A wonderful media spoofer who shows how the media, individuals, and even police departments can be fooled or pushed into doing things through outrage...
``In May of 1994, Kim Yung Soo (a.k.a. Joey Skaggs), President of Kea So Joo, Inc. sent 1,500 letters to dog shelters around America soliciting all their unwanted dogs for $.10 a pound.......''
You can guess what the reaction was. The rest of the story is there, along with other spoofs and hoaxes by him.. They're very good.
This is just another case of the same thing.. The police being coerced by lots of outraged people calls, in this case its from lawyers representing the MPAA CCA, in that case, by the ``concerned public''.
As I've always felt and always said.. I trust the internet completely.. While it may be possible that encryption can be broken, the amount of effort needed would be too high for the gain of a mere credit card number. So, the internet itself is safe.... But that's not enough.
The CC number has to be cleartext when its sitting on MY computer when I type it in. It also has to be cleartext on THEIR computer when they submit it to the CC company. I trust my system is fairly well set up and secure. I don't trust the peon's on the other end to have done the same. THAT is why I dislike ordering online.
There are also the issues of extent. A waiter can only copy so many CC numbers a day; a thief can only steal so many purses a day. But, an online site can store thousands of CC numbers in an insecure database.
But you are right.. The biggest danger isn't monetary loss (because of the $50 limitation of liability), but rather hassle and annoyance.
You mention that mention that mainstream websites tend to not switch their formats for fear of locking out users... But how many websites make themselves (for example) Shockwave required, or Windows only, or IE 5.0 only?
There's not so much of a desire to be compatible with everyone as there once was when you look at the everone-uses-windows website designer mentality.
Remember way back when the VCR was first released, they were claiming that if the VCR came out, the film industry would be dead in 10 years... Hasn't happened. Its the exact same thing for DVD's..
There are some ideas for how to pull this off.. Th e idea is to embed the 'real' calculation within a much larger 'outer' calculation such that operations in the 'outer' calculation gradually perform operations for the 'inner' calculation. The outer calculation is a cryptographic mask hiding the 'real' inner calculation.
Its all theoretical and stuff, but it is possible. Maybe in 20 years it will be doable with only a factor of 1000 slowdown..
Was I not the only one to notice that the email gave a list of 30-odd URL's with CSS stuff? Lets everybody with a good connection start mirroring all the sites they convienently indexed and cataloged for us!:)
Your one stop shop for CSS information: Their court filing.:)
I don't *think* so, it should now be public domain, but I by no means understand the nonsense known as law.
But my bet is that regardless of whether or not it is, these 70-odd people pissed off many very large companies that have vested interestes and lots of money. So they'll be browbeaten into submission. True, they won't have thugs marching up to their door to beat them up like the unionizers had 100 years ago, but is it really all that different to have 100 lawyers march up to your door and give lawsuits, restraining orders, police raids, and such?
Look at eToy/eToys, www.veronica.org, Scientology, or the DVD consortium 2 months ago.
Since my thoughts are shallow today, would someone else wonder about the historical precident of this. Is this deeply similar to the labor leaders from 100 years ago who risked being beaten up, sometimes even killed, for fighting corporations?
``Matter can neither be created nor destroyed in a chemical reaction. It can only be transformed.''
The atoms still exist. The atoms can still be reused. All that's needed is human labor and energy.
PS: This applies to every other post about the evils of ``disposible'' products, or the evilness of the ``consumption culture'' on this whole damned thread. I've responded to two of these messages. I'm going to ignore all the rest.
What's so mysterious to me is why do so many in the slashdot crowd.. And so many scientific types.. They all seem to forget about this fundamental law of chemistry. I would love for someone to explain to me how they manage to do it?
``Matter can never be created nor destroyed in a chemical reaction; it can only be transformed.''
Recycling, Reusing, throwing away.. NONE OF THOSE CAN change this fact. The atoms aren't destroyed.. They can always be reused. Even people with a good understanding of science never seem to remember this law of chemistry.... at least when recycling is the topic of conversation.
