"The information wants to be free," is also a stupid meme. Information doesn't want to be free. It doesn't want to do anything. If information always moved flowed out, then classified information would never exist.
Well classified information does tend to get leaked don't it? Abu Grav anyone, tell me that the those trainning photos were supposed to be allowed out of the facility? There was an article a while back I can't find now but it suggestion that information might be a form of energy or be related in a qantitative way like mass is in the famons e=m(C * C). If thats the case then it should tend toward disorder like everything else in the universe. It will eventually spread out unless energy is put into keeping it where it belongs. In that since "Information wants to be free".
I can't tell you about what the rules say in China with regaurd to skull busting on suspection alone, but I did here a radio pice just the other day. They were talking about how a large number of young pople want an independant judiciary. As you can imagine if the executive and judical are the same pleople the laws matter only as much as the executive wants to fallow them or have them followed. So if their equivelent of the D.A. decides to just have you shoot in the street with no trial, its doubtful anyone would be given the chance to question the legality of it.
No, No, WINE and codeweavers have always been pretty cozy as far as I know and are mostly the same people. Its transgameing or whatever their name is this week that you're thinking of.
Actually you are allowed to charge for the distribution of the source code. If I decide to send you the code on a floopy, I can insist that you pay me $0.20 for the floppy and whatever postage is. Similarly I could make you pay me for cost associated with bandwidth if you download it. Most people don't because the effort of attaching a dollar figure to you transfering 250Kbytes over my T1 probably would cost more then the transfer, and hey its the nice neighborly thing to do.
TOS: Yes lots of the writing was kitchy and the humor as mostly slapstick, fine but mostly it was well placed. The plots were not new, they in many was resembled westerns or adventure stories. Still they managed to ask some questions and do things that were not possible in those more conventional genres at the time. When they did use kitch and slapstick it was not over done, except in a few episodes, "Trouble with Tribbles" anyone?
TNG: Largely continued the traditon of TOS. There was a little more character development which gave the show a little more dimention but the writers did a great job of not over doing to th point where the show had to become serial. They also took the kitch down an notch. All and all the show was very inteligent like what had come before it and felt like it had some more depth. They still had an incredible freedome of plot to do anything they wanted and keep the show mostly fresh for its entire seven years.
DS9: Ok, I felt this was a radical departure from the TNG and TOS. It had a much stonger focus on charater development and relations ships then the others, and it was a serial prime time soap, lets just face it. Still there was plenty of chance for variety. It was a busy port where different charater could resonably come and go. The writing never felt streched or unnatural it was consistant with the timelines the other shows had established and played by the rules created in the other series. The new format allowed them to expolre some political issues that could not be address in the episodal format of the other series.
VOY: Holly crap! Lets write ourselves into a corner with the very first episode, the flog the plotline out for seven years. Yes the show had its moments but there was really only one goal they could have from day one. The first seasons had long streches of "What clever trick to advance our homecomeing will we find and fail at this week?" it got old real fast. The writing was miserable the dialog was not even kitchy more just bad. Then they started introducing plot arcs like the borg and breaking all the rules. Come on the Borg were supposed to be this highly adaptive and terrible enemy which nearly vanquished the entire starfleet. In TNG every tangle the enterprise had it incurred serious damage and often needed repairs at space dock. The Enterprise, a bigger more war-ship inspired vessal usually had help too. Where exactly did Voyager a science ship all alone refit, how did they survice the attacks with no backup? Sure they did it in the writing but it seemed so far feched and generally inconsistant. I think that had to irritate lots of true fans.
Enterprise: Personally its a step up form Voyager I don't care what anyone says. It still suffers terribly for consistancy problems regarding the transporter, the state of technology at the time and lots of other stuff. Archer's character is irratic at best, wholly inconsistant at worst. The relationship with the vulcans is entirely to close, in TOS we get the impression humans and vulcans have peaceful relations some exchange of goods and technology but little real cultural connection, to the point that they barely understand each other. Yet on Enterprise years earlier then TOS humans and vulcans are in constant meetings and already serving together. It feels like they are at least trying to get it write unlike VOY which it felt like they were throwing the story to the wind.
We don't need a break we just need someone besides UPN sheparding the writers. UPN is trying to go for cool or sexy as the shows cake when that has in the past been the icing. Past Treks worked because they were philisophical stories and often played with some actual science even in their world of fantasy and embelishment. These things were just not present in VOY and ENTERPRISE.
"McVoy is a business man; true to his heart, he needs to keep the BK user strung out on his code. Hell, I would feel the same sense of outrage that he feels if someone threatened to kill my cash cow. Don't pretend that every one you wouldn't feel the same way if it was *your* revenue stream. To me, anyone who claims an absolute vow of poverty is looking for a monastery to live in. Everyone I know would fight to protect a source of financial income."
Fine ok but this is how capitalism works there is no right and wrong on either side of this one. McVoy is under no obligation to give away the store. He is free try and keep it secret. I am free to decide if I like it, then I can try and make it or I can buy it from him. I might then give away the store if its not my sorce of income. This should force McVoy to make improvements. Its the way the world works, its call competition.
