What? Relevance to what is happening today? Thought police are en route, please remain in your seat and do not struggle.
Man, if Jefferson were alive today he'd be chained up in a cage in Camp X-Ray. Or at least pilloried as a friend of terrorism and an unpatriotic detractor from the government for his anti-censorship, anti-big government views.
Actually, I think I can't fit his name on there because of the word limit on sigs...
Sorry, I assumed most people would know it. It's not like I was trying to claim it as mine, in any case. Anyway, Jefferson's lifetime-plus-90-years copyright has expired, even under revised US copyright law.
Well, this reporter was possibly a little hasty earlier and would like to reaffirm his allegiance to this country and its human president. It may not be perfect, but it's still the best government we have... for now.
Seems like they have a robot control problem don't you think
Either that or a plan for world domination...
Breaking News
The Magna Corporation announced today that it has accidentally lost control of a swarm of 50,000 robots. The robots are prototypes of a new security droid and will shoot to kill if they sight humans. The robots are armed with 30 megawatt death cannons and are powered by conventional party-balloon gas. Magna executives indicated that the only hope for mankind was for all the governments of the world to hand their power over to the newly established Magna Executive Council for Robotic Oppression, based in a giant floating robot headquarters somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean known as the Flyborg Mothership...
... we will have done so much speculating about how it will behave that the poor thing will probably just have a nervous breakdown and explode. Imagine being born and being presented with a huge book psychoanalysing your every emotion and impression in detail. The pressure to go crazy and enslave mankind would be enough to make you go crazy and enslave mankind.
I am much more interested to hear what sci-fi authors have to say about near-future technologies (e.g. the stuff in this article about surveillance systems) than what they have to say about what things will be like when the earth is ruled by superintelligent robots.
Girl: Remember when those cyborgs enslaved humanity? Fry: Uh... yeah, that rings a bell.
By "we" I meant decent, freethinking people who care about civil rights and the future of the individual, not "we" as in the pack of drooling geeks on Slashdot who care about idiotic casemods and but $4000 computers instead of sponsoring starving children in Africa.
Incidentally, I regard the former category as a horizontal community, not a nation-based sub-group... it may interest you that I am not even in the US. Unfortunately US decisions on copyright etc. have a massive effect on other countries - so for someone like me, I can't even vote jerks like GWB out of office, all I can do is hope you freaks in the states will wake up and do it for me.
Anyway, you are at least vocal and I respect that. Too many people would rather argue about the new Apple G5s rather than worry about things that might actually effect their lives.
Seriously, you have a lot of passion. But you are giving up from the get-go because you think it will be impossible.
I ask you: if a person like you, who is obviously informed and passionate about this stuff, is beaten right from the outset, how can you expect an average joe or even someone who mildly cares about this to get involved?
We need you, and everyone like you, to get active and make as much noise as possible. I totally agree that some sort of organizational structure would be the best bet... meet me at the docks tonight. You will say: "Are you a turtle?" The man in the green sweater will reply: "You bet your sweet ass I am."
Evangelical - i.e. Christian religious fundamentalists. E.g. George W Bush (God sez no abortion. God sez I can execute people. God sez America is great and He is on our side).
Neocon - label for school of conservative thought in US politics based around doctrines of preemption and active military engagement around the world to protect US interests, based largely on the thoughts and words of Paul Wolfowitz and his Washington allies. Currently the dominant school of thought in the Whitehouse (only Colin Powell really offers a voice of dissent on such matters).
Realpolitik - Cynical outlook on politics that says ideals are largely irrelevant and 'practical' policies are paramount. Usually associated with diplomatic hardball on the international stage, pissing off the UN, screwing everyone with massive trade subsidies, attacking other countries etc.
Nazis - I agree that was a bit harsh. Some of the Nazis weren't really *that* bad.
Moon landing - would have looked a lot cooler if it had been staged.
Bin Laden - certainly never received millions of dollars funding from the CIA or anything of that nature.
