I think copyright will fail because it serves the interests of those in the developed nations, not the interests of the developing nations. Copyleft depends on copyright for enforcement, but it is a subversive effort to destroy the value of holding and enforcing copyrights.
Also, those developing nations who manage to self-organize without burdening themselves with responsibility to maintain and enforce the copyright scheme will be more efficient than those that take on that burden.
Also, those who do not prevent their population from having free and universal access to intellectual works will have more educated citizenry, and will see a rise in productivity as a result.
Also, those cultures who attempt to impose barriers that prevent the proliferation of their cultural views will become marginalized, while those who encourage their culture to spread will find more allies and like-mindedness from the other cultures that do the same.
At some point, it will become clear that enforcing all this licensing bullshit with courts and lawyers is just a big waste of time that drains everyone dry, and they'll drop the foundational laws upon which both open and closed source licensing agreements rely.
Then the problem will go away.
I mean, it's a problem of our own making... it's like hitting yourself in the head, all you have to do is stop.
Lack of transparency leads to fraud. It's not your personal little thing, its global publishing. It shouldn't be anonymous, there should be accountability, you should be able to know at all times who you're dealing with, and there should be no need to get the approval of a non-judiciary body on foreign soil before you do.
But then, I also think the world needs a lot more vigilante action. I'd probably engage in some myself.
It is not a gag order, it is saying they don't speak in an official capacity.
Ok, then where do you get the official information about the condition of the infrastructure? Because there is now apparently only one official source, and she refuses to speak.
The reason for the gag order is that the country is in dire straits. The national infrastructure is falling apart, and there are no resources to fix them.
The more people in the public realize this, the faster foreign investment will flee the scene, the less likelihood there will be that the resources might materialize in the future.
Bureaucrats and politicians don't keep secrets when things are going well, they shout from the rooftops.
They also don't waste time enforcing secrecy when things aren't going badly, because it generates no return.
They enforce secrecy when things are absolutely fucked, and they wish to prevent a panic.
At this point, things have become desparate enough, and the US has become unpopular enough, that the only way they can survive is to engage in colonialism and exploit foreigners through force of arms, which is the one area where they are still doing well.
Defamation laws don't exist solely to prevent lies.
They also exist to prevent schoolyard bully style "Hey everyone, did you know that hes a [blank]? It's true... you shouldn't have anything to do with him." tactics from being used to hurt people.
I've had people refuse to hire me before because I "didn't" sue someone for slander, and the reason why I moved along rather than get caught up is that lawyers are dangerous weapons, like guns, and there's a wide gap between what is "fair and reasonable" and what is "legal", and a third parties asinine opinion can wreck your life regardless of if you're in the right.
If the idealists who modded me a troll and called me an idiot were correct, organizations like Scientology would not exist, and yet they do.
Thankfully, he has to prove that this review is knowingly false, written with intent to harm, and actually caused harm to prove libel.
He has to prove that:
1) The defendant has to prove that the author is indeed a crackpot. If the guy suing him is a successful businessman, rather than some smelly dirtbag in a dead-end labour job, it's kind of hard to assert that he is. His life demonstrates that he's capable of using reason to achieve success more effectively than his peers.
2) As a private individual rather than a public figure, the plaintiff does not need to prove intent to harm, nor malice, but only a lack of due diligence.
3) Because this case will be tried in NY, there is no burden to prove harm was done, because there are per se defamatory statements, and one of them is
* Allegations or imputations "injurious to another in their trade, business, or profession"
If the writer had stated "This book is nonsense, and can be refuted with the most basic scientific investigation" and left it at that, he would have been fine.
By making the blanket statement that the author is a crackpot, he damages the capacity of the author to make a living.
Just because someone publishes something that is wrong, doesn't mean you're allowed to publish statements that they're a crackpot. It's libel.
It doesn't serve the public interest to make general statements about this person. All it does is damage their reputation. That's libel.
He might be a brilliant businessman, rational, good at math, but took a leap of intuition when it comes to biology. One book of speculative pseudo-science doesn't mean he's a crackpot, yet now his name is attached to that label in the minds of millions who will never read his book.
The guy who wrote the review looks pretty guilty to me.
Once my current project is up and running and I have a little more free time, I want to try to integrate one with a RepRap, then make as many as I can and give them away. The idea would be to have any improved designs the device is used to print automatically shared.
I figure that will be the way forward... final nails in the coffin of centralized information control, first nails in the coffin of centralized manufacturing control.
There is no achievement to be had on a playground, and there is no achievement to be had in a prison. Nothing that anyone does there means anything when you walk out the doors, so no one cares about it except inasmuch as it indirectly influences the outside world.
The problem is that the education system exists. Teaching the young while participating in daily affairs of life should be the duty and obligation of all citizens.
