This is a little off-topic I admit, but I'll risk the Karma because it might be of interest to a few people here seeing as a lot of/.'s have such strong political views.
I subscribe to Stratfor. It's a paid for service geared towards investors and company strategists and it provides some of the best international and political news you'll ever find. It's cheap enough that I subscribe privately and you can guarentee that it isn't full of propaganda. Why? Because it's used by people with money and whatever news corps tell the masses, the stock market has the right connections to know what's really going down.
Now please don't hammer my karma for trying to be helpful.
Ah yes... You're spot on - it's article 9 in the GPL. SAdly, I don't see a similar clause on either of the Micro$oft licences which has to be a major distinction between the two even if it isn't an initially obvious one.
If RMS goes insane? As a corollory of Clarke's Law - any intelligence sufficiently advanced will be indisingusishable from insanity by a less advanced intelligence.:)
Meaning then that including this licence and this schema in your apps is like walking across a ravine on a bridge held up by Bill Gate$. He says, "Sure, I'm not going anywhere, you can cross."
No thanks - I think I'll stick to LaTeX (I'm into that;)
So if the PHB was almost talked into Open Source by the security issues of installing a virus portal like Word on a trusted system behind the firewall, Microsoft just cut your legs off.
Surely that would actually be a strike against M$. The last remaining obstacle to chucking out the virus portal (nice image:) - i.e. compatability -would be gone.
But then from looking at some of the other posts popping up here, it isn't going to be that simple.
These Patent Wars(tm) are turning into a big chess game. "They've sacrificed an XML schema - what's their plan?"
Can someone clarify for me what this part means...
Microsoft reserves the right to terminate this license grant if you
sue Microsoft or any of Microsoft's affiliates for patent infringement over claims relating to reading or writing of files that comply with the Office Schemas
I'm assuming it's actually fairly innocent but just how wide a scope does it have under the word 'relating' ?
Finally, what are the legal constraints on M$ changing or withdrawing this licence at a later date? Presumably they are no more limiting than those on the GPL,
but then I've never worried about Linus or RMS withdrawing rights from Linux, wheras with M$...
ITIAL's (I Think I'm A Lawyer) out there who can explain?
I don't usually use the terms Evil and Good. And I wont say that pornography is wrong as such, but I think you're being a little naive about the industry. You are right that some women enjoy posing naked for the cameras. Others (fewer) enjoy doing actual porn, but don't take too rosey a view of it - there are a lot of nasty people in the porn business and the money can end up in some pretty grubby pockets too.
Is it better for security researchers to avoid publicly criticizing e-voting flaws? Is public faith in the system more important than overall system security?
There are two sides in this battle - those who may benefit from not fixing flawed voting practices and those (as present in vast numbers on Slashdot) who understand these flaws and attempt to get them fixed.
Trouble is, one of the few pressures the second group can exert on the first group is that of public opinion. Spreading awareness of these flaws is the most effective way for Slashdot types to force change. They wont care for potentially costly (or rig-spoiling) changes just because one programmer points out a flaw.
Of course publicising these flaws is a good thing!
Not really. The only risk is that watching it will make you think Dr. Who is not as great as it is. This animated episode, though kind of fun, is not a patch on the TV series.
Just so you know - this is the ninth Doctor. There all sort of the same person, and there all sort of not.
Enjoy! But if you're not watching from behind the sofa by the end, then it's not proper Dr.Who.
Just to find a metaphor that will bring this home to some of us...
I once had a prolonged discussion on the pros and cons of GM food and the mixing of seperate genetic organisms (as has produced this virus) with a Phd in Computer Science. Eventually I grabbed a textbook on UML from his desk and waved it at him. "Look," I cried, "they're breaking encapsulation!" My friend immediately reversed his stance on Genetic Engineering and wanted more testing.
In this, Gore calls the current US administration Despotism several times. This
is not true yet because the American people still have the power to reverse it by voting new rulers in. How long this will be tolerated though is another question. Look at how the risk of being voted out has caused problems for Bush - the Whitehouse is having to draw up plans for pulling forces out of Iraq due to its unpopularity and the looming elections. I'm sure they would love to stop the stupid people exerting such an influence on their superior plans:)
Or maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps the USA already is a despotic state but with better
PR. After all the last election wasn't actually won by Bush, and there was that
scene of Republicans battering down the doors of the Democrat offices where they were holding ballots. You wont know if you're living in a dictatorship until you test the boundaries. But if the voting machines get in then you'll lose your chance.
