Faith in computers... E-commerce != voting.
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 5
I'm a recent graduate in computer science from Carnegie Mellon. *I* have no faith in computers either.
I want voting to have hard records. It's very easy for a software program to add 10,000 to a location in memory. Hard to create 10,000 fake ballots and harder to insert them into the system without them being noticed.
Secondly, you extend the complexity of the system. How do you know the software in the system has no traps or backdoors. (If it's based around windows, how do you know that windows has no special trapdoors for throwing elections?) Secondly, how do you know that the software, when installed, is the same as what was written?
ANother problem, for those who suggest having a printer printing reciepts: If it is computer-readible, how will the user know if what was printed equals what they voted? Why can't the machine count the vote as for candidate X, yet print a recipt as if for candidate Y?
Finally, you have a lot more problems on the client side: Can you imagine a version of Melissa Virus, that's very innocous and tries to stay hidden. It waits till you try to vote. It waits for you to type in your password, then it secretly votes for who IT wants, not who you want. Hell, Windows 2004 might have this feature built into the OS!!
The problem with computers is that a small group of people, or even a single person, can subvert an entire election. That's almost impossible with old-fashioned paper ballots.
These are critical issues. None of the explanation above says how you're supposed to be resistant to these types of fraud.
The opponent (and therefore threat-model) for an electronic voting system is a HELL OF A LOT worse than that for E-commerce. You're describing how to be resistant to credit-card fraud, where there are small transactions and subversion of the system is minimal. Voting is different. Countries are going to want to subvert the system (Russia, China, Iran, France, organized crime..) and THEY have the resources to bribe, blackmail, and subvert the system from within. They're also going to analyze the system for subtle flaws, and they will break it.
Do a search for 'electonic voting' on comp.risks.
Security is HARD. Hasn't Bruce Schiener said that a dozen times before? This is why I hope we do not have electronic voting until we do truly know how to make it secure, a system, standardized by NIST, that's had people trying to break it for 5-10 years. Voting is more critical than AES, it should have the requisit analysis.
For a VERY long time, Eric absolutely demanded NO mirrors, and would firewall off and permanently deny access to anyone who tried to mirror it.
This is why I like to mirror. That way, if a wonderful resource get's blocked/denied/taken down, I can still use it. (treasuretroves, digitalblasphemy,....)
-- Spoken as a small contributor and as someone who tried to mirror and was firewalled off.
Under current law, my code is my property. Thus, you have no right to distribute it without me allowing it. In order to let you distribute MY code, I exact a price on you. You must distribute your changes to my code. Instead, I could have required you to pay me $10 per copy and required that you give nobody else redistribution rights.
Both of these are capitalistic. Each option exacts a price on you. One is measured in dollars, another is measured in requirements. You aren't obligated to do either of them, but then again, if you don't, you're not allowed to distribute MY code.
This isn't communist. I'm not forcing you to give anything away. You have no right to force ME to give MY things away to you to do whatever you wish, just as I have no right to force Oracle to give me their source code.
Just because GPL software is distributed with full source code doesn't mean it's public domain. If you want source code that has no restrictions on it, write it yourself, or use public domain. Otherwise, live with the restrictions other people put on their source code. Whether they be monetary renumeration (Oracle/Windows/Office/Kai C++/Mathematica/Matlab), or requirements that you must allow your changes to be redistributable under the terms of the GPL (emacs/gcc/linux kernel/tinyfugue).
There's no coercion going on. Your code and your changes are your own. You can distribute them however you wish. What you CANNOT do is distribute MY source code.
This is what my homepage is.. It comes in VERY handy.. I'm actually trying to decide between this or google as my homepage.
No copyright applies to an uncopyrighted work.
on
Obfuscated Circuitry?
·
· Score: 2
Which law applies to an FPGA design? Copyright law, is it an artistic work? Or is it an invention? (Patent law)
If it is an artistic work, then copyright would automatically apply.. But I could create a similar device and be free&clear.
