So should everything that you can give away for free--like kidneys and babies--be legal to sell?
Kidneys: absolutely. Thousands of people die each year because of a lack of available organ donors. Relying on altruism alone is an excellent way to ensure that this continues. Babies: no, because a child is not actually the property of his parents.
I think it's useful to distinguish between technologies that require the user's machine to disobey her, and those that don't. I only apply the DRM label to those in the first category. Encrypting files falls into the second; if an attacker gains access to my encrypted hard drive, it (hopefully) won't be of use to her not because her computer refuses to decrypt it, but because it *can't*.
Protection voluntarily placed on the content by the end-user is legitimate DRM.
Arguably true. My real problem with legally-enforced DRM is not that users can voluntarily surrender their rights (although the legal and moral validity of these sorts of "implied contracts" is questionable), but that it forbids *everyone* from creating certain classes of software, whether or not they have any interaction with copyright holders.
I find it really ironic that many of the same people that say no technology say strong encryption is evil or should be controlled are so willing to declare that DRM is evil and should be controlled.
DRM!=encryption. DRM requires that "my" computer refuse to obey me. Encryption does not. DRM should not be "controlled" in the sense of made illegal, but neither should DRM schemes be protected by force of law.
That's less effective than increasing the cost of gasoline, which is more market-based as a solution.
Agreed. Fuel economy standards attack the problem indirectly, and they encourage car sellers and buyers to find loopholes rather than actually reducing emissions. For example, SUVs came about because they could be classified as trucks under CAFE standards. Directly taxing the activity with negative externalities removes the possibility of these loopholes. If you're concerned about the regressive nature of gas taxes, then cut payroll or sales taxes to compensate.
However, I, too, feel the pinch between the ascendant right wing and the lunatic left wing. There's not much room for "real" liberals, is there?
As a "classical liberal", I share your pain. I remember when Republicans used to at least pretend to care about limited government, fiscal responsibility, and individual freedom.
Even with our "short" life spans now, people commit suicide, engage in risky sexual practices
I would say that "because of" is more accurate than "even with". Today we are destined to deteriorate and die, generally before the age of 100. Thus the benefits of safe behavior have a fixed upper bound, and it can be entirely rational to engage in risky behavior that increases your present happiness. With extended lifespans, the "opportunity cost" of death becomes much greater most people would alter their behavior.
All this will mean is more work. Retirement at 85 until you can get SS benefits?
Retirement exists because many people eventually become physically unable to work. Eliminate aging, and the reason for permanent retirement goes away. Instead we could work for 30-40 years, take 5 years or so off, then go back to work possibly in a completely different area.
No thank you. Lifespan is pretty ok right now. We need better quality, not quantity of life.
Nobody will force you to take life extension treatments. But you may want to, because they will increase both the quality and quantity of life.
Gas prices have gone nowhere but up since Bush took office.
I always hate to interrupt a good Bush-bashing session with facts, but take a look. Gas prices fell quite a bit during the 80s, stayed relatively constant for a while (but note the sharp increase toward the end of the Clinton administration), fell during the first few years of the Bush administration (even after 9/11, which should have been a prime gouging opportunity), and only rose significantly after the Iraq war and last year's hurricanes. Also note that prices peaked right before the 2004 election, which is inconvenient for the "Big Oil manipulates prices so Republicans win" theory.
The President does not control gas prices. Or much of the economy at all, for that matter.
This is referred to as "zone pricing." It is a prime example of how oil companies are gouging
Good grief. I suppose it's also "gouging" when a house in San Jose costs more than an identical house in Peoria. The same people who claim gouging when gas stations have different prices would be screaming "collusion!" if the prices were always identical.
It's pretty clear that the oil companies are plotting to help their good friend Deborah Pryce (and the Republicans generally) in Ohio, but I don't quite follow how they arrange that.
This is the left's version of intelligent design. Gas prices can't possibly be a result of decentralized market forces, there has to be a secret cabal determining what to charge in order to help Republicans win elections. Gas prices fall every single year at the end of summer. They've fallen especially rapidly this year because many events feared by speculators (such as hurricanes and war with Iran) failed to materialize.
