DRM is necessary to prevent the machine from... excessively polluting (bypassed exhaust sensors)
It was just unnecessary to quote the first half of it more than once (assuming an audience with decent reading comprehension skills, anyway).
And it is bullshit, because DRM is in no way "necessary" to prevent pollution. What actually prevents pollution is emissions testing. If you can stick a sensor up the tailpipe and measure the emissions to prove that it's passing, who the fuck cares why it's passing? Maybe it's stock, or maybe the owner modified it to get 1000% more horsepower and run on unicorn farts -- either way, it doesn't matter because the only thing relevant is the actual amounts of pollutants emitted.
Incidentally, this absurd practice of checking the technology for compliance instead of checking the actual result is what led to the whole VW emissions scandal. VW was only able to cheat because the test machine tells the car's ECU "hey, I'm gonna run an emissions test on you now." If they'd used a simple chassis dyno and an exhaust probe, there would have been no way for the car to know it was being tested and therefore no way to program it to cheat.
First of all, host files aren't flexible enough: I want to be able to block domains conditionally (e.g. block Google subdomains except when I'm visiting a Google page directly).
Second, even if something running on the router were good enough, I'd still want a uMatrix-like browser extension for making it easy to add new rules to it anyway.
Really what I'd like is for uMatrix rules to sync between the browsers on all my computers, and then for the subset of the rules that are always-deny (in uMatrix parlance, rules of the form
Yeah, because no one needs to buy clothes, shoes or furniture.
What part of "$200 misc." did you not understand?
And generally there is never an unexpected expense as long as you budget everything in advance.
Of course there are unexpected expenses; that's what about the first year's worth of $366/month savings are for. Once you've built up a decent emergency fund, then you start investing.
Even living frugally, there has to be some buffer.
In this case, that buffer is an entire third of the income ($566 of $1666).
And if memory serves, the median houshold income in the USA recently was reported at around $53,000. That's typically 2 wage-earners plus kids, with mortgage, child-care expenses, leaking roof, paying for your college while saving for the kids - all those things that make up the Great American stereotype.
...And which is at least $20,000 more than that family would need to live a comfortable lifestyle.
I wasn't living extravagantly - a tiny black and white TV getting its signal via the antenna was my major entertainment, for example. No car. Cheap junk furniture.
First of all, I never said somebody should be saving even during temporary emergencies, like unemployment. But if you were at your "normal" level of income when this happened then something was wrong with your budgeting.Were you renting a single room? Did you have a roommate? If the answer to either question is "no," then you could have been living even cheaper.
More importantly, how did you get to that point in the first place? Were you a teenager who suddenly got kicked out of your parent/guardian's home with zero assets (which would be a legitimate excuse)? Or did you become unemployed and wait until you realized you were having a hard time finding a new job before changing your lifestyle to cut expenses (which would not be an excuse)?
the median household income there is barely $20,000 a year
That's $1666/month. One possible budget for a two-adult household might be $500 housing, $200 utilities, $200 transportation (2 transit passes), $300 food, $200 misc., $0 income tax (assuming the EITC or other refundable credit more-or-less cancels out FICA), $0 healthcare (Medicaid) and $366 savings. That's completely reasonable, at least where I live (Atlanta) -- in fact, I left the utilities, food and transportation categories overly generous. In reality, you could cut transportation down to maybe $20/month or less by skipping transit and riding a bike instead.
Incidentally, I know this is reasonable because, as a mustachian, it's not far off from what my actual budget would be if I cut out the fat (figuratively and literally -- my grocery list tends to include more meat and dairy than necessary) and put my student loans in deferment. My mortgage is higher (about $700/month), but that's the only major difference.
When you are working and saving for retirement, your income is I, your living expenses are X, and your savings are S, and they are related by
I - X = S
If S > $0, then it implies I > X.
But when you retire, you only need I = X, by definition. Everything else being equal (i.e., assuming your expenses and tax rates haven't changed) -- which is the only reasonable assumption given an unknowable future -- then I in retirement must be lower than I while working, and since rates are progressive, the marginal tax rate in retirement is lower than it is when working and the money deferred is taxed less than it would have been had it not been deferred.
