I've written my representatives. I get back nice form letters supporting my "important rights to intellectual property." I've written dozens of letters to editors and even seen a couple published. Both major parties support intellectual land grabbing strongly however, so politics is largely a waste of time here it seems.
I don't buy movies or CDs anymore, like they're going to notice, I'm sure. It would take an organized boycott and it won't happen until after the law is passed and the consequences settle in. Too late.
Just what do you suggest for those without money to contribute to lobbying or parties, other than civil disobedience? I'm struggling to think of anything both effective and legal here.
Can we still organize opposition like we did to the Decency act, or will the porn lobby and ACLU be on the content industry's side now?
I don't think the A.G.s this letter was directed at find it very funny at all, and Microsoft does need to settle with them.
If this should provoke a *real* grassroots letter writing campaign expressing support for the prosecution (and outrage at Microsoft's tactics) it could prove more than a little counterproductive.
Legality aside, I don't see this as a minor matter. Expression of popular sentiment is close to the only peaceful feedback mechanism we the people still have. Diluting it will not promote domestic tranquility. Especially if the purpose is to make corporations even less accountable to the law.
The issue isn't that each vote counts, obviously it does, by a fraction inversely proportional to state voting population. Let's leave illegal corruption out of it for now and just look at how it is stacked legally.
The deal is that you have to divide your effective power in voting by 10 because there is only 10% difference between Bush and Gore on issues, perhaps less. If the same person ran for both parties, you'd have zero power, right? Both are free trading pro drug-war social conservatives in favor of censorware, Internet regulation, and intellectual property enforcement. The differences, like w.r. to Wicca and atheism are small to many who think themselves unaffected.
Abortion is the one significant difference I think, and their positions don't differ that greatly, it's the Supreme Court appointments that make the difference loom large. And after either one gets in office it will be the campaign donors that get access and attention, not you. Try getting an appointment with the Prez on the basis you voted for him sometime. You would be more powerful if you contributed a few hundred thousand to both of them (as soft money, of course) rather than voting. That's why your vote is devalued. I wouldn't say it doesn't count, but that it doesn't count as much as it could or should.
In a tie election you have the deciding vote. Given the likelihood of a tie, how powerful does that make you? Not very.
I'm amazed at how close these poll results are (G:18/B:19/N:14/36k... as I write). I would have thought that slashdotters had a fairly distinct perspective from the mainstream's and were fairly aligned with respect to a good number of issues.
Yet Nader, Bush, and Gore are pretty close. If all the poll-takers voted it would only make a 1% difference in the swing diluted by the proportion of voters slashdot represents, though Nader would be helped more.
If accurate (big assumption), slashdot has been rendered effectively voiceless on it's core issues of agreement with regard to the presidential race, and I don't think it's exactly accidental (or targeted at us.) It's just not talking about some issues, and splitting the difference on the others based on demographic polls.
I expect the government will wait for the FBI report before taking any action. But I would be very disappointed if this discussion didn't occur at high levels of the government if the report does find evidence of a significant risk.
I hope that any financial institutions that are using Windows also consider their risk. After military security, financial gain is probably the second most likely motive for a serious attack. I doubt it would involve competing with Microsoft.
If open source doesn't float their boat, the military might consider forking a BSD.
Well, that's an interesting idea. You'll have to explain what voluntarily releasing your own property under liberal distribution terms has to do with the theft of personal details from others from others for profit. I'm afraid I just don't get the connection.
You don't *have* to believe in Open Source, it's not Tinkerbell.
It has measurable effects because it has been tried and works somewhat. On the other hand can you show me any human society anywhere that has *ever* used full transparency as a successful basis? I won't argue it doesn't have some points in theory conceivably, but it's inhuman and therefore impractical, at least until we mature significantly. One step at a time maybe?
Maybe you'd like to share personal and intimate details with a group of strangers, and prove it works? I won't stop you. Or is it that you really think corporations and governments have a right to privacy too?
They weren't all organized with D.A.R.E and everything when I went to high school but they did the visiting police officer, and showed us the old film classics like "Marijuana - The Killer Weed." Teacher couldn't understand why the back of the class kept cracking up. I couldn't either, but I figured it out in college a couple of years later.
