Newer Apple software packages generally require near current versions of the OS, and many other software vendors go the same route.
Clearly your experience is different, but I wouldn't agree with that characterization from my experiences. I find that the vast majority of software I use (which includes a fair amount of stuff) either requires something like 10.1.x (usually 3 or 5), or has both a 10.1 and 10.2 version available. Unless you mean the software that Apple itself releases... but the original poster's point is that these are essentially new features. Can't use the very last Quicktime? Who cares; the last version for your system likely still plays 99% of the movies the new version would play.
I don't think it's unreasonable to say that if you want to guarantee that you can use the latest and greatest of every piece of software you find, you need to keep your OS up-to-date. That's the way the world works. If you don't want to keep it up to date, then settle for continuing to use the products that have presumably served you well for the last year or two. There's always going to be a trade off; you can't expect to have it both ways in the software world (or anywhere else for that matter).
Fink is another example, and they already note on their page that 10.3 will require a new install from them.
Although your point is still valid, Fink is a terrible example of it--like many tools out there, fink will have a new version of the software for 10.3, but will (presumably, since they do it now) continue to offer the 10.1 and 10.2 versions for download. Granted, not all the packages will stay available forever, but there's no reason you can't back up the working versions of all the 10.2 packages you want and call it a day.
While I understand what you are saying, you are choosing to live in a dynamic-software mode, which is probably not a good mode to live your life in if you don't like to pay for upgrades. I know people (in the CS field, not just Joe User) who almost never update anything, and they get along just fine. It's possible to live in a static software world if you are willing to make a few trade-offs. It's up to you to decide whether the money or the cutting edge of everything is most important to you.
The crime/poverty thing is caused largely by the systems we put around it (criminalising the drug taker, for example, who never gets help because to ask for help would be to get sent to jail for being in posession of the drug!).
I understand that there's nothing intrinsically crime/poverty causing about the drug itself, but I don't see where having a pill form would suddenly change the a) legality or b) societal system of hard drugs.
If we had a true way of controlling dosage and purity, and made it legal, and changed society's perceptions of drug use, then we could talk about ending some of the problems. But just being relatively harmless alone (which I don't see this being enough to do anyways) isn't enough to make something legal. Look at pot laws. Look sunday alcohol laws. Look at sodomy laws.
The issue of how our society legislates behavior is far, far harder to deal with.
But assuming a true AI has been built/programmed by humans, I guess it could be considered an 'assembly of humans,' too.
I hope you were kidding; So could a chair, by your logic.
The real point, though, is that corporations are 'assemblies' as in 'school assembly' not as in 'some assembly required', and the two have nothing to do with eachother.
How exactly would you end overdoses with time release pills? If one pill releases x amount per hour, 10 pills releases 10x. If you can put the drug in your body, you can overdose.
Besides, hygene and dosage pale in comparison to the fact that coke and heroin are massively addictive and suck people into a spiral of poverty and crime. That's a little worse than some holes in the arm.
For example, the following gem:
The funny thing about digital security is that we've lived in a world where we only knew someone was attacking us when they hit our firewalls. It's time to evolve that world so that we get the information that an attack is coming before it hits our front door. What the hell?!? So what do you have, 'notification' packets sent before the 'real' packets?? Do you delay the 'real' packets to give enough time between the 'notification' and 'real'? "But we don't know that data's coming until it actually gets here." No shit, really?!?
Probably this refers to a system of allowing things like DOS attack detection and back-propagation along routers, so that DOS attacks can be stopped closer to/at the source(s), rather than at the destination, which is a real idea--not necessarily a good one (I'm not really up on the details of such a system), but it's idea that's out there, so he's not just spewing total gibberish.
I mean, it's hard to get an anti-GPL spin if you make the fundamental correction to the story:
Aimed at home users, the $129 device has been a smash hit, selling 400,000 units in the first quarter of this year alone.
But now there's a problem. The Linux software in the router is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), which the Free Software Foundation created in 1991. That means that the major reason this device was such a hot seller is that it used code stolen from thousands of volunteers.