If it is an invention, then they can either patent it or not. If it is unpatented, then I can use it IN ANY WAY as soon as I determine how it works. Their only protections are trade-secret protections. (Obfuscation)
It's strange to me that ANYTHING one does that someone else doesn't like is being called theft. Everything from an open DVD player, to MP3's, to Napster, to CueCat, to RIAA.
It's beginning to piss me off.
Scott
(FYI: Fair use rights apply to anything, individual or corporate.. A newspaper has the right to excerpt another publication for discussion or debate.)
Is it copyrighted or patented or trade secret?
on
Obfuscated Circuitry?
·
· Score: 2
If the circuit is copyrighted, then duplicating it and using it for your own use is infringement and illegal.
If the circuit uses patented elements, then using those same elements in your circuit is infringement and illegal.
If the circuit is only under trade-secret protections.. Well, if your secret ever gets discovered, you can do nothing to prevent widespread disclosure or use of it. (I assume that it isn't being disclosed in violation of a NDA contract.) If I found the secret recipe of coca cola in my cupboard tonight, I can start bottling my own drink. I can't call it coca-cola (trademark infringement), but I can bottle and sell it.
So, the question is: Is an FPGA circuit copyrighted or a trade secret? IANAL, but I would think that it would be trade secret. The company doesn't disclose the circuit to you, so why shouldn't it be uncopyrighted. If they disclosed it under copyright or patents, then they have a way to prevent you from copying it, or using ideas in it.
But, for anyone in the industry to think that you can send out millions of copies of a circuit, with no more than trade-secret protections, and think it's illegal for anyone to reverse-engineer and use it, then they're an idiot.
IMHO, this is just a risk of the business of FPGA circuits. If you make airplanes, expect to be sued by lawyers. If you sell tobacco, expect everyone to hate you. If you think that somkething has just as many rights under trade-secret protections as under copyright or patent protections, you're deluded.
Copyrights and patents exact a cost for their additional protections: Disclosure of the device or artistic work. You can either accept or reject the deal they offer.
... But in this case, it seems as if they (like UCITA/DMCA) wish to use law to rewrite the rules...
You're forgetting a conflict here.. Between encryption and automatic bootup..
I personally would like it on a file-by-file basis. I need my system to autoboot without a password. So, for example,/usr/etc/var... must all to be unencrypted. On the other hand,
On the other hand, my homedirectory should be encrypted. Also, parts of/home/http/ should be unencrypted (Like, my public site.) While other parts must be encrypted until I can log in.
This means I need at least directory-tree level granularity to control it.
Any heavier integration would require key-management work first.. For example, if we have file/directory -level granularity, two users are supposed to be able to decrypt and use the file. This will require every file to have some sort of 'authorized keys' list.
In a lot of ways, this needs the better filesystem metadata and is a LOT closer to ACL lists than you would expect.
Bluntly, these guys are in a market who's revenue isn't growing. There's too much competetion and too many price wars for the revenue from network services to make double-digit percentage growth targets.
The problem isn't that AT&T isn't growing, it's that it isn't growing fast enough. AT&T was used to it's de-facto monopoly for many years. Things were stable.. Then the long-distance wars started heating up. It started to lose profitability.
Then came the internet. Not only has it greatly increased competetion, but it will fundamentally destroy AT&T's fundamental revenue maker even more, long distance voice calls, but its setting up an expectation of double-digit profit and revenue growth. AT&T can't do that. No way.
So, AT&T is between a rock and a hard place. They're stuck selling a commodity whose price is decreasing exponentially, they have a circuit-switched network instead of a packet-switched.. And they need high growth targets.
In order to remain viable and prominent, they have to find some other big money-maker.And siphoning a share of every commerce transaction is a good technique.
This is the other big fight going on. Everyone is fighting to become the 'middleman' that people go through. The middleman role will give them a free cut of every transaction, and insane profit margins.
The whole AOL versus MSN consent decree in 95 was the fight to be the consumer network provider, and thus THE middleman. Fortunately the public and open internet won the first battle. But the fight still goes on. AT&T, Microsoft, AOL, EBay, Priceline.