Gore also mentions the partiot act part II which he condemns utterly. An old quote I came across recently now seems frighteningly prescient:
The process by which a determined organization can seize control of a government was encapsulated in a 1957 book by Jan Kozak, a member of the Secretariat of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The first step
involves having the organization's own people infiltrate the government. These infiltrators... must be in a
position to bring in at least some legislation.
The second step is to create a real or alleged grievance with the government. This involves either an
action the government took, or a required action it failed to take. The third step is to field a mob
in reaction to the manufactured grievance, demanding that the government solve the problem by legislation. The
fourth step is for the conspirators to bring in legislation - oppressive legislation - that fails to solve the
problem.
The last three steps are repeated again and again. The mob demands more and more legislation, which
the government enacts, until the government has become totalitarian... which was the initial goal of the
conspirators.
--Gurps Illuminati, by Nigel D. Findley, used without permission but with Just Cause(tm).
You lose your voting rights in the USA if you're convicted of a crime?
Nasty. That's a logical flaw in Democracy because in theory it allows the judicial system to remove people's rights, but in practice more likely gives the power to the police who can secure a conviction whenever they want.
Wouldn't it also sway results because the less afluent are more likely to have criminal convictions? And shit - the USA has a major conviction bias against african-americans too doesn't it? This is scary.
Some European countries prevent prisoners from voting in elections (like Britain), but not most of them.
Yeah well, I only got my UID two days ago and I've got Positive Karma once already. Wouldn't want too go to high too fast or I'll end up condeming everyone for spouting Hippy Crap!;)
Cheers!
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but this is the way the world/universe works
Funny. I always thought that the world is what you make it.:)
There is nothing wrong with wanting everything to be free and open. It seems like that would be a much nicer world to live in and it's worth trying for. I've had enough shit in my life that I feel I can see the world for what it is and I think that is the best criteria for deciding whether one's perspective is 'flawed' or not. What I believe we could make of the world is another matter.
Everything in life costs money? Well you are living under one particular economic model. There are others. The communards in Spain had a very successful social system that endured for quite a while until they were invaded. The LETS system also subverts the monetary system to the benefit of local communities with considerable success even today.
You appear to hate the hippies. A shame. Their cultural movement made a tremendous difference to the world we live in today, not the least of which was much more relaxed sexual attitudes (Yay!)
I think it's arrogant to say you have a better grasp of any subject than most of the readers here because you are a CEO. The average level of intelligence and knowledge on Slashdot is far above the average of Western Europe and the USA. If people wish to profess optomism then good for them. It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
To pick an example close to the hearts of many here, GNU/Linux has come about through people's will to create something bigger than themselves without trying to control it for money. In contradiction to what you say however, there are many reasons to embrace freeware other than a "hippy outlook." Reliability is a fine place to start.
Mankind has gone from banging rocks together to spacefilght in a couple of thousand years. In the last few centuries we've thrashed out a sophisticated legal and economic model. You really think you can predict what will happen next? I don't - that's why I try to aim for a good future. We might get it.
So I bear even worse news, pal, there are still people out here who believe the world can be made better, haven't accepted it and are happier because of that. You should try a little hope sometimes. It feels nice.
Yrs, a non-hippy, non-utopian, non-CEO-but-self-employed-and-happy-with-it, engineer who may not have brought about world peace but has saved a few lives and helped to build up local farming industry in Africa through working with Oxfam and will damn well keep trying thankyouverymuch.
p.s. Is every member of staff at your company related to you?
Ask the native americans who owns the land. Once upon a time they would have laughed at the concept of owning the land. If you weren't there and using it then how could you deny it to anyone else and furthermore, what right did you have to spoil and damage it for your children. Now they understand too well what ownership means. It means that you will punish those who use something that you have told them not to.