Larry had one of the hottest programmers in FOSS using his SCM. In fact, this Man Of The Year lavished all kinds of praise on his progeny! You would have to pay more than the "free" license fee for that kind of advertising. Shit, probably A LOT more. If Linus had been paid for his endorsements, that could have added up to quite a sum of money. Larry has wisely kept those funds securely in his pocket......I believe that Larry's BK contribution probably made the significant increase in kernel production possible. Judging from Linus' angst and outrage, I think he believes that too.
Right Larry got his Linus got his, it was win win wonderful. Till someone else wanting his pice of the pie(access) came along and upset the ballance. Again this is nature whats wrong with Tridgell wanting to get some? Other then the fact as a kernel developer he worked for Linus even it it was as a volunteer. He still is somewhat obligated to abide if Linus "asks" him to not do something that is going to have a negative impact on his project. So Linus has a right to be mad at Trdgell but the rest of us unless your a kernel contributor really don't!
If its morally wrong to reverse enginerr you'd better stop speaking. Figure that you could not possibly understand the spoken word when you were first learning to speak. Your infintile brain would have been forced to study the protocol and make some guesses, then try some stuff produce some sounds that it thought had some meaning and see how the people who can speak respond. Reverse engineering is part of human nature. I would bet most of us learn more by what is more akin to reverse engineering then, serialized learning. Could really ever learn anything from a text book if you could not turn around and at least look at the broader contexts of its application that is, how it interacts with the larger system.
This raises a really good point. I would think this would possibly be an Ex-post Facto situtation. Is the EU prohibited from makeing Ex-post Facto legislation?
I can see how continued development may infringe if patent law was enacted but if these projects did nothing, ie simply left the code up on the web exactly as is, then they have performed no illegal activity since it became illegal. Would anyone have standing to get the code taken down?
The thing is ARP is fine, all you really need is a good VPN solution. Just make profs connect to the VPN when doing offical records access or entry. Most private schools could deploy such a solution for profs for about they charge one student to attend. Much better though not perfect security could be had very cheaply with very minor changes to existing systems.
I will say it again. Patents are the nukes of the IP world. A singe patent has the potential to destroy an entire business. It follows just like nuke history too.
Once there were no software patents. Then a few players got them. They blasted their way to economic success useing them.
Suddendly they become anit-perliferation out of fear of being destroyed themselves. They come up with some effective strategy to keep new players out of their businessm, that is they patent baisc and obvious things that prevent anyone doing much of anything. They don't have to worry about each other because just like nukes its an if you use yours I'll use mine pact. This formalized in intercorporate treaties know as cross license agreements.
Then the world changed. They availibility of stuiped patents increased because of all the abuse . Soone rouge terror corporations like SCO and Eolas came into being. They did not care that they had no meaningful or useable products. This made them fearless as even if they are attacked they have next to nothing to use. Yet they control a few of these devestating stupidity software patents or IP nukes if you will. Sure enough just like the north Korea's of the real world they intend to hold others hostage.
I am just glad to see the 800lb beasts out their finally getting a taste of their own medicne. They system should be at least fair if it can't be good. Sure we'd be much better off without software patents or at least ones of a very different nature. Barring that though I will settle for the big guys feeling the hurt, and fear in a way that is equivelent to what the little guys live with. Here is to hopeing for more Eolas and SCO like suits, not because they bleed M$ or others of their earned money but because the public recognizes their stupidity and might prompt the politicians to act. It also forces 800lbers to let lose their patent lobby death grip and allow for some change.
Well computer science goes a little beyond just math. There are some engineering questions in it. I don't know many graudates of the mathmathics department that would have a high comfort level creating a design even at the logicgate level for a databus. People need to get it out of their head that compsci is all math, its just mostly applied math. To the math student a CPU is a finite state machine and they don't care, I do I see datapaths and places where latches would allow pipelining etc etc... But your correct there is a view out there especially if you talk to freshmen(I will be graduating this year, well I hope) that CS is C#/java/html, they had to indroduce a freshman level digital topics course which is largely discrete math just to scare those kids off and into information systems or business, lest they get rudely surprised later.
I think the real issue is it has become too difficult to find decent employment even for the talented without college. College is a good thing but some people just should not be there, I wonder about myself sometimes. I often just do the work to get the grade in gen ed courses, sure sometimes a good proof really peeks my interest and I work at really learning the subject at least to the limits of the class but often not. At this stage in mylife I would have been very content to have gone to a votech school had I feld I would have been employable afterward. I know I'd get more out of college later in my life then now. I am young I have to find a way to support myself, these are stresses I might well be feeling less later and different motivations would be more conducive to really learning. I think there are lots of people who would be better served going to college later in life and plenty who just don;t have the desire period. I don't see anything wrong with that. Its very possible to be a contribuiting member of society without a BS or BA or at least it could be if we made some changes. Lets be honest colleges would be able to sever students much better if everyone there "really wanted to be"
If we wait to bring our major suit against the FCC and the media companies and perhaps even the hardware manufacturers, hell might as well name them all and the court sort it out. We'd potentially have a class action that almost everyone in the USA could participate in. The outcome of such a huge suit would have landmark legal implications that would hard to over turn and sare future executive organizations from attempting to userp(sp?) authority that only congress and by extention the voters have. It would scare hardware vendors away form getting on board with DRM standards that might abrige fair use. It would economicly tie the hands of the media giants for at least a little while as they dished out the settlement.