The items in "Stories to Read" used to load in whatever web browser you had selected as the default. Now they load in some ad-hoc browser window that's "powered by Chrome." Not only does opening in a real browser require two extra taps (one for the menu, and one for the "open in [browser name]" menu item), it means that -- unlike my default Firefox browser -- it doesn't block ads.
It's infuriating enough to almost singlehandedly drive me to an AOSP build or Lineage OS.
It's not easy because it isn't PRACTICAL for many people.
Bullshit. It's not impractical; it's just emotionally difficult for people who crave instant gratification or whose self-worth is tied to buying fancier shit than their peers.
I easily get 33% taxes taken between state and Federal....I am a self employed S-Corp.
If your tax rate is that high as a self-employed person, I'm 99% sure you're doing something stupid like failing to contribute to your SIMPLE/SEP/Solo 401k.
Not only is this "concern" invalid, I question the motives of anyone who brings it up.
It is well-established law that the liability for harm done by a device rests with the owner in control of the device. It always has, and nothing about having software in the damn thing changes that.
The stakes are the continued existence of property rights as a concept.
The ultimate goal of John Deere -- and every other company that has embraced DRM, from Lexmark to Sony to Microsoft to Amazon to Tesla -- is to bind the users of their products into a relationship that more resembles a feudal lord-peasant relationship, than a capitalist seller-buyer one.
...we are talking about very large equipment that perhaps justifies some level of safety validation after a DIY operation. Should a Tesla simply trust Joe Mechanic's DIY battery pack refresh...
AB-SO-FUCKING-LUTELY WE SHOULD!
Why? Because it's Joe's goddamn property, which means that he has the both the right to do what he wants with it and the liability for it harming someone. This is not a new concept; this is how ownership and liability have always fucking worked! Sure, Joe needs to be a competent programmer in order to safely modify the software -- in exactly the same way that he already needed to be a competent mechanic in order to safely modify the hardware. Software isn't magical fairy dust or some shit; the fact that it is in a device changes nothing whatsoever. And more to the point, it sure as Hell doesn't somehow justify property-rights-destroying literal tyranny!
...For about ten seconds, until the manufacturers started habitually incorporating a new company for each product, declaring bankruptcy whenever they wanted to quit supporting it, and buying back the assets (but not the warranty liabilities) to repeat the cycle.
Except one may argue that DRM is necessary to prevent the machine from harming others (bypassed auto-drive causes road accident)
Bullshit.
excessively polluting (bypassed exhaust sensors)
Bullshit.
killing the mechanic (cracked firmware engages belt while hood is open),
More bullshit.
and killing the operator (bypassed safety system does not disengage belt when hood is opened to clean chaff.).
And even more bullshit!
Every one of those arguments -- and every possible argument -- is complete and utter bullshit.
Why?
Because the owner has always been, still is, and should always be the one liable for any harm caused by his property. This is well-established law, and "but software!" is absolutely not, at all, even slightly, in any conceivable way, ever anything resembling something even close to a valid reason to change it!
We need to define 'right to repair' as an extension of fair use.
No, that's backwards. We need to recognize that when the privileges given to holders of "Imaginary Property" conflict with the rights of owners of actual property, it is the actual property rights that must prevail, not the imaginary property privileges.
In other words, it shouldn't be that the right to repair is a limited exception of copyright; it should be that copyright is a limited(!) exception to ownership rights.
While it's great that you pointed out the problem, I wish that you would also mention the projects that are working on solutions, such as Replicant and Libreboot. The world needs more people working on stuff like that, and you could lend those sorts of projects some of your fame and credibility.
What? Not only do I not support it, I'm saying that merely "not supporting it" doesn't go far enough and the entire business model should be fucking outlawed!
What does "property" mean other than "the subject of some exclusive right"?
That's a reasonably good definition, but it hinges, in turn, on what the words "exclusive" and "right" mean. In this context I interpret "right" as natural rights, not legal rights, implying a labor theory of property (which, by the way, I would argue encompasses possession, i.e., control over the thing, as a prerequisite). "Exclusive" is a little trickier, because we have to consider the question of what is the exclusivity an aspect of -- the owner, or the thing owned? I'd argue, both: the good itself must be excludable too.