This is often forgotten because we live in a world where we observe these 'laws' and they become our reality. The shifting of these concepts into a new frontier (asteroids) temporarily shows us the arbitrariness of it all. This will last until a property law adapts to cover space and we get used to it again, or until it collapses and we find
a different way to orgainize ourselves out there.
The question of whether land claims in space are legal meaningless as far as moral rights go. Claim whatever you want. The correct question is who has the biggest 'guns' to control this space. You
can bet new laws will be introduced to allow the government to parcel it out to those
it favours, but these laws are in reality no more than threats from a government maintaining its power in a new frontier. That is why this man has no hope in hell of claiming an asteroid. The same goes for people who 'own' part of the moon. They have no 'guns' and thus no power to defend themselves. The government will say 'mine' and the laws are just its way of phrasing that.
Thing is, the US government doesn't have enough guns in the long run, no more than George III did some years ago with another colony. My advice is to get out there and start mining. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. The other tenth is possession.
"Do you have a flag? If you don't have a flag it's not yours."
This reminds me of that Eddie Izzard routine where the Europeans are seizing land from the Indians. After telling them repeatedly that they're not a nation and it's not their land unless they have a flag, the Indians go off and make themselves a flag. When they come back the English say...
"Good - do you have a gun?" The Indians are... "Ooooh - you need a GUN and a flag."
Sorry but this chap can wave around whatever bits of paper (and make as many flags) as he likes, but unless he has a 'gun' with which to threaten the government, it isn't going to work.
Of course, Terran property rights ultimately come down to who has the most guns too, but people forget that (unless they're Iraqi.)
as it's after the climax
It's about time people started to add more of a denoument to movies again. By providing that closing context it can make a movie much much deeper and lingering.
I think the scouring of the shire should be included - not out of loyalty to the book but because it would improve the film.
But then I thought both films were pretty dull anyway. Ho hum.
In addition to the reasons listed in the last post, there's an important extra - money can be made by persuading gormless officials that e-voting is superior.
Or else at some level in the hierarchy, gormlessness appears and the official below can recieve brownie points from his clueless boss for this idiocy.
Where nothing is wrong, the current economic model demands that you break something so you can fix it. Or if you can't fix something, then break something that does work and blame that!
The only problem with this is the same one as making voting mandatory - all those uninformed people who don't really care anyway are required to make a decision. The people who are informed and therefore make decisions based on this rather than media saturation ("Bush? Oh yeah - I've heard of him, don't know who the other guys are...") get swamped.
It's a little different to having a easy one-click democracy but it works (or doesn't) on the same principle.
None of which comes close to the potential abuses of vote-buying and auditability however.
That is a nice site. The best bit is where it lists a top speed of 450 km/h / 280 mph. That's London to Edinburgh in... about 40 minutes.
I'm not sure I'd want to combine that sort of technology with the British train companies *ahem* track record though. You know, when they shut down a line because of leaves it isn't because the leaves interfere with the train gripping the rails, it's because when it hits the leaves the whole thing just vanishes from their monitoring systems. *Nice*
that which opens the door to future developments. I don't think a skinny TV, or even the beautiful maglev train contribute half as much as the entrants to the X-Prize. I don't think any of the others will stimulate further invention as much as a commercial space travel.
Next I'd like to see the Y-Prize - first commercial hotel on Mars;)
Though that Mag-train is beautiful.
The proposal is not a replacement for copyright, it is an alternative. It therefore has no bearing on the GPL or any other scheme that chooses to remain in the copywright system. Both GNU/Linux and Windows copyright law is still enforceable.
At least one solution to the problem of 'buddy systems' developing has been proposed here already, which is a $100 (or $x) registration fee. Make this yearly, or a
total for however many years the AFV remains and this prevents people from giving
each other money. Or rather it means that several people have to nominate you for
oyu to benefit. There are still holes in this, but they are now much smaller.
Although there have been many doubts expressed here about how many people would be willing to participate I think you might be surprised once people become generally aware of it. It is NOT like political voting - you know exactly what effect your nomination will have and you get something in return. Also it could be made simple by just adding the number / artist reference to your tax form.
