Your last paragraph highlights something interesting, I think, and that is the question of whether this counts as infrastructure. Perhaps it is Democracy Infrastructure. The point I'm trying to make with considering it as infrastructure is that generally the government ends up/should/has to pay for infrastructure, through taxes, because otherwise no one would build it, or if they built it, no one else would use it because you would have to pay for it (or people might use it, like toll roads, but the question is whether they would be built in the first place).
So then, this technology that I would consider to be Democracy Infrastructure is not owned by or controlled by or verifiable by the people who use it, but instead is controlled by a company that won the bid and can do almost whatever it wants. In effect, they don't care that it works perfectly, only that it works well enough not to have their contract thrown out.
As for the actual voting, why not have each machine hold a public/private key pair (or just the public key of a server) and send the results, knowing that they are from a specific voting machine. The current voter registration system could be used, and each voter could be given a little smartcard that will activate the machine. When they are done voting, a small receipt would come out, giving them the number of their machine, the number of their vote, and maybe their actual votes. They keep the receipt, and hand back the smartcard/key.
"You can pick up a cheap *video* camera from x10.com, including a battery pack and a wireless transmitter, and a receiver that connects to your PC and sends the images in via USB, for far less than this Sony will cost, and you can add multiple cameras for not *that* much extra."
Darn. You are correct. Oh well, hehe, I guess *somebody* has given this more thought than I had.;-)
Why has no one even MENTIONED this? My first thought was that this sort of thing would be perfect for, well, think about it for a second.
Yes, Porn. Put the camera anywhere, have it transmit, add a number of them, etc. Wireless webcam. Think about it.
I have to admit, I was really... intrigued / enthralled with the idea of hooking more than 1 USB camera up to a single computer, enabling, among other things, stereoscopic vision. Why has no one else on this board posted about it?:-) I guess it shows where my mind is.
I think I'd like my computer to stay sane, thanks. What about the programmers who have to make the distributed deciphering program? Maybe it is more like Hiro Protagonist making the tools to analyze that mind-breaker static scroll thingie in Snow Crash. (Can you tell it's been a while since I read it?)
Tell me more about this book. Have they figured out its alphabet? Like, the repeated and repeatable characters? I should think it wouldn't be too hard (heh. easy to say.) to turn it into... something. Then again, we may be working on the assumption that it is actually meaningful. It could just be the writings of a rather disturbed person. Or a genius. Or... not.
So what's the holdup here? Some OCR, some statistical analysis, see if the syntax looks like any other language we know well, and then, as it seems to go, come up with nothing and/or go mad. I like those odds!
Why can't we have a site someplace that says 'here is a problem. OK brainiacs, lets have a solution.' and everyone gives their ideas and other stuff. Hm, ok, so it is sounding kinda like slashdot... only without all the news. and other unique things...
I was listening to something on PBS (fund drive time!) and the guy was saying to stop all caffeine intake, and instead to drink green tea, which has little or none, but also has a caffeine-blocking agent. Then again, I wasn't paying attention, and it could be just him wanting to sell more of his book or whatever.
Sorry for being so dense, but... Do I really want to ask what PNAS stands for? Sure, "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" sounds just fine, but PNAS sounds... less-fine.:-) Say it loud!
"I believe so, but I'm not sure if it was crosslicense per se. AMD had to go through the courts (if my memory serves me correctly) to allow them to use 80x86 technology, hence the codename 'Barton' for one of the upcoming Athlon cores... Barton was the name of the presiding Judge who granted them the license."
As far as I know (and I could be way wrong) was that AMD had made clean-room implementations of x86 architechtures, from... I guess around the 486-ish level. I could be wrong, though.
Also, if Intel has to license x86-64 from AMD, they will just use their Yamhill project. However, if you ask Intel, Yamhill doesn't exist. They don't want to even give the hint of going with AMD's x86-64 when they have Itanium (or Itanic, depending) and Itanium II to promote. I think I remember reading that AMD was offering the x86-64 instruction set without too much royalties or *something*.
The code names are all horses.... I think. Thunderbird, Spitfire,... ok, not those. But Barton, Palomino, Thoroughbred are horse-related. Barton is Sir Barton, the first horse to win the Triple Crown, before it was even known as the Triple Crown. http://www.thoroughbredcentral.com/famous.htm (google is leet.)