I really feel that 90% of America's problems today are directly attributed to the total lack of independant media. I know I know anybody can get a web blog seen by millions. Trouble is the only people who read such blogs mostly already subscribe to that way of thinking and you don't get the reenfocement from others because you all ready different blogs and can't talk about them with your friends for that reason. Blogs and the internet are just a wisper in a thunder storm compared with the message the select few who control the papers, big lable music, movies, televison, magazines, raido, mass marketed books, video games, general software, etc, can proffer. That message is a pretty f***ed up and scary one too the more you start to disect it. This is the source of most of the money in politics too, look at opensecrets.org to see how much big media has pumped into your candidate. Then there is the matter of endorsements and exposer that are held as carrots for politicians as well. We NEED TO TAKE THE MONEY OUT OF MEDIA and by extension politics if we are ever going to get back a sane America. The Judiciary is the best branch to start the work from sense the media has the least control of them.
1. This is a pice of public art wether it was purchased with tax dollars or given it belongs to the public. People take pictures its part of how they enjoy a thing like this, get over it. People should have a right to "use" public art anyway they want so long as it does not prevent others from haveing access to it.
2. A photo should not be considered a copy of a sculpture. A photo is a two demensional thing the sculpture has three, they are therefore not even remotely similar. Part of the artform of sculpting is determining how the viewer will inhabit its space, that cannot even be reproduced in a photo. A photo connot preseve a sculpture in anyway other then provokeing a human memory of it.
3. A photograph is in most cases a distinct work of art in and of itself. One form of photograpic art is called "strait photography" it was particularly popular for awhile basicly its all subject subject subject point and shoot. One work of art can't resonably infringe on another.
4. Please see Dadaism if you don't think that anything can be appropriated and made art. In this case DuChamp's "L.h.o.o.q." is particularly appropos. If this can be recognized as its own legitimate pice of art then ANY addition to the bean here include the reflection of the photographer or the act of composeing a photograph would make any such photo its own work of art.
"What then can Bob, Berry, and Bart be charged with? What if they download directly from Alice without sharing themselves? Alice has allready been convicted of the crime of distributing this data. How can they ALSO be guilty?"
Ahh, you walked into it. I have been argueing here forever that the digital world needs no separate laws. We need to stop treating crime diferently be that more or less harshly becase a computer is used. A computer is just a tool, no different then a screw driver in the context of crime. What are they guilty of? They are guilty of recieving stolen property. That base is already covered slapping some imagined copyright infringement on them is dumb.
Today we are taxed by our government here in America at a higher rate then the surfs of midevil Europe. That same government is very often bought off by large industries like the record labels into doing things that if were presented to the public, would no doubt be rejected by the majority. Those same companies control the media to a large degree and therfore are able to if not already preventing much write up on those activites that the general public would see. These people turely are creating an Oligarthy that is every bit as oppressive as the Monarchy our Forefathers fought a revolution against, the truth is King George really was not oppressing Americans that much in the scheme of things. When manufacturing industry tried the same thing 70 some some years ago T.R. Rosevelt stopped them. I don't think G.W. Bush is going to do anything of the sort and I know J.F. Kerry certainly would not have. To a large degree this battle with media industry IS AS IMPORTANT as past revolutions becasue we are starting to be oppressed by them.
If that was reall the case you could have writen the ACLU and probably gone to court with the school district. YOU CHOSE not to protect your rights so they got infringed that is how it works. I bet the town you live in has all sorts of vagrancy and public disturbance laws that are in fact Unconstitutional, due to being vage. Most towns do. The thing is its on the books and they are carefull for the most part not to try and charge anyone with it who has the resources to fight it in court or if they do they make sure the fine is small enough that you'd rather pay it then deal with it otherwise. The point is this, if you don't insist your rights be upheld you don't have any. It has always worked that way in America and that probably is for the greater public good. You could have run your articles if you had really wanted you just did not want it enough.
I still can't get over this Abu Graib thing. These are people who capture and decapitate civilians. First off they are SUBHUMAN to engage in that kind of behavior and deserve to be treated like the animals they are, plain and simple. We can do an awful lot to them and still be able to claim the high road here. Seccond nothing that was done to them amounts to anything close to torture. Most of what happened there is nothing that the police did not do to mobsters in this conuntry in the 30's, that was rough treatment probably abusive but NOT torture! Third the Geneva Convention does not apply, cut the legal fiction BS. The convention as we have aggreed to only coveres uniform soilders, that was specificly done so that it would STAY LEGAL to TORTURE spies. In the 80's the UN tried to expand the convention to cover combatants that were not associated with a state. We, the US, under Regan did not sign, becuase we wanted to be able to deal with terrorists freely. We have no obligation other basic human morality to any of these people. I say golden rule applies, they have treated us poorly the caputer civilans, the kill civilans the use crule wepons against troops. They are going to continue to do that no matter how we treat them so I say lets return the favor.
DRM can NEVER work. There are lots of reasons for this.
1. Pirates --real one like mafia types, they are organized they have resources. They WILL infiltrade the OEMs and steal code if they have too. They plan on breaking the law and unlike individuals are willing to break as many laws as they have too. No arm of lawers and NDAs will protect your trade secrets from a group willing to kidnap and tourture your engineers untill they talk.