Somehow, I doubt that would have fit into Lyons' vision of the story
[Forewarning: This is blatant, uninformed, and content-free propaganda against the FSF and GPL, so be sure to avail yourself of the article comment feature to point out how very very wrong the author is after reading it]
Ignoring idiots won't help, as the parent notes. What we need to do instead is speak out loudly (but eloquently; "Ly0nz suXX0rz!!!" isn't going to help the case any) against FUD like this whenever we see it.
Ironic: Poignantly contrary to what was expected or intended.
So it's ironic because we would expect (and it's a fairly safe bet that Microsoft would intend) that.NET pages work better with IE than anything else, and make it easy to do so, while harder to do anything else (yes, I speak from experience). Thus the fact that it doesn't, in the original poster's experience, is contrary to what is expected. One might even say poignantly so.
There's also the issue of people who are signed up for the DNC list by others; for example, your elderly parents/grandparents might be losing touch a little bit, and thus be easier prey for hard-selling telemarketers. The DNC list lets people protect their family in situations like that, which means less profit for the telemarketers.
Besides, it's not like they'll really gain much from eliminating the absolute no-sell customers; those take almost no time for the telemarketers, so there's almost no cost for calling them. The massive efficiency gain that everyone likes to speculate about won't really come, because only a small fraction of phone time is (I would speculate, perhaps someone has numbers?) be spent on the "No! *click*" calls.
For one thing, the root account is disabled. It is not trivial to enable the root account, and it isn't even necessary.
On the other hand, he doesn't mention that all you have to do is convince someone to enter their Administrator password, and all hell can break loose. I would say you are far more likely to sucessfully socially engineer someone to do that (Check out this wicked screen-saver; you just need to enter your administrator password to install it (a common install procedure)) than to get a *NIX user to run something as root.
Highly, highly doubtful. Just because cell components were once independent of eachother doesn't mean that they have not become dependent on eachother. This is the way ecosystems work; you get a whole lot of different things that evolved at completely different times (plants, insects, lizards, mammals, etc.), and yet they create a balance with each other that goes totally out of whack if you screw with part of it.
To use a much worse, but more slashdot-friendly, analogy: Imagine, however, that we simply wiped Windows from all the personal computers on the plant, without replacing it with anything. Most computers would cease to function entirely. From this, could we conclude that Windows and the personal computer must have been created at the same moment?
P.S. Spare us the trolls about what a good idea this would be
interoperable, intelligent, dynamic, flexible and scalable Arggg.
Just because something is a buzzword doesn't mean that it doesn't have meaning or that it isn't important.
interoperable - There's going to be a ton of different architectures, software, etc. out there. Unless a system can communicate whith all of them, it can't make use of them.
intelligent - That's a heck of a lot of data; it's going to have to be processed quite a bit before humans deal with it, or it's useless.
dynamic - The sensors will be moving around and going on- and off-line all the time. You have to take that into consideration when designing.
flexible - If it won't be a centrally-controlled deployment, then the ability to do as much of what you want as possible with what is available is very important. Also, see 'dynamic'.
scalable - There are a heck of a lot of sensors. You can't say "let's have them all communicate directly with one central server." Scalability is perhaps the most important feature of any large, dynamic network.
Sometimes things get to be buzzwords because they actually matter. Horsepower is a buzzword in the car arena, but that doesn't mean that it's not important to look for if you want a truck that will tow heavy things.
The problem is, the end user/customer usually gets saddled with its costs, and doesn't see a direct benefit from it.
That depends on how big a view you take. In terms of money in your pocket right now, yes, there's usually no benefit to the consumer. In terms of things like, say, cleaner and water, and lower incidence of birth defects and the like, then there's a pretty substantial benefit to a lot of recycling/waste-disposal.
Besides, the only difference between the "consumer pays" system and the "producer pays" system is that in the first case, you pay explicitly, and in the second, you pay implicitly in the price of the product. Unless you believe that the producer will take a profit hit rather than up the price to cover the recycling fees?
Would Alexander Fleming have said, "It wasn't a memorable event," when he discovered penicillin?