In the internet, the way people will win big is to become the middleman, the de-facto monopoly that everyone goes through.. That way you get a cut of every transaction.
The problem with all of the library dependencies isn't really the packaging system, it's the fact that packages are distributed in binary format. That has disadvantages..
Dependences cannot be expressed easily. (Like based on the compiler or another library.. There's a reason that every library number increases whenever a new version of glibc comes out.)
Someone tries to install two packages that require the same library, but different versions, at the same time.. BOOM.
Maybe Bernstein had it right.. Binary distribution sucks.. Use the source.. This is (IMHO) How freebsd gets around the problem.. By forcing you to compile every package as you install it.. This isn't QUITE so bad for installing a couple individual packages.
Law is trying to catch up to the computer&networking age that we've been entering for the last 20 years.
As such, it is entering new territory and the author's are making mistakes. Things are being made illegal now that shouldn't be.. Other things that should be made illegal haven't yet. (Look at the slow creation of various anti-cracking laws.)
The law is still trying to fit this new age into an old mold. But there are holes in the mold. DMCA is one of them. People who like things as they are now are trying to preserve that. Other people want things to change.....
And lawyers, congress, and judges can't straighten this mess out immediately and correctly.
When was the last time you wrote a bug-free program under severe time pressure with people giving conflicting requests? That is what they are suffering from. As such, we live life as we want it and work to get things to settle out.
Why did AIM/ICQ decide to use a centralized database? If you use that design and you have a few million members, of course you're going to have growing pains. Of course you're going to need an insane machine to handle the traffic.
But look at the Email or WWW. THese are decentralized systems and thus can handle the load very easily. They distribute out the overhead to thousands of hosts. Or look at battle.net versus the clones.
The reason that AIM/ICQ are centralized and require a big machine is because they designed that way. They were designed so that they had a common and fixed chokepoint that the corporations cound control and exploit.
Design it differently: Design a protocol where a user has a name of and all messages are sent to that host automatically for that user. THat way you can decentralize it and handle hundreds of millions of users and billions of messages. It worked for email, where people send megabyte powerpoint presentations, it'll work for ICQ where people wrote 4 line messages.
How long did it take you to learn to read and write with extreme proficiency? Most people spend over 10 years, and some spend over 20 years just learning to read and write with proficiency.
Why do we spend 20 years of our life to learn to read and write? Is it because reading and writing is hard, or is it because reading and writing is so critical that our society DEMANDS high proficiency.... Proficiency that takes two decades to learn.
Computers are turning the same way. Kids are learning computers the same way they learned reading and writing. Because they're so valuable, so powerful, and so versatile.
Reading and writing is the most powerful tool yet imagined by the human mind. It let's one record knowledge, disseminate it, and store it. Computers are becoming just as powerful a tool.
We should be designing interfaces that may take 20 years to master, but create incredibly proficient users. Just with illiteracy, some people won't have the time or ability to gain that proficiency.
Idiot-proofing isn't the correct answer. We don't idiot-proof reading and writing skills, why should we do the same for computers skills?
Society needs the greatest number of people to be incredibly proficient in using computers.
If anything, they're being too aggressive in not letting out IP addresses.. a whole 1/4 of the IP address space was just opened up a couple of months ago (64/2). That's over a billion machine names.
Now, I will agree that some of the first allocations should be redone and forced to be returned. (MIT and some others have a class A space, or 16 million machines worth.)
There really isn't as severe shortage of IP's as everyone makes it out to be.
What good is an artistic work that can never be shown, can never be used, and sits moldering away in some storage archive?
Nobody's *obligated* to sell their artistic work. That's why an artistic work NOT in the public domain can potentially do so little public good. If you want to maximize [commercial] artistic works, make copyright infinite in length. Yeah, in a few decades, you won't be able to SEE I Love Lucy anymore, but it'll be 'out there', furthering the public good, won't it?
