Consider: the most popular and successful mobile technology is SMS. 160 characters of text.
Why? Because it is simple enough that people who cannot even use google.com can use it.
SMS can be seen as the "command line interface" for mobile applications but even this basic model is not well exploited.
Mobile web is a luxury that will work only for those who run full operating systems on small devices, and it will work via WiFi, not any of the mobile phone (2G, 2.5G, 3G, 4G, whatever) networks.
Look at the results. A completely irrelevant site has come in at first place. imatix.com is now at second place (this changed today).
imatix.com is an old site, with very high page rank. Now, it does not matter much for us, since no-one is going to search for this phrase, but if this can hit imatix.com, it can hit other sites.
The problem is entirely real, and it is extremely serious. I'd say, if Google don't fix this before it hits the main media, they will suffer irreparable damage to their reputation.
I'm flattered that the interview ended with my question about funding.
This is extremely important to my company as we make free software tools and we try to do this with funding from commercial projects.
I don't promote my company on Slashdot and it does not matter - this is a general issue - but we've been making free software since 1995 or so.
It's not an easy combination but we're getting some really interesting work the last year or so. There are companies that spend significantly more on licenses for software than it would cost to build open source alternatives. This creates a market opportunity for companies like ourselves.
It does take quite a lot of courage for a large company to deliberately pay for an open source development. But there are smart CIOs out there.
And yes, I agree with Mitchell Baker that funding is essential. Love of the work is a large part of the reason for doing it, but love of success and fame and fortune are also a big part of it.
It's about pushing unrelated sites up in the rankings.
For instance: I have a site with excellent page ranking. Now a new site will set up, and do a 302 to my site. Google now gives this new site my page ranking. When the new site is indexed, it removes the 302 redirection.
When you search for my site, you now find these new sites instead. There is no redirection when you click on a link, the the "cached text" that Google shows is wrong.
Basically this technique allows people to get high page rankings without earning them. It's very widespread - I counted over 60 such parasites for my company's web site (which has excellent page ranking).
What it needs is a rapid and satisfactory answer or Google will find themselves at the receiving end of more angst than they even know is possible.
A concrete example. My company's web site has been in existence since 1995. So we have pretty good page ranking. Our main page has one phrase, very distinct, unique.
When I search for this phrase (in quotes), Google reports hundreds of matches. These sites (except our own) do not contain the phrase but are sites that sell traffic boosting.
The 302 problem is real.
Incidentally, I just spent 15 minutes at Google.com looking for a way to report the problem. Where is that mention of "canonicalpage"? In the bottom shelf of a filing cabinet, behind a locked door that says "beware of the tiger"?
I'm not surprised you got only 30 reports. What I am surprised at is that you appear to speak for Google yet have such an inane response to what is a real (and for many people, a terrifying) problem.
I used to work on an Olivetti "portable", which was a clone of the IBM portable PC. It weighed about 15kg, and had a small yellow/black screen. The best thing about it was that closed, it was quite good as a seat.
I carried that machine home and back to work for a year or so, before I finally convinced my boss to pay for a PC for me at home.
Great times. Now I use a Sony X505, which is just about the lightest notebook every made.
1. search Google for 'allinurl:', e.g. 'allinurl:slashdot.org'.
2. copy and paste any dubious URLS into this tool and check whether they're using 302 redirects or not.
3. Panic!/me notices that my company's web site has been thusly hijacked... and yes! Doing a Google search on the main text on my company's web site shows dozens of unrelated sites high in the ranking. None of these actually have the text on their pages.
One example: http://www.tradedoubler.it.
Luckily, the phrase in question is complete gibberish and no-one ever finds our site through Google, only by reputation and word of mouth.
Still, I think it's clear Google have a serious problem here...
can I play/modify what ever games I want, run what ever software I want, use digital media any way I want?
Of course!
Your games, your software, your digital media will be with you wherever you go. That's the whole point.
If you take a photograph it will automatically and securely be sent to your media archive and indexed so you can find it easily later.
When you leave your main console behind you'll have a smaller portable one that gives you exactly the same data and applications, only with a smaller screen and keyboard.