If you'd asked him not too long after, then yes, he probably would have. Most of the Fleming story is a myth; yes he discovered it by accident, but after relatively little lab work he gave up and stopped researching it. He didn't think it had a future as a useful drug, because it retained almost no effectiveness in its raw form. There's lots of evidence that he couldn't have cared less about penicillin for many years.
Until, of course, some more dedicated researches succeeded in making a good drug out of it, at which point he would have been glad to tell you that he'd know from day one that it would change the world.
So in addition to having a flair for the over-dramatic, the author of the article could use a better grounding in history before making really bad comparisons.
And I guess all those virgins are just SOL if the drugs are too expensive. Oh well, after all, it's their own fault becaue "they should have said no"/"the way they were dressed they were asking for it"/some other equal stupid expression that misses the realities of the situation, right? Are you saying that all those innocent people deserve to die a "long, horrible death" just to teach a few people a lesson?
In the long term, education is the only solution. In the short term, it's not much comfort to those who have had a death sentence forced upon them.
I never said it took no effort, just that (counter to your claim) it doesn't require depriving myself of the story. The same argument is worthless for many other examples though; where's the effort in sharing a view of a sunset?
I find "sharing" to mean that you are going out of your way to give something to someone else
That's (more or less) one definition. Here's another, straight from the dictionary: To participate in, use, enjoy, or experience jointly or in turns. Sharing a laugh, or sharing a fun evening, does not require depriving yourself of anything. You specifically said that sharing means depriving yourself of something, which in turn means that the thing being shared is material. My point is that while that can be true (sharing candy), it is in no way implicit in the idea of sharing, thus both of your conclusions are, in general, totally baseless. Just because one type of sharing means giving something up doesn't mean that things that don't give something up can't be sharing (in formal logic, (A->B) does not imply (!A->!B). You can't simply redefine or narrow the definition of a word because you don't like the way it is being used, and still be taken seriously.
What's worse is all you stupid jackasses really make it harder for legitimate uses of P2P technology to shine through
If you'd like to take your foot out of your mouth for a second and read my original post again, you'd see that I never defended the use of the word sharing, nor did I say that information was meant to be free. I took no position at all, and yet you blindly assumed all kinds of things about me, and insult me. That makes you sound like far more of a zealot than "all [those] stupid jackasses".
Your argument is deeply, fundamentally flawed, and if anything is working against convincing rational people of your point of view. There are several good arguments against use of the word "sharing" for P2P (although there are also good arguments against use of the word "theft"; neither of them is a terribly good word for P2P), but you are focusing on an argument that is totally nonsensical. Pointing out that you are undermining your own cause doesn't make me against you. The sooner you learn not to blindly attack anyone who disagrees with anything you say, the sooner you'll find people who might actually listen to and seriously consider your opinions.
But if your goal is just to rant and be a jackass, by all means continue in this vein.
Next you will go on how P2P is "sharing" [which doesn't make sense since you share something by depriving yourself of it
That's total crap. We share stories, we share ideas, we share adventures, we share a good laugh. We share hundreds of other non-material things. There is nothing about the word "share" that implies depriving yourself of anything, nor any implication that the thing being shared is material.
If you want to argue against the term "sharing" being applied to P2P networks, you should do it from a position that makes some sense.
Privacy is anything I do that does not have the risk of killing many other people.
You mean like buying things? What about guns? What about fertilizer, or any potentially dangerous chemical? What about knives? Guess we'd better keep track of everything you buy
What about gatherings? There's always the potential that you and your friends/religious group/barmates will get riled up and form a dangerous mob. Clearly, we should monitor you anytime you are in a group
You can spin almost anything as having the risk of killing many other people. Your contention that any violation of any speed law, no matter how minor, makes you a potential murderous psychopath is no less absurd than my examples, and more absurd than most of them.
You have failed to address my question, which is how your "logic" is unique to driving. Almost everything we do is done in a public place, and thus defined by your warped world-view as a "PUBLIC ACTION". Your argument can be applied exactly the same way to justify 24/7 audio and visual monitoring to everyone who is not in a personal residence, the elimination of cash and recording of all financial transactions, tracking everything we ever check out from a library, etc.
