A bit off-topic, but the same can be said for gun nuts. As frightening as guns are, the fact remains that just as hacking is an integral (and at times annoying) part of computer security, so are guns an integral party of real world security. Just like sanitation and medicine/one's immune system must work together. It's impossible to have a sterile, perfect world. In the long run, it's best to recognize this and be responsible in all parts that are necessary in layered security.
This is all well and good and high and mightly and noble... but it's also completely missing the point.
I don't believe so. The original poster was asking why he/she should be upset. I was explaining that fundamentally infringing the liberty of others is wrong.
What you have to remember with court cases
Yep, the evil courts..
like this, where you're moving in relatively uncharted waters
It's hardly uncharted. It's not like bnetd is the first clone of a product/protocol/etc.
and dealing with new technologies
Cause if it involves new technology we need a new law and new patents to cover it even if it's just to say "using ".
is that the result will generally come down to which side in the dispute can put the most persuasive case to a judge and/or jury who are not specialists in the field in question.
Perhaps. But that's mainly a fault of the system. And the system was constructed by people like the original poster who seem to think that it's hard to justify something because it could be used for infringement of liberty.
The fact is, the only real way to fix this system is to convince people that liberty is something that shouldn't be infringed. From that Senators, judges, etc will be elected to echo that belief. And then in the long scheme of things it won't require trying to use some sort of technicality to justify--it can kill more than good people, your honor--one's liberty. This is what the Ben Franklin quote about security and liberty is about.
In most circumstances, a private company is less wasteful. This is because most companies are not monopolies. You're right that executive salaries often are massive, but knowing that opens an opportunity for new companies to form and to advertise these lower prices. The same can be said for private companies who always by from some management's nephews. This all ties into anonymity. While certainly the company is under no obligation to inform everyone about their fuck-ups, there should be no legal punishment (ie, censorship) to release such information. And anonymity is important so that people feel free to voice the corruption without fear of losing their job. Of course, while not just sell that information to a competitor or form your own company? The risk might be great, but so long as government isn't involved all that waste can turn into higher employee salaries to lure away the host company's employees while still being cheaper than them. Then it's just a matter of informing the consumer of these facts.:)
Wrong. Just because 51% of 51% of people decide to fund a project doesn't mean that the other ~74% should be forced to fund as well. Just as well, if 90% of people wanted this, that doesn't mean the other 10% should be forced to fund as well. Government is in place to maintain the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness by protecting the abuses of other people. When it starts stepping in and becoming the abuser on behalf of the people, it's no longer a fit government. Hell, if 50% of people really want to fund research, they're obviously free to do it themselves. But there's nothing moral about forcing the other 50% to contribute.
If your arguments are true then American health care should be better than in countries that have a publicly provided health service
Not necessarily. That's the irony of the American system. It's so corrupt right now that it's already beaten out the wholly public health care systems in other country. What do I mean by that? On the one hand, the US pays subsidies to pharmaceutical companies. On the other hand, the US pays out more per capita on health care than the UK--the US doesn't spend it on everyone, though. As I recall, healthcare in the US is almost twice as much in the US than the UK. Obviously funneling money to medical companies then paying about lots more than what other governments pay for those on medicare/medicaid is just a huge funneling of tax payer money into medical companies. Now, maybe some of this somehow trickles into new treatments that are cheaper in other countries because they don't have to do all the R&D, but a large part of that is just another way to hide pork spending being funneled to a certain industries.
Of course, even if all of the above were not true, it's possible that the public health care system would be cheaper for a while. It'd be in the long term that there'd be the tyranny, the revolts, etc. The US just happens to have a hybrid system that went corrupt a lot faster. Perhaps that's because it was hybrid.:)
So, people should form health care unions or scientific research unions. To a certain extent it's been shown that people are willing to do the latter, SETI@home. What makes you think that it'd be impossible to convince a group of people to fund research that would help everyone? Or is it simply because there's no way a person would willingly fund a project that might somehow help others without them contributing? Look at collaborative GPLed projects that shows how untrue that is; realize a lot of research would make patents or copyrighted documents that will allow for a GPL-like license to cover access.
But yes, of course, government is the one and only answer. Screw pushing for any other ideas because that'd require way too much continuous effort. Let's push everything into government. I mean, heck, if a web server in the kernel is a good idea, then surely government funded scientific research is stellar.
Let me ask yo ua question: why must everything be about profit? Why can some things not be done simply because it is the right thing to do?
Not everything must be about profit. Things should be done because they're the right thing to do. That doesn't mean it's okay to force people to do the right thing. A Libertarian and a Conservative aren't the same things. Conservatives care about money. Libertarians care about liberty. Sure there might be lots of SOB Libertarians who wouldn't help you if you're in need (hardly a Libertarian-centric trait), but some of us just want to help you because we think it's the right thing to do, not because we have the choice of helping or punishment*; when you receive charity from ones you love and care for it is quite different from a check from the government.
So, maybe it is a bit delusional to think everyone will do the right thing (I don't believe that's true). But doing something which is clearly not right (punishing* people for not helping) obviously isn't a solution.
*The punishment I speak of is through government force, be it through the taking of money or the imprisonment for failure to comply. Social punishment (ie, not talking to them, trying to make them feel shame for not being helpful, etc) is certainly fine because they can ignore you; of course that risks burning bridges, but it's their right to take such risks.
Libertarians argue, for instance, that there should be no public health care and that people should have to pay.
Yep.
Ignoring the fact that it is rather inhumane to demand payment for healing someone, this results in poor people suffering as they cannot afford medical bills.
Possibly. There is also charity.
What, exactly, is wrong with a government monopoly over this?
There's at least four problems with this. One, you don't control how your money is spent. Two, government is much more wasteful than an informed consumer. Three, by shirking off medical matters to government one no longer feels compelled to offer charity to others. There's always the excuse that the government is funding medical matters, so why help? Fourth, when the government ends up becoming tied up with medical companies (for example, look at pharmaceutical companies in the US) it's incredibly difficult to excise the corruption and restore the nominally overflated rate of government decisions.