In other words, it is simply not possible to have an exclusive natural right of ownership over a non-excludable good, since you can't establish exclusive possession of it on your own.
Now, here's the unique thing about expressions of ideas (which is what copyright purports to cover): not only can they be trivially copied, but the act of copying is intrinsic to the very definition of "expression!" Conveying an idea to someone else -- surrendering exclusive possession -- is what causes the idea to have value. Or conversely, an idea never expressed is inherently worthless. That means expressions of ideas are clearly not excludable and therefore cannot be property.
Now, you can establish exclusive right to a non-excludable good, but exclusive right without exclusive possession requires the existence and intervention of a government for enforcement. That means any right such gained must be a legal right, not a natural one. Legal rights are not intrinsic; they must be justified e.g. by social contract. And that brings us to the U.S. Constitution: it assumes property rights preexist (i.e., as natural rights), as seen in e.g. the Fifth Amendment. In contrast, it establishes a power of Congress to grant copyright, and justifies that power "[only] for limited times" in order "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts" -- clearly a social contract.
In summary, property is a natural right applied to excludable goods, while copyright is the government-granted imposition of excludability onto ideas, which would otherwise be public goods, in return for a public benefit. Property and copyright are totally different things.
What sort of backwater third world dictatorship do you think you live in
It isn't that freedom-hating, anti-American facists like him think they live in a backwater third-world dictatorship, it's that they're trying to create it. Accusing others of treason is nothing but projection.
They reserve the right to change the playing field whenever they choose. If you don't like this type of behavior, don't buy their console.
NO, GODDAMNIT!
Sony's (or any other company's) right to control the product it sells fucking ENDS the nanosecond after the sale is completed. Companies do not have the right to hack into, vandalize or destroy people's property, nor do they have the right to dictate how the property owner can use it.
This is nothing less than AN ATTACK ON THE RIGHT TO OWN PROPERTY ITSELF, and "if you don't like it, don't buy it" is not a sufficient or appropriate defense. Copyright leveraged as a weapon of tyranny must be opposed at all costs!
By that logic, What right do you have to tell MS what they can do with their property? Last I heard, they owned the copyright to their Windows OS.
Copyright is not property. Windows -- like all creative works -- inherently belongs to the Public Domain. All Microsoft has is temporary permission from the government to control copying and distribution of it.
Individual copies of software, on the other hand, are property -- and are owned by the end-user who legally obtained the copy, not Microsoft. Those individual owners can use their individual property however the fuck they want and Microsoft has no right to interfere.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I called bullshit on the complete clause:
It was just unnecessary to quote the first half of it more than once (assuming an audience with decent reading comprehension skills, anyway).
And it is bullshit, because DRM is in no way "necessary" to prevent pollution. What actually prevents pollution is emissions testing. If you can stick a sensor up the tailpipe and measure the emissions to prove that it's passing, who the fuck cares why it's passing? Maybe it's stock, or maybe the owner modified it to get 1000% more horsepower and run on unicorn farts -- either way, it doesn't matter because the only thing relevant is the actual amounts of pollutants emitted.
Incidentally, this absurd practice of checking the technology for compliance instead of checking the actual result is what led to the whole VW emissions scandal. VW was only able to cheat because the test machine tells the car's ECU "hey, I'm gonna run an emissions test on you now." If they'd used a simple chassis dyno and an exhaust probe, there would have been no way for the car to know it was being tested and therefore no way to program it to cheat.
First of all, host files aren't flexible enough: I want to be able to block domains conditionally (e.g. block Google subdomains except when I'm visiting a Google page directly).
Second, even if something running on the router were good enough, I'd still want a uMatrix-like browser extension for making it easy to add new rules to it anyway.
Really what I'd like is for uMatrix rules to sync between the browsers on all my computers, and then for the subset of the rules that are always-deny (in uMatrix parlance, rules of the form
) to be exported to the router hosts file.
WTF? APK writes like a schizophrenic retard and constantly spams about hosts files, but I don't recall him ever being anti-semitic.
What part of "$200 misc." did you not understand?
