, think about what's wrong with the email system, do something, but don't be so quick to let the government control the Internet because we can't think of a good solution ourselves at the moment. Come on, where's your hacker, DIY spirit?
Private speech and political speech are fundamentally different than commercial speech.
When you start making distinctions like that, you're treading on dangerous ground. I'm sorry, but I'm a hard-liner when it comes to freedom of speech. The classification of some forms or pieces of communication as `commercial speech' or `hate speech' and restriction of those communications is a breach in the dam of the sacred first amendment. Who defines what is `commercial'? With free speech, it's all or nothing.
Despite the emotionally stirring reference to your 98-year-old grandfather, the situation is not as dire as you make it out to be. He gets 5 to 6 telemarketing calls a week. Figure it takes 15 seconds to determine each one is a telemarketing call and hang up. That's a minute and a half wasted per week. I think we can pay that price until we come up with a better solution in order to keep technology free from government control.
Suppose there were never any ambiguous or good uses for circumventing copy protection. Would the DMCA be a good thing in that case?
I think some of the flaws in the DMCA are deeper than the fact that it restricts legitimate copy protection circumvention. It changes the use of your computer from right to a privilege. It basically says that you can only configure and use your tools in a way permissible to the government.
As for the issue of outlawing spam, here's another way of looking at. If a computer is setup to accept connections over the network and runs software that relays or saves electronic messages sent to it, then it's fair game. The owner of the machine has set it up that way with the knowledge that they have no control over what signals might be coming down that cable. When designing any sort of system that involves machines under the control of different people, we have to assume that if the system is in any way vulnerable to malicious or abusive uses, those uses will be exploited. We can't rely on the government to hold together broken security.
I'm not sure I could support a legally enforced `do not spam' list. In fact, I have mixed feelings about the `do not telemarket' list, despite the fact that I hate telemarketers (AT&T has called me trying to sell long-distance service about five times in the past few days!).
The issue of the government controlling use of technology is what gives me reservations about making spam illegal. Electronic mail's vulnerability to spam is a flaw in the design of the system itself. We should not attempt to solve this problem by introducing regulations that ban certain uses of electronic mail. When you think about it, a federally enforced do not spam list would be a similar approach to that taken by the DMCA. The DMCA attempts to reduce copyright violations by outlawing the distribution or use of software that exploits flawed copy-protection schemes. A federally enforced do not spam list would attempt to reduce destructive uses of email by outlawing certain uses of the flawed electronic mail system.
What about alternatives? In general, we should look for a technological solution to this technological problem. The Bayesian spam filters that everyone has been talking about seem promising. Some system involving only accepting messages signed by trusted sources may also be possible. Of course, you can't list every source you would like to accept mail from, so a system like this may take some hard thought.
Anyway, we may not find a perfect solution to the spam problem immediately, but my point is that government regulation is A Bad Idea.
Slashdot Mirror
PlanetLab is not "Intel's prototype". Intel did not start the project,
and has never been in control of it. PlanetLab is primarily an
academic project that receives funding from a number of corporations,
including HP, Google, AT&T, France Telecom, and Intel.
The steering committee consists of faculty members from four
universities along with one representative from HP and one from Intel.
The research staff is composed mainly of people from Princeton along
with at least one from Berkeley.
Client-side bots.
The reporter really overplayed the significance of the bot. This is just something I whipped up in the past couple days because it would be handy to have.
John Bethencourt (one of the developers of GameGrid)
Right. The client/server communication is still UDP. The server/server communication is actually TCP. The latency of TCP was a concern, but it has turned out to be very acceptable in this case.
TCP is pretty much par for the course in grid computing. I've haven't heard of any grid technologies that use UDP. The concept of `grid' is really pretty high level, with lots of attention toward resource discovery and fault tolerance and so on. There are other areas of distributed computing that are more focused on low-latency parallel systems that may use UDP.
John Bethencourt (one of the developers of GameGrid)
Yes, that's a typo. We said 50 milliseconds. 50 us is ludicrous if you understand what is happening. 50 ms is actually pretty decent though. Quake II only generates server frames every 100 ms, so if the transfer occurs between them, it's essentially perfect.