2. No encryption will stand the test of time and be usable today. The economics demand that only so much cpu be put in that CD player period. If they encryption is simple enough to decode in real time with the key, five or ten years and it will be possible at least if a user is willing to wait some hours to decode the media without it on a highend computer system.
3. Unless this is a pay per use type thing that could dynamicly distribute a uniqe key per-media id or something as soon as one cipher/key pair is broken they all are. Because the stuff has to be prebuilt into all the players and nothing can be done when the system is defeated without makeing all players incompatible with new media. It won't work this way any way because we all know how will Divix sold.
4. The analog hole still exists no matter what you do! Sure you might beable to create water marks that survive D -> A conversion and you might be able to build players that will not play something that is water marked but not DRMed but you can't stop people from makeing their own payers. News to the OEMs sure we might not beable to build super HIFI stuff but lots of us do have the skillz to build crude analog recording and play back devices both sound and video from components and house hold items. Unless you are going to ban sale of loose electrical components you will not be able to prevent communities from developing their own little stnadards and do-it-your-self play back and recording stuffs. They can then swap media as they please and since they are a group of "frineds" probably claim fair use even if you catch them with the media. Don't belive it about the do-it-your-selfers makeing and standard just look at all the smaller linux distributions with their own groups of users and package standards etc.
5. If you can't stop people form makeing/buying/selling dope and other drugs your not gonna be able to take away the music either. Remember prohibition it did not work out so good and some might argue that while it really did curb alcohol and domestic abuse, it created new problems that were much worse. This too can only end of a cure is worse then the disease kinda situation. There are lots of smart people in the world and if you motivate enough of them they will always beable to out perform your payroll. There are lots of unscrupled people in the world motivate enough of them and they will mostly out perform law enforcement. The media companies will lose becase people like me who feel besmirched by them already might decide based not on what's legal only one what's cheapest, and if that means passing my dollars to the mob or otherwise its possible people like me might.
There are certainly many motives, but now that IBM is out of the PC bussiness I can only see that they stand to benifet from more open software platforms. After all M$ only real selling point on most of their products over anyone else is better integration, and it is better after all who could possible better integrate with Windows and Office then M$.
Now consider IBM likes to sell end to end solutions, ie we want to sell you the Iseries and the desktop software so your employees can use it. The could write plugins for open office and such much easier and more freely in any case then for M$ office, or any other closed software. Could they possible be doing this so the can cleany attempt to kill something the say Exchange without hurting OgO? Ie we licensed this tech for use in open source, that closed source progam violates the patent here is your cease and disist, and we don't look hipicritical not going after that open project we happen to like and contribute to becase we alread said that its ok to use the IP for open projects.
Could this possiblly be IBM looking for a way to touch off the start of the patent war that will change the software development landscape forever (likely to their favor), without damaging OSS.
Actually the biggest improvements to human behavior towards the enviornment have come as a result of capitalizm. Look at England during the period where they were transitioning away from community grazeing fields to private property. Suddenly people started careing for the land and doingin things they had know for a long time were better. Like not putting out too many sheep and crop rotation. Look at water rights in America. Especially focus out west and compare areas who have "ownership" of water ways and those that don't where the water is owned its better manages and used in a more eco-conscience way. There is no question that for the last half century the ecological state of the US has been improving in every way we can measure. One of the big things that has helped is attaching sudo property rights to air, its forced lots of cleaner operation. The rest of the world would be better off if governments did garuntee more private ownership of natural resources. Capitalism and private ownership drive people to protect things instead of take what they can get before someone else does.
Lots of the clear cutting, strip mining, pumping dry are done underless then free market conditions . Any right-minded business person would not do that in the interest of protecting a revenue steam, he'd rather wait for the stuff to become more scarce else ware so its worth even more.
It won't have any impact on taxation. There are GAAP rules for accounting, which you use for all financial reporting to share holders and investors. Then there are tax rules, which you use to calculate your taxes. Most public companies keep two sets of books. One according to tax rules and one GAAP.
The fact that the computer was involved is *not* the issue. This was strait up attempted larceny or shoud have been, there is no need for other charges. The fact the computers were part of the means has nothing to do with the elements of theft. There realy does not need to be an specific laws for *computer crimes*. If someone broke into a neuclear power plant it would be covered by Anti Terrorism laws, possibly treason or sabotage and public order laws. The computer is just an instrument in all of these crimes. Does it make any difference if I burgle your home by smashing the padlock on you garage door or picking it? No I broke and entered a home regardless of wether the instrament was a paperclip or a big rock. People think because a computer is involved some specail rules should apply and thats just stupid.
These guys are theifs and should be prosecuted as such, plain and simple. Just like the guy who hacks into the neculear plant is comminting a crime aginst the state and should be charged with treason and fried. I don't care wether he used his Thinkpad or a UHALL filled with TNT its THE SAME CRIME or should be.
Well, it is infact larceny. Embezzelment requires you legaly possesed the property then converted it to an illegal use. Such as you had access to the company bank account so you could do payroll but instead you bought a boat. Larceny is just the permenate takeing of anothers property, some definitions include "by force or sneaking". I would say breaking into someones computer system falls under sneaking.
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"The information wants to be free," is also a stupid meme. Information doesn't want to be free. It doesn't want to do anything. If information always moved flowed out, then classified information would never exist.