How many horses are there left? Maybe we'll have a Mr. Ed codename soon.... Or not.
Again, I could be wrong. It might be the judge's name.
"Code is the key to solving many problems. Like the problem of the RIAA and its inordinately and disproportionately strong political influence."
"We need to have code written that organizes the scattered power in the world and focuses it to do our collective bidding. Either way, in the end, more code has to be written; Declan is right, and Public Knowledge are acknowledging this by writing code to solve a problem of political imbalance."
(end quote)
"We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code." - David Clarke
Bring it on.
It wasn't a meteor that killed the dinosaurs, remember, it was the dust. How can you fight against dust? (This bit of zen makes me want to say only: "I'm disrespectful to dirt! Can you see I am serious! Join me or die. Can you do any less?" (quoting the whole thing would be too weird, and probably expose me to too much thinking about why I linked the two. Mr. Sparkle in the Land of the Lost!)
OK, so that was a nonsensical rambling. Bring on the revolution anyway.
There have been some interesting action/strategy mixes before, Black and White comes to mind, as does Actraiser. It seems rather sporadic, though... I think this would be something definitely worth looking into. Players could use strategy to refine their forces and attributes, and then have a certain edge during the action phases. Being able to choose your armaments in Mechwarrior is sort of like this, though, so maybe it isn't as innovative as I am thinking it is.
While this is pretty innovative, there are some new problems that are introduced. Written code is... how can I explain this? The metaphor is that of a physical sheet of paper. It occupies space on the page, you can scroll up or down, etc. While it is really just a long stream of bytes, the way it is presented is visually, and 2-dimensionally.
With music, it is more a temporal presentation. It's a little difficult to jump ahead or back by a certain amount and be sure of where you are in the code. Well, you would have to listen to it a few times, at the very least (OK, so it is no different from code you have never seen before.)
It is a different presentation method, and so has different benefits. Personally, I think the musical phrases they use for the different language structures are far too long and complicated. I am imagining it taking 2 minutes to go through a simple program... Also, the audio should have been a compressed format... mp3 or ogg or *something* other than.wav.
Anyway... A nifty idea overall, I guess. I'm probably jealous that I didn't come up with it first. It's basically text to speech, only not speech...
If you ask me, all the 'Apple switching to Intel' stories have been pretty much just silly hype. What I think is more interesting, but only slightly less fanciful, is Apple switching to AMD Hammer processors.
I don't follow this whole thing as much as some people, but Apple is part of the HyperTransport consortium (as is NVidia, and AMD), and so there is some speculation that Apple might go with a hammer/nforce combo (with HyperTransport), if they were to make any huge jump to another architechture.
The last jump was from the Motorola 680x0 platform to the current Apple/IBM/Motorola PowerPC platform, and that was a while ago. The problem with this new IBM chip is that it isn't terribly close to being done yet. I guess we'll have to wait and see how it turns out.
Here's a link I dug up: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=4814
"I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself, "Dijkstra would not have liked this", well that would be enough immortality for me"
A very apt last quote for your post. It reminds me a little bit of one of Richard Feynman's friends talking about how he had seen Feynman in a dream, talking very animatedly about something or other, and he thought 'Should I tell him he's dead, or does he already know?'
OK, so it seemed more relevant in my own mind, but he certainly has left a legacy for others to follow.
It just seems to me that once the people no longer control what they own, they no longer have the power to use those resources for bringing about necessary changes.
My example, taken from an economics class, is that of the grass growing in the town square. (How much more common can that get?) If 1 shepherd lets the flock graze on the land, maybe there will be no problems (other than a herd of sheep invading the town square). If too many shepherds do this, or if it becomes a habit, there won't be much grass left, and the people and the sheep will both have to go without.
The end result of companies buying up that which belongs to us all is that they will exploit it to their maximum profit potential, and then discard it. What you end up with is vast resources that were squandered and used up to benefit a very few, after having been seized from the many. That which used to be free is now owned. That which used to belong to everyone is now fenced off, divided, broken down, distilled, and resold at a profit. The end result of this, however, is a death of sorts. The excesses that allowed other things to spring up and evolve have been destroyed, crushed under the optimizing economics of profit-uber-alles. And so, that which was supposed to enrich everyone (the public at large wouldn't extract minerals from the ground) ends up making everyone poorer (the public at large isn't going to chop down every tree and then let the wood rot).