Black Helicopters - give it a few more years, the Terrorist Information Awareness system is barely on line and you already expect helicopters? We can only implement on part of the apparatus of oppression at a time, you know.
I think me joining the Republican party would be even more dishonest than me encouraging them with financial incentives... I mean one's just money, the other's my *soul* baby!
As for your other main point about other ways to exert pressure, I totally agree and I do try to do things in that spirit as far as possible. I think at first I was too hostile to your response and I apologize - it's probably exactly the kind of thing I would have written myself. If I was a jerk. Just kidding.:)
As for liberty with honour and courage, I also agree wholeheartedly. It's just very difficult not to become cynical... being an idealist these days rates somewhere between leper and bag lady in terms of how serious people will take you.
"It seems silly to abolish the right of these people to petition government through this medium simply because you don't like them."
Petition? Or control? And do you think it is the small stockholders or the major player who make decisions about political contributions?
Shareholders in corporations get their vote in elections, same as the rest of us. Why should they get to have more influence just because they have stocks in some company?
(1) Don't preach to me about John McCain. If McCain had won the primary over GWB then the world would be a lot better place today and America's popularity wouldn't be at an all-time low worldwide. Furthermore I totally agree with him on campaign finance, as I have said in other posts in this thread. Unfortunately it will not happen while the Republicans are ruled by an evangelical/neocon cabal of realpolitik nazis (no trolling intended).
(2) "Isn't that giving up the most needed of democratic liberties?" How can you give up something you don't have? What good is a vote when Dubbya can raise $20 million at a fundraising dinner and use it to fund pictures of himself landing on aircraft carriers being shown during the capaign and thereby getting thousands of dimwits to vote for him?
The whole point I was trying to make was: we are already totally marginalised. The congress doesn't give a damn about what the people want in a genuine sense; they only care in the sense that they must manipulate perceptions sufficiently to get reelected. Therefore it is only logical that if we want to exert influence over the political process we must use other avenues to do so.
(3) I don't "suggest trading $ for votes" in the sense you suggest; I suggest trading $ for votes on capital hill, because right now you or I can't trade votes on election day for votes on capital hill with any degree of certainty.
(4) "Fighting fire with fire sometimes leaves nothing but scorched earth." You can use metaphors to demonstrate pretty much anything. "Sometimes the shortest path is through the mud."
Hey, I know that and you know that, but do you actually think the people who make the laws in the US of A give a damn?
What exactly is your plan, to stand around and talk about our principles while the megacompanies gradually buy control of congress?
Obviously the best solutions would involve massive reforms of campaign finance and elimination of all connections between business interests and politicians/political parties... but this seems to be hell and as of now it is not freezing over, so I guess it'll be a while yet before that happens.
Sure, but the amount of money Disney, for example, has thrown around is in the low millions, not the hundreds of millions.
It's not completely impossible to imagine that that kind of money could be obtained. After all, where do corporations get their money from? That's right, you and me.
Given that the record and film industry appears to have invested heavily in buying some congressmen, perhaps its time for the open source/public domain movements to do the same. All the good will in the world wont lead to actual passing of legislation when Time Warner/Sony/EMI/Bertlemann/Conglomokorp actually owns people on Capitol hill... we have a petition, but they have votes in Congress.
I don't see why the EFF and similar groups can't 'invest' in a few reelection campaigns. The business model is established by numerous corporations and special interest groups - all it would take are funds. In fact the same applies to all progressive social and political groups... how come the bad guys are smart enough to heavily influence politics with their money but the good guys aren't?
I am not trying to be a jerk, just expressing an honest opinion that in 2000 years time archaeologists will not look back at our time and gasp in awe at our ability to take the insides of a computer and place it in the case of another computer.
Look at the number of comments... people are voting with their mice and not even bothering with stories like this one, of which there are far too many.
Lousy case-modding star wars figurine-collecting Buffy-watching foreign country-invading negative moderation-giving sons of...
...do we really need *another* story about some idiot cramming a crappy PC into a crappy case that wasn't designed to hold it?