The problem of the people all picking their ONE FAVOURITE and all the money going
to Britney and none to Pink, could be countered by community's of artists that arrange the division of the loot amongst themselves by some agreed method. Your less
popular metalband may not compete with Korn, but the Metal Collective of half a dozen bands you've been listening to might just flatten them. Not a perfect solution - Korn might ally with Mariah Carey, but it is A solution and nothing is perfect.
Also, it doesn't have to be run by the government, but until the revolution, it will require their support for it to be tax deductible and easy to select an artist/collective.
Big projects like hollywood movies that require massive initial outlay will probably continue to be released under copyright for a good long time.
This is a great idea and it deserves a bit more thought to see if it could be made to work.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a little off-topic I admit, but I'll risk the Karma because it might be of interest to a few people here seeing as a lot of
I subscribe to Stratfor. It's a paid for service geared towards investors and company strategists and it provides some of the best international and political news you'll ever find. It's cheap enough that I subscribe privately and you can guarentee that it isn't full of propaganda. Why? Because it's used by people with money and whatever news corps tell the masses, the stock market has the right connections to know what's really going down.
Now please don't hammer my karma for trying to be helpful.
Ah yes... You're spot on - it's article 9 in the GPL. SAdly, I don't see a similar clause on either of the Micro$oft licences which has to be a major distinction between the two even if it isn't an initially obvious one.
:)
If RMS goes insane? As a corollory of Clarke's Law - any intelligence sufficiently advanced will be indisingusishable from insanity by a less advanced intelligence.
Meaning then that including this licence and this schema in your apps is like walking across a ravine on a bridge held up by Bill Gate$. He says, "Sure, I'm not going anywhere, you can cross."
No thanks - I think I'll stick to LaTeX (I'm into that
So if the PHB was almost talked into Open Source by the security issues of installing a virus portal like Word on a trusted system behind the firewall, Microsoft just cut your legs off.
:) - i.e. compatability -would be gone.
Surely that would actually be a strike against M$. The last remaining obstacle to chucking out the virus portal (nice image
But then from looking at some of the other posts popping up here, it isn't going to be that simple.
These Patent Wars(tm) are turning into a big chess game. "They've sacrificed an XML schema - what's their plan?"
I'm assuming it's actually fairly innocent but just how wide a scope does it have under the word 'relating' ?
Finally, what are the legal constraints on M$ changing or withdrawing this licence at a later date? Presumably they are no more limiting than those on the GPL, but then I've never worried about Linus or RMS withdrawing rights from Linux, wheras with M$...
ITIAL's (I Think I'm A Lawyer) out there who can explain?
I don't usually use the terms Evil and Good. And I wont say that pornography is wrong as such, but I think you're being a little naive about the industry. You are right that some women enjoy posing naked for the cameras. Others (fewer) enjoy doing actual porn, but don't take too rosey a view of it - there are a lot of nasty people in the porn business and the money can end up in some pretty grubby pockets too.
Is it better for security researchers to avoid publicly criticizing e-voting flaws? Is public faith in the system more important than overall system security?
There are two sides in this battle - those who may benefit from not fixing flawed voting practices and those (as present in vast numbers on Slashdot) who understand these flaws and attempt to get them fixed.
Trouble is, one of the few pressures the second group can exert on the first group is that of public opinion. Spreading awareness of these flaws is the most effective way for Slashdot types to force change. They wont care for potentially costly (or rig-spoiling) changes just because one programmer points out a flaw.
Of course publicising these flaws is a good thing!
Not really. The only risk is that watching it will make you think Dr. Who is not as great as it is. This animated episode, though kind of fun, is not a patch on the TV series.
Just so you know - this is the ninth Doctor. There all sort of the same person, and there all sort of not.
Enjoy! But if you're not watching from behind the sofa by the end, then it's not proper Dr.Who.
Just to find a metaphor that will bring this home to some of us...
I once had a prolonged discussion on the pros and cons of GM food and the mixing of seperate genetic organisms (as has produced this virus) with a Phd in Computer Science. Eventually I grabbed a textbook on UML from his desk and waved it at him. "Look," I cried, "they're breaking encapsulation!" My friend immediately reversed his stance on Genetic Engineering and wanted more testing.
Or does he work for Renraku?
Yep - go back to sleep America, the Megacorps are in control.