Re:Do you also own a cat with a diamond collar?
on
Failing Our Geniuses
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· Score: 1
Now, my younger brother can hardly spell when he's pressed and can't take time to review what he's written, but he hacks genomes and tutors university students on anatomy for part time cash while he's finishing school. Doesn't really jive well with your perspective on things, does it?
It was all serious business at the time. There were 8 of us in the program. Spelling, writing, studying shapes, multiplication and division, place value and fractions, yadda yadda yadda. It was considered a pretty big deal at the time.
The other 7 kids worked really hard, they were really serious and dedicated and smart kids whose parents pushed them hard, but I broke the mould, made them and the other older students look dumb because everything was all just easy and obvious stuff the moment I saw it, and it wasn't for them.
I used to intuitively see the nature of things before I was taught them a lot... it made it very hard to respect the education system, but I always believed it was necessary to prove something to people.
Now I just feel like I threw years of my life away.
Exceptional people don't need to be spoon fed, they find repetition boring, and they find the necessity to waste their days proving to their intellectual inferiors that they can complete rudimentary tasks.
Hell, I knew how to read, print, add and subtract when I was 4 years old. You think there was a day of my life that I found school challenging? I used to finish all my classwork and all my homework homework and two paperback novels a day before school finished for the day, and I was still spending lots of time staring vacantly out the window.
I have no regard for the education system. All it ever did, throughout my life, was hold me back, slow me down, and force me to be surrounded by violent stupid monkeys.
They do this in high school here in Canada. Only the advanced classes count towards university qualifications though, so you generally find strong students take all advanced classes, and weak students take general classes.
I was in a pilot fast-track program when I was a child... completed grades 1, 2 and 3 in 2 years while mingled in amongst the grade 1s the first year and the grade 3's the next. I have to say, it's a hard thing to put a kid through when it comes to socializing... I lost a lot of blood on that schoolyard. They didn't continue the program.
It's not on me to get into a debate about the efficiencies of historical systems with different problems in different environments, the point is that these technological marvels are not the sole province of modern capitalism and the corporate structure, as you insinuated.
Do you believe that we've achieved Utopia, a state beyond our capacity to surpass?
Do you think there will not be a better system that isn't a stepwise refinement, but a replacement?
This whole system is optimized towards dealing with scarcity, it uses scarcity to provide the motive force to keep people industrious, and it destroys wealth with artificial scarcity to keep that going.
We've developed the tools necessary to destroy scarcity in a wide range of sectors, but our economic systems equate "plenty for all" with "utterly worthless". That needs to stop if we're going to progress.
That means new political-economic systems with supporting infrastructure, and it's not going to build itself, and no one motivated by the love of money is going to invest because it's going to devalue everything that they have built their power upon, but it's still going to have to be done.
And when it's done, and done right, things will be markedly better than they are now, and more efficient, not less. Any group who competes the old way will lose.
And I'll miss the wintel legacy not at all, I don't imagine.
The people protesting feel the purpose of the BBC is to spread culture and knowledge as far and wide as can be. The money and related mechanisms are meant to serve that purpose, and not the other way around. They feel that the BBC should fail and disappear if need be before abandoning this important purpose which it was created to fulfill.
DRM is not compatable with this purpose. Particularly when it is beyond the reach of law.
There are others who have differing opinions about what purpose the BBC should be put to, and they are driving the DRM.
This isn't a debate, it's a contest between small groups who have an opinion on the subject.
The FCC has banned other devices before, solely because they might have been hacked by the owner in such a way as to threaten the television spectrum.
Devices that could fail and make it necessary to send someone around the persons house and make them turn it off are obviously not going to pass these kinds of requirements.
Yes, there is fear, uncertainty and doubt. Which is why it didn't get approved.
Slashdot Mirror
The most intelligent machine any of us are ever going to make will be achieved by finding a woman and fucking her until she pops one out.
The trailer park boys have a better chance at creating intelligent machines than most of the slashdot crowd.
When I'm using Windows, here's my selection:
Utilities:
7-Zip (Compression/Decompression)
Editpad (Tabbed Notepad replacement)
SequoiaView (Creates square treemaps of file system)
Multimedia:
VLC (Plays Anything)
Exact Audio Copy (Perfect CD Ripping)
LAME (High Quality MP3 Compression)
Audacity (Record off Line Inputs or Loopback)
Internet:
uTorrent (Bittorrent)
Firefox with FireFTP (Browswer, FTP)
Thunderbird with WebMail (Email Client)
TortiseSVN (Windows Shell Integration for Subversion)
Putty (Telnet/SSH)
Games:
OpenArena (Open source extension of Quake 3 codebase)
Battle of Wesnoth (Open source strategic fantasy game)
There are over 6 billion people who aren't in that Facebook group for a reason. The few thousand that remain were the ones that were bluffing.