When you mark a media item as "shared", your friends, or the whole world, will be able to see it.
All this is an obvious progression from where we are today. Faster and ubiquitous networking, distribution and encryption of data to keep it safe...
The iPod already embodies many of these concepts, in a simple way, that's why it's so successful. Take your music anywhere...
Not dead but very sick...
on
The PC Is Not Dead
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
... the PC as an island of personal data is facing real threats:
- invasion from parasitical software
- competition from smaller devices
- competition from web-based services
- ever cheaper hardware
Of course I'm typing this from a PC and I can't imagine any other way of working, but still... in 10 years' time:
- would I have to move physically to a box somewhere in order to read slashdot?
- would I have my data sitting on a single hard disk somewhere under a desk?
- would I be surfing on the public Internet using the same infrastructure as I use to (e.g.) access my bank accounts or write contract proposals?
The PC as "personal computer" is running out of reasons for being...... the future belongs to secure virtual infrastructure, secure distributed data, and redundant portable devices.
The PC will eventually be relegated to a keyboard, mouse, and screen.
Not a computer industry statement but a statement of my observation over the last years.
We are long past the "knee" of the infection curve: this hit around a year ago. Today, it is exceptional to find a domestic Windows PC that is not infected by at least 4-6 different parasites.
It's true that most of these don't appear to cause obvious harm but this is an ominous sign in itself... it means that (a) they will spread further and remain undetected for longer and (b) that the parasitical software is mature.
Once you have a single trojan or spyware installed, others will follow. It is meaningless to say "so far, so good".
"Close to 100%" was meant exactly as that. In my experience only a tiny fraction of domestic Windows users are skilled enough to keep their boxes safe. Those behind company firewalls, with strict policies on patching, are reasonably safe but even this does not guard against IE exploits.
If you really think I was trolling then you need to go outside and take a look at what has happened to the connected world in the last 18 months.
Furthermore the figure seems far too low. From my experience with Windows PCs, something close to 100% of home Windows PCs are compromised - I've not seen a single home Windows PC without some spyware or trojan in the last year.
How can one count whether a PC is compromised? Perhaps by tracking and sampling bot traffic. But many compromised PCs are not used except to spread the parastical software. A zombied PC that is actively used tends to be noticed and wiped.
I suspect the real figure - if one counts all parasitic software (viruses, trojans, spyware, and backdoors) - is more like 80%, with a large part of the healthy PCs either not running Windows, or being disconnected from the Internet.
1. You will pay royalties 2. Open source is explicitly disallowed 3. Microsoft can audit your development 4. They get to see your code 5. They get to see your technology 6. They get to choose the auditor 7. You may have to pay the audit 8. Microsoft suggest you "trust them".
ROTFL. Excellent article.
If this is the price of interconnection, it makes it all the easier to justify why Microsoft's server technology should be isolated, relegated, and eventually thrown discarded.
Exactly my thought. Telcos are amongst the most profitable companies around, especially in countries where they derived from old state monopolies.
I don't see governments encouraging the destruction of major industries, nor those industries happily watching, no matter how logical it may seem to the geeks involved.
Revolutions are possible but heading for full-frontal confrontations with powerful and rich interest groups is generally a good way to get yourself into serious pain.
If the telcos were bankrupt, inefficient, unable to provide a decent service, and already collapsing... yes, aim for the throat.
But given that's not the case, the smartest strategy is to move the fight to a different terrain (which VoIP attempts to do but which wifi is more suitable for). Guerilla warfare can bring down powerful interest groups.
Sorry for the metaphor of war, but if someone came along and told me that my $BIGbn business could be replaced by a bootable CD, there would be a certain reaction, yes.
Say someone develops an interesting add-on. I have three choices, all acceptable:
1. rewrite it, often necessary since we have extremely strict coding standards and styles.
2. ask the author to transfer the copyright to us, which most people are happy to do, since they have benefited from our work and are happy to give something back.
3. leave the contribution as it is - a GPL'd work that we do not try to distribute or modify.
Really, there is no problem here at all (and after several years of this way of working, I'd know if there was).