Well classified information does tend to get leaked don't it? Abu Grav anyone, tell me that the those trainning photos were supposed to be allowed out of the facility? There was an article a while back I can't find now but it suggestion that information might be a form of energy or be related in a qantitative way like mass is in the famons e=m(C * C). If thats the case then it should tend toward disorder like everything else in the universe. It will eventually spread out unless energy is put into keeping it where it belongs. In that since "Information wants to be free".
I can't tell you about what the rules say in China with regaurd to skull busting on suspection alone, but I did here a radio pice just the other day. They were talking about how a large number of young pople want an independant judiciary. As you can imagine if the executive and judical are the same pleople the laws matter only as much as the executive wants to fallow them or have them followed. So if their equivelent of the D.A. decides to just have you shoot in the street with no trial, its doubtful anyone would be given the chance to question the legality of it.
No, No, WINE and codeweavers have always been pretty cozy as far as I know and are mostly the same people. Its transgameing or whatever their name is this week that you're thinking of.
Actually you are allowed to charge for the distribution of the source code. If I decide to send you the code on a floopy, I can insist that you pay me $0.20 for the floppy and whatever postage is. Similarly I could make you pay me for cost associated with bandwidth if you download it. Most people don't because the effort of attaching a dollar figure to you transfering 250Kbytes over my T1 probably would cost more then the transfer, and hey its the nice neighborly thing to do.
TOS, TNG, and DS9 had great writing.
TOS: Yes lots of the writing was kitchy and the humor as mostly slapstick, fine but mostly it was well placed. The plots were not new, they in many was resembled westerns or adventure stories. Still they managed to ask some questions and do things that were not possible in those more conventional genres at the time. When they did use kitch and slapstick it was not over done, except in a few episodes, "Trouble with Tribbles" anyone?
TNG: Largely continued the traditon of TOS. There was a little more character development which gave the show a little more dimention but the writers did a great job of not over doing to th point where the show had to become serial. They also took the kitch down an notch. All and all the show was very inteligent like what had come before it and felt like it had some more depth. They still had an incredible freedome of plot to do anything they wanted and keep the show mostly fresh for its entire seven years.
DS9: Ok, I felt this was a radical departure from the TNG and TOS. It had a much stonger focus on charater development and relations ships then the others, and it was a serial prime time soap, lets just face it. Still there was plenty of chance for variety. It was a busy port where different charater could resonably come and go. The writing never felt streched or unnatural it was consistant with the timelines the other shows had established and played by the rules created in the other series. The new format allowed them to expolre some political issues that could not be address in the episodal format of the other series.
VOY: Holly crap! Lets write ourselves into a corner with the very first episode, the flog the plotline out for seven years. Yes the show had its moments but there was really only one goal they could have from day one. The first seasons had long streches of "What clever trick to advance our homecomeing will we find and fail at this week?" it got old real fast. The writing was miserable the dialog was not even kitchy more just bad. Then they started introducing plot arcs like the borg and breaking all the rules. Come on the Borg were supposed to be this highly adaptive and terrible enemy which nearly vanquished the entire starfleet. In TNG every tangle the enterprise had it incurred serious damage and often needed repairs at space dock. The Enterprise, a bigger more war-ship inspired vessal usually had help too. Where exactly did Voyager a science ship all alone refit, how did they survice the attacks with no backup? Sure they did it in the writing but it seemed so far feched and generally inconsistant. I think that had to irritate lots of true fans.
Enterprise: Personally its a step up form Voyager I don't care what anyone says. It still suffers terribly for consistancy problems regarding the transporter, the state of technology at the time and lots of other stuff. Archer's character is irratic at best, wholly inconsistant at worst. The relationship with the vulcans is entirely to close, in TOS we get the impression humans and vulcans have peaceful relations some exchange of goods and technology but little real cultural connection, to the point that they barely understand each other. Yet on Enterprise years earlier then TOS humans and vulcans are in constant meetings and already serving together. It feels like they are at least trying to get it write unlike VOY which it felt like they were throwing the story to the wind.
We don't need a break we just need someone besides UPN sheparding the writers. UPN is trying to go for cool or sexy as the shows cake when that has in the past been the icing. Past Treks worked because they were philisophical stories and often played with some actual science even in their world of fantasy and embelishment. These things were just not present in VOY and ENTERPRISE.
"McVoy is a business man; true to his heart, he needs to keep the BK user strung out on his code. Hell, I would feel the same sense of outrage that he feels if someone threatened to kill my cash cow. Don't pretend that every one you wouldn't feel the same way if it was *your* revenue stream. To me, anyone who claims an absolute vow of poverty is looking for a monastery to live in. Everyone I know would fight to protect a source of financial income."
Fine ok but this is how capitalism works there is no right and wrong on either side of this one. McVoy is under no obligation to give away the store. He is free try and keep it secret. I am free to decide if I like it, then I can try and make it or I can buy it from him. I might then give away the store if its not my sorce of income. This should force McVoy to make improvements. Its the way the world works, its call competition.