And I have to tell you lying isn't what you want to do. Once I blew that myth off, it was only natural to throw out all the rest of the stuff they told me too. Being older now I can see that you should be slightly more selective than that.
I'm not sure it matters if the current production run of Transmeta's chips are competitive or not, the question is more whether this is the right way to make chips in the future.
By allowing the instruction set presented to the world to be set by software the chip has a lot of advantages in terms of customizability and turnaround time for fixing bugs. Software is also more compact that the corresponding hardware so the chip is overall less complex and presumably more reliable, once debugged.
There is another whole category of applications that may become possible thru use of the native instructions, or better, by custom design of a logical instruction set for a given use.
Four revisions ago, the transmeta chip took half an hour to boot Windows. Consider where they'll be four revisions from now before discounting them on speed alone.
This information and more can be found in a good Technology Review article I found on Linux Today here.
Yes, we all make assumptions. The difference is that science doesn't hold them sacred, they encourage their overturn by new evidence. And in fact any assumption that *can't* be overturned by new evidence is not allowed... it is against the rules. It *is* true that metascience, religion, and philosophy have some commonality, but science is something else I'm afraid.
People don't need to believe in science, they use the best it has to offer. Knowing full well it isn't correct, but probably close. Most don't even *care* what is actually correct if their answers are good enough to be useful.
Science says that if you want to know how something works, study that thing. Hypothesize, test, and refine. Many religions apparently believe that the appearance of reality can be deceptive, a trap of Satan, and experienced clergy are needed to interpret sacred writings to determine what can be trusted. Or something.
Science works. I can't prove religion doesn't, but I've never been given evidence I can believe. I'm not saying that you can't be a better person for having a religion, or that it isn't a valuable comfort for some, but its ability to predict and control reality is not as impressive as that of science.
So yes, I take things on faith. But I'm willing to toss my faith tomorrow for a better one, and actually kind of hope I might have to. Are you?
Many feel as you do, Janelle Brown wrote a good piece from that point of view on Salon recently.
The issue is whether this delays SDMI, strengthening it in the long term, or whether it will prove to be a killing blow. If it does kill it, so much the better, as you say. However it is almost *certain* that waiting until after the ramp up in hardware and media would prove fatal, and some people would prefer to make certain.
It may seem cold, and it is, but remember that most of us have done *nothing* to deserve being strongarmed into buying new players and entire new collections of media, either.
The only way to protect it I've heard that will work is to switch to a DVD format that actually uses the higher density for audibly better quality. Only if the music itself is too clumsy and large to rip will it be protected, and then only until technology catches up. There are issues here too, like mandatory ads/copyright warnings at the beginning of audio disks, but at least the new media would be better in some way.
Once upon a time, when people got sick they visited or were visited by a doctor, and paid the doctor's bill directly. If you were very sick or injured very seriously, you could end up owing more than your means, but you didn't get thrown out in the street for it too often. Medical insurance was not common.
Then medicine got higher tech, and for a lot of money we could fix some kinds of really serious injury and illness, and postpone death by months in some other cases. Very expensive months. Insurance now looks attractive and is sold as a way to insure that your family will have access to these expensive medical techniques just in case.
Thanks to the corporate bottom lines, we are soon confronted with the basic dilemna -- how much is a person's life worth to society as a whole, and to them individually? Some positive things do result like a new concentration on preventive medicine. At first, it is left up to individuals so at least the freedom of choice is preserved, and insurance remains fairly apolitical.
Soon though, medical insurance began to be provided by employers, partly thanks to the unions, and partly because there is economic efficiency in large purchases. The company benefits by a healthier and happier workforce, and employees benefit by being covered for less money than they could arrange on their own. However the chance to choose how to arrange medical insurance disappeared for many -- the insurance companies didn't really need individual business anymore. There is much furor over which expensive treatments are covered and which aren't. Medical care has become political in a big way.