So either you are against the entire concept of privacy (unless you define privacy to mean "only things that happen in your home", which is not what society in general or our laws mean by privacy, in which case you should start using a different word), or you are unable to follow your flawed arguments to their natural conclusions.
Way to totally ignore all of my actual points. Of course, since you've already admitted that you don't know what the hell you are talking about, that doesn't surprise me greatly.
Think of the little black box as your little cop friend who never leaves you...
Are you volunteering to have a cop monitor you physically, 24/7, to make sure that you never do anything illegal? If not, then you are hypocrite, and you should get off your horse.
Oh, and by the way: stalking is illegal, so it's your point that is invalid.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
In case you aren't clear on what this means and why it is there:
"I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not content that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretence for claiming that power."
-Hamilton
"It has been objected also against a bill of rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure."
-Madison
You, as the driver, have to be in absolute control of your speed at all times. If you are unable to do so, you are unfit for the road!!!
Have you ever actually driven? I don't know about you, but I like to occasionally look at the road, instead of staring fixedly at my spedometer. This means that my speed will, on occasion, drift slightly (even if I had "absolute control" over every muscle in my body, there would be variations when I, say, hit a pot-hole and am bounced slightly). This is true for everyone else as well. Having "absolute control" over your speed is a physical impossibility, especially when you are doing something else, like trying to drive safely.
So your argument is that no-one on earth is fit for the road. Let's see what else we can determine from your logic:
No one can fly a plane (because they are not in absolute control of its position or velocity at all times
No one can use a firearm, knife, or basically anything else that is potentially dangerous (i.e., basically everything) because they could potentially trip, twitch, or otherwise make an involuntary movement that would result in an innocent person's death.
The list is endless, but I think I've made my point. You keep living in your fantasy world; I'll keep using the better part of my finite attention to watch the road than to worry about whether I'm going 34 or 36 in a 35 zone.
Downloading content on a public network is an eminently public act, and those who do it shall have no more expectations of privacy than someone picking his nose in front of Sack's Fifth Avenue on the morning rush-hour.
The subpenaing of personally identifying information is a crucial step in the investigation of copyright violations. Sheltering that information from the RIAA has only one purpose, to shield delinquent downloaders from retribution for their unlawful acts.
Even moreso, all online activities should be associated with personal identifying information, and be downloadable at distance by law enforcement.
Shall we also say again that using the internet is a mere PRIVILEGE and far from being a right????
Like bascially all laws (such as copyright laws), traffic laws are designed with a certain amount of assumed flexibility in enforcement: flexibility that is destroyed by complete and mandatory disclosing of all data.
My parallel is slightly tongue in cheek... but only slightly. And I can adapt your argument the same way for almost anything. For example, the existance of cash in our economy allows a great deal of crime to take place, because it grants a certain anonymity. Do you really espouse the complete desctruction of the idea of anonymity in our society, in place of a big-brotheresque system that enforces total accountability of everything?
Slashdot Mirror
Newer Apple software packages generally require near current versions of the OS, and many other software vendors go the same route.
Clearly your experience is different, but I wouldn't agree with that characterization from my experiences. I find that the vast majority of software I use (which includes a fair amount of stuff) either requires something like 10.1.x (usually 3 or 5), or has both a 10.1 and 10.2 version available. Unless you mean the software that Apple itself releases... but the original poster's point is that these are essentially new features. Can't use the very last Quicktime? Who cares; the last version for your system likely still plays 99% of the movies the new version would play.
I don't think it's unreasonable to say that if you want to guarantee that you can use the latest and greatest of every piece of software you find, you need to keep your OS up-to-date. That's the way the world works. If you don't want to keep it up to date, then settle for continuing to use the products that have presumably served you well for the last year or two. There's always going to be a trade off; you can't expect to have it both ways in the software world (or anywhere else for that matter).
Fink is another example, and they already note on their page that 10.3 will require a new install from them.
Although your point is still valid, Fink is a terrible example of it--like many tools out there, fink will have a new version of the software for 10.3, but will (presumably, since they do it now) continue to offer the 10.1 and 10.2 versions for download. Granted, not all the packages will stay available forever, but there's no reason you can't back up the working versions of all the 10.2 packages you want and call it a day.