Also consider that the gas prices are magically dropping for no apparent reason seven weeks before election day.
Summer driving season is over, no significant hurricanes this year, Iran hasn't blown up, major oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, Prudhoe Bay shutdown less severe than originally thought. I know it's fun to believe in shadowy conspiracies, but let's leave the magical thinking to the creationists.
You can trash this article all you want, but if you are a math-fearing geek (as you should be to have a slashdot membership card), then you simply cannot argue with the conclusion of this article.
Just like you can't argue when the Discovery Institute uses math to "prove" that evolution is impossible.
Bush *is* an illegitimately elected aspirant dictator, a large scale mass murderer, and a war criminal.
This is why you guys are going to keep losing. As a conservative who actually believes in limited government and individual freedom, I strongly disagree with the current Republican leadership on many issues. But when the opposition is this unhinged, all I can do is either leave my ballot blank or "waste" it on a third party.
No, Apple should fix the freaking thing, a "OS X security update", small sized, why should they hesitate?
Of course they should. I thought the "serious design flaw" made that clear.
I liked the guys attitude, it is not like "Installer is evil" things probably by some Unix geeks that hates everything easy and automatic.
Well, I suppose I'm a Unix geek and I like things that are easy and automatic. That's why I don't like installer packages and do like self-contained app bundles.
I knew it was weird when I installed Parallels a few months ago and it added several kernel extensions without a password prompt. This is a serious design flaw, and yet another reason for developers and users to avoid installer packages unless absolutely necessary.
Re:What happens when complexity gets out of contro
on
Why Johnny Can't Code
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Division of labor is good. If everybody has to be fully self-sufficient, that greatly reduces the opportunity to focus on a particular area and make advancements that everyone can benefit from.
if there were a catastrophic event that destroyed most of society, very few people would have enough knowledge to rebuild what we currently have.
True and unavoidable. Unless we go back to the caves, so "rebuilding" would be easier.
Therefore, I believe that we as a society are getting dumber because we need to know less
Collectively we know far more than we did in the past, and thus the percentage of that knowledge that any one individual can have is less.
because modern medicine can keep nearly anyone alive long enough to reproduce, I'd say that evolution of the human species has stopped
Funny, I'm doing this each night w/ my PC. Been doing it for years. Not an apple in sight.
Me too, although my PC is a Mac mini. But this isn't about us, it's about normal humans who understandably have little interest in assembling disparate pieces of hardware and software.
You do know that the majority of bankruptcies are caused my large medical bills, right?
Money is fungible. Medical bills no more "cause" bankruptcy than everything else somebody has spent money on. Medical bills are often large and unexpected, but so are lots of other things. This is why you should live below your means, and have emergency savings and insurance against catastrophic events. Most people really could do this if they wanted to. Maybe you only make $30,000, but there are people who make $25,000 and aren't starving.
No argument there. It combines the worst aspects of capitalism and socialism with none of the benefits. The two most harmful misfeatures are the linkage between your job and your insurance (which means you're doubly screwed if you lose your job), and the attitude that insurance should pay for *everything* (which drives up costs because you don't have to care how much doctors charge). We need high-deductible catastrophic-only policies that are affordable to individuals. HSAs are a decent step in that direction, but with employer-provided insurance still the norm there's not a big incentive for people to move to them.
Moral of story: private credit agencies make mistakes, screw up your life, and don't give a toss.
While I'm no fan of excessive lawsuits, I do believe in situations like this you should be able to sue credit reporting agencies for what is essentially defamation.
My advice to you all: if you're going to be entering into a situation where your credit record will be checked (e.g. loan, mortage, etc) do a check first and clear up any mistakes the credit agencies might have made. Obviously, you have to pay them, a private company, to look at your records....
In the US you can get free credit reports (once a year IIRC), don't know about UK.
Actually, copyright/patents/etc allow an author to include a license along with the work
I don't believe this is the case. It only works for software because of lousy court decisions holding that "copying" software to RAM in order to run it is a copyright violation unless you have a license, which is utter nonsense.