Today, insurance companies are actually paying for propaganda to discourage behaviors expensive for them, and interfering politically in matters such as drug testing. It appears that they will also set standards for "good" DNA and "bad" DNA in a way that will directly affect the quality and length of people's life. Equality of opportunity implies that you should not be penalized for who you are, and surely your DNA is not anything else.
We should look back at this point, now that many agree that basic universal coverage is probably desirable. We can cut insurance companies right out of the basic coverage loop and we should. This is not to say someone doesn't have to make the tough decisions about who and what doesn't get covered given the finite amount of money available for medical costs. But since this decision is highly emotional and political it belongs in the political arena, not corporate boardrooms.
The problem with your simple model is of course that there is no benevolent superior force capable of taking on the multi-nationals. Governments may have the scale, but not the will or moral force. And there is danger in any supposedly benevolent force, because it is only benevolent as long as it is absolutely correct.
Aren't corporations chartered? Who has power to revoke a charter and what does it take? How much of a dent would being unincorporated in one country make in their power? Are there any examples of this ever being done? Any good tries? I suspect it all traces back to the "corporations are individuals" mistake, what could overturn that in law?
Would making individual company members liable for their products' effects, including criminal liability, do more harm than good? I suspect this would only get engineers hung instead of those who insisted on dodgy tradeoffs, unfortunately. At the least it would start a huge game of CYA.
The only real check I can think of is that of boycott, and that has to be worldwide across a broad spectrum of products to be effective. And it can't work against a monopoly or oligopoly in a critical product. Even when not the case, like here, not the easiest thing to organize, and you need an issue that directly affects millions of people -- region coding probably isn't dramatic enough.
Corporations sometimes aren't stupid. They usually know it is cheaper to keep people happy than enforce their power. If enough people are vocal about an abuse of their power, it can be enough to make them correct it, before government steps in with regulation. Unfortunately, the music and movie industries seem to be a bit substandard in intelligence in this sense, and the governments a little too well bought, which is why we are talking about force here. Ultimately all justice comes down to the proper application of force.
It is extremely funny that the RIAA is trying to win this argument on moral grounds. Here's a group that passes stealth legislation to remove rights to works after death, makes music work-for-hire to minimize the artists' rights, refuses to pay record company royalties to artists, or any portion of the MP3.com settlement, markets violent entertainment to young kids while contributing heavily to the politicians expressing outrage, and also colludes on CD prices according to the FTC.
After all this, to suggest that they are the noble defenders of the helpless artists against the immoral, thieving public is just a bit surreal, don't you think?
'You can't stop Lazy and inexperienced users from using your product.'
Where did I say you could? I said that if you make a point of marketing to such users you'll have more of them.
'Who is working to prevent lazy and inexperienced people from using Linux?'
Who needs to? You don't seem to get the point. Here it is. Microsoft sites are run by less experienced people because they are sold as being runnable by less experienced (and expensive) people. When Microsoft tells you Linux has a higher TCO because you need more expensive people to run it, this kind of story about the Nasdaq is the hidden cost of believing them.
It's amazing how powerful market speak is. If you call something easy to use and self-maintaining people smile. When you say that it was designed to be marketed to those who *need* easy and self-maintaining, tempers fly. But it's true. Microsoft sacrificed an awful lot of functionality and reliability so that it would be.
I never said that everyone who uses Microsoft was lazy and inexperienced, that is just as stupid and false as saying that everyone who uses Linux isn't. But saying that Microsoft has created their own problem userbase thru clever marketing not backed up by a sufficiently clever product is not a generalization and I believe it to be true.
I won't argue that Microsoft takes some unjust abuse on slashdot. Consider it balance for the vaporous marketing and pseudo-libertarian nonsense *they* spew. At least I don't have to read slashdot if I don't want to.
And speaking of marketing, has it ever occurred to you that if you design and market a product as usable by lazy and inexperienced people that it will most likely be used by lazy and inexperienced people? Granted, marketing uses prettier words, that's their job, but the meaning is clear. If it weren't for the fact that Microsoft wants to sell products to the military and critical civilian installations like Nasdaq, no one would even care.
Until Microsoft restricts its marketing to a more realistic portion of the market, or quits implying that their products make proper use trivial and automatic, I think their customer's follies are fair game for derision.