You're also forgetting that copyright is a DISINCENTIVE to producing non-commercial works. Not every work out there was created by Disney for money, some were created by artists scratching an itch. (Linux, Hornet.org, etc)
I like your idea though, it's something I might agree with. But I don't think it's workable, the artistic work doesn't have to be sold for money, they may choose to distribute limited copies, and never sell another. (Beanie Babies) Or they may want to (as you suggest) use copyright to 'censor' their past.
Around 10,000 people will die this year in accidents, about 4,000 will die in rollovers, with maybe 100 of them were caused by those firestone tires. Tires which were underinflated, worn, and misused. IE, 2.5% of the rollover deaths were caused by fire tires that were misused. I wouldn't call that a big deal. [www.junkscience.com]
The people who brought this publically are a professional organization whos purpose is to act as witnesses in class-action trials. [www.junkscience.com]
This is just another issue of someone bringing up a panic on something, so that the lawyers can come in and clean up.. Breast implants. (With no repeatible evidence YET discovered in over 10 years.) Cell phones causing cancer... Or fragrences. (Very popular in excuse in Canada, they cause everything from birth defects to insomnia.)
Once a copyright holder has been payed for their work, they have no right to restrict futher sale of it.
The reason for Copyright's is NOT to maximize profit. It is to encourage works in the public domain. Though it create's a monopoly, that monopoly is intended to be as mild as possible.
As there's one author and 6 billion people on this earth who may benefit from that book, I'd much rather have the author screwed, than allow that author screw 6 billion people perpetually.
Besides, it is the doctrine of first sale that let's libraries exist, that let's used bookstores exist, that let's you sell or loan a book to a friend.
If you're going to complain that all of the above is unfair to the author, you must like the DMCA, as it allows the copyright holders many rights they never used to have.
You've got to be kidding? You mean that they'd rather have the books shredded and ripped up than have them donated to libraries or charities or prisons!?!
Now that is arrogance and cruelty. There are so many people in the world who aren't literate, or aren't literate enough and would be helped by having books. Why not donate them to Africa or South America for people to learn english from? No. They rip them up and destroy them instead.
Forget it.. They're as fucked up as the RIAA/MPAA.
(As a side thing, there are times when a book's cover gets ripped off or falls off.. It's happened to several of my paperbacks. Will I be called a thief if I sell such a book?)
This is the one disadvantage of electronic news, is that it can be changed 'after the fact', and it's almost impossible to prove which was the origional one.
If this was a paper newspaper, they couldn't retroactively alter the past in this way, but because this is electronic, they can.
I don't like this ability.to change the past, it is WAY too much like 1984.
Yes, I love and use LISP.. And have registered myself for the contest. if you want to join me, bounce me an email..
(Though I do wish that they had CMUCL on their machine. It's still the most sophisticated and fastest lisp compiler out there... It's comparable in speed to C, with all the plusses of LISP.)
Anytime a new place opens up. Whether that be the DNS tree, a new patch of land, or the Ultima Online world, there will be real estate speculators. Those who go first will get the prime real estate and will sell it to others who come in later.
Why, when this occurs in the DNS tree is it called squatting? Is it called squatting if someone purchases a lot of land in Silicon Valley, expecting to sell it for 3x the price in 2 years? Is it squatting if someone got into Ultima in the beginning and managed to build a huge castle, something which noone else can do as there's not enough land?
The words you choose *DO* make a difference. This is DNS speculation... The only problem is that instead of a lot of rich people/companies doing it, it's individuals who got in first. The companies don't like it, and call those individuals who thought that 'sell.com' 'clean.com', 'ford.com' domain squatters. That way it's easier to steal their property from them.
If I own ford.com, and I'm not using it for any purpose, or I purchase it to offer to sell it to them, that's NO WORSE than purchasing a lot of land next to a ford manufacturing plant, expecting them to expand a year, and buy it for 3x the price. In one case, it's called 'cybersquatting', and you have no rights. In another, it's called speculation, and stealing it is theft.
The words you use make a difference.. Cybersquatting, Domain Speculation, Unauthorized Duplication, Piracy.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a recent graduate in computer science from Carnegie Mellon. *I* have no faith in computers either.