While I understand what you are saying, you are choosing to live in a dynamic-software mode, which is probably not a good mode to live your life in if you don't like to pay for upgrades. I know people (in the CS field, not just Joe User) who almost never update anything, and they get along just fine. It's possible to live in a static software world if you are willing to make a few trade-offs. It's up to you to decide whether the money or the cutting edge of everything is most important to you.
The crime/poverty thing is caused largely by the systems we put around it (criminalising the drug taker, for example, who never gets help because to ask for help would be to get sent to jail for being in posession of the drug!).
I understand that there's nothing intrinsically crime/poverty causing about the drug itself, but I don't see where having a pill form would suddenly change the a) legality or b) societal system of hard drugs.
If we had a true way of controlling dosage and purity, and made it legal, and changed society's perceptions of drug use, then we could talk about ending some of the problems. But just being relatively harmless alone (which I don't see this being enough to do anyways) isn't enough to make something legal. Look at pot laws. Look sunday alcohol laws. Look at sodomy laws.
The issue of how our society legislates behavior is far, far harder to deal with.
But assuming a true AI has been built/programmed by humans, I guess it could be considered an 'assembly of humans,' too.
I hope you were kidding; So could a chair, by your logic.
The real point, though, is that corporations are 'assemblies' as in 'school assembly' not as in 'some assembly required', and the two have nothing to do with eachother.
How exactly would you end overdoses with time release pills? If one pill releases x amount per hour, 10 pills releases 10x. If you can put the drug in your body, you can overdose.
Besides, hygene and dosage pale in comparison to the fact that coke and heroin are massively addictive and suck people into a spiral of poverty and crime. That's a little worse than some holes in the arm.
Probably this refers to a system of allowing things like DOS attack detection and back-propagation along routers, so that DOS attacks can be stopped closer to/at the source(s), rather than at the destination, which is a real idea--not necessarily a good one (I'm not really up on the details of such a system), but it's idea that's out there, so he's not just spewing total gibberish.
I mean, it's hard to get an anti-GPL spin if you make the fundamental correction to the story:
Somehow, I doubt that would have fit into Lyons' vision of the story
[Forewarning: This is blatant, uninformed, and content-free propaganda against the FSF and GPL, so be sure to avail yourself of the article comment feature to point out how very very wrong the author is after reading it]
Ignoring idiots won't help, as the parent notes. What we need to do instead is speak out loudly (but eloquently; "Ly0nz suXX0rz!!!" isn't going to help the case any) against FUD like this whenever we see it.
Ironic: Poignantly contrary to what was expected or intended.
So it's ironic because we would expect (and it's a fairly safe bet that Microsoft would intend) that .NET pages work better with IE than anything else, and make it easy to do so, while harder to do anything else (yes, I speak from experience). Thus the fact that it doesn't, in the original poster's experience, is contrary to what is expected. One might even say poignantly so.
Does that clear it up for you?
There's also the issue of people who are signed up for the DNC list by others; for example, your elderly parents/grandparents might be losing touch a little bit, and thus be easier prey for hard-selling telemarketers. The DNC list lets people protect their family in situations like that, which means less profit for the telemarketers.
Besides, it's not like they'll really gain much from eliminating the absolute no-sell customers; those take almost no time for the telemarketers, so there's almost no cost for calling them. The massive efficiency gain that everyone likes to speculate about won't really come, because only a small fraction of phone time is (I would speculate, perhaps someone has numbers?) be spent on the "No! *click*" calls.
For one thing, the root account is disabled. It is not trivial to enable the root account, and it isn't even necessary.
On the other hand, he doesn't mention that all you have to do is convince someone to enter their Administrator password, and all hell can break loose. I would say you are far more likely to sucessfully socially engineer someone to do that (Check out this wicked screen-saver; you just need to enter your administrator password to install it (a common install procedure)) than to get a *NIX user to run something as root.
Perhaps this is a way to test that theory?
Highly, highly doubtful. Just because cell components were once independent of eachother doesn't mean that they have not become dependent on eachother. This is the way ecosystems work; you get a whole lot of different things that evolved at completely different times (plants, insects, lizards, mammals, etc.), and yet they create a balance with each other that goes totally out of whack if you screw with part of it.