GPLv3 includes the no-DRM restriction, that's ostensibly legal
Because it only applies if you want to do something that is otherwise forbidden by standard copyright. No GPL version attempts to remove your existing rights, as EULAs do.
GPL v3 added the no military use restriction too
No, some nutjobs took the GPL and added that clause, thereby making their software non-free.
You might want to have a look at the checkout screen for the MacBook...when you say 'insufferable reflective screen on the MB'.. you know you can specify whether you want a shiny or matt screen?
All MacBook screens are glossy. Only the MacBook Pro lets you choose.
I sometimes cringe when I read the comments on Mac blogs - the Mac users make Linux fans look humble and Windows users look intelligent.
There are morons in every community. Note the guy in this thread comparing Mac users to fundamentalist Islamic terrorists.
I work in the IT security industry and I'm perfectly willing to accept that this exploit is for real. The pattern of events is not abnormal: the exploit will be demonstrated at a conference but because of NDA the details remain under wraps until the manufacturer releases a patch.
Fine, but the exploit that was demonstrated is not what's being questioned. They showed an exploit of a third-party wireless card, and I accept that. The key question about which they have been extremely vague is whether a similar vulnerability exists in the built-in hardware and software. This is not just a theoretical concern; I use Airport in my MacBook Pro in my apartment, and if it's vulnerable to anyone within wireless range I want to know.
It's blatantly obvious that Apple's lawyers have come down on him like a ton of bricks
Perhaps to you. To others, it's "blatantly obvious" that he has some weird issue with Apple and enjoys spreading FUD. His "clarification" provides no support either way.
He states that the ONLY reason he's saying something now is because he's talking about Intels drivers, not Apples
Or maybe that's all he actually has an exploit for. I don't know, and neither do you.
Funny, I bet you have plenty of DVDs, despite their DRM and region encoding.
Which are trivially defeatable. I don't buy a lot of DVDs, but I would buy exactly zero if I couldn't rip them. Likewise, if Blu-ray or HD-DVD gets cracked as fully as DVD, I'll consider them.
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Kidneys: absolutely. Thousands of people die each year because of a lack of available organ donors. Relying on altruism alone is an excellent way to ensure that this continues. Babies: no, because a child is not actually the property of his parents.
I think it's useful to distinguish between technologies that require the user's machine to disobey her, and those that don't. I only apply the DRM label to those in the first category. Encrypting files falls into the second; if an attacker gains access to my encrypted hard drive, it (hopefully) won't be of use to her not because her computer refuses to decrypt it, but because it *can't*.
Protection voluntarily placed on the content by the end-user is legitimate DRM.
Arguably true. My real problem with legally-enforced DRM is not that users can voluntarily surrender their rights (although the legal and moral validity of these sorts of "implied contracts" is questionable), but that it forbids *everyone* from creating certain classes of software, whether or not they have any interaction with copyright holders.
I find it really ironic that many of the same people that say no technology say strong encryption is evil or should be controlled are so willing to declare that DRM is evil and should be controlled.
DRM!=encryption. DRM requires that "my" computer refuse to obey me. Encryption does not. DRM should not be "controlled" in the sense of made illegal, but neither should DRM schemes be protected by force of law.
That's less effective than increasing the cost of gasoline, which is more market-based as a solution.
Agreed. Fuel economy standards attack the problem indirectly, and they encourage car sellers and buyers to find loopholes rather than actually reducing emissions. For example, SUVs came about because they could be classified as trucks under CAFE standards. Directly taxing the activity with negative externalities removes the possibility of these loopholes. If you're concerned about the regressive nature of gas taxes, then cut payroll or sales taxes to compensate.
However, I, too, feel the pinch between the ascendant right wing and the lunatic left wing. There's not much room for "real" liberals, is there?
As a "classical liberal", I share your pain. I remember when Republicans used to at least pretend to care about limited government, fiscal responsibility, and individual freedom.
Even with our "short" life spans now, people commit suicide, engage in risky sexual practices
I would say that "because of" is more accurate than "even with". Today we are destined to deteriorate and die, generally before the age of 100. Thus the benefits of safe behavior have a fixed upper bound, and it can be entirely rational to engage in risky behavior that increases your present happiness. With extended lifespans, the "opportunity cost" of death becomes much greater most people would alter their behavior.