By promoting private health care, libertarians are, in effect, causing illness and lowering the life expectency of fellow human beings.
Ah, I didn't realize that private health care caused illnes. Perhaps you meant promotes illness?
I simply say, put yourself in their shoes.
I'll put myself in their shoes. And I'll be incredibly pissed off because service X is considered too expensive with my HMO plan and my family can't pay for it and there's no time to have a charity drive. Or maybe it isn't considered too expensive, but I'll spend the rest of my life paying off medical bills. Of course, in a public health care system, I'd just die (I doubt service X would be available readily, if at all, under public health care).
Of course, that's also the option of death in private health care if I can't find a hospital to take care of me when I can't pay. But, that really comes down to hospitals having the charity to treat those who are in need even when they can't pay. That's just as true in a public health care system. The government can't with the wave of a magic wand or any fixed amount of value in money make everyone better. As much as I fear dying, I'd rather die than see a lot of people needlessly throw their money (ie, their time and energy) on a hopeless case because they're unwilling to admit that people do eventually die and there are limits where one should try. Of course below that limit, I hope that they have the compassion to freely help me if I am unable to pay. But how can I demand that by force of others?
I mean, yes, I know the DMCA is a "bad thing". However, it does seem to me that the only practical purpose of the whole bnetd thing was to allow people to play pirated copies of Blizzard games online.
And VCRs are only used for piracy. And P2P is only used for piracy. And how dare you buy a Gameboy Advance flash cart since that's totally for piracy too.
Blizzard's own battle.net system has always seemed a good system to me; it's fast, it's free (unless you include WoW) and I haven't noticed serious reliability problems since shortly after the Diablo 2 launch.
Woopie. It's fast and free. So?
Maybe I've just got the wrong end of the stick here (and I'd be happy to be corrected if I have), but is this a case of the "good guys" picking the wrong battle to fight over digital rights? I mean, it would be easier to fight the DMCA on terms that would make it easier to convince the educated (but non-techie) public, as well as lawmakers, if we weren't using a program whose main purpose in the wild is always going to be the circumvention of legitimate copy protection as the test-bed?
Ah, of course. Let's only fight a few battles that are really wrong. Hell, the whole legal system should work like that. Why go after thieves when there are rapists? And hell, why go after rapists when there are child murderers? Yes, let's do that.
Okay, I've trolled enough. I think going back to the VCR example might very well be a prime reason of what the problem is. When the VCR came out, there was already a laserdisc-like system setup for the movie industry to sell movies. It worked. It wasn't free (though you could claim it was reasonably priced). And certainly this knew VCR invention would allow rampant piracy.
Now, I should stop at this point to point out how you seem be following the logic of judges of the time (and ironically how judges use the same logic now for p2p). You see, the judges of the time didn't go "Hey, a VCR is technology, just like a gun or a knife. Sure, they can be misused, but the law is here to stop misusings, not tools of such." Instead, they tried to normalize what effect it would have on society to justify why VCRs should be okay.
But don't you see, that this is the same logic that allowed for Prohibition (well, and a large temporary support for it). Prohibition, though, didn't solve social ills. It just made elements of it more hidden and more violent. So, while certainly those who supported Prohibition had a somewhat noble goal--getting drunk daily isn't good for you--they decided to go about it by forcing their will on others instead of trying to convince others to follow their way. Of course, they probably did this knowing that it'd take the force of law (ie, cops) to get a lot of people to comply.
The US is founded on the idea of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So long as enough people hold on to these ideals, society will survive without needing Draconian laws to stop the latest "social ill". And if enough people don't hold on to these ideals, we're fucked already. Turning the country into a totalitarian regime which tries to control society or think for society only creates a totalitarian regime.
So, in closing, the reason you should be upset about the whole case is that a company has decided that they don't like what someone else is writing. And it looks like the government might step in and stop them. It doesn't matter how dubious, obscene, or likely to incite societal decay those writings are, no matter how much there exists another free or "better" alternative. People are free to make tools that can harm. And people can choose to harm themselves or others and be held responsible when they truly infringe the life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness--that last one is vague, but, oh well--over the others infringing of their own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (ie, my liberty outweighs your pursuit of happiness). This holds true as much for cloning the IBM bios to cloning the Unix OS to cloning a lowly game protocol.
If you were truly fighting a civil war, you'd almost certainly be dead before they arrest you. You keep saying that the majority (52%) of the US holds enough values in opposition to yours. How do you know this? Last I knew only around 51% of the population voted in the last election cycle. It's the fact that 49% of the population either has the apathy to not vote or the presumption that their candidate will win or lose without their vote mattering that is the base for which you should be going to.
I think it's a bad assumption to think that 52% of the US holds values opposite to you when the reality is that majority think both parties are so corrupt or so rigged that their vote no longer matters. It might seem stupid to try to raise an out of those who see futility and have cynical apathy, but as you say the corporate rule of the US perhaps has a lot to do with it as it seems to effect you as well. The real issue is to prove to people just how bad things really are such that they are finally willing to raise up arms and stop a corrupt government; ie, they're willing to die for the cause. It's very sad that those who were drafted did not do such, since the draft was clearly a violation of the 13th amendment, which is founded on the fact that everyone has a right to live. Government inaction can legally kill you, but government action cannot.
Whether you like it or not, Microsoft was convicted of using one monopoly to further their position in another market. As such, Microsoft is being punished. Now, this could mean Microsoft's exec would be thrown in jail. Or it could mean Microsoft would no longer be allowed to sell their products in the European Union. The EU decided punishment would be to release the specifications to their protocols such that competitors, such as free software, would be able to better able to compete against Microsoft; ie, it was the EU's way of indirectly punishing Microsoft.
Now, you may completely disagree with the laws of the EU, and if that's so, I wholly heartedly urge you to try to change them if you're a part of the EU. If Microsoft has any power to do so, I'm sure it's punishing for such. Until that day comes, though, either Microsoft can face the punishment and continue in the EU market, or they can leave and risk their assets being seized to pay for the fines for non-compliance. In some ways, I personally wish the EU had simply disincorporated MS (if only in recognition) and left all the executives up to the mercy of external lawsuits--I'm against limited liability anyways.