Larry had one of the hottest programmers in FOSS using his SCM. In fact, this Man Of The Year lavished all kinds of praise on his progeny! You would have to pay more than the "free" license fee for that kind of advertising. Shit, probably A LOT more. If Linus had been paid for his endorsements, that could have added up to quite a sum of money. Larry has wisely kept those funds securely in his pocket......I believe that Larry's BK contribution probably made the significant increase in kernel production possible. Judging from Linus' angst and outrage, I think he believes that too.
Right Larry got his Linus got his, it was win win wonderful. Till someone else wanting his pice of the pie(access) came along and upset the ballance. Again this is nature whats wrong with Tridgell wanting to get some? Other then the fact as a kernel developer he worked for Linus even it it was as a volunteer. He still is somewhat obligated to abide if Linus "asks" him to not do something that is going to have a negative impact on his project. So Linus has a right to be mad at Trdgell but the rest of us unless your a kernel contributor really don't!
If its morally wrong to reverse enginerr you'd better stop speaking. Figure that you could not possibly understand the spoken word when you were first learning to speak. Your infintile brain would have been forced to study the protocol and make some guesses, then try some stuff produce some sounds that it thought had some meaning and see how the people who can speak respond. Reverse engineering is part of human nature. I would bet most of us learn more by what is more akin to reverse engineering then, serialized learning. Could really ever learn anything from a text book if you could not turn around and at least look at the broader contexts of its application that is, how it interacts with the larger system.
This raises a really good point. I would think this would possibly be an Ex-post Facto situtation. Is the EU prohibited from makeing Ex-post Facto legislation?
I can see how continued development may infringe if patent law was enacted but if these projects did nothing, ie simply left the code up on the web exactly as is, then they have performed no illegal activity since it became illegal. Would anyone have standing to get the code taken down?
The thing is ARP is fine, all you really need is a good VPN solution. Just make profs connect to the VPN when doing offical records access or entry. Most private schools could deploy such a solution for profs for about they charge one student to attend. Much better though not perfect security could be had very cheaply with very minor changes to existing systems.
In Korea only old people use Microsoft?
I will say it again. Patents are the nukes of the IP world. A singe patent has the potential to destroy an entire business. It follows just like nuke history too.
Once there were no software patents. Then a few players got them. They blasted their way to economic success useing them.
Suddendly they become anit-perliferation out of fear of being destroyed themselves. They come up with some effective strategy to keep new players out of their businessm, that is they patent baisc and obvious things that prevent anyone doing much of anything. They don't have to worry about each other because just like nukes its an if you use yours I'll use mine pact. This formalized in intercorporate treaties know as cross license agreements.
Then the world changed. They availibility of stuiped patents increased because of all the abuse . Soone rouge terror corporations like SCO and Eolas came into being. They did not care that they had no meaningful or useable products. This made them fearless as even if they are attacked they have next to nothing to use. Yet they control a few of these devestating stupidity software patents or IP nukes if you will. Sure enough just like the north Korea's of the real world they intend to hold others hostage.
I am just glad to see the 800lb beasts out their finally getting a taste of their own medicne. They system should be at least fair if it can't be good. Sure we'd be much better off without software patents or at least ones of a very different nature. Barring that though I will settle for the big guys feeling the hurt, and fear in a way that is equivelent to what the little guys live with. Here is to hopeing for more Eolas and SCO like suits, not because they bleed M$ or others of their earned money but because the public recognizes their stupidity and might prompt the politicians to act. It also forces 800lbers to let lose their patent lobby death grip and allow for some change.
Well computer science goes a little beyond just math. There are some engineering questions in it. I don't know many graudates of the mathmathics department that would have a high comfort level creating a design even at the logicgate level for a databus. People need to get it out of their head that compsci is all math, its just mostly applied math. To the math student a CPU is a finite state machine and they don't care, I do I see datapaths and places where latches would allow pipelining etc etc... But your correct there is a view out there especially if you talk to freshmen(I will be graduating this year, well I hope) that CS is C#/java/html, they had to indroduce a freshman level digital topics course which is largely discrete math just to scare those kids off and into information systems or business, lest they get rudely surprised later.
I think the real issue is it has become too difficult to find decent employment even for the talented without college. College is a good thing but some people just should not be there, I wonder about myself sometimes. I often just do the work to get the grade in gen ed courses, sure sometimes a good proof really peeks my interest and I work at really learning the subject at least to the limits of the class but often not. At this stage in mylife I would have been very content to have gone to a votech school had I feld I would have been employable afterward. I know I'd get more out of college later in my life then now. I am young I have to find a way to support myself, these are stresses I might well be feeling less later and different motivations would be more conducive to really learning. I think there are lots of people who would be better served going to college later in life and plenty who just don;t have the desire period. I don't see anything wrong with that. Its very possible to be a contribuiting member of society without a BS or BA or at least it could be if we made some changes. Lets be honest colleges would be able to sever students much better if everyone there "really wanted to be"
If we wait to bring our major suit against the FCC and the media companies and perhaps even the hardware manufacturers, hell might as well name them all and the court sort it out. We'd potentially have a class action that almost everyone in the USA could participate in. The outcome of such a huge suit would have landmark legal implications that would hard to over turn and sare future executive organizations from attempting to userp(sp?) authority that only congress and by extention the voters have. It would scare hardware vendors away form getting on board with DRM standards that might abrige fair use. It would economicly tie the hands of the media giants for at least a little while as they dished out the settlement.