Why aren't authors up in arms that libraries share dozens of copies of their books that might otherwise be sales? Do libraries consult with the author before making a book available? Suppose Napster bought CDs, ripped them, and made them publically available so they were far more like a private library. Would that improve the situation for you? It's not hard to see that the RIAA's notion of copyright is much stricter than the version typically applied to authors.
Since the Internet allows millions of people to read copyrighted articles without any payment are the authors being fairly compensated, or should they complain that the Internet is facilitating copyright violations? Maybe we need an injunction on the Internet.
If a company puts music on their phone menu, and then passes the price of the per-play copyright to the consumer, how do you like that? Should you be forced to pay for music you didn't intentionally listen to?
I think you mentioned a key part of copyright we *do* want to preserve. Protection against corruption and loss of control. Authors and artists *should* have control over timing and contents of releases, and be protected against others profiting from modification or resale. But the person who released the metallica demo (which they presumably received under a contract prohibiting release) is the party that should be in court.
All of the advances since 1900 have been part of the scientific revolution, of which the digital revolution is a part. Computers are happening because some scientists and mathematicians studied solid state physics and the theory of computation, basically the same reason we have electricity and medicine, etc.
It was a long time between the discovery of electricity and its widespread use in homes. As the light bulb was to the application of electricity, so the Internet is to the digital revolution -- the means for getting the basics installed in everyone's home. In the beginning many complained of the harsh unreal light of electric bulbs, and loudly bemoaned the so-called "progress." But lightbulbs improved and a whole spectrum of unimagined applications rapidly arose from the availability of electricity.
The next real shocker may well be practical nanotechnology or genetic mastery. But those who thumb their nose at the digital revolution then should imagine the difficulty of designing nanotechnology or decoding the genome without computers. It's too interdependent to make comparing parts useful, and what would be the point? To tell scientists what to study?
I haven't found a decent replacement for Brief under Linux yet either. I did try jed, but either I misconfigured it or the emulation was not sufficient. Crisp looks to be the choice, but the license is draconian and expensive as you say. I can use either vi or Emacs, but I feel like I'm programming with lead gloves on:) 15 years of muscle memory doesn't go away quietly...
I've used TECO, Vedit, KED, EDLIN, WS, and a lot of other editors quite a bit. I've never found better or less buggy than Brief though, so I'm still using it on the Windows side. Having a strong open source clone of Brief would be a really strong incentive for me to shut Windows down for the last time. Perhaps I am feeling the beginnings of an itch here...
I have yet to try Brief under DOSEMU though (need to grab a DOS image.) I hope that works better than I expect.
I *am* a fan, if you want to call it that, of the open source movement. But for me, there is no moral component to the proprietary/free choice. Others have different morals of course, but for me it's about exploring to its limits a new and humane way to develop software. It's not about wiping out all non-open source software in some jihad.
We've seen the sterility of the scorched desert approach demonstrated quite well already I think. Diversity is the best way to survive catastrophes and promote competition. We should embrace it, and judging by the number of filesystems and platforms Linux supports, we do. Compare a certain company.
I certainly do think that proprietary software is more easily abused and put to evil purposes -- evil hates the light goes the cliche -- but the immorality is in the abuse, not in the license.
Well, as long as open-source should classify the support the programmers received how about proprietary software? Windows just used taxpayer-supported software when they rip^H^H^Hextended Kerberos. How many commercial products involve the taxpayer funded Internet in their production? Should businesses disclose their use of public highways?
Why is it ok for corporations to use public resources, but when individuals do it, it is disingenuous? By definition, public resources are available as part of the context of life and business. You don't have to apologize for using them.
If Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't a good enough example already of why you don't want to play with nukes, I really doubt hitting the moon would provoke that much more fear.
It seems very likely though that useful seismological research could be carried out on the moon's interior if you had the right sensors set up over it's surface when you set off a nuke underneath it.