Just my thoughts. The maintenance of the commons provides a very important balance to the individual / corporate urges to conquer and claim. Balance is good.
If you take nothing else from the essay, read over the poem:
They hang the man and flog the woman That steal the goose from off the common, But let the greater villain loose That steals the common from the goose.
I was watching the Fox 5 News from NYC covering H2K2 (http://www.h2k2.net/) and went around getting handles of people, and even mentioned that that these 'teenagers' could be the next group called on in the 'war' on terror. Ignore that it isn't a declared war or anything, but from a major media outlet, that sounds like a near-riging endorsement.
Maybe you were thinking of this link: http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/08/01/comput er.security.ap/index.html (holy cow does that guy look scary or what...)
search for word/phrase 'digital millennium' (2 L's and 2 N's) or enter bill number "s. 2037"
Click on one of the relevant results.
The Bill Summary and Status link is informative. Check the "All Bill Summary and Status Info" link for some history (or some of the other links), then look for "Recorded Vote"
Bingo. (phew, stepping through this was a little harder than I thought it would be... But, now that I understand it enough, I can tell everyone else how to do it. Bang on.)
"I think if people knew that certain members of our government were trying to: -put the law in the hands of the RIAA -give them sole discression of who to attack -give them the power to commit what would be a crime for anyone else this might blow up. I have a feeling most folks, given the facts, would be ashamed. Maybe we could find a way to get a black shadow cast on those behind this?"
Phone up the EFF and get them to hold a press conference. Or, my original idea:
C-SPAN, Washington Journal, every morning, 7am to 8,9 or 10am.
Do it with whomever you like. In fact, I encourage anyone to Steal This Meme (or something).
One of the problems I sometimes see (and I have done it myself) is that the message is too complicated and convoluted and no one really can get it. Compare and contrast: "Abolish Legalized Corporate Tyranny" with "Freedom Good. DMCA Bad."
Flyers good. Unclear signs bad.
I would love for you to do this. And yes, a friend is good.:-) My preferred method is to get 2 3/4 inch wooden dowels (or less, but 3/4 inch is the max allowed for DC, I think, as I learned for Jan 20th, 2000. Whatever ones I have (that you have no way to see) are legal. Yeah, so that doesn't help.) and tape your sign in between the two poles, with a little space above and below the ends of the poles. This way you can hold it up if you have to, or put it on the ground and stick your feet under it, if you have to. This way your arms don't get tired all the time. Anyway!
>>Hollywood is winning, folks. You are losing. And you'd better start caring.
>Couldn't have said it better myself.
This just gave me an idea. 2 people, with 2 signs, and *lots* of pro-freedom anti-DMCA flyers.
Sign 1: Congress is selling your rights and freedom.
Sign 2: Hollywood is buying.
Maybe chop out two of the words in Sign 1, but you get the idea. (for clarity, choose rights or freedoms.)
If you no longer control what you buy, do you really actually own it? If you can't record from your TV, if you can't make a copy of that shiny new (expensive) CD for your car, if you can't take notes from a[n e-]book you bought... do you actually own them?
>Because, in order to copy the poem one would have to "circumvent" the copy protection... in this case, the copy protection is the envelope... you have to take it out of the envelope in order to copy it.
I much prefer the term "Access Control" to copy protection, since that is truly what it is. The technological measures limit your access to your own property (the fair use rights are still there, you just have no way to exercise them).
And now for a little story: This reminds me a little bit of a story about a famous trickster (Nasreddin Hodja, but I'm not sure which part of the Middle East he comes from) who sold his house to someone for a very good price, except for a nail in the kitchen. When the new owner was eating dinner, Hodja insisted that he be allowed to come in and check on his nail, to make sure that nothing had happened to it. Eventually, he got to annoying that the new owner agreed to buy the nail from him, for a considerable sum, just so he didn't have to deal with being interrupted all the time.