All this will mean is more work. Retirement at 85 until you can get SS benefits?
Retirement exists because many people eventually become physically unable to work. Eliminate aging, and the reason for permanent retirement goes away. Instead we could work for 30-40 years, take 5 years or so off, then go back to work possibly in a completely different area.
No thank you. Lifespan is pretty ok right now. We need better quality, not quantity of life.
Nobody will force you to take life extension treatments. But you may want to, because they will increase both the quality and quantity of life.
Gas prices have gone nowhere but up since Bush took office.
I always hate to interrupt a good Bush-bashing session with facts, but take a look. Gas prices fell quite a bit during the 80s, stayed relatively constant for a while (but note the sharp increase toward the end of the Clinton administration), fell during the first few years of the Bush administration (even after 9/11, which should have been a prime gouging opportunity), and only rose significantly after the Iraq war and last year's hurricanes. Also note that prices peaked right before the 2004 election, which is inconvenient for the "Big Oil manipulates prices so Republicans win" theory.
The President does not control gas prices. Or much of the economy at all, for that matter.
This is referred to as "zone pricing." It is a prime example of how oil companies are gouging
Good grief. I suppose it's also "gouging" when a house in San Jose costs more than an identical house in Peoria. The same people who claim gouging when gas stations have different prices would be screaming "collusion!" if the prices were always identical.
It's pretty clear that the oil companies are plotting to help their good friend Deborah Pryce (and the Republicans generally) in Ohio, but I don't quite follow how they arrange that.
This is the left's version of intelligent design. Gas prices can't possibly be a result of decentralized market forces, there has to be a secret cabal determining what to charge in order to help Republicans win elections. Gas prices fall every single year at the end of summer. They've fallen especially rapidly this year because many events feared by speculators (such as hurricanes and war with Iran) failed to materialize.
Also consider that the gas prices are magically dropping for no apparent reason seven weeks before election day.
Summer driving season is over, no significant hurricanes this year, Iran hasn't blown up, major oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, Prudhoe Bay shutdown less severe than originally thought. I know it's fun to believe in shadowy conspiracies, but let's leave the magical thinking to the creationists.
You can trash this article all you want, but if you are a math-fearing geek (as you should be to have a slashdot membership card), then you simply cannot argue with the conclusion of this article.
Just like you can't argue when the Discovery Institute uses math to "prove" that evolution is impossible.
Bush *is* an illegitimately elected aspirant dictator, a large scale mass murderer, and a war criminal.
This is why you guys are going to keep losing. As a conservative who actually believes in limited government and individual freedom, I strongly disagree with the current Republican leadership on many issues. But when the opposition is this unhinged, all I can do is either leave my ballot blank or "waste" it on a third party.
No, Apple should fix the freaking thing, a "OS X security update", small sized, why should they hesitate?
Of course they should. I thought the "serious design flaw" made that clear.
I liked the guys attitude, it is not like "Installer is evil" things probably by some Unix geeks that hates everything easy and automatic.
Well, I suppose I'm a Unix geek and I like things that are easy and automatic. That's why I don't like installer packages and do like self-contained app bundles.
I knew it was weird when I installed Parallels a few months ago and it added several kernel extensions without a password prompt. This is a serious design flaw, and yet another reason for developers and users to avoid installer packages unless absolutely necessary.
Division of labor is good. If everybody has to be fully self-sufficient, that greatly reduces the opportunity to focus on a particular area and make advancements that everyone can benefit from.
if there were a catastrophic event that destroyed most of society, very few people would have enough knowledge to rebuild what we currently have.
True and unavoidable. Unless we go back to the caves, so "rebuilding" would be easier.
Therefore, I believe that we as a society are getting dumber because we need to know less
Collectively we know far more than we did in the past, and thus the percentage of that knowledge that any one individual can have is less.
because modern medicine can keep nearly anyone alive long enough to reproduce, I'd say that evolution of the human species has stopped
Give biotech a few decades.
Funny, I'm doing this each night w/ my PC. Been doing it for years. Not an apple in sight.