Nukes are tools we'll likely need for space development, just don't let the politicians play with them until they grow up a bit:)
Slashdot Mirror
I've written my representatives. I get back nice form letters supporting my "important rights to intellectual property." I've written dozens of letters to editors and even seen a couple published. Both major parties support intellectual land grabbing strongly however, so politics is largely a waste of time here it seems.
I don't buy movies or CDs anymore, like they're going to notice, I'm sure. It would take an organized boycott and it won't happen until after the law is passed and the consequences settle in. Too late.
Just what do you suggest for those without money to contribute to lobbying or parties, other than civil disobedience? I'm struggling to think of anything both effective and legal here.
Can we still organize opposition like we did to the Decency act, or will the porn lobby and ACLU be on the content industry's side now?
I don't think the A.G.s this letter was directed at find it very funny at all, and Microsoft does need to settle with them.
If this should provoke a *real* grassroots letter writing campaign expressing support for the prosecution (and outrage at Microsoft's tactics) it could prove more than a little counterproductive.
Legality aside, I don't see this as a minor matter. Expression of popular sentiment is close to the only peaceful feedback mechanism we the people still have. Diluting it will not promote domestic tranquility. Especially if the purpose is to make corporations even less accountable to the law.
The issue isn't that each vote counts, obviously it does, by a fraction inversely proportional to state voting population. Let's leave illegal corruption out of it for now and just look at how it is stacked legally.
The deal is that you have to divide your effective power in voting by 10 because there is only 10% difference between Bush and Gore on issues, perhaps less. If the same person ran for both parties, you'd have zero power, right? Both are free trading pro drug-war social conservatives in favor of censorware, Internet regulation, and intellectual property enforcement. The differences, like w.r. to Wicca and atheism are small to many who think themselves unaffected.
Abortion is the one significant difference I think, and their positions don't differ that greatly, it's the Supreme Court appointments that make the difference loom large. And after either one gets in office it will be the campaign donors that get access and attention, not you. Try getting an appointment with the Prez on the basis you voted for him sometime. You would be more powerful if you contributed a few hundred thousand to both of them (as soft money, of course) rather than voting. That's why your vote is devalued. I wouldn't say it doesn't count, but that it doesn't count as much as it could or should.
In a tie election you have the deciding vote. Given the likelihood of a tie, how powerful does that make you? Not very.
I'm amazed at how close these poll results are (G:18/B:19/N:14/36k... as I write). I would have thought that slashdotters had a fairly distinct perspective from the mainstream's and were fairly aligned with respect to a good number of issues.
Yet Nader, Bush, and Gore are pretty close. If all the poll-takers voted it would only make a 1% difference in the swing diluted by the proportion of voters slashdot represents, though Nader would be helped more.
If accurate (big assumption), slashdot has been rendered effectively voiceless on it's core issues of agreement with regard to the presidential race, and I don't think it's exactly accidental (or targeted at us.) It's just not talking about some issues, and splitting the difference on the others based on demographic polls.
It sure sounds like they are thinking of changing a sane policy for the worse.
I expect the government will wait for the FBI report before taking any action. But I would be very disappointed if this discussion didn't occur at high levels of the government if the report does find evidence of a significant risk.
I hope that any financial institutions that are using Windows also consider their risk. After military security, financial gain is probably the second most likely motive for a serious attack. I doubt it would involve competing with Microsoft.
If open source doesn't float their boat, the military might consider forking a BSD.
Well, that's an interesting idea. You'll have to explain what voluntarily releasing your own property under liberal distribution terms has to do with the theft of personal details from others from others for profit. I'm afraid I just don't get the connection.
You don't *have* to believe in Open Source, it's not Tinkerbell.
It has measurable effects because it has been tried and works somewhat. On the other hand can you show me any human society anywhere that has *ever* used full transparency as a successful basis? I won't argue it doesn't have some points in theory conceivably, but it's inhuman and therefore impractical, at least until we mature significantly. One step at a time maybe?
Maybe you'd like to share personal and intimate details with a group of strangers, and prove it works? I won't stop you. Or is it that you really think corporations and governments have a right to privacy too?
Absolutely.