I think copyright will fail because it serves the interests of those in the developed nations, not the interests of the developing nations. Copyleft depends on copyright for enforcement, but it is a subversive effort to destroy the value of holding and enforcing copyrights.
Also, those developing nations who manage to self-organize without burdening themselves with responsibility to maintain and enforce the copyright scheme will be more efficient than those that take on that burden.
Also, those who do not prevent their population from having free and universal access to intellectual works will have more educated citizenry, and will see a rise in productivity as a result.
Also, those cultures who attempt to impose barriers that prevent the proliferation of their cultural views will become marginalized, while those who encourage their culture to spread will find more allies and like-mindedness from the other cultures that do the same.
Need I go on?
At some point, it will become clear that enforcing all this licensing bullshit with courts and lawyers is just a big waste of time that drains everyone dry, and they'll drop the foundational laws upon which both open and closed source licensing agreements rely.
Then the problem will go away.
I mean, it's a problem of our own making... it's like hitting yourself in the head, all you have to do is stop.
When can we get one with an implant?
I want to eat candy all day, fuel all my devices with a jack that comes out of my ear, and never get fat.
Lack of transparency leads to fraud. It's not your personal little thing, its global publishing. It shouldn't be anonymous, there should be accountability, you should be able to know at all times who you're dealing with, and there should be no need to get the approval of a non-judiciary body on foreign soil before you do.
But then, I also think the world needs a lot more vigilante action. I'd probably engage in some myself.
It is not a gag order, it is saying they don't speak in an official capacity.
Ok, then where do you get the official information about the condition of the infrastructure? Because there is now apparently only one official source, and she refuses to speak.
The reason for the gag order is that the country is in dire straits. The national infrastructure is falling apart, and there are no resources to fix them.
The more people in the public realize this, the faster foreign investment will flee the scene, the less likelihood there will be that the resources might materialize in the future.
Bureaucrats and politicians don't keep secrets when things are going well, they shout from the rooftops.
They also don't waste time enforcing secrecy when things aren't going badly, because it generates no return.
They enforce secrecy when things are absolutely fucked, and they wish to prevent a panic.
At this point, things have become desparate enough, and the US has become unpopular enough, that the only way they can survive is to engage in colonialism and exploit foreigners through force of arms, which is the one area where they are still doing well.
Sorry to burst anyones bubble.
Defamation laws don't exist solely to prevent lies.
They also exist to prevent schoolyard bully style "Hey everyone, did you know that hes a [blank]? It's true... you shouldn't have anything to do with him." tactics from being used to hurt people.
I've had people refuse to hire me before because I "didn't" sue someone for slander, and the reason why I moved along rather than get caught up is that lawyers are dangerous weapons, like guns, and there's a wide gap between what is "fair and reasonable" and what is "legal", and a third parties asinine opinion can wreck your life regardless of if you're in the right.
If the idealists who modded me a troll and called me an idiot were correct, organizations like Scientology would not exist, and yet they do.
Thankfully, he has to prove that this review is knowingly false, written with intent to harm, and actually caused harm to prove libel.
He has to prove that:
1) The defendant has to prove that the author is indeed a crackpot. If the guy suing him is a successful businessman, rather than some smelly dirtbag in a dead-end labour job, it's kind of hard to assert that he is. His life demonstrates that he's capable of using reason to achieve success more effectively than his peers.
2) As a private individual rather than a public figure, the plaintiff does not need to prove intent to harm, nor malice, but only a lack of due diligence.
3) Because this case will be tried in NY, there is no burden to prove harm was done, because there are per se defamatory statements, and one of them is
* Allegations or imputations "injurious to another in their trade, business, or profession"
If the writer had stated "This book is nonsense, and can be refuted with the most basic scientific investigation" and left it at that, he would have been fine.
By making the blanket statement that the author is a crackpot, he damages the capacity of the author to make a living.
He could be in very big trouble.
Just because someone publishes something that is wrong, doesn't mean you're allowed to publish statements that they're a crackpot. It's libel.
It doesn't serve the public interest to make general statements about this person. All it does is damage their reputation. That's libel.
He might be a brilliant businessman, rational, good at math, but took a leap of intuition when it comes to biology. One book of speculative pseudo-science doesn't mean he's a crackpot, yet now his name is attached to that label in the minds of millions who will never read his book.
The guy who wrote the review looks pretty guilty to me.
Once my current project is up and running and I have a little more free time, I want to try to integrate one with a RepRap, then make as many as I can and give them away. The idea would be to have any improved designs the device is used to print automatically shared.