It's not like this wonderful conversion will actually do anything a normal computer can't, except it will look crappier and work worse. And quite frankly, if people have money to spend on this type of bullshit maybe they should consider joining Greenpeace or World Vision and putting their money somewhere where it will do someone some good.
Alternatively this individual could use the money to get some life counselling sessions and work out why doing something this pointless is meaningful to them. Of course we must ask... who's sadder, the sad-sack who builds the PC in the Amiga case or the sad-sack who voluntarily reads about it and then writes a diatribe about how it is a pointless waste of time and money...
...and then shuts down all their actual work activities and makes every single SCO employee work out the remainder of their contract fetching coffee and donuts for IBM's IP lawyers and mopping floors.
At the end of each contract IBM can then lay off the employee as 'redundant' because they have decided to shut down their 'total jerk' business unit.
OR
They could buy them out and then use the contract between Micro$oft and SCO to irritate the hell out of MS.
Either way it's gotta be worth a few million to a company the size of IBM to end this bullcrap and win the love of the open source community. I imagine there will be a brutal court battle and, if unsuccessful, IBM will then 'invest' in SCO.
I also observe that Mr Oppenheim frequently resorts to specious reasoning and inaccurate analogies, whereas Lessig applies actual logic and legal precedent to derive his answers.
Oppenheim, for instance, draws several analogies between stealing an object (a car off the street, a DVD from a movie rental store) with 'stealing' music in the sense of making unauthorized copies. He utterly ignores the fact that copying music does not deprive the original owner of the use of the music:
An intention to deprive the owner of an item of the use of that item is a necessary element of larceny or 'stealing', to use the non-legal terminology the RIAA favours when framing their quasi-legal responses. If I get into someone's car left unattended on the street and drive away with it, I clearly intend to deprive the owner of its use. On the other hand, if I copy a music track from a friend, I have no intention to deprive my friend of the use of their CD - ergo at law no theft has occurred.
The only illegal action is copyright infringement, which is NOT theft. The only way I could commit theft against my friend with the CD would be to take the CD itself, without my friend's consent, with the intention of keeping it indefinitely.
But far be it from me to imagine that the RIAA (or the US Supreme Court, I expect) should use *actual law* in their ranting diatribes against music copying.
There has not been genocide in Western Europe since WW2. Connecting France to the Bosnia Hertzogovina situation is like saying the USA is responsible for what happens in Cuba.
As for the desecration of war graves, I guess you are saying that there are no redneck, racist idiots in the States, then? Oh wait, you elected Bush... my mistake.
A few of your noble allies:
- Pakistan - Saudi Arabia - Israel - Indonesia - Phillipines - Chile - Nicaragua - Guatemala - Argentina - Zaire
I'm sure there's more. Most of these either have US-backed or US-installed dictators or plutocracies. All of them have been host to a wide variety of atrocities. Your perception that the 'enemies' of the US are the only ones committing human rights abuses is certainly coincidental. Did you ever stop to consider that you don't hear about how awful things are in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for a reason?
Oh, sorry, phone up the UN and tell them the crisis is over then. Also, you might want to tell the people in Venice, they seem to have some crazy idea that the sea is rising. While you're at it, please turn up the thermostat to increase your usage of that non-polluting, non-global warming fossil fuel I've been hearing about.
When I see Americans 'producing gas from animal manure' I will say that the Chinese should do the same.
Solar power is great but the lack of investment means that there is no real market for it - it is still relegated to niche status.
Energy efficient appliances are good, but more expensive, so if we expect the developing world to use them we must subsidise their production.
Good point about the scale though. I always wondered if a huge number of really small generators all along a river might not be better, safer and more efficient. Even our mighty civilisation once used waterwheels for mills etc.
Slashdot Mirror
What? Relevance to what is happening today? Thought police are en route, please remain in your seat and do not struggle.
Man, if Jefferson were alive today he'd be chained up in a cage in Camp X-Ray. Or at least pilloried as a friend of terrorism and an unpatriotic detractor from the government for his anti-censorship, anti-big government views.