They weren't all organized with D.A.R.E and everything when I went to high school but they did the visiting police officer, and showed us the old film classics like "Marijuana - The Killer Weed." Teacher couldn't understand why the back of the class kept cracking up. I couldn't either, but I figured it out in college a couple of years later.
And I have to tell you lying isn't what you want to do. Once I blew that myth off, it was only natural to throw out all the rest of the stuff they told me too. Being older now I can see that you should be slightly more selective than that.
By allowing the instruction set presented to the world to be set by software the chip has a lot of advantages in terms of customizability and turnaround time for fixing bugs. Software is also more compact that the corresponding hardware so the chip is overall less complex and presumably more reliable, once debugged.
There is another whole category of applications that may become possible thru use of the native instructions, or better, by custom design of a logical instruction set for a given use.
Four revisions ago, the transmeta chip took half an hour to boot Windows. Consider where they'll be four revisions from now before discounting them on speed alone.
This information and more can be found in a good Technology Review article I found on Linux Today here.
Yes, we all make assumptions. The difference is that science doesn't hold them sacred, they encourage their overturn by new evidence. And in fact any assumption that *can't* be overturned by new evidence is not allowed... it is against the rules. It *is* true that metascience, religion, and philosophy have some commonality, but science is something else I'm afraid.
People don't need to believe in science, they use the best it has to offer. Knowing full well it isn't correct, but probably close. Most don't even *care* what is actually correct if their answers are good enough to be useful.
Science says that if you want to know how something works, study that thing. Hypothesize, test, and refine. Many religions apparently believe that the appearance of reality can be deceptive, a trap of Satan, and experienced clergy are needed to interpret sacred writings to determine what can be trusted. Or something.
Science works. I can't prove religion doesn't, but I've never been given evidence I can believe. I'm not saying that you can't be a better person for having a religion, or that it isn't a valuable comfort for some, but its ability to predict and control reality is not as impressive as that of science.
So yes, I take things on faith. But I'm willing to toss my faith tomorrow for a better one, and actually kind of hope I might have to. Are you?
Many feel as you do, Janelle Brown wrote a good piece from that point of view on Salon recently.
The issue is whether this delays SDMI, strengthening it in the long term, or whether it will prove to be a killing blow. If it does kill it, so much the better, as you say. However it is almost *certain* that waiting until after the ramp up in hardware and media would prove fatal, and some people would prefer to make certain.
It may seem cold, and it is, but remember that most of us have done *nothing* to deserve being strongarmed into buying new players and entire new collections of media, either.
The only way to protect it I've heard that will work is to switch to a DVD format that actually uses the higher density for audibly better quality. Only if the music itself is too clumsy and large to rip will it be protected, and then only until technology catches up. There are issues here too, like mandatory ads/copyright warnings at the beginning of audio disks, but at least the new media would be better in some way.
Once upon a time, when people got sick they visited or were visited by a doctor, and paid the doctor's bill directly. If you were very sick or injured very seriously, you could end up owing more than your means, but you didn't get thrown out in the street for it too often. Medical insurance was not common.
Then medicine got higher tech, and for a lot of money we could fix some kinds of really serious injury and illness, and postpone death by months in some other cases. Very expensive months. Insurance now looks attractive and is sold as a way to insure that your family will have access to these expensive medical techniques just in case.
Thanks to the corporate bottom lines, we are soon confronted with the basic dilemna -- how much is a person's life worth to society as a whole, and to them individually? Some positive things do result like a new concentration on preventive medicine. At first, it is left up to individuals so at least the freedom of choice is preserved, and insurance remains fairly apolitical.
Soon though, medical insurance began to be provided by employers, partly thanks to the unions, and partly because there is economic efficiency in large purchases. The company benefits by a healthier and happier workforce, and employees benefit by being covered for less money than they could arrange on their own. However the chance to choose how to arrange medical insurance disappeared for many -- the insurance companies didn't really need individual business anymore. There is much furor over which expensive treatments are covered and which aren't. Medical care has become political in a big way.
Today, insurance companies are actually paying for propaganda to discourage behaviors expensive for them, and interfering politically in matters such as drug testing. It appears that they will also set standards for "good" DNA and "bad" DNA in a way that will directly affect the quality and length of people's life. Equality of opportunity implies that you should not be penalized for who you are, and surely your DNA is not anything else.