That's a good movie. Better than the last two matrix films.
I've happily past the stage where this disturbs me and can now just find that incredibly funny. It helps that I don't live in the US.
Or maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps the USA already is a despotic state but with better PR. After all the last election wasn't actually won by Bush, and there was that scene of Republicans battering down the doors of the Democrat offices where they were holding ballots. You wont know if you're living in a dictatorship until you test the boundaries. But if the voting machines get in then you'll lose your chance.
Gore also mentions the partiot act part II which he condemns utterly. An old quote I came across recently now seems frighteningly prescient:
You lose your voting rights in the USA if you're convicted of a crime?
Nasty. That's a logical flaw in Democracy because in theory it allows the judicial system to remove people's rights, but in practice more likely gives the power to the police who can secure a conviction whenever they want.
Wouldn't it also sway results because the less afluent are more likely to have criminal convictions? And shit - the USA has a major conviction bias against african-americans too doesn't it? This is scary.
Some European countries prevent prisoners from voting in elections (like Britain), but not most of them.
Yeah well, I only got my UID two days ago and I've got Positive Karma once already. Wouldn't want too go to high too fast or I'll end up condeming everyone for spouting Hippy Crap! ;)
Cheers!
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but this is the way the world/universe works
:)
Funny. I always thought that the world is what you make it.
There is nothing wrong with wanting everything to be free and open. It seems like that would be a much nicer world to live in and it's worth trying for. I've had enough shit in my life that I feel I can see the world for what it is and I think that is the best criteria for deciding whether one's perspective is 'flawed' or not. What I believe we could make of the world is another matter.
Everything in life costs money? Well you are living under one particular economic model. There are others. The communards in Spain had a very successful social system that endured for quite a while until they were invaded. The LETS system also subverts the monetary system to the benefit of local communities with considerable success even today.
You appear to hate the hippies. A shame. Their cultural movement made a tremendous difference to the world we live in today, not the least of which was much more relaxed sexual attitudes (Yay!)
I think it's arrogant to say you have a better grasp of any subject than most of the readers here because you are a CEO. The average level of intelligence and knowledge on Slashdot is far above the average of Western Europe and the USA. If people wish to profess optomism then good for them. It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
To pick an example close to the hearts of many here, GNU/Linux has come about through people's will to create something bigger than themselves without trying to control it for money. In contradiction to what you say however, there are many reasons to embrace freeware other than a "hippy outlook." Reliability is a fine place to start.
Mankind has gone from banging rocks together to spacefilght in a couple of thousand years. In the last few centuries we've thrashed out a sophisticated legal and economic model. You really think you can predict what will happen next? I don't - that's why I try to aim for a good future. We might get it.
So I bear even worse news, pal, there are still people out here who believe the world can be made better, haven't accepted it and are happier because of that. You should try a little hope sometimes. It feels nice. Yrs, a non-hippy, non-utopian, non-CEO-but-self-employed-and-happy-with-it, engineer who may not have brought about world peace but has saved a few lives and helped to build up local farming industry in Africa through working with Oxfam and will damn well keep trying thankyouverymuch. p.s. Is every member of staff at your company related to you?
Ask the native americans who owns the land. Once upon a time they would have laughed at the concept of owning the land. If you weren't there and using it then how could you deny it to anyone else and furthermore, what right did you have to spoil and damage it for your children. Now they understand too well what ownership means. It means that you will punish those who use something that you have told them not to.
This is often forgotten because we live in a world where we observe these 'laws' and they become our reality. The shifting of these concepts into a new frontier (asteroids) temporarily shows us the arbitrariness of it all. This will last until a property law adapts to cover space and we get used to it again, or until it collapses and we find a different way to orgainize ourselves out there.
The question of whether land claims in space are legal meaningless as far as moral rights go. Claim whatever you want. The correct question is who has the biggest 'guns' to control this space. You can bet new laws will be introduced to allow the government to parcel it out to those it favours, but these laws are in reality no more than threats from a government maintaining its power in a new frontier. That is why this man has no hope in hell of claiming an asteroid. The same goes for people who 'own' part of the moon. They have no 'guns' and thus no power to defend themselves. The government will say 'mine' and the laws are just its way of phrasing that.