OK, so it isn't a *totally* relevant story, but if the MPAA can 'enter' your devices and 'check on' 'their' property, well, do you really own it, even though you paid money for it? Perhaps I don't 'know' how to properly use the 'single' quotes...:-)
And, since it is kinda relevant, I offer my letter that I wrote: http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-09 -11-011-20-OP-HW-SW-0000 and a short follow-up: http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-09 -11-011-20-OP-HW-SW-0021
I've heard of all that stuff before, except for the anticounterfeiting one. WTF???!!! The post you have above is worthy of 5 articles in major media. These are important issues and should be covered, but of course, like the HDTV bandwidth auction, got nary a peep out to the public.
That is just messed up. Copying a movie being equivalent to counterfeiting money is again taking copyright matters out of the civil arena and into the criminal arena. Go read the bill, esp. the parts that were struck out. This is piracy language, and they are turning it into something else. The way I think about it, to make money and movies/phonorecords/computer program on equal footing gives the very distinct impression that you no longer own the product you are buying. If you don't own it, you have no rights to control it. Just lovely. Why haven't I heard about this bill before? (I'm glad those parts were struck out, but come on, should we have to look in every bill that is introduced? Remember back to the 'right to virus' that the RIAA and MPAA wanted put into the (horribly named) USA PATRIOT Act...)
At the risk of sounding like a/. loser, mod parent up!
"We should make "Coding" into a religion perhaps, then we could publish books with code in them that couldn't be deems illegal? They would be infringing on our rights? How about we call it CowBoyNeilism?"
How about Codeboy Nihlism? Hm... Nihilism (edited): 2. The doctrine that nothing can be known; scepticism as to all knowledge and reality. [1913 Webster] 1. a revolutionary doctrine that advocates destruction of the social system for its own sake. [wordnet]
Hm... Maybe a little too close to Slashdot reality at times...
Does anyone have any information about how well this 2.4ghz band works? Will you have to yell at your family members not to stand or walk past a certain area between the machines?
ObBeowulfComment: Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these! Um. Or something. Still, the wireless network part is kinda nifty, although somehow I don't think it would be quite that useful unless you had some kind of cross-platform computing structure in place. Also, the wireless nature might make it harder to scale past a certain number of machines (interference and packet storms and all that good stuff...)
" Wasn't code ruled free speech a while back though? So just explaining the code... wouldn't that be ok? I really don't see how a court can make explaining something can be illegal."
" What if someone makes something, can they explain it then? What about if they paint the code? Or sing it? Is that ok? Could he sing his whole presentation?"
Sort of gives a new, strange meaning to 'write-only code.' Actually, that's really kinda scary. Sort of like writing letters to someone and then having to put them in a fire. (Reminded of the Memory Hole in 1984...)
Something I've realized, there are only people in this world. Person against person, or in groups. If enough people get together, this law and others like it *can* be changed. Get to it.
Is there any place that has a few good examples of what can be done with the XUL and XPI features of Mozilla / Gecko / whatever ? I've discovered www.xulplanet.com but I was wondering if anyone knew of any demos out there.
"What is wrong with corporations having an incentive to make profit? That is what they are there for.
Companies have no incentive to support free speech, the 1st Amendment doesn't apply to them. If you don't like what cable companies do then don't use them. Don't try to impose your will on others."
The simple point is this: Corporations are not citizens. While you say that the 1st Amendment doesn't apply to them, the 1st Amendment does apply to the citizens that use the cable company. (I know there have been a number of court cases that give citizen-like rights to corporations, though. One phone company sued a town that wouldn't let them put up a cellphone tower, saying its civil rights had been violated. The town lost.)
Consider this, perhaps... While it might be a flawed analogy, what if the cable provider changed your text en route, attributing things to you that you didn't say. Could you sue the company for libel? Slander? If they are blocking you, would that be denying you your right to free speech?
While it is most likely in their (profitable) interest to promote free speech (sounds like a phone ad...) if there are fewer and fewer companies that provide the service (cable is not a right) they will have de facto control over the medium. The solution is to have more players in the market, so that there isn't one central controlling company or a very small number of controlling companies. Competition helps promote fair play. Usually...