We should look back at this point, now that many agree that basic universal coverage is probably desirable. We can cut insurance companies right out of the basic coverage loop and we should. This is not to say someone doesn't have to make the tough decisions about who and what doesn't get covered given the finite amount of money available for medical costs. But since this decision is highly emotional and political it belongs in the political arena, not corporate boardrooms.
The problem with your simple model is of course that there is no benevolent superior force capable of taking on the multi-nationals. Governments may have the scale, but not the will or moral force. And there is danger in any supposedly benevolent force, because it is only benevolent as long as it is absolutely correct.
Aren't corporations chartered? Who has power to revoke a charter and what does it take? How much of a dent would being unincorporated in one country make in their power? Are there any examples of this ever being done? Any good tries? I suspect it all traces back to the "corporations are individuals" mistake, what could overturn that in law?
Would making individual company members liable for their products' effects, including criminal liability, do more harm than good? I suspect this would only get engineers hung instead of those who insisted on dodgy tradeoffs, unfortunately. At the least it would start a huge game of CYA.
The only real check I can think of is that of boycott, and that has to be worldwide across a broad spectrum of products to be effective. And it can't work against a monopoly or oligopoly in a critical product. Even when not the case, like here, not the easiest thing to organize, and you need an issue that directly affects millions of people -- region coding probably isn't dramatic enough.
Corporations sometimes aren't stupid. They usually know it is cheaper to keep people happy than enforce their power. If enough people are vocal about an abuse of their power, it can be enough to make them correct it, before government steps in with regulation. Unfortunately, the music and movie industries seem to be a bit substandard in intelligence in this sense, and the governments a little too well bought, which is why we are talking about force here. Ultimately all justice comes down to the proper application of force.
It is extremely funny that the RIAA is trying to win this argument on moral grounds. Here's a group that passes stealth legislation to remove rights to works after death, makes music work-for-hire to minimize the artists' rights, refuses to pay record company royalties to artists, or any portion of the MP3.com settlement, markets violent entertainment to young kids while contributing heavily to the politicians expressing outrage, and also colludes on CD prices according to the FTC.
After all this, to suggest that they are the noble defenders of the helpless artists against the immoral, thieving public is just a bit surreal, don't you think?
'You can't stop Lazy and inexperienced users from using your product.'
Where did I say you could? I said that if you make a point of marketing to such users you'll have more of them.
'Who is working to prevent lazy and inexperienced people from using Linux?'
Who needs to? You don't seem to get the point. Here it is. Microsoft sites are run by less experienced people because they are sold as being runnable by less experienced (and expensive) people. When Microsoft tells you Linux has a higher TCO because you need more expensive people to run it, this kind of story about the Nasdaq is the hidden cost of believing them.
It's amazing how powerful market speak is. If you call something easy to use and self-maintaining people smile. When you say that it was designed to be marketed to those who *need* easy and self-maintaining, tempers fly. But it's true. Microsoft sacrificed an awful lot of functionality and reliability so that it would be.
I never said that everyone who uses Microsoft was lazy and inexperienced, that is just as stupid and false as saying that everyone who uses Linux isn't. But saying that Microsoft has created their own problem userbase thru clever marketing not backed up by a sufficiently clever product is not a generalization and I believe it to be true.
I won't argue that Microsoft takes some unjust abuse on slashdot. Consider it balance for the vaporous marketing and pseudo-libertarian nonsense *they* spew. At least I don't have to read slashdot if I don't want to.
And speaking of marketing, has it ever occurred to you that if you design and market a product as usable by lazy and inexperienced people that it will most likely be used by lazy and inexperienced people? Granted, marketing uses prettier words, that's their job, but the meaning is clear. If it weren't for the fact that Microsoft wants to sell products to the military and critical civilian installations like Nasdaq, no one would even care.
Until Microsoft restricts its marketing to a more realistic portion of the market, or quits implying that their products make proper use trivial and automatic, I think their customer's follies are fair game for derision.