It is a right to speak. It is a natural right, at least in Europe, to copyright a work* and decide what is done with it. It's also equally a right to travel freely. All three of these rights can be restricted for a period of punishment after due process of law convicts someone of a crime. Obviously Microsoft has the choice to not cooperate. I just doesn't think it seems worth it to them.
PS - While Microsoft is trying to frame the debate in terms of source code, the fact is that the EU's requirement is to release protocol specifications. It's also required to make sure that such is available at a reasonable fee to those who wish to receive a copy of the specification. IIRC, they also can't demand unreasonable royalties on use of the specification. Because open source and free software are competitors, this effectively means they can't charge royalties and the upfront cost can't be that much. It also means that in all likelihood that a BSD group will implement the specification and release it under the BSD, allowing everyone a free copy. There doesn't seem any way out of this short of violate the ruling and picking up shop. This is just another desperate attempt out of it.
*Note: If this situation were happening in the US, the courts could just revoke the privilege of copyright. In the US, the Constitution is what establishes the power of Congress to legislate the privilege of copyright; such is obviously even more shakey ground than the EU.
Compatmentalising is not the only reason to run "hypervisors" (ick), or even the main reason.
Maybe not for Xen or most other hypervisors, but I'd guess it's the main reason Microsoft is doing it. I would guess that it was easier to write/buy a "hypervisor" than to fix XP and Longhorn to run under a compartmental system. Certainly, Microsoft may be looking in the far future so that when Windows Longhorn 2010 or whatever comes rolling out there will be the hypervisor to still run XP, but I'd assume Microsoft's current plan is more around running multiple Windows Longhorn Servers (and perhaps Windows 2003 if Longhorn Server is delayed for quite a while) to compete against IBM eSeries. And maybe it's also for easier admining of corporate desktops. I'd especially believe that if they have plans for a smart copy-on-write system (read, the virtualization layer does it at the file, not sector, layer so updates can still occur to the base image).
Like the summary explains, vfat (ie, fat) is used in all sorts of consumer electronic devices because it is (well, was) the most common filesystem for desktop users. Add to that, near ever desktop OS supports reading/writing fat and it's not much of a surprise that it'd be the common filesystem for ubiquity in data access on portable devices. The only other filesystem that'd make sense would be udf. But not every OS (read, Windows) readily supports that through usb, floppy, etc.
And if you wonder why they don't just use a data syncing program instead of exposing the filesystem itself to users, the simple answer is that it's much easier and desirable to the computer to just plug in a usb device anywhere and access it as a mass storage device than it is to have to install software everywhere for every device that you ever plan to connect to any computer you plan to use. Overall I like it this way since it means that if I'm willing to trade accessibility I can use whatever filesystem I please. But odds are I'll still use vfat because I really dislike the idea of not being able to access it wherever I go.
But once you know it is standard practice the court would probably rule that you weren't acting in good faith since you could easily avoid the issue by asking about a EULA before the purchase or by simply not buying the software.
I'm not sure I understand what good faith means exactly, but my understand of it is that good faith means to have good intentions when it comes to following the spirit of a contract, not the actual wording. The problem is, sale of a copy of a copyrighted work isn't something uniquely new to software. Even though it is true that it's now common standard to include an EULA with software, I don't think that modifying the software is a violation of good faith.
Here's why. EULAs aren't a new concept. The same idea was tried back in the 20s by book publishers. It became quite common for this EULAs to be attached to the inside cover of the book. And at that time, the courts struct down the whole EULAs in books.
"Why?" you might ask. The courts recognized a concept called First Sale Doctrine. In a nut shell, it means that buying something implies the right to use it. It's for this reason that software companies (though not retailers) have repeatedly tried to talk about "licens(e)"ing boxed software. But, the fact is, boxed software is clearly a sale. As such, it's questionable that even if you did agree to a fair EULA* that it'd be enforceable.
But take it a step further and completely circumvent ever agreeing to the EULA, and it seems even more difficult to somehow claim that the user is somehow covered under the EULA. The claim that "good faith" is somehow a basis for why such a defense wouldn't work seems silly. It's that sort of logic that would indicate that, for example, it's unnecessary to sign a car rental agreement/contract because everyone should just automatically realize that they're bound by such a contract after they hand over the money. Claiming that you being able to get a refund basically opens the flood for every single manufacturer of every good to retroactive force requirements with the option to comply or return the product for a full refund. The simple fact is, one should realize that most companies are assholic enough to try such, so going along with whatever they say should in theory be "acting in good faith".
This idea that copyright is the only law that applies to software is FOSS wet dream.
Obviously not. There's also the 1st amendment (a law to limit govt), libel, slander, fraud, trademark, copyright, patent, and any sort of contract you can manage to link to software. Of course none of those matter to you the end user if you're being selling a copy of a copyrighted work. If you're redistributing under a license, then obviously the whole list of laws can go into effect. It's the understanding that software is speech and copyrightable that is the basis upon with FOSS builds their ideals precisely because it's the one thing assured to occur whenever you receive a copy of software. If you can find some actual law that contradicts how much software is based in speech, I'd welcome the opportunity to read it.
*One of the requirements of a valid contract/license is the concept of consideration. In simple terms, both sides give up something in return for something else. Contracts are simply a way of commiting a non-standard sale, usually in writing. Without an EULA giving the user something, then the user giving up something in return is unfair. You'll notice that even in the simplest of court settlements where one side is basically giving in completely to the other side for reduced damages that the other side will always end up trading some trifle object in return, even if it's only $1. Given that First Sale Doctrine restates the innate right to use what you bought, I'd love to know what good faith there actually is in giving up some rights, like the right to sue for damages from defective software, for nothing in return.
And before you claim things like protection from libel or
It looks like you make these changes before you accept the EULA I wonder if you could use that for an angle.