I want voting to have hard records. It's very easy for a software program to add 10,000 to a location in memory. Hard to create 10,000 fake ballots and harder to insert them into the system without them being noticed.
Secondly, you extend the complexity of the system. How do you know the software in the system has no traps or backdoors. (If it's based around windows, how do you know that windows has no special trapdoors for throwing elections?) Secondly, how do you know that the software, when installed, is the same as what was written?
ANother problem, for those who suggest having a printer printing reciepts: If it is computer-readible, how will the user know if what was printed equals what they voted? Why can't the machine count the vote as for candidate X, yet print a recipt as if for candidate Y?
Finally, you have a lot more problems on the client side: Can you imagine a version of Melissa Virus, that's very innocous and tries to stay hidden. It waits till you try to vote. It waits for you to type in your password, then it secretly votes for who IT wants, not who you want. Hell, Windows 2004 might have this feature built into the OS!!
The problem with computers is that a small group of people, or even a single person, can subvert an entire election. That's almost impossible with old-fashioned paper ballots.
These are critical issues. None of the explanation above says how you're supposed to be resistant to these types of fraud.
The opponent (and therefore threat-model) for an electronic voting system is a HELL OF A LOT worse than that for E-commerce. You're describing how to be resistant to credit-card fraud, where there are small transactions and subversion of the system is minimal. Voting is different. Countries are going to want to subvert the system (Russia, China, Iran, France, organized crime..) and THEY have the resources to bribe, blackmail, and subvert the system from within. They're also going to analyze the system for subtle flaws, and they will break it.
Do a search for 'electonic voting' on comp.risks.
Security is HARD. Hasn't Bruce Schiener said that a dozen times before? This is why I hope we do not have electronic voting until we do truly know how to make it secure, a system, standardized by NIST, that's had people trying to break it for 5-10 years. Voting is more critical than AES, it should have the requisit analysis.
Scott
when he lies to congress..
That's what got Nixon in.. He lied to congress. But, that's not important anymore.
For a VERY long time, Eric absolutely demanded NO mirrors, and would firewall off and permanently deny access to anyone who tried to mirror it.
....)
This is why I like to mirror. That way, if a wonderful resource get's blocked/denied/taken down, I can still use it. (treasuretroves, digitalblasphemy,
-- Spoken as a small contributor and as someone who tried to mirror and was firewalled off.
I have had this sig for months. None of these things will enter the public domain.
Under current law, my code is my property. Thus, you have no right to distribute it without me allowing it. In order to let you distribute MY code, I exact a price on you. You must distribute your changes to my code. Instead, I could have required you to pay me $10 per copy and required that you give nobody else redistribution rights.
Both of these are capitalistic. Each option exacts a price on you. One is measured in dollars, another is measured in requirements. You aren't obligated to do either of them, but then again, if you don't, you're not allowed to distribute MY code.
This isn't communist. I'm not forcing you to give anything away. You have no right to force ME to give MY things away to you to do whatever you wish, just as I have no right to force Oracle to give me their source code.
Just because GPL software is distributed with full source code doesn't mean it's public domain. If you want source code that has no restrictions on it, write it yourself, or use public domain. Otherwise, live with the restrictions other people put on their source code. Whether they be monetary renumeration (Oracle/Windows/Office/Kai C++/Mathematica/Matlab), or requirements that you must allow your changes to be redistributable under the terms of the GPL (emacs/gcc/linux kernel/tinyfugue).
There's no coercion going on. Your code and your changes are your own. You can distribute them however you wish. What you CANNOT do is distribute MY source code.
This is what my homepage is.. It comes in VERY handy.. I'm actually trying to decide between this or google as my homepage.
Which law applies to an FPGA design? Copyright law, is it an artistic work? Or is it an invention? (Patent law)
If it is an artistic work, then copyright would automatically apply.. But I could create a similar device and be free&clear.
If it is an invention, then they can either patent it or not. If it is unpatented, then I can use it IN ANY WAY as soon as I determine how it works. Their only protections are trade-secret protections. (Obfuscation)
It's strange to me that ANYTHING one does that someone else doesn't like is being called theft. Everything from an open DVD player, to MP3's, to Napster, to CueCat, to RIAA.