John Bethencourt (one of the developers of GameGrid)
Despite the fact that none of these robots does anything useful (with the exception of the mine clearing one) that couldn't be done better and cheaper without the robot, I still love them. Whenever I see new, advanced robots - especially humanoid ones - I'm just overwhelmed with awe. These things are so cool. They're dazzling.
If I had the means to buy one of those very expensive new robots, I would do it without hesitation. I would consider it a reasonable decision. "But they don't serve any practical purpose!", you think. News flash: the practical matters in my life are pretty much taken care of. I could work part-time at McDonald's and have more than enough money to feed myself and have a place to live. All activities and expenses beyond that are impractical. Basic survival takes almost zero effort in modern society. The question is "What do you do with the rest of your life?". I know my answer. I want robots.
One more thought: you know how in Civilization III cities of one civilization can spontaneously switch their allegiance to another when they are consumed by the other civilization's "culture" (artistic and technological achievements, attitudes, etc.)? That's how I feel. There is a part of me that wants to permanently move to Japan because of their wonderful appreciation for robots and technology in general. I don't plan to, because there are a lot of things I like about the US too, but I would like to visit Japan some day.
Ok, I'll do my best to resist my programming for a moment while you explain to me this secret source of free energy. Precisely what is it? Who is developing it? Why are they hiding it? Facts please, no vague generalizations.
Incidentally, I don't watch CNN or even own a TV. I spend most of my time reading books. From where am I receiving this `conditioning' that makes me into a `drone'?
Get real. No one (e.g., the government, giant corporations, `The Man', the `military-industrial complex') is trying hide some source of Free Energy through some conspiracy. If we had some source of Free Energy, no one would be able to hide it or even try to.
While the sources of energy you mentioned are very nice, in most situations they simply aren't as cost effective as, say, a coal plant. So much for being free. "But coal plants use up fossil fuels that we can't regenerate so we're going to run out!", you say. If we do run out (or come close), then the sources of energy you mentioned will naturally become the most economical, and we will switch over. There's no reason to force people to switch over now and spend more money in the meantime. Anyway, I really doubt it will get to that point at all. At the rate technology is changing, I expect us to be in a much different situation long before we run out of fossil fuels.
Someone once tried to steal my palm m100. I was sitting in a bus in the seat right next to the rear door. I was leaning back with my elbows propped on my stomach, holding the palm up to read from its screen. A somewhat rough looking kid (he was about 12 or so) went to exit the bus at a stop. As he walked by me through the door, he quickly snatched the pda out of my hands and bolted. I was up and out of the bus in a flash and he only got a few steps away before I caught him. Looking scared, he quickly turned around and held out the pda for me. I took it back and was happy.
I can't help but agree with LibertineR (although I admit he sounds quite frustrated).
Because you can afford it?
See, that's just what he's talking about. We have all these anti-yuppie, `haves and have-nots' sentiments that have absolutely nothing to do with the issue.
Bikes, blades and boards are not allowed, so why SHOULD the segway?
This is open to debate, but I think that Segways would be less of a problem on the sidewalks than bikes, blades, and boards. Segways only go a bit faster than jogging speed, so they are slower than the other mentioned modes of transportation. Also, Segways appear to be much more maneuverable and easier to stop than bikes, blades, and boards.
I like the thought you've put into this, but I disagree. I suspect it is possible to overcome the forced voting problem in an online voting protocol.
What you need is a way to make it look like you voted without actually voting. Here's the general idea:
Take your favorite academic voting protocol. Perhaps it involves signing something with a private key that is stored, encrypted with a passphrase, on your computer. When your abusive husband Bob is looking over your shoulder as you vote, you type in the wrong passphrase. The private key should be silently decrypted as garbage, and the signature should come out wrong. Then whatever entity is receiving the signed packet should detect it as invalid and silently ignore it.
When considering online voting protocols, you should just add the requirement that it is possible to cast `fake' votes in a way indistinguishable to people observing you.
Wow, you are such a hot shot. Do you actually think your script could make you enough money to live on?