I figure that will be the way forward... final nails in the coffin of centralized information control, first nails in the coffin of centralized manufacturing control.
The answer is to create wireless mesh devices and take centralized control out of the equation entirely.
You'd still need a backbone to cross long uninhabited expanses, but that's all.
The problem is that the education system exists.
There is no achievement to be had on a playground, and there is no achievement to be had in a prison. Nothing that anyone does there means anything when you walk out the doors, so no one cares about it except inasmuch as it indirectly influences the outside world.
The problem is that the education system exists. Teaching the young while participating in daily affairs of life should be the duty and obligation of all citizens.
Now, my younger brother can hardly spell when he's pressed and can't take time to review what he's written, but he hacks genomes and tutors university students on anatomy for part time cash while he's finishing school. Doesn't really jive well with your perspective on things, does it?
It was all serious business at the time. There were 8 of us in the program. Spelling, writing, studying shapes, multiplication and division, place value and fractions, yadda yadda yadda. It was considered a pretty big deal at the time.
The other 7 kids worked really hard, they were really serious and dedicated and smart kids whose parents pushed them hard, but I broke the mould, made them and the other older students look dumb because everything was all just easy and obvious stuff the moment I saw it, and it wasn't for them.
I used to intuitively see the nature of things before I was taught them a lot... it made it very hard to respect the education system, but I always believed it was necessary to prove something to people.
Now I just feel like I threw years of my life away.
Snobbish, but true.
Exceptional people don't need to be spoon fed, they find repetition boring, and they find the necessity to waste their days proving to their intellectual inferiors that they can complete rudimentary tasks.
Hell, I knew how to read, print, add and subtract when I was 4 years old. You think there was a day of my life that I found school challenging? I used to finish all my classwork and all my homework homework and two paperback novels a day before school finished for the day, and I was still spending lots of time staring vacantly out the window.
I have no regard for the education system. All it ever did, throughout my life, was hold me back, slow me down, and force me to be surrounded by violent stupid monkeys.
They do this in high school here in Canada. Only the advanced classes count towards university qualifications though, so you generally find strong students take all advanced classes, and weak students take general classes.
I was in a pilot fast-track program when I was a child... completed grades 1, 2 and 3 in 2 years while mingled in amongst the grade 1s the first year and the grade 3's the next. I have to say, it's a hard thing to put a kid through when it comes to socializing... I lost a lot of blood on that schoolyard. They didn't continue the program.
How much was consumed in cold war spending?
It's not on me to get into a debate about the efficiencies of historical systems with different problems in different environments, the point is that these technological marvels are not the sole province of modern capitalism and the corporate structure, as you insinuated.
Do you believe that we've achieved Utopia, a state beyond our capacity to surpass?
Do you think there will not be a better system that isn't a stepwise refinement, but a replacement?
This whole system is optimized towards dealing with scarcity, it uses scarcity to provide the motive force to keep people industrious, and it destroys wealth with artificial scarcity to keep that going.
We've developed the tools necessary to destroy scarcity in a wide range of sectors, but our economic systems equate "plenty for all" with "utterly worthless". That needs to stop if we're going to progress.
That means new political-economic systems with supporting infrastructure, and it's not going to build itself, and no one motivated by the love of money is going to invest because it's going to devalue everything that they have built their power upon, but it's still going to have to be done.
And when it's done, and done right, things will be markedly better than they are now, and more efficient, not less. Any group who competes the old way will lose.
And I'll miss the wintel legacy not at all, I don't imagine.
Yeah. Because people who don't participate in corporatist capitalism have never achieved anything. Like, say, going to space.
You're talking quite literally about dismantling the cornerstone of modern civilization.
That's what I'm actively conspiring towards, I don't know about the rest of you.
The people protesting feel the purpose of the BBC is to spread culture and knowledge as far and wide as can be. The money and related mechanisms are meant to serve that purpose, and not the other way around. They feel that the BBC should fail and disappear if need be before abandoning this important purpose which it was created to fulfill.
DRM is not compatable with this purpose. Particularly when it is beyond the reach of law.
There are others who have differing opinions about what purpose the BBC should be put to, and they are driving the DRM.
This isn't a debate, it's a contest between small groups who have an opinion on the subject.
Can you imagine the crazy pyrotechnics that could be achieved with this sort of thing?
:P
Heh... it would be fun to take one of these things and set it up near a village of primitives. You could be the face of God
The FCC has banned other devices before, solely because they might have been hacked by the owner in such a way as to threaten the television spectrum.
Devices that could fail and make it necessary to send someone around the persons house and make them turn it off are obviously not going to pass these kinds of requirements.
Yes, there is fear, uncertainty and doubt. Which is why it didn't get approved.