To use a much worse, but more slashdot-friendly, analogy: Imagine, however, that we simply wiped Windows from all the personal computers on the plant, without replacing it with anything. Most computers would cease to function entirely. From this, could we conclude that Windows and the personal computer must have been created at the same moment?
P.S. Spare us the trolls about what a good idea this would be
Just because something is a buzzword doesn't mean that it doesn't have meaning or that it isn't important.
Sometimes things get to be buzzwords because they actually matter. Horsepower is a buzzword in the car arena, but that doesn't mean that it's not important to look for if you want a truck that will tow heavy things.
The problem is, the end user/customer usually gets saddled with its costs, and doesn't see a direct benefit from it.
That depends on how big a view you take. In terms of money in your pocket right now, yes, there's usually no benefit to the consumer. In terms of things like, say, cleaner and water, and lower incidence of birth defects and the like, then there's a pretty substantial benefit to a lot of recycling/waste-disposal.
Besides, the only difference between the "consumer pays" system and the "producer pays" system is that in the first case, you pay explicitly, and in the second, you pay implicitly in the price of the product. Unless you believe that the producer will take a profit hit rather than up the price to cover the recycling fees?
Would Alexander Fleming have said, "It wasn't a memorable event," when he discovered penicillin?
If you'd asked him not too long after, then yes, he probably would have. Most of the Fleming story is a myth; yes he discovered it by accident, but after relatively little lab work he gave up and stopped researching it. He didn't think it had a future as a useful drug, because it retained almost no effectiveness in its raw form. There's lots of evidence that he couldn't have cared less about penicillin for many years.
Until, of course, some more dedicated researches succeeded in making a good drug out of it, at which point he would have been glad to tell you that he'd know from day one that it would change the world.
So in addition to having a flair for the over-dramatic, the author of the article could use a better grounding in history before making really bad comparisons.
And I guess all those virgins are just SOL if the drugs are too expensive. Oh well, after all, it's their own fault becaue "they should have said no"/"the way they were dressed they were asking for it"/some other equal stupid expression that misses the realities of the situation, right? Are you saying that all those innocent people deserve to die a "long, horrible death" just to teach a few people a lesson?
In the long term, education is the only solution. In the short term, it's not much comfort to those who have had a death sentence forced upon them.
Actually yes, telling stories requires effort.
I never said it took no effort, just that (counter to your claim) it doesn't require depriving myself of the story. The same argument is worthless for many other examples though; where's the effort in sharing a view of a sunset?
I find "sharing" to mean that you are going out of your way to give something to someone else
That's (more or less) one definition. Here's another, straight from the dictionary: To participate in, use, enjoy, or experience jointly or in turns. Sharing a laugh, or sharing a fun evening, does not require depriving yourself of anything. You specifically said that sharing means depriving yourself of something, which in turn means that the thing being shared is material. My point is that while that can be true (sharing candy), it is in no way implicit in the idea of sharing, thus both of your conclusions are, in general, totally baseless. Just because one type of sharing means giving something up doesn't mean that things that don't give something up can't be sharing (in formal logic, (A->B) does not imply (!A->!B). You can't simply redefine or narrow the definition of a word because you don't like the way it is being used, and still be taken seriously.
What's worse is all you stupid jackasses really make it harder for legitimate uses of P2P technology to shine through
If you'd like to take your foot out of your mouth for a second and read my original post again, you'd see that I never defended the use of the word sharing, nor did I say that information was meant to be free. I took no position at all, and yet you blindly assumed all kinds of things about me, and insult me. That makes you sound like far more of a zealot than "all [those] stupid jackasses".
Your argument is deeply, fundamentally flawed, and if anything is working against convincing rational people of your point of view. There are several good arguments against use of the word "sharing" for P2P (although there are also good arguments against use of the word "theft"; neither of them is a terribly good word for P2P), but you are focusing on an argument that is totally nonsensical. Pointing out that you are undermining your own cause doesn't make me against you. The sooner you learn not to blindly attack anyone who disagrees with anything you say, the sooner you'll find people who might actually listen to and seriously consider your opinions.