It's beginning to piss me off.
Scott
(FYI: Fair use rights apply to anything, individual or corporate.. A newspaper has the right to excerpt another publication for discussion or debate.)
If the circuit is copyrighted, then duplicating it and using it for your own use is infringement and illegal.
...
If the circuit uses patented elements, then using those same elements in your circuit is infringement and illegal.
If the circuit is only under trade-secret protections.. Well, if your secret ever gets discovered, you can do nothing to prevent widespread disclosure or use of it. (I assume that it isn't being disclosed in violation of a NDA contract.) If I found the secret recipe of coca cola in my cupboard tonight, I can start bottling my own drink. I can't call it coca-cola (trademark infringement), but I can bottle and sell it.
So, the question is: Is an FPGA circuit copyrighted or a trade secret? IANAL, but I would think that it would be trade secret. The company doesn't disclose the circuit to you, so why shouldn't it be uncopyrighted. If they disclosed it under copyright or patents, then they have a way to prevent you from copying it, or using ideas in it.
But, for anyone in the industry to think that you can send out millions of copies of a circuit, with no more than trade-secret protections, and think it's illegal for anyone to reverse-engineer and use it, then they're an idiot.
IMHO, this is just a risk of the business of FPGA circuits. If you make airplanes, expect to be sued by lawyers. If you sell tobacco, expect everyone to hate you. If you think that somkething has just as many rights under trade-secret protections as under copyright or patent protections, you're deluded.
Copyrights and patents exact a cost for their additional protections: Disclosure of the device or artistic work. You can either accept or reject the deal they offer.
... But in this case, it seems as if they (like UCITA/DMCA) wish to use law to rewrite the rules
You're forgetting a conflict here.. Between encryption and automatic bootup..
/usr /etc /var ... must all to be unencrypted. On the other hand,
/home/http/ should be unencrypted (Like, my public site.) While other parts must be encrypted until I can log in.
I personally would like it on a file-by-file basis. I need my system to autoboot without a password. So, for example,
On the other hand, my homedirectory should be encrypted. Also, parts of
This means I need at least directory-tree level granularity to control it.
Any heavier integration would require key-management work first.. For example, if we have file/directory -level granularity, two users are supposed to be able to decrypt and use the file. This will require every file to have some sort of 'authorized keys' list.
In a lot of ways, this needs the better filesystem metadata and is a LOT closer to ACL lists than you would expect.
Bluntly, these guys are in a market who's revenue isn't growing. There's too much competetion and too many price wars for the revenue from network services to make double-digit percentage growth targets.
The problem isn't that AT&T isn't growing, it's that it isn't growing fast enough. AT&T was used to it's de-facto monopoly for many years. Things were stable.. Then the long-distance wars started heating up. It started to lose profitability.
Then came the internet. Not only has it greatly increased competetion, but it will fundamentally destroy AT&T's fundamental revenue maker even more, long distance voice calls, but its setting up an expectation of double-digit profit and revenue growth. AT&T can't do that. No way.
So, AT&T is between a rock and a hard place. They're stuck selling a commodity whose price is decreasing exponentially, they have a circuit-switched network instead of a packet-switched.. And they need high growth targets.
In order to remain viable and prominent, they have to find some other big money-maker.And siphoning a share of every commerce transaction is a good technique.
This is the other big fight going on. Everyone is fighting to become the 'middleman' that people go through. The middleman role will give them a free cut of every transaction, and insane profit margins.
The whole AOL versus MSN consent decree in 95 was the fight to be the consumer network provider, and thus THE middleman. Fortunately the public and open internet won the first battle. But the fight still goes on. AT&T, Microsoft, AOL, EBay, Priceline.
In the internet, the way people will win big is to become the middleman, the de-facto monopoly that everyone goes through.. That way you get a cut of every transaction.
This is AT&T trying to join that club.
The problem with all of the library dependencies isn't really the packaging system, it's the fact that packages are distributed in binary format. That has disadvantages..