Actually, I think I can't fit his name on there because of the word limit on sigs...
"because it is obviously not yours"
Sorry, I assumed most people would know it. It's not like I was trying to claim it as mine, in any case. Anyway, Jefferson's lifetime-plus-90-years copyright has expired, even under revised US copyright law.
Well, this reporter was possibly a little hasty earlier and would like to reaffirm his allegiance to this country and its human president. It may not be perfect, but it's still the best government we have... for now.
[rips down 'Hail Flyborgs' poster]
Seems like they have a robot control problem don't you think
Either that or a plan for world domination...
Breaking News
The Magna Corporation announced today that it has accidentally lost control of a swarm of 50,000 robots. The robots are prototypes of a new security droid and will shoot to kill if they sight humans. The robots are armed with 30 megawatt death cannons and are powered by conventional party-balloon gas. Magna executives indicated that the only hope for mankind was for all the governments of the world to hand their power over to the newly established Magna Executive Council for Robotic Oppression, based in a giant floating robot headquarters somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean known as the Flyborg Mothership...
This has happened before... remember this story about a robot escaping from a building and making its way to the parking lot?
... we will have done so much speculating about how it will behave that the poor thing will probably just have a nervous breakdown and explode. Imagine being born and being presented with a huge book psychoanalysing your every emotion and impression in detail. The pressure to go crazy and enslave mankind would be enough to make you go crazy and enslave mankind.
I am much more interested to hear what sci-fi authors have to say about near-future technologies (e.g. the stuff in this article about surveillance systems) than what they have to say about what things will be like when the earth is ruled by superintelligent robots.
Girl: Remember when those cyborgs enslaved humanity?
Fry: Uh... yeah, that rings a bell.
...get a quieter fan?
By "we" I meant decent, freethinking people who care about civil rights and the future of the individual, not "we" as in the pack of drooling geeks on Slashdot who care about idiotic casemods and but $4000 computers instead of sponsoring starving children in Africa.
Incidentally, I regard the former category as a horizontal community, not a nation-based sub-group... it may interest you that I am not even in the US. Unfortunately US decisions on copyright etc. have a massive effect on other countries - so for someone like me, I can't even vote jerks like GWB out of office, all I can do is hope you freaks in the states will wake up and do it for me.
Anyway, you are at least vocal and I respect that. Too many people would rather argue about the new Apple G5s rather than worry about things that might actually effect their lives.
Seriously, you have a lot of passion. But you are giving up from the get-go because you think it will be impossible.
I ask you: if a person like you, who is obviously informed and passionate about this stuff, is beaten right from the outset, how can you expect an average joe or even someone who mildly cares about this to get involved?
We need you, and everyone like you, to get active and make as much noise as possible. I totally agree that some sort of organizational structure would be the best bet... meet me at the docks tonight. You will say: "Are you a turtle?" The man in the green sweater will reply: "You bet your sweet ass I am."
Ok chummmmm...p. Let's break it down:
Evangelical - i.e. Christian religious fundamentalists. E.g. George W Bush (God sez no abortion. God sez I can execute people. God sez America is great and He is on our side).
Neocon - label for school of conservative thought in US politics based around doctrines of preemption and active military engagement around the world to protect US interests, based largely on the thoughts and words of Paul Wolfowitz and his Washington allies. Currently the dominant school of thought in the Whitehouse (only Colin Powell really offers a voice of dissent on such matters).
Realpolitik - Cynical outlook on politics that says ideals are largely irrelevant and 'practical' policies are paramount. Usually associated with diplomatic hardball on the international stage, pissing off the UN, screwing everyone with massive trade subsidies, attacking other countries etc.
Nazis - I agree that was a bit harsh. Some of the Nazis weren't really *that* bad.
Moon landing - would have looked a lot cooler if it had been staged.
Bin Laden - certainly never received millions of dollars funding from the CIA or anything of that nature.
Black Helicopters - give it a few more years, the Terrorist Information Awareness system is barely on line and you already expect helicopters? We can only implement on part of the apparatus of oppression at a time, you know.