First, the community is free to take and modify our software under the GPL.
Second, we accept patches and changes to the software but under condition that the copyright is transferred to us. If the authors do not want to do this, that's fine. If they agree, we take over the work and maintain it and it becomes part of the "official" package.
Lastly, this situation is extremely rare. The community mainly consists of users, some who provide feedback on problems, a very few who provide error reports and possibly fixes, and a tiny number who actually contribute. Assigning copyright to us has never been an issue.
Stone tools?... do you know what "kill sites" are? Large numbers of animal bones, and huge numbers of stone tools. Discarded. Made, used, and thrown away. Prehistoric MacDonalds. It takes about 20 minutes to chop a flint ax. No-one in their right minds would carry these around when they can make them again in a short time. You'd only carry tools you needed, e.g. while you're actually hunting.
Probably you meant "metal tools", where the investment is relatively large. But note... the bronze age is post-agricultural. Hunter-gatherer cultures did not have, do not have, metal.
As for jewelry... decorative but without any intrinsic value. Made from shells, seeds,... pretty, and totally disposable.
When you're a society on a permanent camping trip, everything you use is made from what you find around you.
Ironically, pre-agricultural societies are really meritocracies - the only things that have real value are your physical skills, looks, and abilities.
Everything I've said is quite easy to check - there are still a few hunter-gather societies (e.g. the San) and they have been very well documented.
While modern humans have definitely adapted to a world of possessions, we're much more adapted to a world like the one I describe. This is perhaps why the "possession is evil" reaction is so common - it reflects a million years of evolution in which sharing and co-dependence made the difference between life and death.
These fines are being levied by the same EU Commission that is forcing through changes in EU patent law designed to allow companies like Microsoft to profit handsomely? Which EU commission shows all signs of being... how can I put this politely... bribed by Microsoft?
Why do I feel we are watching a made-for-public-viewing spectacle that will ultimately result in a trivial fine being paid and the continuation of business as usual?
I know my post seems wrong. And yet it's an honest statement of what I feel, and what I've noticed the majority here feels. GPL violators and file sharers are nominally breaking the same code but in reality, not.
The nominal code is "illegal copying is theft", but the real code is, I believe, "culture wants to be free".
Illegal copying is a violation of someone's rights, yes. No debate about that. But throttling a culture is a violation of many more people's rights, I believe. Stallman's great vision was to see that software is culture and that free software would flourish like free culture would.
Most of us at Slashdot react as we do because we value "free movement of culture" much more highly than "profit", especially profit that is not clearly merited.
Thus we perceive the two license violations as entirely opposed, and we attack the one while we (uncomfortably) defend the other.
Somehow, I suspect that the concept of property predates agriculture.
You don't even have to theorise on this. Study any pre-agricultural society and you will remark that there is an almost total lack of (a) personal property and (b) privacy. Tools are made as needed and discarded when blunt.
Why? Non-agricultural societies are almost always migratory (since they have to move to follow their food). Migration means walking and as any traveller knows, "property" just means extra weight to carry and lose.
It's much easier to re-sharpen a stick than to carry it around.
As for meat and teats... when a hunter kills a large animal in a society with no fridges, there is no way to "possess" the meat. It is either eaten, or it rots. You can salt and dry meat but that's already beyond the capacity of most simple societies. So what happens is that successful hunters share their bounty with their friends and relatives, and when they're less lucky, they hope to get some back. Not quite communism, but very close.
So yes, I'm quite certain that the concept of "private property" was invented at the same time as agriculture. No coincidence perhaps that this period of human history also saw the growth of the first large (and generally brutal) empires.
Read my comment above about "the right to copyright".
Yes, of course people expect to be rewarded for their effort. That is so evident I did not feel it was necessary to say. "Reward" does not need to be strictly financial but whether it's status, reputation, groupies, or cars, something has to get us out of bed in the morning. Of course.
But it's the relationships between "reward" and "ownership" and "creation" that are under debate here.
Personally I'd love to see all music (for instance) sold along the lines of the old mp3.com or allofmp3.com, where you could/can get music in a wide variety of formats, rapidly and cheaply. If this money went fairly to the artists, I'd spend significantly more than I ever did buying CDs.