(Yes, while there are a finite number of atoms within the earth, there are so many you might as well say its near-infinite.)
So what is all this uproar about there being a ``finite number of resources''? All you need are the atoms... Crude oil, wood, trees.. All of these can be manufactured given the raw materials (atoms) and energy.
Yes, right now, its not usually worth the money (IE: hours of human labor) to actually refine these raw atoms (What you disparigingly call trash).. It requires less human labor to extract from mines or land which already exists. So we don't typically reuse those atoms.
When the economics of obtaining raw materials change, humanity will remain using the most economical methods. Maybe we will mine the `landfills' and `dumps' as raw source material.
There is the civil forfieture scam.. Any lucrative object found or used in the use of a crime can be ``forfieted'' (not stolen, you see) by the police.
More than a few police departments are a little, um, aggressive with this.. Small towns, interstate highways, and travelers who carry around several hundred bucks, and such NICE policemen don't mix well.
Then of course, the government grabs ~30% of your income.. Its not theft, its taxes!:)
The flaw is that all communications are interceptable already. As has been pointed out in the DVD issue. Data has to be in plaintext to be viewed or seen. It also has to be in plaintext when its written. So all they have to do is install a bug or camera on the computer monitor at either endpoint. Or install some monitoring software onto their computer.
Thus, they are searchable anyways. The search doesn't require wiretapping. Therefore wiretapping is not needed.
Just because the government has the right to search my property in a court-mandated fashion does not give them the right to keep me from hiding something (Personal papers, money, or whatever), or making door-locks illegal.
Again, you're still making the same mistake.. So what if the era of the 100-million movie ends.
The movie industry has already gone through many era's, the silent movie, the musical movie.. Do you curse and scream at their passing, or do you realize that they are the past, history, obsolete, and enjoy the product of later era's?
Maybe in 20 year's we'll have weak copyright laws and movies will all be $500,000 to make so that they make profit on them. Maybe things will equalize at some other price-profit point.
AS LONG AS THERE IS A DEMAND, MONEY CAN BE MADE.
(and IMO, just because the time is donated doesn't mean its free, it means that people donated it.)
Freedom is Slavery, Duplication is Theft, Words are Property.
The RIAA, and whatever other representives are doing pretty good, they're already accomplished two of the three in the public's mind. Want to take bets on how long until they accomplish the third?
BTW, have you noticed that the way they get people to talk about these issues is fascinatingly doublespeak.
Freedom is Slavery, Duplication is Theft, Words are Property.
Tell me this isn't EXACTLY the meaning of what you're saying?
You are literally calling ``duplication'' ``theft'', ``words'' ``property''.
Do you know when you will be calling ``freedom'' as ``slavery''?
Perhaps because being free makes you a slave, unable to access any of the modern world's (life+70year copyright term) modern data. You would be a slave to the past where such notions as ``freedom to think'' are considered good.
When will people realize that JUST because its always been done that way in the past means it CANNOT BE DONE DIFFERENTLY IN THE FUTURE.
The telephone obsoleted the telegraph. Many people lost their jobs, many telegraph companies lost their only source of money. Do we still lament their passing?
JUST BECAUSE the current distribution methods of media won't give the CURRENT POWERS their money in the future. doesn't mean that there won't be alternatives in the future.
So what if the era 100-million-dollar movie ends? So what if the era of MGM or Paramount or Disney as film companies ends? So what if the era of the railroads ended? So what if the era of the Telegraph ended? As long as there is demand, there will be a replacement. Its safe to say that there will always be a demand for entertainment.
``I propose that to save the critically important telegraph industry we must make it illegal to transmit voice electronically over any wire.''
Or how about:
``I propose that to save the critically important post office, we must make it illegal to transmit any message electronically over a wire domestically.''
``I propose that we immediately discount that new foolish idea that some legistlators are proposing, called 'copyright', as it will let tyrannical authors prevent bookmakers from making books.''
Or, what was that one about british candlemakers protesting about how the Sun was screwing up their business?
The future is different from the past, just because its the past doesn't make it better, doesn't make it the only way that works.