I absolutely agree with you. While courts have ruled that agreeing to an EULA by signing it is an acceptable to form a contract, until you actually sign the contract you can do whatever is legal under copyright to the work. This obviously includes modifying the work; imagine the stupidity of an author suing you for writing into a copy of his book.
But, extending that even further, there's no logical reason why you couldn't modify the EULA displaying program such that agreeing or disagreeing with it is sufficient for the program to continue to install. Again with the author analogy, it's like there being "EULA included" on the cover of the book, the EULA being on the inside front cover, and your choices being to rip up the contract or sign it. In reality, the only reason any sane person would sign such a contract is if it gave you things beyond what you're already intrinsicly entitled to (notice, copyright covers distribution and performance, not use). So, the idea that one could somehow technologically force people to sign a contract to use something they already have a right to use is ludicrous.
It's only now because counteracting an EULA is so much work and so few people get punished for violating an EULA now that so little effort is put into trying to circumvent such. It's not like most people are going to be able to sue MS and win when it comes to damages to faulty software even if they didn't sign the EULA, if only for lack of funds. In any case, as you sign the EULA after the modification, logically you're agreeing to terms under the modified version, so this automatic pairing removes any possibility of violating the EULA.
Intel did the same thing with 486SX processors (turning of the FPU, though I've heard part of this was the frequency of bad FPUs) and the 487 (a 486DX that turns off the 486SX). Intel and AMD do it all the time when they underclock chips to meet demand. False advertising would be lying what the product is available to do, not what the product is capable of doing. So, as much as it might seem scummy to only have a two byte difference to differentiate products, it'd be legal. Of course, it sounds like some programs are left off of the XP Home CD, so it's a bit more than two bytes for the whole thing.
Apparently L1 Cache accesses are as fast as register accesses on Intel chips. Thus, 512KB of L1 Cache translates to 128K 32-bit registers available for the CPU. That's plenty of registers.
Not exactly. Like others have stated, at least one side of the math has to be stuck in a register. Couple this with there being less physical registers than these virtual registers that you need, and you're talking about caching in-out registers as need be. For some algorithms, that's no big deal. But you'd be amazed at how quickly the math spills into many registers. This is why that per mHz RISC processors, with many more registers, tend to easily beat CISC processors often by a factor of 2. Besides, accessing the L1 cache is flukish. There's only so much that can be done to lock the registers into memory. And when you do, you've got to access them with extra-long instructions (32-bit addressing + opcode + other operand(s)) which further sucks down the efficiency of memory throughput/instruction cache size.
Aside from this, CPU registers are heavily renamed (remapped) to a whole host of hidden registers to improve parallelism. Essentially, the old AX, BX, CX, DX register model is is simply the public representation of the CPU architecture, while behind the scenes things are very much more RISC like in their implementation.
True. And with something like the Athlon's multiple apu/fpu pipes there's the supposed potential of 200% added performance over what the apparent clock rating would indicate (ie, such should mean that Athlons should be 50% faster than PPC). Of course, real figures are closer to 30% to 100% (ie, 65% to 100% of PPC per clock). This has a lot to do with, again, the caching-like behavior compiler code spits out. This is ignoring simd.
In any case, given the 0.5 GHz to 1.5 GHz advantage that Intel CPUs have over the current PPC chips, it's entirely likely that native PPC code written for OSX could run quite well on a JIT compiler on x86.
Yea, I don't doubt the CPU will be doable. But what about the rest of the hardware? Qemu's non-hand-optimized x86 on x86 system emulator has all sorts of performance issues when it comes to the video card emulation and the ide emulation. Of course, I'm sure that if Apple is planning on such they'll spend a lot of time getting the performance to be more reasonable.
So, I don't think the question really is whether or not it's doable or even if it the result will at all be usable. The things that make it usable are the things like fast response to keyboard, a quick display, and "fast" disk access. But, odds are that the virtual CPU will have a lower MIPs rating than a PPC CPU. You have to figure in that even if somehow you could get a 1:1 mapping for all PPC instructions and keep all the instructions roughly the same size to remove any extra bandwidth needs that the actual translation takes enough time fetching and processing on its own to greatly negate the extra Hz available.
It's in this that I think your Dynamo reference is lacking. While Dynamo might have been able to see a 20% improvement in some programs, actually trying to pull off profiling across an entire system to optimize would be near madness; only a handful of programs are likely to see a real improvement with profiling, while the majority are likely to be slower. This is mostly because profiling is extra work and won't necessarily do the best job. Even if it does, the actual profiling work might counteract this. Something like HLE, with a static list of known constructs, is probably a better trade-off. I'd be amazed that even with this that top of the line x86 32-bit would be any faster than top of the line Apple PPC.
It's a lot like capitalism- in a truly free market, businesses that are clearly doomed to failure from the start are not given capital to work with in the first place.
No. In a truly free market, businesses that are clearly doomed to failure are not *specifically* given capital to work. Those who wish to run the business can still get loans or use their own money to finance a doomed venture. It's only because it's a doomed venture that the waste is minimized. There's no single person/govt who stops them.
But there is plenty of evidence to support the conclusion that plant suffering and animal suffering are not the same, and every reason to believe that animals, particularly vertebrates, and especially mammals are capable of emotion and great suffering which we would not want inflicted upon ourselves.
No kidding. And I'm still an omnivore. If you noticed, I'm still not a vegan. The qualifier for when intentionally creating life is unacceptable to me isn't when I know the life will end in a cruel way. If that were the case, I'd be a fruitarian and trying to avoid killing things. Instead, I was stating that I don't see a reason to unnecessarily cause waste.
It always disturbs me that so many pro-lifers are so inconsistent that they claim to support a "culture of life" while ignoring the suffering of fellow animals, supporting the dealth penalty when it has been shown to have little deterring effect, and ignoring the suffering of their fellow man.