I think it's not about "getting something for free", but more about a moral sense of right and wrong which stems from our in-built sense of fairness.
All property is a compromise. The reason we don't live in a socialist paradise (which we used to, a hundred thousand years ago before agriculture and the concept of 'property') is because without ownership, common assets lack stewardship and can be degraged. The tragedy of the commons...
Defining an asset as "property" is a compromise for those cases where it is less evil than the alternatives.
There is no other moral justification for claiming ownership of something. No natural law that says "this land, these animals, these trees are mine to use, eat, burn".
Now, please explain how defining a song or program as "property" is less evil than the alternatives? Artists don't create when they can't sell records? Untrue. Programmers won't work except for money? Laughable.
The truth is that you can hardly prevent people from being creative and generous with their works. It takes large and oppressive regimes to get artists to sign up with the RIAA and equivalents, to get movie makers to work within "the studio system", to get programmers to accept that money is more important than dissemination of their ideas and works.
Copyright is a compromise that - like patents - must provide demonstrable value to the entire community, not just the law makers and their friends - or must be questioned and reviewed.
Personally I'm a prolific writer and programmer and I do think that I have the right to do what I want with my work, but within reason. If I can't maintain my source code, improve and invest in it, I should lose the rights to it.
Property rights should, morally, be tied to stewardship. Take care of something, and we the people grant you the right to "own" it.
No, it's not. Many cultural artifacts: languages, forms of art, even technologies have gone extinct because they were unable to spread. Culture is like an organism, it's evolved together with our genome, and it can go extinct just in the same way.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider: the most popular and successful mobile technology is SMS. 160 characters of text.
Why? Because it is simple enough that people who cannot even use google.com can use it.
SMS can be seen as the "command line interface" for mobile applications but even this basic model is not well exploited.
Mobile web is a luxury that will work only for those who run full operating systems on small devices, and it will work via WiFi, not any of the mobile phone (2G, 2.5G, 3G, 4G, whatever) networks.
I believe the point is this:
- the web site has a very unique signature phrase
- it has a very high page ranking
- it has been successfully hijacked by other sites
Now...
- take a site with more generic search terms
- with modest page ranking
And... what happens to their traffic? Basically it dies.
My company's web site is imatix.com
You will notice that the site's main page contains very little text. There is one marketroid phrase, "Strategic solutions for a complex world".
Now search Google for this phrase.
Look at the results. A completely irrelevant site has come in at first place. imatix.com is now at second place (this changed today).
imatix.com is an old site, with very high page rank. Now, it does not matter much for us, since no-one is going to search for this phrase, but if this can hit imatix.com, it can hit other sites.
The problem is entirely real, and it is extremely serious. I'd say, if Google don't fix this before it hits the main media, they will suffer irreparable damage to their reputation.
I'm flattered that the interview ended with my question about funding.
This is extremely important to my company as we make free software tools and we try to do this with funding from commercial projects.
I don't promote my company on Slashdot and it does not matter - this is a general issue - but we've been making free software since 1995 or so.
It's not an easy combination but we're getting some really interesting work the last year or so. There are companies that spend significantly more on licenses for software than it would cost to build open source alternatives. This creates a market opportunity for companies like ourselves.
It does take quite a lot of courage for a large company to deliberately pay for an open source development. But there are smart CIOs out there.
And yes, I agree with Mitchell Baker that funding is essential. Love of the work is a large part of the reason for doing it, but love of success and fame and fortune are also a big part of it.
Email to webmaster@google.com with the keyword "canonicalpage".
Google are not taking this problem seriously.
I'd suggest that if your website is affected, you send an email as above.
It's about pushing unrelated sites up in the rankings.
For instance: I have a site with excellent page ranking. Now a new site will set up, and do a 302 to my site. Google now gives this new site my page ranking. When the new site is indexed, it removes the 302 redirection.
When you search for my site, you now find these new sites instead. There is no redirection when you click on a link, the the "cached text" that Google shows is wrong.