FSCK normally only corrects trivial problems automatically, minor inconstencies where there is only one reasonable fix.
That line means that it found a slightly more abnormal inconsistency, like two files sharing the same blocks. What it usually means is that you lost data and not in a simple way. But there's also a chance of recovering some of it if you're desperate.
It still knows how to fix the problems, its just giving you the option to try yourself.
You'd be surprised.. I have a system that fsck's 6 8.5 gig drives in parallel in under 60 seconds. (I think it is about that timeframe, it has been 65 days of uptime since it last booted.) Running a single fsck, on one drive (95% full) takes 35 seconds real time (as just measured)
But lets put it this way, that system takes less time to boot up with an fsck than my personal machine which has one 90% full 5gb partitian formatted with the defaults among its drives.
Those 6 drives are intended for big datafiles, so I make the blocksize 4kb as compared to the default 1kb. This means 1/4 the number if indirect blocks. Also, since its big files, there aren't a lot of directories so it doesn't have to scan through them. Those directories that there are only require 1/4 the time to read because they are 1/4 the number of blocks. (I assume that sequential reads are relatively free because seek time should be the main cost.)
Then, I formatted it at one inode per 128kb, as compared to the default of one inode for every 4kb. This drops the number of inodes fsck has to read off the disk by a factor of 30 to only 69632 (compared to >2 million in the default format). (FSCK *has* to read off each inode, to check if the file is orphaned.) I think that this here is the main speed improvement. It also frees an extra 120mb of drivespace. (drivespace that an fsck would have to read in.)
Remember, since you can never create new inodes, so the default format always starts you with a large amount of them, usually an insane number of extra ones.
What I'm saying is to format your drives appropriately for their planned usage. FSCK's don't always have to be that painful.
If you need that huge quantity of extra inodes and also have to save the data, than you are screwed. If you don't need all the inodes, then formatting a filesystem without them is a lot more effecient. And if you don't need to save the data (say, a cache server), then it may be faster to just reformat it upon each boot.
If none of the above apply, then yes, with the current version of ext2, it is very painful to fsck a 20gb filesystem that has 3 million files on it.:)
Re:Terminal ballistic qualities if it falls ;-)
on
Sir Arthur Speaks
·
· Score: 1
No, it can go either up or down if it breaks.. Think of the cable as being produced in geostationary orbit, you extend kilometers of cable both ``up'' and ``down''. The cable you extend up is to counterbalance the cable you extend down. Eventually you extrude enough cable that you can seat it on the ground, but its under no net-motion, literally magically hanging from the sky. THEN, you add in a weight on the outer-tip. centrifugal force means it'll now cause a net tension on the earth's surface, so if it were to break on the ground, it would pull up.
If it breaks close to the surface, only the portion below the break will fall, the portion above the break will rise due to the inbalanced forces. (IE, since its not ``holding up'' so much weight, it will move outward until centrifugal forces are balanced.) If it breaks 10000km up, then you have a problem.:) If it breaks up in geostationary orbit, you have a BIG problem.
There is no assumption that they will continue to code as much as they do for no monetary gain. Or that they will give code to the public.
But this doesn't matter! The source is out there, they can never retroactively revoke it. (at least with the GPL and other licenses)
So, even if the origional authors give it up, as has happened on so many programs, someone else, a company, a user, even yourself can pick up the code and run with it.
If you write the code and want to only sell it for money, that's your choice. Others make different choices.
Besides, I spent a lot of time and effort on this post. If you take my advice you can pay me for it.:)
Ya know what? The Linux kernel is a clever program, but its not creative -- Its destructive to companies trying to sell competing software OS's. Its insecure as its not supported by a trustworthy company. And look at the people who wrote it, distribute it, and proclaim long and loud about what a great "Operating System" it is should be treated like the scheming anarchists they are. After all, the user is dumb, they shouldn't need or even WANT to know how their program works. They shouldn't be called revolutionaries or treated like hero's. It doesn't help the situation at all.
Or how about RMS? Hell, how about Windows?