There are huge financial companies out there that employ dozens of mathematicians with Ph.D's to statistically analyze the stock market. Even they can't make money appear out of thin air.
Get real.
Great idea, but you aren't the first person to think of it. (Don't you hate it when that happens?) :) Do some google searches for `trust metric' and `reputation learning'. Read the O'Reilly book `Peer to Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies'.
Unfortunately, it's not easy to implement such a system. Who keeps track of the (meta)moderation? How do you know the people keeping track of the moderation aren't cheating? How do you know the people keeping track of *them* aren't cheating? Answering these questions is an open area of research. Check out Raph Levien's work.
If we make a working system, however, it would useful for a lot more than filtering out bogus files. Many newer, more scalable network designs are vulnerable to fragmentation by malicious nodes (e.g., Chord), so the nodes themselves could have a reputation as well. Also, a system like this could be used to alleviate the free-loading problem. Nodes that share more get a better reputation, and other nodes treat them better (e.g., higher priority downloads).
Anyway, this a very interesting subject. A friend of mine (Mathew Hammer) and I have been looking into it a lot lately. I agree: technology *can* beat this!
I've always loved that Indiana Jones quote. I've had people (usually Christians) ask if I believe in `absolute truth'. I'm usually hesitant to say yes because `truth' is such a loaded word. I prefer to say I believe in absolute facts, i.e., there is some sort of unchanging reality out there (of course, it may not be knowable, and is certainly not provable).
With all its associated feelings and connotations, the word `truth' is really annoying.
Incidentally, I'm currently reading Candide and Micromegas by Voltaire. Despite being a philosopher, Voltaire was really anti-philosophy in many ways. He despised people who viewed the world through the glasses of their own philosophical system. His ideal person was someone who was `candid', or naive, someone who simply observed facts, rather than `truths'.
I think micropayments are definitely the Right Idea for the web, but I don't see how they could be properly implemented using current payment systems. Off the top of my head, I think a payment system suitable for micropayments would need (at the minimum) the following properties:
- implicit (yet secure) payments. The user should be able to configure their
(trusted) web browser to automatically make requested per-page micropayments to
a server if those payments are below a threshold (e.g., $0.001). The browser
can prompt the user for permission to make larger micropayments. It's very
important that the user does not need to intervene in the micropayment process
every time they request a document. Since a user can not read through the whole
source of the browser and anything else that might need to make payments,
perhaps the browser and other programs should call an external program to make
the payments, the user's `payment agent'. This would be a small program that
makes payments while following the user's policies and restrictions.
- extremely low (or non-existent) per-transaction fees. If the provider(s) of
the payment system are charging $0.10 to the payment receiver for each
micropayment, it obviously won't work. This essentially implies the next
requirement.
- contact with payment system provider(s) not required for every transaction.
If the server collecting micropayments must contact the provider(s) every time
a payment is collected, the system will not be feasible. The server should be
able to store up many micropayments and redeem them with the provider all at
once every day/week/month.
The digital cash folks have had many interesting ideas for payment systems that may satisfy these properties. Here are some links to check out:- http://ntrg.cs.tcd.ie/mepeirce/Project/Mlists/min
i faq.html
- http://research.compaq.com/SRC/personal/steveg/mi
l licent/millicent.html
- http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/yiannis/pubs.html
- http://www.aci.net/kalliste/cryptnum.htm
- http://www.chaum.com/articles/list_of_articles.ht
m
Creating a digital cash system that has all the properties we'd like is a damn hard problem that hasn't be solved yet. However, cryptographic tools such as one way functions and PKI are very powerful. I don't think we've fully exploited their possibilities yet, so I'm still hopeful that a true digital cash scheme will one day be created.You know, that's a good point.
People always say that money doesn't bring happiness. This is true, but it is also true that a lack of money brings unhappiness.
On another note, I constantly hear stories of people who search for `meaning', `purpose', their `dreams', `true satisfaction', etc. all through their lives in so many places (money, prestige, relationships, power, religion, hedonism), only to be continually disappointed and unsatisfied. I've come to the conclusion that, for the most part, true happiness just isn't out there. It's simply in our nature to keep searching and pushing ourselves toward what we see as the next Great Thing.