Slashdot Mirror
Your last paragraph highlights something interesting, I think, and that is the question of whether this counts as infrastructure. Perhaps it is Democracy Infrastructure. The point I'm trying to make with considering it as infrastructure is that generally the government ends up/should/has to pay for infrastructure, through taxes, because otherwise no one would build it, or if they built it, no one else would use it because you would have to pay for it (or people might use it, like toll roads, but the question is whether they would be built in the first place).
:-)
So then, this technology that I would consider to be Democracy Infrastructure is not owned by or controlled by or verifiable by the people who use it, but instead is controlled by a company that won the bid and can do almost whatever it wants. In effect, they don't care that it works perfectly, only that it works well enough not to have their contract thrown out.
As for the actual voting, why not have each machine hold a public/private key pair (or just the public key of a server) and send the results, knowing that they are from a specific voting machine. The current voter registration system could be used, and each voter could be given a little smartcard that will activate the machine. When they are done voting, a small receipt would come out, giving them the number of their machine, the number of their vote, and maybe their actual votes. They keep the receipt, and hand back the smartcard/key.
It isn't that difficult.
(as for bugs and code, what about wu-ftpd?
"You can pick up a cheap *video* camera from x10.com, including a battery pack and a wireless transmitter, and a receiver that connects to your PC and sends the images in via USB, for far less than this Sony will cost, and you can add multiple cameras for not *that* much extra."
;-)
Darn. You are correct. Oh well, hehe, I guess *somebody* has given this more thought than I had.
Why has no one even MENTIONED this? My first thought was that this sort of thing would be perfect for, well, think about it for a second.
... intrigued / enthralled with the idea of hooking more than 1 USB camera up to a single computer, enabling, among other things, stereoscopic vision. Why has no one else on this board posted about it? :-) I guess it shows where my mind is.
Yes, Porn. Put the camera anywhere, have it transmit, add a number of them, etc. Wireless webcam. Think about it.
I have to admit, I was really
I think I'd like my computer to stay sane, thanks. What about the programmers who have to make the distributed deciphering program? Maybe it is more like Hiro Protagonist making the tools to analyze that mind-breaker static scroll thingie in Snow Crash. (Can you tell it's been a while since I read it?)
... something. Then again, we may be working on the assumption that it is actually meaningful. It could just be the writings of a rather disturbed person. Or a genius. Or... not.
Tell me more about this book. Have they figured out its alphabet? Like, the repeated and repeatable characters? I should think it wouldn't be too hard (heh. easy to say.) to turn it into
So what's the holdup here? Some OCR, some statistical analysis, see if the syntax looks like any other language we know well, and then, as it seems to go, come up with nothing and/or go mad. I like those odds!
Why can't we have a site someplace that says 'here is a problem. OK brainiacs, lets have a solution.' and everyone gives their ideas and other stuff. Hm, ok, so it is sounding kinda like slashdot... only without all the news. and other unique things...
I was listening to something on PBS (fund drive time!) and the guy was saying to stop all caffeine intake, and instead to drink green tea, which has little or none, but also has a caffeine-blocking agent. Then again, I wasn't paying attention, and it could be just him wanting to sell more of his book or whatever.
:-) Say it loud!
Sorry for being so dense, but... Do I really want to ask what PNAS stands for? Sure, "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" sounds just fine, but PNAS sounds... less-fine.
"I believe so, but I'm not sure if it was crosslicense per se. AMD had to go through the courts (if my memory serves me correctly) to allow them to use 80x86 technology, hence the codename 'Barton' for one of the upcoming Athlon cores... Barton was the name of the presiding Judge who granted them the license."
... I guess around the 486-ish level. I could be wrong, though.
... I think. Thunderbird, Spitfire, ... ok, not those. But Barton, Palomino, Thoroughbred are horse-related. Barton is Sir Barton, the first horse to win the Triple Crown, before it was even known as the Triple Crown. http://www.thoroughbredcentral.com/famous.htm (google is leet.)
... Or not.
As far as I know (and I could be way wrong) was that AMD had made clean-room implementations of x86 architechtures, from
Also, if Intel has to license x86-64 from AMD, they will just use their Yamhill project. However, if you ask Intel, Yamhill doesn't exist. They don't want to even give the hint of going with AMD's x86-64 when they have Itanium (or Itanic, depending) and Itanium II to promote. I think I remember reading that AMD was offering the x86-64 instruction set without too much royalties or *something*.