Windows is a clever program , but it's not creative -- it's destructive. And the people who wrote it, distribute it, and proclaim long and loud what a great "Operating system it is" should be treated like the scheming anarchists they are. They shouldn't be called revolutionaries or treated like heroes. It doesn't help the situation at all.
Or how about the bill of rights..
Its a clever set of laws, but its not creative -- Its destructive. And the people who wrote it, spread the idea, and proclaimed how good and free the laws were should be treated like the scheming anarchists they are. After all, what right does the stupid public have to question the monarchy or nobility? They shouldn't be called revolutionaries or treated like hero's. They should be treated like the criminals they are. It doesn't help the situation at all.
My point is that ANY new idea that people don't like, are unconfortable with can be advocated against in the same way. This SAME argument for something being bad and subversive can be said to apply to Windows, the bill of rights, the weakening of the church centuries ago, the growth of freedom, the growth of the internet, the growth of widespread literacy, cryptography, censorship.
Its also an argument frequently used by organizations in power to `get rid of' subversive material or ideas.
Just of complete curiosity, why couldn't I make the same argument for censorship of the internet? Look at how destructive the internet has been already and how destructive it will be in the future? It has no use, it does nothing fundamentally new that couldn't be done over the telephone, just as the telephone does nothing fundamentally new that couldn't be done under postal mail. Its subversive and destructive. Its a tool that lets people perform evil deeds.
Its information, information or software isn't dangerous or evil on its own, its how it's used.
MS, yes they make software, they claim that they don't control the content.. But thats false..
MS creates the 'presses' that print the newspapers. Tell me that's not a position of power? All they have to do to anyone is to withhold their presses, to not sell them, or to put in backdoors.
Slashdot Mirror
``Linus..... I am your father.'' -- Gore.
http://www.joeyskaggs.com/html/dog.html
A wonderful media spoofer who shows how the media, individuals, and even police departments can be fooled or pushed into doing things through outrage...
``In May of 1994, Kim Yung Soo (a.k.a. Joey Skaggs), President of Kea So Joo, Inc. sent 1,500 letters to dog shelters around America soliciting all their unwanted dogs for $.10 a pound.......''
You can guess what the reaction was. The rest of the story is there, along with other spoofs and hoaxes by him.. They're very good.
This is just another case of the same thing.. The police being coerced by lots of outraged people calls, in this case its from lawyers representing the MPAA CCA, in that case, by the ``concerned public''.
As I've always felt and always said.. I trust the internet completely.. While it may be possible that encryption can be broken, the amount of effort needed would be too high for the gain of a mere credit card number. So, the internet itself is safe.... But that's not enough.
The CC number has to be cleartext when its sitting on MY computer when I type it in. It also has to be cleartext on THEIR computer when they submit it to the CC company. I trust my system is fairly well set up and secure. I don't trust the peon's on the other end to have done the same. THAT is why I dislike ordering online.
There are also the issues of extent. A waiter can only copy so many CC numbers a day; a thief can only steal so many purses a day. But, an online site can store thousands of CC numbers in an insecure database.
But you are right.. The biggest danger isn't monetary loss (because of the $50 limitation of liability), but rather hassle and annoyance.
You mention that mention that mainstream websites tend to not switch their formats for fear of locking out users... But how many websites make themselves (for example) Shockwave required, or Windows only, or IE 5.0 only?
There's not so much of a desire to be compatible with everyone as there once was when you look at the everone-uses-windows website designer mentality.
Progress is one thing, but this is a sad thing.
Remember way back when the VCR was first released, they were claiming that if the VCR came out, the film industry would be dead in 10 years... Hasn't happened. Its the exact same thing for DVD's..
They are just an opportunity to make more money.
There are some ideas for how to pull this off.. Th e idea is to embed the 'real' calculation within a much larger 'outer' calculation such that operations in the 'outer' calculation gradually perform operations for the 'inner' calculation. The outer calculation is a cryptographic mask hiding the 'real' inner calculation.
Its all theoretical and stuff, but it is possible. Maybe in 20 years it will be doable with only a factor of 1000 slowdown..