Dependences cannot be expressed easily. (Like based on the compiler or another library.. There's a reason that every library number increases whenever a new version of glibc comes out.)
Someone tries to install two packages that require the same library, but different versions, at the same time.. BOOM.
Maybe Bernstein had it right.. Binary distribution sucks.. Use the source.. This is (IMHO) How freebsd gets around the problem.. By forcing you to compile every package as you install it.. This isn't QUITE so bad for installing a couple individual packages.
Law is trying to catch up to the computer&networking age that we've been entering for the last 20 years.
As such, it is entering new territory and the author's are making mistakes. Things are being made illegal now that shouldn't be.. Other things that should be made illegal haven't yet. (Look at the slow creation of various anti-cracking laws.)
The law is still trying to fit this new age into an old mold. But there are holes in the mold. DMCA is one of them. People who like things as they are now are trying to preserve that. Other people want things to change.....
And lawyers, congress, and judges can't straighten this mess out immediately and correctly.
When was the last time you wrote a bug-free program under severe time pressure with people giving conflicting requests? That is what they are suffering from. As such, we live life as we want it and work to get things to settle out.
Why did AIM/ICQ decide to use a centralized database? If you use that design and you have a few million members, of course you're going to have growing pains. Of course you're going to need an insane machine to handle the traffic.
But look at the Email or WWW. THese are decentralized systems and thus can handle the load very easily. They distribute out the overhead to thousands of hosts. Or look at battle.net versus the clones.
The reason that AIM/ICQ are centralized and require a big machine is because they designed that way. They were designed so that they had a common and fixed chokepoint that the corporations cound control and exploit.
Design it differently: Design a protocol where a user has a name of and all messages are sent to that host automatically for that user. THat way you can decentralize it and handle hundreds of millions of users and billions of messages. It worked for email, where people send megabyte powerpoint presentations, it'll work for ICQ where people wrote 4 line messages.
How long did it take you to learn to read and write with extreme proficiency? Most people spend over 10 years, and some spend over 20 years just learning to read and write with proficiency.
Why do we spend 20 years of our life to learn to read and write? Is it because reading and writing is hard, or is it because reading and writing is so critical that our society DEMANDS high proficiency.... Proficiency that takes two decades to learn.
Computers are turning the same way. Kids are learning computers the same way they learned reading and writing. Because they're so valuable, so powerful, and so versatile.
Reading and writing is the most powerful tool yet imagined by the human mind. It let's one record knowledge, disseminate it, and store it. Computers are becoming just as powerful a tool.
We should be designing interfaces that may take 20 years to master, but create incredibly proficient users. Just with illiteracy, some people won't have the time or ability to gain that proficiency.
Idiot-proofing isn't the correct answer. We don't idiot-proof reading and writing skills, why should we do the same for computers skills?
Society needs the greatest number of people to be incredibly proficient in using computers.
I thought that something around 90% of coding effort is dedicated to maintance.
If anything, they're being too aggressive in not letting out IP addresses.. a whole 1/4 of the IP address space was just opened up a couple of months ago (64/2). That's over a billion machine names.
Now, I will agree that some of the first allocations should be redone and forced to be returned. (MIT and some others have a class A space, or 16 million machines worth.)
There really isn't as severe shortage of IP's as everyone makes it out to be.
What good is an artistic work that can never be shown, can never be used, and sits moldering away in some storage archive?
Nobody's *obligated* to sell their artistic work. That's why an artistic work NOT in the public domain can potentially do so little public good. If you want to maximize [commercial] artistic works, make copyright infinite in length. Yeah, in a few decades, you won't be able to SEE I Love Lucy anymore, but it'll be 'out there', furthering the public good, won't it?
You're also forgetting that copyright is a DISINCENTIVE to producing non-commercial works. Not every work out there was created by Disney for money, some were created by artists scratching an itch. (Linux, Hornet.org, etc)
I like your idea though, it's something I might agree with. But I don't think it's workable, the artistic work doesn't have to be sold for money, they may choose to distribute limited copies, and never sell another. (Beanie Babies) Or they may want to (as you suggest) use copyright to 'censor' their past.