The code names are all horses.
How many horses are there left? Maybe we'll have a Mr. Ed codename soon.
Again, I could be wrong. It might be the judge's name.
"Code is the key to solving many problems. Like the problem of the RIAA and its inordinately and disproportionately strong political influence."
"We need to have code written that organizes the scattered power in the world and focuses it to do our collective bidding. Either way, in the end, more code has to be written; Declan is right, and Public Knowledge are acknowledging this by writing code to solve a problem of political imbalance."
(end quote)
"We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code." - David Clarke
Bring it on.
It wasn't a meteor that killed the dinosaurs, remember, it was the dust. How can you fight against dust? (This bit of zen makes me want to say only: "I'm disrespectful to dirt! Can you see I am serious! Join me or die. Can you do any less?" (quoting the whole thing would be too weird, and probably expose me to too much thinking about why I linked the two. Mr. Sparkle in the Land of the Lost!)
OK, so that was a nonsensical rambling. Bring on the revolution anyway.
Sounds like Tribes 2 to me... Sort of.
There have been some interesting action/strategy mixes before, Black and White comes to mind, as does Actraiser. It seems rather sporadic, though... I think this would be something definitely worth looking into. Players could use strategy to refine their forces and attributes, and then have a certain edge during the action phases. Being able to choose your armaments in Mechwarrior is sort of like this, though, so maybe it isn't as innovative as I am thinking it is.
While this is pretty innovative, there are some new problems that are introduced. Written code is ... how can I explain this? The metaphor is that of a physical sheet of paper. It occupies space on the page, you can scroll up or down, etc. While it is really just a long stream of bytes, the way it is presented is visually, and 2-dimensionally.
.wav.
With music, it is more a temporal presentation. It's a little difficult to jump ahead or back by a certain amount and be sure of where you are in the code. Well, you would have to listen to it a few times, at the very least (OK, so it is no different from code you have never seen before.)
It is a different presentation method, and so has different benefits. Personally, I think the musical phrases they use for the different language structures are far too long and complicated. I am imagining it taking 2 minutes to go through a simple program... Also, the audio should have been a compressed format... mp3 or ogg or *something* other than
Anyway... A nifty idea overall, I guess. I'm probably jealous that I didn't come up with it first. It's basically text to speech, only not speech...
If you ask me, all the 'Apple switching to Intel' stories have been pretty much just silly hype. What I think is more interesting, but only slightly less fanciful, is Apple switching to AMD Hammer processors.
I don't follow this whole thing as much as some people, but Apple is part of the HyperTransport consortium (as is NVidia, and AMD), and so there is some speculation that Apple might go with a hammer/nforce combo (with HyperTransport), if they were to make any huge jump to another architechture.
The last jump was from the Motorola 680x0 platform to the current Apple/IBM/Motorola PowerPC platform, and that was a while ago. The problem with this new IBM chip is that it isn't terribly close to being done yet. I guess we'll have to wait and see how it turns out.
Here's a link I dug up: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=4814
"I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself, "Dijkstra would not have liked this", well that would be enough immortality for me"
A very apt last quote for your post. It reminds me a little bit of one of Richard Feynman's friends talking about how he had seen Feynman in a dream, talking very animatedly about something or other, and he thought 'Should I tell him he's dead, or does he already know?'
OK, so it seemed more relevant in my own mind, but he certainly has left a legacy for others to follow.
It just seems to me that once the people no longer control what they own, they no longer have the power to use those resources for bringing about necessary changes.
My example, taken from an economics class, is that of the grass growing in the town square. (How much more common can that get?) If 1 shepherd lets the flock graze on the land, maybe there will be no problems (other than a herd of sheep invading the town square). If too many shepherds do this, or if it becomes a habit, there won't be much grass left, and the people and the sheep will both have to go without.
The end result of companies buying up that which belongs to us all is that they will exploit it to their maximum profit potential, and then discard it. What you end up with is vast resources that were squandered and used up to benefit a very few, after having been seized from the many. That which used to be free is now owned. That which used to belong to everyone is now fenced off, divided, broken down, distilled, and resold at a profit. The end result of this, however, is a death of sorts. The excesses that allowed other things to spring up and evolve have been destroyed, crushed under the optimizing economics of profit-uber-alles. And so, that which was supposed to enrich everyone (the public at large wouldn't extract minerals from the ground) ends up making everyone poorer (the public at large isn't going to chop down every tree and then let the wood rot).