I think me joining the Republican party would be even more dishonest than me encouraging them with financial incentives... I mean one's just money, the other's my *soul* baby!
:)
As for your other main point about other ways to exert pressure, I totally agree and I do try to do things in that spirit as far as possible. I think at first I was too hostile to your response and I apologize - it's probably exactly the kind of thing I would have written myself. If I was a jerk. Just kidding.
As for liberty with honour and courage, I also agree wholeheartedly. It's just very difficult not to become cynical... being an idealist these days rates somewhere between leper and bag lady in terms of how serious people will take you.
"It seems silly to abolish the right of these people to petition government through this medium simply because you don't like them."
Petition? Or control? And do you think it is the small stockholders or the major player who make decisions about political contributions?
Shareholders in corporations get their vote in elections, same as the rest of us. Why should they get to have more influence just because they have stocks in some company?
All right, all right, settle down.
(1) Don't preach to me about John McCain. If McCain had won the primary over GWB then the world would be a lot better place today and America's popularity wouldn't be at an all-time low worldwide. Furthermore I totally agree with him on campaign finance, as I have said in other posts in this thread. Unfortunately it will not happen while the Republicans are ruled by an evangelical/neocon cabal of realpolitik nazis (no trolling intended).
(2) "Isn't that giving up the most needed of democratic liberties?" How can you give up something you don't have? What good is a vote when Dubbya can raise $20 million at a fundraising dinner and use it to fund pictures of himself landing on aircraft carriers being shown during the capaign and thereby getting thousands of dimwits to vote for him?
The whole point I was trying to make was: we are already totally marginalised. The congress doesn't give a damn about what the people want in a genuine sense; they only care in the sense that they must manipulate perceptions sufficiently to get reelected. Therefore it is only logical that if we want to exert influence over the political process we must use other avenues to do so.
(3) I don't "suggest trading $ for votes" in the sense you suggest; I suggest trading $ for votes on capital hill, because right now you or I can't trade votes on election day for votes on capital hill with any degree of certainty.
(4) "Fighting fire with fire sometimes leaves nothing but scorched earth." You can use metaphors to demonstrate pretty much anything. "Sometimes the shortest path is through the mud."
(5) Thanks, I read my sig before I chose it.
Hey, I know that and you know that, but do you actually think the people who make the laws in the US of A give a damn?
What exactly is your plan, to stand around and talk about our principles while the megacompanies gradually buy control of congress?
Obviously the best solutions would involve massive reforms of campaign finance and elimination of all connections between business interests and politicians/political parties... but this seems to be hell and as of now it is not freezing over, so I guess it'll be a while yet before that happens.
Sure, but the amount of money Disney, for example, has thrown around is in the low millions, not the hundreds of millions.
It's not completely impossible to imagine that that kind of money could be obtained. After all, where do corporations get their money from? That's right, you and me.
Given that the record and film industry appears to have invested heavily in buying some congressmen, perhaps its time for the open source/public domain movements to do the same. All the good will in the world wont lead to actual passing of legislation when Time Warner/Sony/EMI/Bertlemann/Conglomokorp actually owns people on Capitol hill... we have a petition, but they have votes in Congress.
I don't see why the EFF and similar groups can't 'invest' in a few reelection campaigns. The business model is established by numerous corporations and special interest groups - all it would take are funds. In fact the same applies to all progressive social and political groups... how come the bad guys are smart enough to heavily influence politics with their money but the good guys aren't?
I am not trying to be a jerk, just expressing an honest opinion that in 2000 years time archaeologists will not look back at our time and gasp in awe at our ability to take the insides of a computer and place it in the case of another computer.
Look at the number of comments... people are voting with their mice and not even bothering with stories like this one, of which there are far too many.
Lousy case-modding star wars figurine-collecting Buffy-watching foreign country-invading negative moderation-giving sons of...
...do we really need *another* story about some idiot cramming a crappy PC into a crappy case that wasn't designed to hold it?