Well, good for you, but I'm not one of them. I don't support the death penalty now because it's not cost effective. The thing is, the death penalty is for people who have so abused the life of another that society has decided to forfeit their life. The decision to let them waste away in jail or to kill them right off only seems a moot one. That being said, I dislike the idea of men suffering. But punishment isn't a deterrent. It's an attempt to directly stop further injustice.
It's "we care about your rights as an individual if you haven't yet been born, or if you're a persistent vegetative state, but everything in between, you're on your own!
I care about the rights of everyone. Beyond that, I find it amoral to have vast wealth and let starve those who through which can be fed. That doesn't mean I think government should step in and solve the problem. I think it means that people should share more, even when they aren't basking in wealth. And it means that more should unionize to avoid circumstances where it's repeatedly necessary to rely on others to survive.
I don't consider it reasonable to expect all sexually mature adults to abstain from sex unless they're willing to have a child should the wheel of chance happen to not fall in their favor.
If all responsible sexually mature adults that didn't want to have a child actually become sterilized through a reversible procedure, perhaps then abstinence wouldn't be necessary.
>And there's plenty of evidence that thievery in the long term is disadvantageous to society. We tend to arrest thieves. We also give warnings if you make a small mistake like shop lift.
That analogy is not comparable or analogous in any way. Thievery is clearly detrimental to society and our ideas of property, and one who is guilty of theivery is still one capable of much suffering, and still may have other traits that would be advantageous to society. a 3-month old fetus is not capable of suffering, and if undesired presents a significant risk to society
My point was more that while a few abortions in the rare circumstance where all other preventions failed might not be a big deal, repeatedly abortions or doing it on selective factors starts to go beyond simply making a want to/don't want to have a child decision is very different. It seems more heinous to me to selectively kill a child than to kill all or not because of genetics.
What is the point of having children, and really anything else we do here if it is not to make every effort to maximize our long-term survival and prosperity as a species?
Actually, the point of having a child is to selfishly try to propagate one's own genetic line as far as possible. It's only because most everyone else is just as determined to do the same thing that as a whole it maximizes the long-term survivability of the species. Think how the invisible hand of capitalism works.
I'm saying there is reasonable evidence to conclude that this electrochemical computational phenomenon we call "life" does not develop beyond that of a very rudimentary organism until around halfway in the pregnancy, and there is some evidence which shows that giving people the option to do so greatly improves the peace and and quality of life in a community, which in turn increases long-term survivability and prosperity of the species.
Oh, so as long we can build some justification to end define level of development, it's okay to then try to weed out some for the benefit of the society? How is this not like killing a 10 year old that's got a negative genetic defect? Or do they have to not be talking yet for you to think it's okay?
But are you seriously not able to distinguish between leaving a baby to the wolves and destroying what is clearly a non-sentient mass of tissue? It's significantly less sentient than that animal you just ate was. I don't suppose you're a vegan?
Distinguishing between a human and a wolf does not give justification for having some innate right to kill one over the other. Instead, one only has to consider the waste of creating life just to destroy it. Being a vegan I'd be killing life as well (plants). It's only through something like being a fruitarian that I'd pose any chance of not killing life to eat. I'm an omnivore. And I have issue with the needless suffering of the animals I eat. At least those animals that are raised for food fill some useful purpose to other life.
It's not just for one's own selfish wants, but the benefit to society and the future of the species....ignoring that there being others with "defects" in society heightens one's compassion for others. That doesn't benefit society or the future of the species, right?
Do the benefits of a society without unwanted children outweigh giving you the satisfaction of making people suffer "the consequences of their actions"?
It doesn't satisfy me that others should suffer. It startles me that people should suffer for having to raise and care for another living being or the mere prospect of having to do so. If such people are really that fearful of the consequences of their actions, perhaps they should remove the 99.9% chance of it occuring (ie, a vasectomy). Yes, that still leaves risk, but perhaps then there'd be more compassion for them not wanting to have the child and there'd be more room for others who can't have children to adopt such a child.
So instead you'd have society suffer for years the consequences of irrational inaction?
And of course, there's always the final point. It's not necessary to have sex. If you don't want to risk having defective children, then you don't have to have kids. In turn, if you're willing to love your child regardless of any flaws that others see, then your child is not unwanted and their presence in the community will almost certainly advantage it.
No matter how much sex education you give people, some will still make mistakes or have accidents. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that unwanted and unprepared pregnancies often result in poverty, psychological problems, and crime.
And there's plenty of evidence that thievery in the long term is disadvantageous to society. We tend to arrest thieves. We also give warnings if you make a small mistake like shop lift.
There is also plenty of evidence that a large part
don't be so quick to judge those who don't make the same decisions as you. in other cultures a child born with such a defect would be left in the woods, or similarly cast out. there are many of us who would rather invest our parenting efforts and limited time raising a child who will grow up to be independent and able to carry on our genetic line.
Ie, you're more interested in creating a child to carry your genetics than in creating a life to love, hold, and care for. Perhaps I should ask why you care so much about your specific genetic line. Unless you can prove that your genetic line will be advantageous in the future (which you can't), I can't begin to see why you'd decide to go off and end a life to maximize the chances of creating the single life you're able to financially insure.
not all of us believe that that cluster of cells which has implanted itself in a woman's uterus has a soul, or is even yet a human being with all the rights that accompany such status, and would rather stop a frustrating and problematic situation before it develops into an irreversible one.
But is it alive?
don't get me wrong- i respect your choice. it's noble, and all that. but nobody should be forced to live with an avoidable anomalous situation and accept it as "god's will", as not everyone believes that.
So, if you could only find out your child had Down's syndrome at 10 years, would you be okay with people killing their children then? Would you require a doctor's note? What if it wasn't until 19 years that symptoms showed up?
I think it funny you'd decide to go through an act which you know risks the creation of an "anomalous" person, then bitch about being forced to live with an "unavoidable" situation. Unless God comes down and inseminates someone, I don't think "God's will" is involved.
Life is life. It's a sad state of affairs when people place their own selfish wants over the responsibility that goes with it, just like it's a sad state of affairs that people would inhibit risk reduction (ie, go out of their way to block contraceptive use). It's one thing to block the contract of sperm and egg (analogous to not having sex at all). It's quite another to, even with contraceptives, having egg and sperm unite, then deciding you're not able to take the responsibility.