Basically this technique allows people to get high page rankings without earning them. It's very widespread - I counted over 60 such parasites for my company's web site (which has excellent page ranking).
This story does not need "debunking".
What it needs is a rapid and satisfactory answer or Google will find themselves at the receiving end of more angst than they even know is possible.
A concrete example. My company's web site has been in existence since 1995. So we have pretty good page ranking. Our main page has one phrase, very distinct, unique.
When I search for this phrase (in quotes), Google reports hundreds of matches. These sites (except our own) do not contain the phrase but are sites that sell traffic boosting.
The 302 problem is real.
Incidentally, I just spent 15 minutes at Google.com looking for a way to report the problem. Where is that mention of "canonicalpage"? In the bottom shelf of a filing cabinet, behind a locked door that says "beware of the tiger"?
I'm not surprised you got only 30 reports. What I am surprised at is that you appear to speak for Google yet have such an inane response to what is a real (and for many people, a terrifying) problem.
I used to work on an Olivetti "portable", which was a clone of the IBM portable PC. It weighed about 15kg, and had a small yellow/black screen. The best thing about it was that closed, it was quite good as a seat.
I carried that machine home and back to work for a year or so, before I finally convinced my boss to pay for a PC for me at home.
Great times. Now I use a Sony X505, which is just about the lightest notebook every made.
1. search Google for 'allinurl:', e.g. 'allinurl:slashdot.org'.
/me notices that my company's web site has been thusly hijacked... and yes! Doing a Google search on the main text on my company's web site shows dozens of unrelated sites high in the ranking. None of these actually have the text on their pages.
2. copy and paste any dubious URLS into this tool and check whether they're using 302 redirects or not.
3. Panic!
One example: http://www.tradedoubler.it.
Luckily, the phrase in question is complete gibberish and no-one ever finds our site through Google, only by reputation and word of mouth.
Still, I think it's clear Google have a serious problem here...
can I play/modify what ever games I want, run what ever software I want, use digital media any way I want?
Of course!
Your games, your software, your digital media will be with you wherever you go. That's the whole point.
If you take a photograph it will automatically and securely be sent to your media archive and indexed so you can find it easily later.
When you leave your main console behind you'll have a smaller portable one that gives you exactly the same data and applications, only with a smaller screen and keyboard.
When you mark a media item as "shared", your friends, or the whole world, will be able to see it.
All this is an obvious progression from where we are today. Faster and ubiquitous networking, distribution and encryption of data to keep it safe...
The iPod already embodies many of these concepts, in a simple way, that's why it's so successful. Take your music anywhere...
... the PC as an island of personal data is facing real threats:
... the future belongs to secure virtual infrastructure, secure distributed data, and redundant portable devices.
- invasion from parasitical software
- competition from smaller devices
- competition from web-based services
- ever cheaper hardware
Of course I'm typing this from a PC and I can't imagine any other way of working, but still... in 10 years' time:
- would I have to move physically to a box somewhere in order to read slashdot?
- would I have my data sitting on a single hard disk somewhere under a desk?
- would I be surfing on the public Internet using the same infrastructure as I use to (e.g.) access my bank accounts or write contract proposals?
The PC as "personal computer" is running out of reasons for being...
The PC will eventually be relegated to a keyboard, mouse, and screen.
Not a computer industry statement but a statement of my observation over the last years.
We are long past the "knee" of the infection curve: this hit around a year ago. Today, it is exceptional to find a domestic Windows PC that is not infected by at least 4-6 different parasites.
It's true that most of these don't appear to cause obvious harm but this is an ominous sign in itself... it means that (a) they will spread further and remain undetected for longer and (b) that the parasitical software is mature.
Once you have a single trojan or spyware installed, others will follow. It is meaningless to say "so far, so good".
"Close to 100%" was meant exactly as that. In my experience only a tiny fraction of domestic Windows users are skilled enough to keep their boxes safe. Those behind company firewalls, with strict policies on patching, are reasonably safe but even this does not guard against IE exploits.
If you really think I was trolling then you need to go outside and take a look at what has happened to the connected world in the last 18 months.