Was I not the only one to notice that the email gave a list of 30-odd URL's with CSS stuff? Lets everybody with a good connection start mirroring all the sites they convienently indexed and cataloged for us! :)
:)
Your one stop shop for CSS information: Their court filing.
I don't *think* so, it should now be public domain, but I by no means understand the nonsense known as law.
But my bet is that regardless of whether or not it is, these 70-odd people pissed off many very large companies that have vested interestes and lots of money. So they'll be browbeaten into submission. True, they won't have thugs marching up to their door to beat them up like the unionizers had 100 years ago, but is it really all that different to have 100 lawyers march up to your door and give lawsuits, restraining orders, police raids, and such?
Look at eToy/eToys, www.veronica.org, Scientology, or the DVD consortium 2 months ago.
Since my thoughts are shallow today, would someone else wonder about the historical precident of this. Is this deeply similar to the labor leaders from 100 years ago who risked being beaten up, sometimes even killed, for fighting corporations?
I await replies.
``Matter can neither be created nor destroyed in a chemical reaction. It can only be transformed.''
The atoms still exist. The atoms can still be reused. All that's needed is human labor and energy.
PS: This applies to every other post about the evils of ``disposible'' products, or the evilness of the ``consumption culture'' on this whole damned thread. I've responded to two of these messages. I'm going to ignore all the rest.
What's so mysterious to me is why do so many in the slashdot crowd.. And so many scientific types.. They all seem to forget about this fundamental law of chemistry. I would love for someone to explain to me how they manage to do it?
``Matter can never be created nor destroyed in a chemical reaction; it can only be transformed.''
Recycling, Reusing, throwing away.. NONE OF THOSE CAN change this fact. The atoms aren't destroyed.. They can always be reused. Even people with a good understanding of science never seem to remember this law of chemistry.... at least when recycling is the topic of conversation.
(Yes, while there are a finite number of atoms within the earth, there are so many you might as well say its near-infinite.)
So what is all this uproar about there being a ``finite number of resources''? All you need are the atoms... Crude oil, wood, trees.. All of these can be manufactured given the raw materials (atoms) and energy.
Yes, right now, its not usually worth the money (IE: hours of human labor) to actually refine these raw atoms (What you disparigingly call trash).. It requires less human labor to extract from mines or land which already exists. So we don't typically reuse those atoms.
When the economics of obtaining raw materials change, humanity will remain using the most economical methods. Maybe we will mine the `landfills' and `dumps' as raw source material.
Awesome!
:)
I want to use this in my signature or save it for use as a quote. I suspect that I am not the only one.
So, to give accurate attributation for it, I would like your name or email address. Or is it OK for me to just leave it unattributated.
Thanks.
Quake! Give me quake! Can you imagine using the top system for playing a 32-way quake deathmatch
2048x1532 resolution simultanously on one machine?
There is the civil forfieture scam.. Any lucrative object found or used in the use of a crime can be ``forfieted'' (not stolen, you see) by the police.
:)
More than a few police departments are a little, um, aggressive with this.. Small towns, interstate highways, and travelers who carry around several hundred bucks, and such NICE policemen don't mix well.
Then of course, the government grabs ~30% of your income.. Its not theft, its taxes!
The flaw is that all communications are interceptable already. As has been pointed out in the DVD issue. Data has to be in plaintext to be viewed or seen. It also has to be in plaintext when its written. So all they have to do is install a bug or camera on the computer monitor at either endpoint. Or install some monitoring software onto their computer.
Thus, they are searchable anyways. The search doesn't require wiretapping. Therefore wiretapping is not needed.
Just because the government has the right to search my property in a court-mandated fashion does not give them the right to keep me from hiding something (Personal papers, money, or whatever), or making door-locks illegal.
Again, you're still making the same mistake.. So what if the era of the 100-million movie ends.
The movie industry has already gone through many era's, the silent movie, the musical movie.. Do you curse and scream at their passing, or do you realize that they are the past, history, obsolete, and enjoy the product of later era's?