It's not like this wonderful conversion will actually do anything a normal computer can't, except it will look crappier and work worse. And quite frankly, if people have money to spend on this type of bullshit maybe they should consider joining Greenpeace or World Vision and putting their money somewhere where it will do someone some good.
Alternatively this individual could use the money to get some life counselling sessions and work out why doing something this pointless is meaningful to them. Of course we must ask... who's sadder, the sad-sack who builds the PC in the Amiga case or the sad-sack who voluntarily reads about it and then writes a diatribe about how it is a pointless waste of time and money...
...and then shuts down all their actual work activities and makes every single SCO employee work out the remainder of their contract fetching coffee and donuts for IBM's IP lawyers and mopping floors.
At the end of each contract IBM can then lay off the employee as 'redundant' because they have decided to shut down their 'total jerk' business unit.
OR
They could buy them out and then use the contract between Micro$oft and SCO to irritate the hell out of MS.
Either way it's gotta be worth a few million to a company the size of IBM to end this bullcrap and win the love of the open source community. I imagine there will be a brutal court battle and, if unsuccessful, IBM will then 'invest' in SCO.
Well put.
I also observe that Mr Oppenheim frequently resorts to specious reasoning and inaccurate analogies, whereas Lessig applies actual logic and legal precedent to derive his answers.
Oppenheim, for instance, draws several analogies between stealing an object (a car off the street, a DVD from a movie rental store) with 'stealing' music in the sense of making unauthorized copies. He utterly ignores the fact that copying music does not deprive the original owner of the use of the music:
An intention to deprive the owner of an item of the use of that item is a necessary element of larceny or 'stealing', to use the non-legal terminology the RIAA favours when framing their quasi-legal responses. If I get into someone's car left unattended on the street and drive away with it, I clearly intend to deprive the owner of its use. On the other hand, if I copy a music track from a friend, I have no intention to deprive my friend of the use of their CD - ergo at law no theft has occurred.
The only illegal action is copyright infringement, which is NOT theft. The only way I could commit theft against my friend with the CD would be to take the CD itself, without my friend's consent, with the intention of keeping it indefinitely.
But far be it from me to imagine that the RIAA (or the US Supreme Court, I expect) should use *actual law* in their ranting diatribes against music copying.
Gimme a gamecube controller any day!
Nintendo is the Apple of the console world. Microsoft is the Microsoft of the console world...
-
There has not been genocide in Western Europe since WW2. Connecting France to the Bosnia Hertzogovina situation is like saying the USA is responsible for what happens in Cuba.
As for the desecration of war graves, I guess you are saying that there are no redneck, racist idiots in the States, then? Oh wait, you elected Bush... my mistake.
A few of your noble allies:
- Pakistan
- Saudi Arabia
- Israel
- Indonesia
- Phillipines
- Chile
- Nicaragua
- Guatemala
- Argentina
- Zaire
I'm sure there's more. Most of these either have US-backed or US-installed dictators or plutocracies. All of them have been host to a wide variety of atrocities. Your perception that the 'enemies' of the US are the only ones committing human rights abuses is certainly coincidental. Did you ever stop to consider that you don't hear about how awful things are in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for a reason?
Is it not possible that we might live even longer if we didn't use pollution causing power sources?
I visited Los Angeles... that is not a healthy atmosphere to live in (in several senses).
Oh, sorry, phone up the UN and tell them the crisis is over then. Also, you might want to tell the people in Venice, they seem to have some crazy idea that the sea is rising. While you're at it, please turn up the thermostat to increase your usage of that non-polluting, non-global warming fossil fuel I've been hearing about.
When I see Americans 'producing gas from animal manure' I will say that the Chinese should do the same.
Solar power is great but the lack of investment means that there is no real market for it - it is still relegated to niche status.
Energy efficient appliances are good, but more expensive, so if we expect the developing world to use them we must subsidise their production.
Good point about the scale though. I always wondered if a huge number of really small generators all along a river might not be better, safer and more efficient. Even our mighty civilisation once used waterwheels for mills etc.