But if your goal is just to rant and be a jackass, by all means continue in this vein.
Next you will go on how P2P is "sharing" [which doesn't make sense since you share something by depriving yourself of it
That's total crap. We share stories, we share ideas, we share adventures, we share a good laugh. We share hundreds of other non-material things. There is nothing about the word "share" that implies depriving yourself of anything, nor any implication that the thing being shared is material.
If you want to argue against the term "sharing" being applied to P2P networks, you should do it from a position that makes some sense.
Privacy is anything I do that does not have the risk of killing many other people.
You mean like buying things? What about guns? What about fertilizer, or any potentially dangerous chemical? What about knives? Guess we'd better keep track of everything you buy
What about gatherings? There's always the potential that you and your friends/religious group/barmates will get riled up and form a dangerous mob. Clearly, we should monitor you anytime you are in a group
You can spin almost anything as having the risk of killing many other people. Your contention that any violation of any speed law, no matter how minor, makes you a potential murderous psychopath is no less absurd than my examples, and more absurd than most of them.
You have failed to address my question, which is how your "logic" is unique to driving. Almost everything we do is done in a public place, and thus defined by your warped world-view as a "PUBLIC ACTION". Your argument can be applied exactly the same way to justify 24/7 audio and visual monitoring to everyone who is not in a personal residence, the elimination of cash and recording of all financial transactions, tracking everything we ever check out from a library, etc.
So either you are against the entire concept of privacy (unless you define privacy to mean "only things that happen in your home", which is not what society in general or our laws mean by privacy, in which case you should start using a different word), or you are unable to follow your flawed arguments to their natural conclusions.
Way to totally ignore all of my actual points. Of course, since you've already admitted that you don't know what the hell you are talking about, that doesn't surprise me greatly.
Think of the little black box as your little cop friend who never leaves you...
Are you volunteering to have a cop monitor you physically, 24/7, to make sure that you never do anything illegal? If not, then you are hypocrite, and you should get off your horse.
Oh, and by the way: stalking is illegal, so it's your point that is invalid.
The Ninth amendment to the constuition states:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
In case you aren't clear on what this means and why it is there:
"I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not content that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretence for claiming that power."
-Hamilton
"It has been objected also against a bill of rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure."
-Madison
You, as the driver, have to be in absolute control of your speed at all times. If you are unable to do so, you are unfit for the road!!!
Have you ever actually driven? I don't know about you, but I like to occasionally look at the road, instead of staring fixedly at my spedometer. This means that my speed will, on occasion, drift slightly (even if I had "absolute control" over every muscle in my body, there would be variations when I, say, hit a pot-hole and am bounced slightly). This is true for everyone else as well. Having "absolute control" over your speed is a physical impossibility, especially when you are doing something else, like trying to drive safely.
So your argument is that no-one on earth is fit for the road. Let's see what else we can determine from your logic:
The list is endless, but I think I've made my point. You keep living in your fantasy world; I'll keep using the better part of my finite attention to watch the road than to worry about whether I'm going 34 or 36 in a 35 zone.
Downloading content on a public network is an eminently public act, and those who do it shall have no more expectations of privacy than someone picking his nose in front of Sack's Fifth Avenue on the morning rush-hour.
The subpenaing of personally identifying information is a crucial step in the investigation of copyright violations. Sheltering that information from the RIAA has only one purpose, to shield delinquent downloaders from retribution for their unlawful acts.
Even moreso, all online activities should be associated with personal identifying information, and be downloadable at distance by law enforcement.
Shall we also say again that using the internet is a mere PRIVILEGE and far from being a right????
Like bascially all laws (such as copyright laws), traffic laws are designed with a certain amount of assumed flexibility in enforcement: flexibility that is destroyed by complete and mandatory disclosing of all data.
My parallel is slightly tongue in cheek... but only slightly. And I can adapt your argument the same way for almost anything. For example, the existance of cash in our economy allows a great deal of crime to take place, because it grants a certain anonymity. Do you really espouse the complete desctruction of the idea of anonymity in our society, in place of a big-brotheresque system that enforces total accountability of everything?