Maybe in 20 year's we'll have weak copyright laws and movies will all be $500,000 to make so that they make profit on them. Maybe things will equalize at some other price-profit point.
AS LONG AS THERE IS A DEMAND, MONEY CAN BE MADE.
(and IMO, just because the time is donated doesn't mean its free, it means that people donated it.)
Freedom is Slavery, Duplication is Theft, Words are Property.
The RIAA, and whatever other representives are doing pretty good, they're already accomplished two of the three in the public's mind. Want to take bets on how long until they accomplish the third?
BTW, have you noticed that the way they get people to talk about these issues is fascinatingly doublespeak.
Freedom is Slavery, Duplication is Theft, Words are Property.
Tell me this isn't EXACTLY the meaning of what you're saying?
You are literally calling ``duplication'' ``theft'', ``words'' ``property''.
Do you know when you will be calling ``freedom'' as ``slavery''?
Perhaps because being free makes you a slave, unable to access any of the modern world's (life+70year copyright term) modern data. You would be a slave to the past where such notions as ``freedom to think'' are considered good.
When will people realize that JUST because its always been done that way in the past means it CANNOT BE DONE DIFFERENTLY IN THE FUTURE.
The telephone obsoleted the telegraph. Many people lost their jobs, many telegraph companies lost their only source of money. Do we still lament their passing?
JUST BECAUSE the current distribution methods of media won't give the CURRENT POWERS their money in the future. doesn't mean that there won't be alternatives in the future.
So what if the era 100-million-dollar movie ends? So what if the era of MGM or Paramount or Disney as film companies ends? So what if the era of the railroads ended? So what if the era of the Telegraph ended? As long as there is demand, there will be a replacement. Its safe to say that there will always be a demand for entertainment.
``I propose that to save the critically important telegraph industry we must make it illegal to transmit voice electronically over any wire.''
Or how about:
``I propose that to save the critically important post office, we must make it illegal to transmit any message electronically over a wire domestically.''
``I propose that we immediately discount that new foolish idea that some legistlators are proposing, called 'copyright', as it will let tyrannical authors prevent bookmakers from making books.''
Or, what was that one about british candlemakers protesting about how the Sun was screwing up their business?
The future is different from the past, just because its the past doesn't make it better, doesn't make it the only way that works.
Oh, 1984 doublespeak
BTW, have you noticed that the way they get people to talk is fascinatingly doublespeak.
Freedom is Slavery, Duplication is Theft, Words are Property.
FSCK normally only corrects trivial problems automatically, minor inconstencies where there is only one reasonable fix.
That line means that it found a slightly more abnormal inconsistency, like two files sharing the same blocks. What it usually means is that you lost data and not in a simple way. But there's also a chance of recovering some of it if you're desperate.
It still knows how to fix the problems, its just giving you the option to try yourself.
You'd be surprised.. I have a system that fsck's 6 8.5 gig drives in parallel in under 60 seconds. (I think it is about that timeframe, it has been 65 days of uptime since it last booted.) Running a single fsck, on one drive (95% full) takes 35 seconds real time (as just measured)
:)
But lets put it this way, that system takes less time to boot up with an fsck than my personal machine which has one 90% full 5gb partitian formatted with the defaults among its drives.
Those 6 drives are intended for big datafiles, so I make the blocksize 4kb as compared to the default 1kb. This means 1/4 the number if indirect blocks. Also, since its big files, there aren't a lot of directories so it doesn't have to scan through them. Those directories that there are only require 1/4 the time to read because they are 1/4 the number of blocks. (I assume that sequential reads are relatively free because seek time should be the main cost.)
Then, I formatted it at one inode per 128kb, as compared to the default of one inode for every 4kb. This drops the number of inodes fsck has to read off the disk by a factor of 30 to only 69632 (compared to >2 million in the default format). (FSCK *has* to read off each inode, to check if the file is orphaned.) I think that this here is the main speed improvement. It also frees an extra 120mb of drivespace. (drivespace that an fsck would have to read in.)