Me too, although my PC is a Mac mini. But this isn't about us, it's about normal humans who understandably have little interest in assembling disparate pieces of hardware and software.
You do know that the majority of bankruptcies are caused my large medical bills, right?
Money is fungible. Medical bills no more "cause" bankruptcy than everything else somebody has spent money on. Medical bills are often large and unexpected, but so are lots of other things. This is why you should live below your means, and have emergency savings and insurance against catastrophic events. Most people really could do this if they wanted to. Maybe you only make $30,000, but there are people who make $25,000 and aren't starving.
Our health care system is seriously screwed up
No argument there. It combines the worst aspects of capitalism and socialism with none of the benefits. The two most harmful misfeatures are the linkage between your job and your insurance (which means you're doubly screwed if you lose your job), and the attitude that insurance should pay for *everything* (which drives up costs because you don't have to care how much doctors charge). We need high-deductible catastrophic-only policies that are affordable to individuals. HSAs are a decent step in that direction, but with employer-provided insurance still the norm there's not a big incentive for people to move to them.
Moral of story: private credit agencies make mistakes, screw up your life, and don't give a toss.
While I'm no fan of excessive lawsuits, I do believe in situations like this you should be able to sue credit reporting agencies for what is essentially defamation.
My advice to you all: if you're going to be entering into a situation where your credit record will be checked (e.g. loan, mortage, etc) do a check first and clear up any mistakes the credit agencies might have made. Obviously, you have to pay them, a private company, to look at your records....
In the US you can get free credit reports (once a year IIRC), don't know about UK.
Actually, copyright/patents/etc allow an author to include a license along with the work
I don't believe this is the case. It only works for software because of lousy court decisions holding that "copying" software to RAM in order to run it is a copyright violation unless you have a license, which is utter nonsense.
GPLv3 includes the no-DRM restriction, that's ostensibly legal
Because it only applies if you want to do something that is otherwise forbidden by standard copyright. No GPL version attempts to remove your existing rights, as EULAs do.
GPL v3 added the no military use restriction too
No, some nutjobs took the GPL and added that clause, thereby making their software non-free.
I'll put a bet down that once they go with the Core 2 Duo (guessing in 4-6 months)
You're off by 5-7 months. Both the Mac Pro and new iMacs use Core 2 CPUs.
You might want to have a look at the checkout screen for the MacBook...when you say 'insufferable reflective screen on the MB' .. you know you can specify whether you want a shiny or matt screen?
All MacBook screens are glossy. Only the MacBook Pro lets you choose.
I sometimes cringe when I read the comments on Mac blogs - the Mac users make Linux fans look humble and Windows users look intelligent.
There are morons in every community. Note the guy in this thread comparing Mac users to fundamentalist Islamic terrorists.
I work in the IT security industry and I'm perfectly willing to accept that this exploit is for real. The pattern of events is not abnormal: the exploit will be demonstrated at a conference but because of NDA the details remain under wraps until the manufacturer releases a patch.
Fine, but the exploit that was demonstrated is not what's being questioned. They showed an exploit of a third-party wireless card, and I accept that. The key question about which they have been extremely vague is whether a similar vulnerability exists in the built-in hardware and software. This is not just a theoretical concern; I use Airport in my MacBook Pro in my apartment, and if it's vulnerable to anyone within wireless range I want to know.
So now she boots into Windows XP for a couple of hours once a week to do payroll
Parallels would probably be more convenient.
It's blatantly obvious that Apple's lawyers have come down on him like a ton of bricks
Perhaps to you. To others, it's "blatantly obvious" that he has some weird issue with Apple and enjoys spreading FUD. His "clarification" provides no support either way.
He states that the ONLY reason he's saying something now is because he's talking about Intels drivers, not Apples
Or maybe that's all he actually has an exploit for. I don't know, and neither do you.
Funny, I bet you have plenty of DVDs, despite their DRM and region encoding.
Which are trivially defeatable. I don't buy a lot of DVDs, but I would buy exactly zero if I couldn't rip them. Likewise, if Blu-ray or HD-DVD gets cracked as fully as DVD, I'll consider them.