Furthermore the figure seems far too low. From my experience with Windows PCs, something close to 100% of home Windows PCs are compromised - I've not seen a single home Windows PC without some spyware or trojan in the last year.
How can one count whether a PC is compromised? Perhaps by tracking and sampling bot traffic. But many compromised PCs are not used except to spread the parastical software. A zombied PC that is actively used tends to be noticed and wiped.
I suspect the real figure - if one counts all parasitic software (viruses, trojans, spyware, and backdoors) - is more like 80%, with a large part of the healthy PCs either not running Windows, or being disconnected from the Internet.
1. You will pay royalties
2. Open source is explicitly disallowed
3. Microsoft can audit your development
4. They get to see your code
5. They get to see your technology
6. They get to choose the auditor
7. You may have to pay the audit
8. Microsoft suggest you "trust them".
ROTFL. Excellent article.
If this is the price of interconnection, it makes it all the easier to justify why Microsoft's server technology should be isolated, relegated, and eventually thrown discarded.
There are, after all, alternatives.
Exactly my thought. Telcos are amongst the most profitable companies around, especially in countries where they derived from old state monopolies.
I don't see governments encouraging the destruction of major industries, nor those industries happily watching, no matter how logical it may seem to the geeks involved.
Revolutions are possible but heading for full-frontal confrontations with powerful and rich interest groups is generally a good way to get yourself into serious pain.
If the telcos were bankrupt, inefficient, unable to provide a decent service, and already collapsing... yes, aim for the throat.
But given that's not the case, the smartest strategy is to move the fight to a different terrain (which VoIP attempts to do but which wifi is more suitable for). Guerilla warfare can bring down powerful interest groups.
Sorry for the metaphor of war, but if someone came along and told me that my $BIGbn business could be replaced by a bootable CD, there would be a certain reaction, yes.
Well, that's a problem of luxury.
Say someone develops an interesting add-on. I have three choices, all acceptable:
1. rewrite it, often necessary since we have extremely strict coding standards and styles.
2. ask the author to transfer the copyright to us, which most people are happy to do, since they have benefited from our work and are happy to give something back.
3. leave the contribution as it is - a GPL'd work that we do not try to distribute or modify.
Really, there is no problem here at all (and after several years of this way of working, I'd know if there was).
My apologies for mixing up the EU institutions. And thanks for the kde.ie summary - it has a very nice briefing.
Several points here.
First, the community is free to take and modify our software under the GPL.
Second, we accept patches and changes to the software but under condition that the copyright is transferred to us. If the authors do not want to do this, that's fine. If they agree, we take over the work and maintain it and it becomes part of the "official" package.
Lastly, this situation is extremely rare. The community mainly consists of users, some who provide feedback on problems, a very few who provide error reports and possibly fixes, and a tiny number who actually contribute. Assigning copyright to us has never been an issue.
What violation is there here?
Stone tools?... do you know what "kill sites" are? Large numbers of animal bones, and huge numbers of stone tools. Discarded. Made, used, and thrown away. Prehistoric MacDonalds. It takes about 20 minutes to chop a flint ax. No-one in their right minds would carry these around when they can make them again in a short time. You'd only carry tools you needed, e.g. while you're actually hunting.
Probably you meant "metal tools", where the investment is relatively large. But note... the bronze age is post-agricultural. Hunter-gatherer cultures did not have, do not have, metal.
As for jewelry... decorative but without any intrinsic value. Made from shells, seeds,... pretty, and totally disposable.
When you're a society on a permanent camping trip, everything you use is made from what you find around you.
Ironically, pre-agricultural societies are really meritocracies - the only things that have real value are your physical skills, looks, and abilities.
Everything I've said is quite easy to check - there are still a few hunter-gather societies (e.g. the San) and they have been very well documented.
While modern humans have definitely adapted to a world of possessions, we're much more adapted to a world like the one I describe. This is perhaps why the "possession is evil" reaction is so common - it reflects a million years of evolution in which sharing and co-dependence made the difference between life and death.