Remember, since you can never create new inodes, so the default format always starts you with a large amount of them, usually an insane number of extra ones.
What I'm saying is to format your drives appropriately for their planned usage. FSCK's don't always have to be that painful.
If you need that huge quantity of extra inodes and also have to save the data, than you are screwed. If you don't need all the inodes, then formatting a filesystem without them is a lot more effecient. And if you don't need to save the data (say, a cache server), then it may be faster to just reformat it upon each boot.
If none of the above apply, then yes, with the current version of ext2, it is very painful to fsck a 20gb filesystem that has 3 million files on it.
No, it can go either up or down if it breaks.. Think of the cable as being produced in geostationary orbit, you extend kilometers of cable both ``up'' and ``down''. The cable you extend up is to counterbalance the cable you extend down. Eventually you extrude enough cable that you can seat it on the ground, but its under no net-motion, literally magically hanging from the sky. THEN, you add in a weight on the outer-tip. centrifugal force means it'll now cause a net tension on the earth's surface, so if it were to break on the ground, it would pull up.
:) If it breaks up in geostationary orbit, you have a BIG problem.
If it breaks close to the surface, only the portion below the break will fall, the portion above the break will rise due to the inbalanced forces. (IE, since its not ``holding up'' so much weight, it will move outward until centrifugal forces are balanced.) If it breaks 10000km up, then you have a problem.
There is no assumption that they will continue to code as much as they do for no monetary gain. Or that they will give code to the public.
:)
But this doesn't matter! The source is out there, they can never retroactively revoke it. (at least with the GPL and other licenses)
So, even if the origional authors give it up, as has happened on so many programs, someone else, a company, a user, even yourself can pick up the code and run with it.
If you write the code and want to only sell it for money, that's your choice. Others make different choices.
Besides, I spent a lot of time and effort on this post. If you take my advice you can pay me for it.
Ya know what? The Linux kernel is a clever program, but its not creative -- Its destructive to companies trying to sell competing software OS's. Its insecure as its not supported by a trustworthy company. And look at the people who wrote it, distribute it, and proclaim long and loud about what a great "Operating System" it is should be treated like the scheming anarchists they are. After all, the user is dumb, they shouldn't need or even WANT to know how their program works. They shouldn't be called revolutionaries or treated like hero's. It doesn't help the situation at all.
Or how about RMS? Hell, how about Windows?
Windows is a clever program , but it's not creative -- it's destructive. And the people who wrote it, distribute it, and proclaim long and loud what a great "Operating system it is" should be treated like the scheming anarchists they are. They shouldn't be called revolutionaries or treated like heroes. It doesn't help the situation at all.
Or how about the bill of rights..
Its a clever set of laws, but its not creative -- Its destructive. And the people who wrote it, spread the idea, and proclaimed how good and free the laws were should be treated like the scheming anarchists they are. After all, what right does the stupid public have to question the monarchy or nobility? They shouldn't be called revolutionaries or treated like hero's. They should be treated like the criminals they are. It doesn't help the situation at all.
My point is that ANY new idea that people don't like, are unconfortable with can be advocated against in the same way. This SAME argument for something being bad and subversive can be said to apply to Windows, the bill of rights, the weakening of the church centuries ago, the growth of freedom, the growth of the internet, the growth of widespread literacy, cryptography, censorship.
Its also an argument frequently used by organizations in power to `get rid of' subversive material or ideas.
Just of complete curiosity, why couldn't I make the same argument for censorship of the internet? Look at how destructive the internet has been already and how destructive it will be in the future? It has no use, it does nothing fundamentally new that couldn't be done over the telephone, just as the telephone does nothing fundamentally new that couldn't be done under postal mail. Its subversive and destructive. Its a tool that lets people perform evil deeds.
Its information, information or software isn't dangerous or evil on its own, its how it's used.
MS, yes they make software, they claim that they don't control the content.. But thats false..
MS creates the 'presses' that print the newspapers. Tell me that's not a position of power? All they have to do to anyone is to withhold their presses, to not sell them, or to put in backdoors.