I really feel that 90% of America's problems today are directly attributed to the total lack of independant media. I know I know anybody can get a web blog seen by millions. Trouble is the only people who read such blogs mostly already subscribe to that way of thinking and you don't get the reenfocement from others because you all ready different blogs and can't talk about them with your friends for that reason. Blogs and the internet are just a wisper in a thunder storm compared with the message the select few who control the papers, big lable music, movies, televison, magazines, raido, mass marketed books, video games, general software, etc, can proffer. That message is a pretty f***ed up and scary one too the more you start to disect it. This is the source of most of the money in politics too, look at opensecrets.org to see how much big media has pumped into your candidate. Then there is the matter of endorsements and exposer that are held as carrots for politicians as well. We NEED TO TAKE THE MONEY OUT OF MEDIA and by extension politics if we are ever going to get back a sane America. The Judiciary is the best branch to start the work from sense the media has the least control of them.
1. This is a pice of public art wether it was purchased with tax dollars or given it belongs to the public. People take pictures its part of how they enjoy a thing like this, get over it. People should have a right to "use" public art anyway they want so long as it does not prevent others from haveing access to it.
2. A photo should not be considered a copy of a sculpture. A photo is a two demensional thing the sculpture has three, they are therefore not even remotely similar. Part of the artform of sculpting is determining how the viewer will inhabit its space, that cannot even be reproduced in a photo. A photo connot preseve a sculpture in anyway other then provokeing a human memory of it.
3. A photograph is in most cases a distinct work of art in and of itself. One form of photograpic art is called "strait photography" it was particularly popular for awhile basicly its all subject subject subject point and shoot. One work of art can't resonably infringe on another.
4. Please see Dadaism if you don't think that anything can be appropriated and made art. In this case DuChamp's "L.h.o.o.q." is particularly appropos. If this can be recognized as its own legitimate pice of art then ANY addition to the bean here include the reflection of the photographer or the act of composeing a photograph would make any such photo its own work of art.
"What then can Bob, Berry, and Bart be charged with? What if they download directly from Alice without sharing themselves? Alice has allready been convicted of the crime of distributing this data. How can they ALSO be guilty?"
Ahh, you walked into it. I have been argueing here forever that the digital world needs no separate laws. We need to stop treating crime diferently be that more or less harshly becase a computer is used. A computer is just a tool, no different then a screw driver in the context of crime. What are they guilty of? They are guilty of recieving stolen property. That base is already covered slapping some imagined copyright infringement on them is dumb.
Does he need perspectove?
Today we are taxed by our government here in America at a higher rate then the surfs of midevil Europe. That same government is very often bought off by large industries like the record labels into doing things that if were presented to the public, would no doubt be rejected by the majority. Those same companies control the media to a large degree and therfore are able to if not already preventing much write up on those activites that the general public would see. These people turely are creating an Oligarthy that is every bit as oppressive as the Monarchy our Forefathers fought a revolution against, the truth is King George really was not oppressing Americans that much in the scheme of things. When manufacturing industry tried the same thing 70 some some years ago T.R. Rosevelt stopped them. I don't think G.W. Bush is going to do anything of the sort and I know J.F. Kerry certainly would not have. To a large degree this battle with media industry IS AS IMPORTANT as past revolutions becasue we are starting to be oppressed by them.
If that was reall the case you could have writen the ACLU and probably gone to court with the school district. YOU CHOSE not to protect your rights so they got infringed that is how it works. I bet the town you live in has all sorts of vagrancy and public disturbance laws that are in fact Unconstitutional, due to being vage. Most towns do. The thing is its on the books and they are carefull for the most part not to try and charge anyone with it who has the resources to fight it in court or if they do they make sure the fine is small enough that you'd rather pay it then deal with it otherwise. The point is this, if you don't insist your rights be upheld you don't have any. It has always worked that way in America and that probably is for the greater public good. You could have run your articles if you had really wanted you just did not want it enough.
I still can't get over this Abu Graib thing. These are people who capture and decapitate civilians. First off they are SUBHUMAN to engage in that kind of behavior and deserve to be treated like the animals they are, plain and simple. We can do an awful lot to them and still be able to claim the high road here. Seccond nothing that was done to them amounts to anything close to torture. Most of what happened there is nothing that the police did not do to mobsters in this conuntry in the 30's, that was rough treatment probably abusive but NOT torture! Third the Geneva Convention does not apply, cut the legal fiction BS. The convention as we have aggreed to only coveres uniform soilders, that was specificly done so that it would STAY LEGAL to TORTURE spies. In the 80's the UN tried to expand the convention to cover combatants that were not associated with a state. We, the US, under Regan did not sign, becuase we wanted to be able to deal with terrorists freely. We have no obligation other basic human morality to any of these people. I say golden rule applies, they have treated us poorly the caputer civilans, the kill civilans the use crule wepons against troops. They are going to continue to do that no matter how we treat them so I say lets return the favor.
DRM can NEVER work. There are lots of reasons for this.
1. Pirates --real one like mafia types, they are organized they have resources. They WILL infiltrade the OEMs and steal code if they have too. They plan on breaking the law and unlike individuals are willing to break as many laws as they have too. No arm of lawers and NDAs will protect your trade secrets from a group willing to kidnap and tourture your engineers untill they talk.