Just my thoughts. The maintenance of the commons provides a very important balance to the individual / corporate urges to conquer and claim. Balance is good.
If you take nothing else from the essay, read over the poem:
They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.
--English folk poem, circa 1764
I was watching the Fox 5 News from NYC covering H2K2 (http://www.h2k2.net/) and went around getting handles of people, and even mentioned that that these 'teenagers' could be the next group called on in the 'war' on terror. Ignore that it isn't a declared war or anything, but from a major media outlet, that sounds like a near-riging endorsement.
t er.security.ap/index.html (holy cow does that guy look scary or what...)
Maybe you were thinking of this link: http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/08/01/compu
ok, follow me...
go to thomas.loc.gov
under the Legislation heading, click on Bill Text
select the 105th congress (1997-1998)
search for word/phrase 'digital millennium' (2 L's and 2 N's) or enter bill number "s. 2037"
Click on one of the relevant results.
The Bill Summary and Status link is informative. Check the "All Bill Summary and Status Info" link for some history (or some of the other links), then look for "Recorded Vote"
Bingo.
(phew, stepping through this was a little harder than I thought it would be... But, now that I understand it enough, I can tell everyone else how to do it. Bang on.)
"I think if people knew that certain members of our government were trying to:
-put the law in the hands of the RIAA
-give them sole discression of who to attack
-give them the power to commit what would be a crime for anyone else
this might blow up. I have a feeling most folks, given the facts, would be ashamed. Maybe we could find a way to get a black shadow cast on those behind this?"
Phone up the EFF and get them to hold a press conference. Or, my original idea:
C-SPAN, Washington Journal, every morning, 7am to 8,9 or 10am.
http://www.cspan.org/journal/
journal iz_at_teh c-span.org (my mangling.)
Do it with whomever you like. In fact, I encourage anyone to Steal This Meme (or something).
:-) My preferred method is to get 2 3/4 inch wooden dowels (or less, but 3/4 inch is the max allowed for DC, I think, as I learned for Jan 20th, 2000. Whatever ones I have (that you have no way to see) are legal. Yeah, so that doesn't help.) and tape your sign in between the two poles, with a little space above and below the ends of the poles. This way you can hold it up if you have to, or put it on the ground and stick your feet under it, if you have to. This way your arms don't get tired all the time. Anyway!
One of the problems I sometimes see (and I have done it myself) is that the message is too complicated and convoluted and no one really can get it. Compare and contrast: "Abolish Legalized Corporate Tyranny" with "Freedom Good. DMCA Bad."
Flyers good. Unclear signs bad.
I would love for you to do this. And yes, a friend is good.
>>Hollywood is winning, folks. You are losing. And you'd better start caring.
>Couldn't have said it better myself.
This just gave me an idea. 2 people, with 2 signs, and *lots* of pro-freedom anti-DMCA flyers.
Sign 1:
Congress is selling your rights and freedom.
Sign 2:
Hollywood is buying.
Maybe chop out two of the words in Sign 1, but you get the idea. (for clarity, choose rights or freedoms.)
If you no longer control what you buy, do you really actually own it? If you can't record from your TV, if you can't make a copy of that shiny new (expensive) CD for your car, if you can't take notes from a[n e-]book you bought... do you actually own them?
>Because, in order to copy the poem one would have to "circumvent" the copy protection... in this case, the copy protection is the envelope... you have to take it out of the envelope in order to copy it.
:-)
9 -11-011-20-OP-HW-SW-0000 and a short follow-up: http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-09 -11-011-20-OP-HW-SW-0021
I much prefer the term "Access Control" to copy protection, since that is truly what it is. The technological measures limit your access to your own property (the fair use rights are still there, you just have no way to exercise them).
And now for a little story:
This reminds me a little bit of a story about a famous trickster (Nasreddin Hodja, but I'm not sure which part of the Middle East he comes from) who sold his house to someone for a very good price, except for a nail in the kitchen. When the new owner was eating dinner, Hodja insisted that he be allowed to come in and check on his nail, to make sure that nothing had happened to it. Eventually, he got to annoying that the new owner agreed to buy the nail from him, for a considerable sum, just so he didn't have to deal with being interrupted all the time.