Around 10,000 people will die this year in accidents, about 4,000 will die in rollovers, with maybe 100 of them were caused by those firestone tires. Tires which were underinflated, worn, and misused. IE, 2.5% of the rollover deaths were caused by fire tires that were misused. I wouldn't call that a big deal. [www.junkscience.com]
The people who brought this publically are a professional organization whos purpose is to act as witnesses in class-action trials. [www.junkscience.com]
This is just another issue of someone bringing up a panic on something, so that the lawyers can come in and clean up.. Breast implants. (With no repeatible evidence YET discovered in over 10 years.) Cell phones causing cancer... Or fragrences. (Very popular in excuse in Canada, they cause everything from birth defects to insomnia.)
Once a copyright holder has been payed for their work, they have no right to restrict futher sale of it.
The reason for Copyright's is NOT to maximize profit. It is to encourage works in the public domain. Though it create's a monopoly, that monopoly is intended to be as mild as possible.
As there's one author and 6 billion people on this earth who may benefit from that book, I'd much rather have the author screwed, than allow that author screw 6 billion people perpetually.
Besides, it is the doctrine of first sale that let's libraries exist, that let's used bookstores exist, that let's you sell or loan a book to a friend.
If you're going to complain that all of the above is unfair to the author, you must like the DMCA, as it allows the copyright holders many rights they never used to have.
You've got to be kidding? You mean that they'd rather have the books shredded and ripped up than have them donated to libraries or charities or prisons!?!
Now that is arrogance and cruelty. There are so many people in the world who aren't literate, or aren't literate enough and would be helped by having books. Why not donate them to Africa or South America for people to learn english from? No. They rip them up and destroy them instead.
Forget it.. They're as fucked up as the RIAA/MPAA.
(As a side thing, there are times when a book's cover gets ripped off or falls off.. It's happened to several of my paperbacks. Will I be called a thief if I sell such a book?)
This is the one disadvantage of electronic news, is that it can be changed 'after the fact', and it's almost impossible to prove which was the origional one.
If this was a paper newspaper, they couldn't retroactively alter the past in this way, but because this is electronic, they can.
I don't like this ability.to change the past, it is WAY too much like 1984.
That's a scheme program, it's not common lisp.
Yes, I love and use LISP.. And have registered myself for the contest. if you want to join me, bounce me an email..
(Though I do wish that they had CMUCL on their machine. It's still the most sophisticated and fastest lisp compiler out there... It's comparable in speed to C, with all the plusses of LISP.)
Copyright is/was 14 years, renewable for another 14 years..
A 3 minute search on google gives this library of congress URL on the history of copyright.
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/docs/circ1a.html
(Or see my posts from a couple weeks ago.)
Anytime a new place opens up. Whether that be the DNS tree, a new patch of land, or the Ultima Online world, there will be real estate speculators. Those who go first will get the prime real estate and will sell it to others who come in later.
Why, when this occurs in the DNS tree is it called squatting? Is it called squatting if someone purchases a lot of land in Silicon Valley, expecting to sell it for 3x the price in 2 years? Is it squatting if someone got into Ultima in the beginning and managed to build a huge castle, something which noone else can do as there's not enough land?
The words you choose *DO* make a difference. This is DNS speculation... The only problem is that instead of a lot of rich people/companies doing it, it's individuals who got in first. The companies don't like it, and call those individuals who thought that 'sell.com' 'clean.com', 'ford.com' domain squatters. That way it's easier to steal their property from them.
If I own ford.com, and I'm not using it for any purpose, or I purchase it to offer to sell it to them, that's NO WORSE than purchasing a lot of land next to a ford manufacturing plant, expecting them to expand a year, and buy it for 3x the price. In one case, it's called 'cybersquatting', and you have no rights. In another, it's called speculation, and stealing it is theft.
The words you use make a difference.. Cybersquatting, Domain Speculation, Unauthorized Duplication, Piracy.