These fines are being levied by the same EU Commission that is forcing through changes in EU patent law designed to allow companies like Microsoft to profit handsomely? Which EU commission shows all signs of being... how can I put this politely... bribed by Microsoft?
Why do I feel we are watching a made-for-public-viewing spectacle that will ultimately result in a trivial fine being paid and the continuation of business as usual?
I know my post seems wrong. And yet it's an honest statement of what I feel, and what I've noticed the majority here feels. GPL violators and file sharers are nominally breaking the same code but in reality, not.
The nominal code is "illegal copying is theft", but the real code is, I believe, "culture wants to be free".
Illegal copying is a violation of someone's rights, yes. No debate about that. But throttling a culture is a violation of many more people's rights, I believe. Stallman's great vision was to see that software is culture and that free software would flourish like free culture would.
Most of us at Slashdot react as we do because we value "free movement of culture" much more highly than "profit", especially profit that is not clearly merited.
Thus we perceive the two license violations as entirely opposed, and we attack the one while we (uncomfortably) defend the other.
Somehow, I suspect that the concept of property predates agriculture.
You don't even have to theorise on this. Study any pre-agricultural society and you will remark that there is an almost total lack of (a) personal property and (b) privacy. Tools are made as needed and discarded when blunt.
Why? Non-agricultural societies are almost always migratory (since they have to move to follow their food). Migration means walking and as any traveller knows, "property" just means extra weight to carry and lose.
It's much easier to re-sharpen a stick than to carry it around.
As for meat and teats... when a hunter kills a large animal in a society with no fridges, there is no way to "possess" the meat. It is either eaten, or it rots. You can salt and dry meat but that's already beyond the capacity of most simple societies. So what happens is that successful hunters share their bounty with their friends and relatives, and when they're less lucky, they hope to get some back. Not quite communism, but very close.
So yes, I'm quite certain that the concept of "private property" was invented at the same time as agriculture. No coincidence perhaps that this period of human history also saw the growth of the first large (and generally brutal) empires.
Read my comment above about "the right to copyright".
Yes, of course people expect to be rewarded for their effort. That is so evident I did not feel it was necessary to say. "Reward" does not need to be strictly financial but whether it's status, reputation, groupies, or cars, something has to get us out of bed in the morning. Of course.
But it's the relationships between "reward" and "ownership" and "creation" that are under debate here.
Personally I'd love to see all music (for instance) sold along the lines of the old mp3.com or allofmp3.com, where you could/can get music in a wide variety of formats, rapidly and cheaply. If this money went fairly to the artists, I'd spend significantly more than I ever did buying CDs.
I think it's not about "getting something for free", but more about a moral sense of right and wrong which stems from our in-built sense of fairness.
All property is a compromise. The reason we don't live in a socialist paradise (which we used to, a hundred thousand years ago before agriculture and the concept of 'property') is because without ownership, common assets lack stewardship and can be degraged. The tragedy of the commons...
Defining an asset as "property" is a compromise for those cases where it is less evil than the alternatives.
There is no other moral justification for claiming ownership of something. No natural law that says "this land, these animals, these trees are mine to use, eat, burn".
Now, please explain how defining a song or program as "property" is less evil than the alternatives? Artists don't create when they can't sell records? Untrue. Programmers won't work except for money? Laughable.
The truth is that you can hardly prevent people from being creative and generous with their works. It takes large and oppressive regimes to get artists to sign up with the RIAA and equivalents, to get movie makers to work within "the studio system", to get programmers to accept that money is more important than dissemination of their ideas and works.
Copyright is a compromise that - like patents - must provide demonstrable value to the entire community, not just the law makers and their friends - or must be questioned and reviewed.
Personally I'm a prolific writer and programmer and I do think that I have the right to do what I want with my work, but within reason. If I can't maintain my source code, improve and invest in it, I should lose the rights to it.
Property rights should, morally, be tied to stewardship. Take care of something, and we the people grant you the right to "own" it.
PS Extinction is surely hyperbole no?
No, it's not. Many cultural artifacts: languages, forms of art, even technologies have gone extinct because they were unable to spread. Culture is like an organism, it's evolved together with our genome, and it can go extinct just in the same way.