If people were taught early on (ie, as soon as 2yrs old) where children come from, then no one could claim ignorance. And maybe then we'd have less need for abortions for people totally ill-equiped to handle raising a child. But in any other situations that don't involve the risk of death to the mother and/or child, I can't begin to imagine how you could feel justified in killing life purely because you're not happy with it. Killing is for survival.
It is not really secret if the searched person is ever told about it.
So by your logic, if you don't tell your child they were adopted until they are 18, it's not a secret that they were adopted?
If a terrorist is warned of a search, then they know that the game is up, and that they should flee and tell their co-conspirators to do the same.
The terrorist is only warned of a search so far as they the cops/fbi show up with a warrant and begin a search of the place. The fact is, the warrant and the arrest almost certainly will be occuring at the same time. The only reason this is not true is if there is an intention to spy on people, terrorist or not, and possibly bug equipment. Clearly one is no longer secure in their persons, houses, papers, or effects if this is true.
Warrants are for collecting evidence, not fishing for it. They're for strengthing a case, not creating one. If it's somehow possible that you can perform the warrant in front of the suspect and still manage to not arrest them, then there's something seriously wrong with your investigation. The answer isn't to allow secret searches. The answer is to build better cases in the first place.
Just a few small notes. One, I think you mean MS hasn't released a desktop OS for going on four years now (there's 2003 server). Second, now we finally know what the eXPerience is. It's MS giving people the middle finger cause they "know" everyone has to upgrade or fear spyware/viruses/etc. Okay, that'd mean MS was a bit psychic. I'm sure the plan was to unveil something else to entice people to upgrade.
Of course, with Linux and Firefox out there, giving people the middle finger like they are is really only going to motivate people to switch. The fact is, corporations are really in the best situation to switch. They'll need to retrain everyone anyways when they upgrade. Might as well used the savings in free software to supplement that as necessary and account for the rest as cost savings. Then everyone can give MS the middle finger back.
Why'd you bring up P2P users? P2P != copyright infringement. Never the less, it is times like this that I wish commercial piracy and non-commercial piracy were separated. It's a stretch to claim that commercial piracy does much to fund terrorist (like another child mentioned: protection money), but how would non-commercial piracy fund terrorist? A lower TCO somehow making more money available to terrorists? Well, if that were the logic, then Linux would surely fit in that too.
Of course put another way, all commercial piracy is related to terrorism is the same way in which selling drugs relates to terrorism: terrorist use capitalism to make money. If terrorist had a store open selling 'legitimate' goods, do you think there'd be news stories there too? Oh, of course.. Cause then it's charity that funds terrorism. Well, if we had a socialist state, then we'd just have to worry about terrorist states. Hmm.. This really sounds like you can't change the economic system to avoid terrorism.
Perhaps, then, there should work to avoid terrorism by removing the basis for terrorism, like the forcing of other countries to do what you want. Instead of telling Iran to not build nukes and making threats, perhaps we could become their friends so they don't feel a need to make them? I don't mean paying them off. I mean literally becoming their friends. And if they don't want to be friends and want to be left alone, we can leave them alone. It's only if they actually go about attacking another country preemptively or other selfish ends that we really need to use force; the terrorism that stems from that is unstoppable except on a case-by-case basis.
At least, that's my ideological take on the situation. It's a shame the US and Soviet Union so corrupted the lines of trust in the past.
Slashdot Mirror
A bit off-topic, but the same can be said for gun nuts. As frightening as guns are, the fact remains that just as hacking is an integral (and at times annoying) part of computer security, so are guns an integral party of real world security. Just like sanitation and medicine/one's immune system must work together. It's impossible to have a sterile, perfect world. In the long run, it's best to recognize this and be responsible in all parts that are necessary in layered security.
This is all well and good and high and mightly and noble... but it's also completely missing the point.
I don't believe so. The original poster was asking why he/she should be upset. I was explaining that fundamentally infringing the liberty of others is wrong.
What you have to remember with court cases
Yep, the evil courts..
like this, where you're moving in relatively uncharted waters
It's hardly uncharted. It's not like bnetd is the first clone of a product/protocol/etc.
and dealing with new technologies
Cause if it involves new technology we need a new law and new patents to cover it even if it's just to say "using ".
is that the result will generally come down to which side in the dispute can put the most persuasive case to a judge and/or jury who are not specialists in the field in question.
Perhaps. But that's mainly a fault of the system. And the system was constructed by people like the original poster who seem to think that it's hard to justify something because it could be used for infringement of liberty.
The fact is, the only real way to fix this system is to convince people that liberty is something that shouldn't be infringed. From that Senators, judges, etc will be elected to echo that belief. And then in the long scheme of things it won't require trying to use some sort of technicality to justify--it can kill more than good people, your honor--one's liberty. This is what the Ben Franklin quote about security and liberty is about.
In most circumstances, a private company is less wasteful. This is because most companies are not monopolies. You're right that executive salaries often are massive, but knowing that opens an opportunity for new companies to form and to advertise these lower prices. The same can be said for private companies who always by from some management's nephews. This all ties into anonymity. While certainly the company is under no obligation to inform everyone about their fuck-ups, there should be no legal punishment (ie, censorship) to release such information. And anonymity is important so that people feel free to voice the corruption without fear of losing their job. Of course, while not just sell that information to a competitor or form your own company? The risk might be great, but so long as government isn't involved all that waste can turn into higher employee salaries to lure away the host company's employees while still being cheaper than them. Then it's just a matter of informing the consumer of these facts. :)
Wrong. Just because 51% of 51% of people decide to fund a project doesn't mean that the other ~74% should be forced to fund as well. Just as well, if 90% of people wanted this, that doesn't mean the other 10% should be forced to fund as well. Government is in place to maintain the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness by protecting the abuses of other people. When it starts stepping in and becoming the abuser on behalf of the people, it's no longer a fit government. Hell, if 50% of people really want to fund research, they're obviously free to do it themselves. But there's nothing moral about forcing the other 50% to contribute.