2. No encryption will stand the test of time and be usable today. The economics demand that only so much cpu be put in that CD player period. If they encryption is simple enough to decode in real time with the key, five or ten years and it will be possible at least if a user is willing to wait some hours to decode the media without it on a highend computer system.
3. Unless this is a pay per use type thing that could dynamicly distribute a uniqe key per-media id or something as soon as one cipher/key pair is broken they all are. Because the stuff has to be prebuilt into all the players and nothing can be done when the system is defeated without makeing all players incompatible with new media. It won't work this way any way because we all know how will Divix sold.
4. The analog hole still exists no matter what you do! Sure you might beable to create water marks that survive D -> A conversion and you might be able to build players that will not play something that is water marked but not DRMed but you can't stop people from makeing their own payers. News to the OEMs sure we might not beable to build super HIFI stuff but lots of us do have the skillz to build crude analog recording and play back devices both sound and video from components and house hold items. Unless you are going to ban sale of loose electrical components you will not be able to prevent communities from developing their own little stnadards and do-it-your-self play back and recording stuffs. They can then swap media as they please and since they are a group of "frineds" probably claim fair use even if you catch them with the media. Don't belive it about the do-it-your-selfers makeing and standard just look at all the smaller linux distributions with their own groups of users and package standards etc.
5. If you can't stop people form makeing/buying/selling dope and other drugs your not gonna be able to take away the music either. Remember prohibition it did not work out so good and some might argue that while it really did curb alcohol and domestic abuse, it created new problems that were much worse. This too can only end of a cure is worse then the disease kinda situation. There are lots of smart people in the world and if you motivate enough of them they will always beable to out perform your payroll. There are lots of unscrupled people in the world motivate enough of them and they will mostly out perform law enforcement. The media companies will lose becase people like me who feel besmirched by them already might decide based not on what's legal only one what's cheapest, and if that means passing my dollars to the mob or otherwise its possible people like me might.
There are certainly many motives, but now that IBM is out of the PC bussiness I can only see that they stand to benifet from more open software platforms. After all M$ only real selling point on most of their products over anyone else is better integration, and it is better after all who could possible better integrate with Windows and Office then M$.
Now consider IBM likes to sell end to end solutions, ie we want to sell you the Iseries and the desktop software so your employees can use it. The could write plugins for open office and such much easier and more freely in any case then for M$ office, or any other closed software. Could they possible be doing this so the can cleany attempt to kill something the say Exchange without hurting OgO? Ie we licensed this tech for use in open source, that closed source progam violates the patent here is your cease and disist, and we don't look hipicritical not going after that open project we happen to like and contribute to becase we alread said that its ok to use the IP for open projects.
Could this possiblly be IBM looking for a way to touch off the start of the patent war that will change the software development landscape forever (likely to their favor), without damaging OSS.
Actually the biggest improvements to human behavior towards the enviornment have come as a result of capitalizm. Look at England during the period where they were transitioning away from community grazeing fields to private property. Suddenly people started careing for the land and doingin things they had know for a long time were better. Like not putting out too many sheep and crop rotation. Look at water rights in America. Especially focus out west and compare areas who have "ownership" of water ways and those that don't where the water is owned its better manages and used in a more eco-conscience way. There is no question that for the last half century the ecological state of the US has been improving in every way we can measure. One of the big things that has helped is attaching sudo property rights to air, its forced lots of cleaner operation. The rest of the world would be better off if governments did garuntee more private ownership of natural resources. Capitalism and private ownership drive people to protect things instead of take what they can get before someone else does.
Lots of the clear cutting, strip mining, pumping dry are done underless then free market conditions . Any right-minded business person would not do that in the interest of protecting a revenue steam, he'd rather wait for the stuff to become more scarce else ware so its worth even more.
It won't have any impact on taxation. There are GAAP rules for accounting, which you use for all financial reporting to share holders and investors. Then there are tax rules, which you use to calculate your taxes. Most public companies keep two sets of books. One according to tax rules and one GAAP.
Right because its so much better to be forced to pay for something you may use then to simply pay for something you will use.
The fact that the computer was involved is *not* the issue. This was strait up attempted larceny or shoud have been, there is no need for other charges. The fact the computers were part of the means has nothing to do with the elements of theft. There realy does not need to be an specific laws for *computer crimes*. If someone broke into a neuclear power plant it would be covered by Anti Terrorism laws, possibly treason or sabotage and public order laws. The computer is just an instrument in all of these crimes. Does it make any difference if I burgle your home by smashing the padlock on you garage door or picking it? No I broke and entered a home regardless of wether the instrament was a paperclip or a big rock. People think because a computer is involved some specail rules should apply and thats just stupid.
These guys are theifs and should be prosecuted as such, plain and simple. Just like the guy who hacks into the neculear plant is comminting a crime aginst the state and should be charged with treason and fried. I don't care wether he used his Thinkpad or a UHALL filled with TNT its THE SAME CRIME or should be.
Well, it is infact larceny. Embezzelment requires you legaly possesed the property then converted it to an illegal use. Such as you had access to the company bank account so you could do payroll but instead you bought a boat. Larceny is just the permenate takeing of anothers property, some definitions include "by force or sneaking". I would say breaking into someones computer system falls under sneaking.