Of course there are unexpected expenses; that's what about the first year's worth of $366/month savings are for. Once you've built up a decent emergency fund, then you start investing.
In this case, that buffer is an entire third of the income ($566 of $1666).
...And which is at least $20,000 more than that family would need to live a comfortable lifestyle.
...you're already doing it wrong.
First of all, I never said somebody should be saving even during temporary emergencies, like unemployment. But if you were at your "normal" level of income when this happened then something was wrong with your budgeting.Were you renting a single room? Did you have a roommate? If the answer to either question is "no," then you could have been living even cheaper.
More importantly, how did you get to that point in the first place? Were you a teenager who suddenly got kicked out of your parent/guardian's home with zero assets (which would be a legitimate excuse)? Or did you become unemployed and wait until you realized you were having a hard time finding a new job before changing your lifestyle to cut expenses (which would not be an excuse)?
That's $1666/month. One possible budget for a two-adult household might be $500 housing, $200 utilities, $200 transportation (2 transit passes), $300 food, $200 misc., $0 income tax (assuming the EITC or other refundable credit more-or-less cancels out FICA), $0 healthcare (Medicaid) and $366 savings. That's completely reasonable, at least where I live (Atlanta) -- in fact, I left the utilities, food and transportation categories overly generous. In reality, you could cut transportation down to maybe $20/month or less by skipping transit and riding a bike instead.
Incidentally, I know this is reasonable because, as a mustachian, it's not far off from what my actual budget would be if I cut out the fat (figuratively and literally -- my grocery list tends to include more meat and dairy than necessary) and put my student loans in deferment. My mortgage is higher (about $700/month), but that's the only major difference.
No, it really isn't. Here's why:
When you are working and saving for retirement, your income is I, your living expenses are X, and your savings are S, and they are related by
If S > $0, then it implies I > X.
But when you retire, you only need I = X, by definition. Everything else being equal (i.e., assuming your expenses and tax rates haven't changed) -- which is the only reasonable assumption given an unknowable future -- then I in retirement must be lower than I while working, and since rates are progressive, the marginal tax rate in retirement is lower than it is when working and the money deferred is taxed less than it would have been had it not been deferred.
What part of "MODIFYING THE DEVICE DOESN'T IMPLY VIOLATING EMISSIONS STANDARDS" do you not fucking get?
This is absolutely not like prohibiting drunk driving; this is like prohibiting ownership of cars entirely because somebody might drive one drunk!
The items in "Stories to Read" used to load in whatever web browser you had selected as the default. Now they load in some ad-hoc browser window that's "powered by Chrome." Not only does opening in a real browser require two extra taps (one for the menu, and one for the "open in [browser name]" menu item), it means that -- unlike my default Firefox browser -- it doesn't block ads.
It's infuriating enough to almost singlehandedly drive me to an AOSP build or Lineage OS.
Bullshit. It's not impractical; it's just emotionally difficult for people who crave instant gratification or whose self-worth is tied to buying fancier shit than their peers.
If your tax rate is that high as a self-employed person, I'm 99% sure you're doing something stupid like failing to contribute to your SIMPLE/SEP/Solo 401k.
Not only is this "concern" invalid, I question the motives of anyone who brings it up.
It is well-established law that the liability for harm done by a device rests with the owner in control of the device. It always has, and nothing about having software in the damn thing changes that.
The stakes are the continued existence of property rights as a concept.
The ultimate goal of John Deere -- and every other company that has embraced DRM, from Lexmark to Sony to Microsoft to Amazon to Tesla -- is to bind the users of their products into a relationship that more resembles a feudal lord-peasant relationship, than a capitalist seller-buyer one.
AB-SO-FUCKING-LUTELY WE SHOULD!
Why? Because it's Joe's goddamn property, which means that he has the both the right to do what he wants with it and the liability for it harming someone. This is not a new concept; this is how ownership and liability have always fucking worked! Sure, Joe needs to be a competent programmer in order to safely modify the software -- in exactly the same way that he already needed to be a competent mechanic in order to safely modify the hardware. Software isn't magical fairy dust or some shit; the fact that it is in a device changes nothing whatsoever. And more to the point, it sure as Hell doesn't somehow justify property-rights-destroying literal tyranny!