If your arguments are true then American health care should be better than in countries that have a publicly provided health service
:)
Not necessarily. That's the irony of the American system. It's so corrupt right now that it's already beaten out the wholly public health care systems in other country. What do I mean by that? On the one hand, the US pays subsidies to pharmaceutical companies. On the other hand, the US pays out more per capita on health care than the UK--the US doesn't spend it on everyone, though. As I recall, healthcare in the US is almost twice as much in the US than the UK. Obviously funneling money to medical companies then paying about lots more than what other governments pay for those on medicare/medicaid is just a huge funneling of tax payer money into medical companies. Now, maybe some of this somehow trickles into new treatments that are cheaper in other countries because they don't have to do all the R&D, but a large part of that is just another way to hide pork spending being funneled to a certain industries.
Of course, even if all of the above were not true, it's possible that the public health care system would be cheaper for a while. It'd be in the long term that there'd be the tyranny, the revolts, etc. The US just happens to have a hybrid system that went corrupt a lot faster. Perhaps that's because it was hybrid.
So, people should form health care unions or scientific research unions. To a certain extent it's been shown that people are willing to do the latter, SETI@home. What makes you think that it'd be impossible to convince a group of people to fund research that would help everyone? Or is it simply because there's no way a person would willingly fund a project that might somehow help others without them contributing? Look at collaborative GPLed projects that shows how untrue that is; realize a lot of research would make patents or copyrighted documents that will allow for a GPL-like license to cover access.
But yes, of course, government is the one and only answer. Screw pushing for any other ideas because that'd require way too much continuous effort. Let's push everything into government. I mean, heck, if a web server in the kernel is a good idea, then surely government funded scientific research is stellar.
Let me ask yo ua question: why must everything be about profit? Why can some things not be done simply because it is the right thing to do?
Not everything must be about profit. Things should be done because they're the right thing to do. That doesn't mean it's okay to force people to do the right thing. A Libertarian and a Conservative aren't the same things. Conservatives care about money. Libertarians care about liberty. Sure there might be lots of SOB Libertarians who wouldn't help you if you're in need (hardly a Libertarian-centric trait), but some of us just want to help you because we think it's the right thing to do, not because we have the choice of helping or punishment*; when you receive charity from ones you love and care for it is quite different from a check from the government.
So, maybe it is a bit delusional to think everyone will do the right thing (I don't believe that's true). But doing something which is clearly not right (punishing* people for not helping) obviously isn't a solution.
*The punishment I speak of is through government force, be it through the taking of money or the imprisonment for failure to comply. Social punishment (ie, not talking to them, trying to make them feel shame for not being helpful, etc) is certainly fine because they can ignore you; of course that risks burning bridges, but it's their right to take such risks.
Libertarians argue, for instance, that there should be no public health care and that people should have to pay.
Yep.
Ignoring the fact that it is rather inhumane to demand payment for healing someone, this results in poor people suffering as they cannot afford medical bills.
Possibly. There is also charity.
What, exactly, is wrong with a government monopoly over this?
There's at least four problems with this. One, you don't control how your money is spent. Two, government is much more wasteful than an informed consumer. Three, by shirking off medical matters to government one no longer feels compelled to offer charity to others. There's always the excuse that the government is funding medical matters, so why help? Fourth, when the government ends up becoming tied up with medical companies (for example, look at pharmaceutical companies in the US) it's incredibly difficult to excise the corruption and restore the nominally overflated rate of government decisions.
By promoting private health care, libertarians are, in effect, causing illness and lowering the life expectency of fellow human beings.
Ah, I didn't realize that private health care caused illnes. Perhaps you meant promotes illness?
I simply say, put yourself in their shoes.
I'll put myself in their shoes. And I'll be incredibly pissed off because service X is considered too expensive with my HMO plan and my family can't pay for it and there's no time to have a charity drive. Or maybe it isn't considered too expensive, but I'll spend the rest of my life paying off medical bills. Of course, in a public health care system, I'd just die (I doubt service X would be available readily, if at all, under public health care).
Of course, that's also the option of death in private health care if I can't find a hospital to take care of me when I can't pay. But, that really comes down to hospitals having the charity to treat those who are in need even when they can't pay. That's just as true in a public health care system. The government can't with the wave of a magic wand or any fixed amount of value in money make everyone better. As much as I fear dying, I'd rather die than see a lot of people needlessly throw their money (ie, their time and energy) on a hopeless case because they're unwilling to admit that people do eventually die and there are limits where one should try. Of course below that limit, I hope that they have the compassion to freely help me if I am unable to pay. But how can I demand that by force of others?
I mean, yes, I know the DMCA is a "bad thing". However, it does seem to me that the only practical purpose of the whole bnetd thing was to allow people to play pirated copies of Blizzard games online.
And VCRs are only used for piracy. And P2P is only used for piracy. And how dare you buy a Gameboy Advance flash cart since that's totally for piracy too.
Blizzard's own battle.net system has always seemed a good system to me; it's fast, it's free (unless you include WoW) and I haven't noticed serious reliability problems since shortly after the Diablo 2 launch.
Woopie. It's fast and free. So?
Maybe I've just got the wrong end of the stick here (and I'd be happy to be corrected if I have), but is this a case of the "good guys" picking the wrong battle to fight over digital rights? I mean, it would be easier to fight the DMCA on terms that would make it easier to convince the educated (but non-techie) public, as well as lawmakers, if we weren't using a program whose main purpose in the wild is always going to be the circumvention of legitimate copy protection as the test-bed?
Ah, of course. Let's only fight a few battles that are really wrong. Hell, the whole legal system should work like that. Why go after thieves when there are rapists? And hell, why go after rapists when there are child murderers? Yes, let's do that.
Okay, I've trolled enough. I think going back to the VCR example might very well be a prime reason of what the problem is. When the VCR came out, there was already a laserdisc-like system setup for the movie industry to sell movies. It worked. It wasn't free (though you could claim it was reasonably priced). And certainly this knew VCR invention would allow rampant piracy.