Thing is, the US government doesn't have enough guns in the long run, no more than George III did some years ago with another colony. My advice is to get out there and start mining. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. The other tenth is possession.
"Do you have a flag? If you don't have a flag it's not yours."
This reminds me of that Eddie Izzard routine where the Europeans are seizing land from the Indians. After telling them repeatedly that they're not a nation and it's not their land unless they have a flag, the Indians go off and make themselves a flag. When they come back the English say... "Good - do you have a gun?" The Indians are... "Ooooh - you need a GUN and a flag." Sorry but this chap can wave around whatever bits of paper (and make as many flags) as he likes, but unless he has a 'gun' with which to threaten the government, it isn't going to work.
Of course, Terran property rights ultimately come down to who has the most guns too, but people forget that (unless they're Iraqi.)
as it's after the climax It's about time people started to add more of a denoument to movies again. By providing that closing context it can make a movie much much deeper and lingering.
I think the scouring of the shire should be included - not out of loyalty to the book but because it would improve the film.
But then I thought both films were pretty dull anyway. Ho hum.
November 12th, 2003: Skynet becomes self-aware.
I just lurvvve the idea of automated military devices, don't you?
In addition to the reasons listed in the last post, there's an important extra - money can be made by persuading gormless officials that e-voting is superior.
Or else at some level in the hierarchy, gormlessness appears and the official below can recieve brownie points from his clueless boss for this idiocy.
Where nothing is wrong, the current economic model demands that you break something so you can fix it. Or if you can't fix something, then break something that does work and blame that!
The only problem with this is the same one as making voting mandatory - all those uninformed people who don't really care anyway are required to make a decision. The people who are informed and therefore make decisions based on this rather than media saturation ("Bush? Oh yeah - I've heard of him, don't know who the other guys are...") get swamped.
It's a little different to having a easy one-click democracy but it works (or doesn't) on the same principle.
None of which comes close to the potential abuses of vote-buying and auditability however.
That is a nice site. The best bit is where it lists a top speed of 450 km/h / 280 mph. That's London to Edinburgh in... about 40 minutes. I'm not sure I'd want to combine that sort of technology with the British train companies *ahem* track record though. You know, when they shut down a line because of leaves it isn't because the leaves interfere with the train gripping the rails, it's because when it hits the leaves the whole thing just vanishes from their monitoring systems. *Nice*
that which opens the door to future developments. I don't think a skinny TV, or even the beautiful maglev train contribute half as much as the entrants to the X-Prize. I don't think any of the others will stimulate further invention as much as a commercial space travel. Next I'd like to see the Y-Prize - first commercial hotel on Mars ;)
Though that Mag-train is beautiful.
The proposal is not a replacement for copyright, it is an alternative. It therefore has no bearing on the GPL or any other scheme that chooses to remain in the copywright system. Both GNU/Linux and Windows copyright law is still enforceable.
At least one solution to the problem of 'buddy systems' developing has been proposed here already, which is a $100 (or $x) registration fee. Make this yearly, or a total for however many years the AFV remains and this prevents people from giving each other money. Or rather it means that several people have to nominate you for oyu to benefit. There are still holes in this, but they are now much smaller.
Although there have been many doubts expressed here about how many people would be willing to participate I think you might be surprised once people become generally aware of it. It is NOT like political voting - you know exactly what effect your nomination will have and you get something in return. Also it could be made simple by just adding the number / artist reference to your tax form.
The problem of the people all picking their ONE FAVOURITE and all the money going to Britney and none to Pink, could be countered by community's of artists that arrange the division of the loot amongst themselves by some agreed method. Your less popular metalband may not compete with Korn, but the Metal Collective of half a dozen bands you've been listening to might just flatten them. Not a perfect solution - Korn might ally with Mariah Carey, but it is A solution and nothing is perfect.
Also, it doesn't have to be run by the government, but until the revolution, it will require their support for it to be tax deductible and easy to select an artist/collective.
Big projects like hollywood movies that require massive initial outlay will probably continue to be released under copyright for a good long time.
This is a great idea and it deserves a bit more thought to see if it could be made to work.