That would work great!
...For about ten seconds, until the manufacturers started habitually incorporating a new company for each product, declaring bankruptcy whenever they wanted to quit supporting it, and buying back the assets (but not the warranty liabilities) to repeat the cycle.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
More bullshit.
And even more bullshit!
Every one of those arguments -- and every possible argument -- is complete and utter bullshit.
Why?
Because the owner has always been, still is, and should always be the one liable for any harm caused by his property. This is well-established law, and "but software!" is absolutely not, at all, even slightly, in any conceivable way, ever anything resembling something even close to a valid reason to change it!
No, that's backwards. We need to recognize that when the privileges given to holders of "Imaginary Property" conflict with the rights of owners of actual property, it is the actual property rights that must prevail, not the imaginary property privileges.
In other words, it shouldn't be that the right to repair is a limited exception of copyright; it should be that copyright is a limited(!) exception to ownership rights.
While it's great that you pointed out the problem, I wish that you would also mention the projects that are working on solutions, such as Replicant and Libreboot. The world needs more people working on stuff like that, and you could lend those sorts of projects some of your fame and credibility.
What? Not only do I not support it, I'm saying that merely "not supporting it" doesn't go far enough and the entire business model should be fucking outlawed!
That's a reasonably good definition, but it hinges, in turn, on what the words "exclusive" and "right" mean. In this context I interpret "right" as natural rights, not legal rights, implying a labor theory of property (which, by the way, I would argue encompasses possession, i.e., control over the thing, as a prerequisite). "Exclusive" is a little trickier, because we have to consider the question of what is the exclusivity an aspect of -- the owner, or the thing owned? I'd argue, both: the good itself must be excludable too.
In other words, it is simply not possible to have an exclusive natural right of ownership over a non-excludable good, since you can't establish exclusive possession of it on your own.
Now, here's the unique thing about expressions of ideas (which is what copyright purports to cover): not only can they be trivially copied, but the act of copying is intrinsic to the very definition of "expression!" Conveying an idea to someone else -- surrendering exclusive possession -- is what causes the idea to have value. Or conversely, an idea never expressed is inherently worthless. That means expressions of ideas are clearly not excludable and therefore cannot be property.
Now, you can establish exclusive right to a non-excludable good, but exclusive right without exclusive possession requires the existence and intervention of a government for enforcement. That means any right such gained must be a legal right, not a natural one. Legal rights are not intrinsic; they must be justified e.g. by social contract. And that brings us to the U.S. Constitution: it assumes property rights preexist (i.e., as natural rights), as seen in e.g. the Fifth Amendment. In contrast, it establishes a power of Congress to grant copyright, and justifies that power "[only] for limited times" in order "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts" -- clearly a social contract.
In summary, property is a natural right applied to excludable goods, while copyright is the government-granted imposition of excludability onto ideas, which would otherwise be public goods, in return for a public benefit. Property and copyright are totally different things.
It isn't that freedom-hating, anti-American facists like him think they live in a backwater third-world dictatorship, it's that they're trying to create it. Accusing others of treason is nothing but projection.
Fuck that bullshit. The law itself is wrong. Government secrecy is tyranny.
NO, GODDAMNIT!
Sony's (or any other company's) right to control the product it sells fucking ENDS the nanosecond after the sale is completed. Companies do not have the right to hack into, vandalize or destroy people's property, nor do they have the right to dictate how the property owner can use it.
This is nothing less than AN ATTACK ON THE RIGHT TO OWN PROPERTY ITSELF, and "if you don't like it, don't buy it" is not a sufficient or appropriate defense. Copyright leveraged as a weapon of tyranny must be opposed at all costs!
Copyright is not property. Windows -- like all creative works -- inherently belongs to the Public Domain. All Microsoft has is temporary permission from the government to control copying and distribution of it.
Individual copies of software, on the other hand, are property -- and are owned by the end-user who legally obtained the copy, not Microsoft. Those individual owners can use their individual property however the fuck they want and Microsoft has no right to interfere.
Microsoft is doing literally everything in its power -- and several things that should be beyond its power -- to change that ASAP.