Why aren't authors up in arms that libraries share dozens of copies of their books that might otherwise be sales? Do libraries consult with the author before making a book available? Suppose Napster bought CDs, ripped them, and made them publically available so they were far more like a private library. Would that improve the situation for you? It's not hard to see that the RIAA's notion of copyright is much stricter than the version typically applied to authors.
Since the Internet allows millions of people to read copyrighted articles without any payment are the authors being fairly compensated, or should they complain that the Internet is facilitating copyright violations? Maybe we need an injunction on the Internet.
If a company puts music on their phone menu, and then passes the price of the per-play copyright to the consumer, how do you like that? Should you be forced to pay for music you didn't intentionally listen to?
I think you mentioned a key part of copyright we *do* want to preserve. Protection against corruption and loss of control. Authors and artists *should* have control over timing and contents of releases, and be protected against others profiting from modification or resale. But the person who released the metallica demo (which they presumably received under a contract prohibiting release) is the party that should be in court.
It means God has 13 fingers. This is obvious from the observation that 6X9=42 base 13.
All of the advances since 1900 have been part of the scientific revolution, of which the digital revolution is a part. Computers are happening because some scientists and mathematicians studied solid state physics and the theory of computation, basically the same reason we have electricity and medicine, etc.
It was a long time between the discovery of electricity and its widespread use in homes. As the light bulb was to the application of electricity, so the Internet is to the digital revolution -- the means for getting the basics installed in everyone's home. In the beginning many complained of the harsh unreal light of electric bulbs, and loudly bemoaned the so-called "progress." But lightbulbs improved and a whole spectrum of unimagined applications rapidly arose from the availability of electricity.
The next real shocker may well be practical nanotechnology or genetic mastery. But those who thumb their nose at the digital revolution then should imagine the difficulty of designing nanotechnology or decoding the genome without computers. It's too interdependent to make comparing parts useful, and what would be the point? To tell scientists what to study?
I haven't found a decent replacement for Brief under Linux yet either. I did try jed, but either I misconfigured it or the emulation was not sufficient. Crisp looks to be the choice, but the license is draconian and expensive as you say. I can use either vi or Emacs, but I feel like I'm programming with lead gloves on :) 15 years of muscle memory doesn't go away quietly...
I've used TECO, Vedit, KED, EDLIN, WS, and a lot of other editors quite a bit. I've never found better or less buggy than Brief though, so I'm still using it on the Windows side. Having a strong open source clone of Brief would be a really strong incentive for me to shut Windows down for the last time. Perhaps I am feeling the beginnings of an itch here...
I have yet to try Brief under DOSEMU though (need to grab a DOS image.) I hope that works better than I expect.
They were Team TNT: www.teamtnt.com
I *am* a fan, if you want to call it that, of the open source movement. But for me, there is no moral component to the proprietary/free choice. Others have different morals of course, but for me it's about exploring to its limits a new and humane way to develop software. It's not about wiping out all non-open source software in some jihad.
We've seen the sterility of the scorched desert approach demonstrated quite well already I think. Diversity is the best way to survive catastrophes and promote competition. We should embrace it, and judging by the number of filesystems and platforms Linux supports, we do. Compare a certain company.
I certainly do think that proprietary software is more easily abused and put to evil purposes -- evil hates the light goes the cliche -- but the immorality is in the abuse, not in the license.
Well, as long as open-source should classify the support the programmers received how about proprietary software? Windows just used taxpayer-supported software when they rip^H^H^Hextended Kerberos. How many commercial products involve the taxpayer funded Internet in their production? Should businesses disclose their use of public highways?
Why is it ok for corporations to use public resources, but when individuals do it, it is disingenuous? By definition, public resources are available as part of the context of life and business. You don't have to apologize for using them.
the DMCA
If Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't a good enough example already of why you don't want to play with nukes, I really doubt hitting the moon would provoke that much more fear.
:)
It seems very likely though that useful seismological research could be carried out on the moon's interior if you had the right sensors set up over it's surface when you set off a nuke underneath it.
Nukes are tools we'll likely need for space development, just don't let the politicians play with them until they grow up a bit