I've resigned myself to the fact that I will probably never find any sort deep fulfillment. Here's hoping I at least won't be miserable.
it's a GPS receiver unit only. There is no transmitter.
How the hell does that work? This makes no sense. From the point of view the of the government, the tracking devices are write only memory.
The basic idea here is that when you have a `right' to do something, that means the government may not interfere with your doing it. That *does not* mean that government should pass laws to ensure you are capable of doing it. You have the right to communicate freely, so the government does not have the right to interfere with how you do so. If you have trouble communicating due to technological limitations of the medium (e.g., vulnerability to abuse), that does not mean the government should step in and control the use of the medium.
I don't think this distinction is valid. What is a company other than a collection of people working together to make money? How is a collection of people working together to make money any different from a collection of people working together to do something else? Here's another way of looking at the situation. You don't have an inherent right to use, say, email. If people want to setup some communication system like email, that's fine, but if it doesn't work out (e.g., due to vulnerability to cheap mass advertising), that's just too bad. The government never guaranteed you email to begin (the citizens set this up themselves), so if it isn't worth using, don't use it. Better yet, make a superior system. This idea does not apply as much to the telephone system since the government already regulates that a great deal, but I think it's the right way of looking at communication systems in general.
It sounds like you seem to think that releasing source code is somehow a loss for the person who wrote it. Pretty much all the programmers I know would be delighted to see their code (written for an employer) released.
Agreed. If people can't get along using some communication system they've established, that's not a problem suitable for government intervention. The government is not here to make everyone `play nice', and it would never be capable of accomplishing that anyway.
When people are, say, shooting each other, *that's* when the government needs to get things under control.
Despite the emotionally stirring reference to your 98-year-old grandfather, the situation is not as dire as you make it out to be. He gets 5 to 6 telemarketing calls a week. Figure it takes 15 seconds to determine each one is a telemarketing call and hang up. That's a minute and a half wasted per week. I think we can pay that price until we come up with a better solution in order to keep technology free from government control.
Suppose there were never any ambiguous or good uses for circumventing copy protection. Would the DMCA be a good thing in that case?
I think some of the flaws in the DMCA are deeper than the fact that it restricts legitimate copy protection circumvention. It changes the use of your computer from right to a privilege. It basically says that you can only configure and use your tools in a way permissible to the government.
As for the issue of outlawing spam, here's another way of looking at. If a computer is setup to accept connections over the network and runs software that relays or saves electronic messages sent to it, then it's fair game. The owner of the machine has set it up that way with the knowledge that they have no control over what signals might be coming down that cable. When designing any sort of system that involves machines under the control of different people, we have to assume that if the system is in any way vulnerable to malicious or abusive uses, those uses will be exploited. We can't rely on the government to hold together broken security.
I'm not sure I could support a legally enforced `do not spam' list. In fact, I have mixed feelings about the `do not telemarket' list, despite the fact that I hate telemarketers (AT&T has called me trying to sell long-distance service about five times in the past few days!).
The issue of the government controlling use of technology is what gives me reservations about making spam illegal. Electronic mail's vulnerability to spam is a flaw in the design of the system itself. We should not attempt to solve this problem by introducing regulations that ban certain uses of electronic mail. When you think about it, a federally enforced do not spam list would be a similar approach to that taken by the DMCA. The DMCA attempts to reduce copyright violations by outlawing the distribution or use of software that exploits flawed copy-protection schemes. A federally enforced do not spam list would attempt to reduce destructive uses of email by outlawing certain uses of the flawed electronic mail system.
What about alternatives? In general, we should look for a technological solution to this technological problem. The Bayesian spam filters that everyone has been talking about seem promising. Some system involving only accepting messages signed by trusted sources may also be possible. Of course, you can't list every source you would like to accept mail from, so a system like this may take some hard thought.
Anyway, we may not find a perfect solution to the spam problem immediately, but my point is that government regulation is A Bad Idea.