OK, so it isn't a *totally* relevant story, but if the MPAA can 'enter' your devices and 'check on' 'their' property, well, do you really own it, even though you paid money for it? Perhaps I don't 'know' how to properly use the 'single' quotes...
And, since it is kinda relevant, I offer my letter that I wrote: http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-0
bless you, RZG
I've heard of all that stuff before, except for the anticounterfeiting one. WTF???!!! The post you have above is worthy of 5 articles in major media. These are important issues and should be covered, but of course, like the HDTV bandwidth auction, got nary a peep out to the public.
/. loser, mod parent up!
That is just messed up. Copying a movie being equivalent to counterfeiting money is again taking copyright matters out of the civil arena and into the criminal arena. Go read the bill, esp. the parts that were struck out. This is piracy language, and they are turning it into something else. The way I think about it, to make money and movies/phonorecords/computer program on equal footing gives the very distinct impression that you no longer own the product you are buying. If you don't own it, you have no rights to control it. Just lovely. Why haven't I heard about this bill before? (I'm glad those parts were struck out, but come on, should we have to look in every bill that is introduced? Remember back to the 'right to virus' that the RIAA and MPAA wanted put into the (horribly named) USA PATRIOT Act...)
At the risk of sounding like a
"We should make "Coding" into a religion perhaps, then we could publish books with code in them that couldn't be deems illegal? They would be infringing on our rights? How about we call it CowBoyNeilism?"
How about Codeboy Nihlism? Hm...
Nihilism (edited):
2. The doctrine that nothing can be known; scepticism as to all knowledge and reality. [1913 Webster]
1. a revolutionary doctrine that advocates destruction of the social system for its own sake. [wordnet]
Hm... Maybe a little too close to Slashdot reality at times...
Does anyone have any information about how well this 2.4ghz band works? Will you have to yell at your family members not to stand or walk past a certain area between the machines?
ObBeowulfComment: Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these! Um. Or something. Still, the wireless network part is kinda nifty, although somehow I don't think it would be quite that useful unless you had some kind of cross-platform computing structure in place. Also, the wireless nature might make it harder to scale past a certain number of machines (interference and packet storms and all that good stuff...)
" Wasn't code ruled free speech a while back though? So just explaining the code... wouldn't that be ok? I really don't see how a court can make explaining something can be illegal."
" What if someone makes something, can they explain it then? What about if they paint the code? Or sing it? Is that ok? Could he sing his whole presentation?"
Sort of gives a new, strange meaning to 'write-only code.' Actually, that's really kinda scary. Sort of like writing letters to someone and then having to put them in a fire. (Reminded of the Memory Hole in 1984...)
Something I've realized, there are only people in this world. Person against person, or in groups. If enough people get together, this law and others like it *can* be changed. Get to it.
Is there any place that has a few good examples of what can be done with the XUL and XPI features of Mozilla / Gecko / whatever ? I've discovered www.xulplanet.com but I was wondering if anyone knew of any demos out there.
"What is wrong with corporations having an incentive to make profit? That is what they are there for.
Companies have no incentive to support free speech, the 1st Amendment doesn't apply to them. If you don't like what cable companies do then don't use them. Don't try to impose your will on others."
The simple point is this: Corporations are not citizens. While you say that the 1st Amendment doesn't apply to them, the 1st Amendment does apply to the citizens that use the cable company. (I know there have been a number of court cases that give citizen-like rights to corporations, though. One phone company sued a town that wouldn't let them put up a cellphone tower, saying its civil rights had been violated. The town lost.)
Consider this, perhaps... While it might be a flawed analogy, what if the cable provider changed your text en route, attributing things to you that you didn't say. Could you sue the company for libel? Slander? If they are blocking you, would that be denying you your right to free speech?
While it is most likely in their (profitable) interest to promote free speech (sounds like a phone ad...) if there are fewer and fewer companies that provide the service (cable is not a right) they will have de facto control over the medium. The solution is to have more players in the market, so that there isn't one central controlling company or a very small number of controlling companies. Competition helps promote fair play. Usually...