Now, I should stop at this point to point out how you seem be following the logic of judges of the time (and ironically how judges use the same logic now for p2p). You see, the judges of the time didn't go "Hey, a VCR is technology, just like a gun or a knife. Sure, they can be misused, but the law is here to stop misusings, not tools of such." Instead, they tried to normalize what effect it would have on society to justify why VCRs should be okay.
But don't you see, that this is the same logic that allowed for Prohibition (well, and a large temporary support for it). Prohibition, though, didn't solve social ills. It just made elements of it more hidden and more violent. So, while certainly those who supported Prohibition had a somewhat noble goal--getting drunk daily isn't good for you--they decided to go about it by forcing their will on others instead of trying to convince others to follow their way. Of course, they probably did this knowing that it'd take the force of law (ie, cops) to get a lot of people to comply.
The US is founded on the idea of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So long as enough people hold on to these ideals, society will survive without needing Draconian laws to stop the latest "social ill". And if enough people don't hold on to these ideals, we're fucked already. Turning the country into a totalitarian regime which tries to control society or think for society only creates a totalitarian regime.
So, in closing, the reason you should be upset about the whole case is that a company has decided that they don't like what someone else is writing. And it looks like the government might step in and stop them. It doesn't matter how dubious, obscene, or likely to incite societal decay those writings are, no matter how much there exists another free or "better" alternative. People are free to make tools that can harm. And people can choose to harm themselves or others and be held responsible when they truly infringe the life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness--that last one is vague, but, oh well--over the others infringing of their own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (ie, my liberty outweighs your pursuit of happiness). This holds true as much for cloning the IBM bios to cloning the Unix OS to cloning a lowly game protocol.
If you were truly fighting a civil war, you'd almost certainly be dead before they arrest you. You keep saying that the majority (52%) of the US holds enough values in opposition to yours. How do you know this? Last I knew only around 51% of the population voted in the last election cycle. It's the fact that 49% of the population either has the apathy to not vote or the presumption that their candidate will win or lose without their vote mattering that is the base for which you should be going to.
I think it's a bad assumption to think that 52% of the US holds values opposite to you when the reality is that majority think both parties are so corrupt or so rigged that their vote no longer matters. It might seem stupid to try to raise an out of those who see futility and have cynical apathy, but as you say the corporate rule of the US perhaps has a lot to do with it as it seems to effect you as well. The real issue is to prove to people just how bad things really are such that they are finally willing to raise up arms and stop a corrupt government; ie, they're willing to die for the cause. It's very sad that those who were drafted did not do such, since the draft was clearly a violation of the 13th amendment, which is founded on the fact that everyone has a right to live. Government inaction can legally kill you, but government action cannot.
Whether you like it or not, Microsoft was convicted of using one monopoly to further their position in another market. As such, Microsoft is being punished. Now, this could mean Microsoft's exec would be thrown in jail. Or it could mean Microsoft would no longer be allowed to sell their products in the European Union. The EU decided punishment would be to release the specifications to their protocols such that competitors, such as free software, would be able to better able to compete against Microsoft; ie, it was the EU's way of indirectly punishing Microsoft.
Now, you may completely disagree with the laws of the EU, and if that's so, I wholly heartedly urge you to try to change them if you're a part of the EU. If Microsoft has any power to do so, I'm sure it's punishing for such. Until that day comes, though, either Microsoft can face the punishment and continue in the EU market, or they can leave and risk their assets being seized to pay for the fines for non-compliance. In some ways, I personally wish the EU had simply disincorporated MS (if only in recognition) and left all the executives up to the mercy of external lawsuits--I'm against limited liability anyways.
It is a right to speak. It is a natural right, at least in Europe, to copyright a work* and decide what is done with it. It's also equally a right to travel freely. All three of these rights can be restricted for a period of punishment after due process of law convicts someone of a crime. Obviously Microsoft has the choice to not cooperate. I just doesn't think it seems worth it to them.
PS - While Microsoft is trying to frame the debate in terms of source code, the fact is that the EU's requirement is to release protocol specifications. It's also required to make sure that such is available at a reasonable fee to those who wish to receive a copy of the specification. IIRC, they also can't demand unreasonable royalties on use of the specification. Because open source and free software are competitors, this effectively means they can't charge royalties and the upfront cost can't be that much. It also means that in all likelihood that a BSD group will implement the specification and release it under the BSD, allowing everyone a free copy. There doesn't seem any way out of this short of violate the ruling and picking up shop. This is just another desperate attempt out of it.
*Note: If this situation were happening in the US, the courts could just revoke the privilege of copyright. In the US, the Constitution is what establishes the power of Congress to legislate the privilege of copyright; such is obviously even more shakey ground than the EU.
Compatmentalising is not the only reason to run "hypervisors" (ick), or even the main reason.
Maybe not for Xen or most other hypervisors, but I'd guess it's the main reason Microsoft is doing it. I would guess that it was easier to write/buy a "hypervisor" than to fix XP and Longhorn to run under a compartmental system. Certainly, Microsoft may be looking in the far future so that when Windows Longhorn 2010 or whatever comes rolling out there will be the hypervisor to still run XP, but I'd assume Microsoft's current plan is more around running multiple Windows Longhorn Servers (and perhaps Windows 2003 if Longhorn Server is delayed for quite a while) to compete against IBM eSeries. And maybe it's also for easier admining of corporate desktops. I'd especially believe that if they have plans for a smart copy-on-write system (read, the virtualization layer does it at the file, not sector, layer so updates can still occur to the base image).
Like the summary explains, vfat (ie, fat) is used in all sorts of consumer electronic devices because it is (well, was) the most common filesystem for desktop users. Add to that, near ever desktop OS supports reading/writing fat and it's not much of a surprise that it'd be the common filesystem for ubiquity in data access on portable devices. The only other filesystem that'd make sense would be udf. But not every OS (read, Windows) readily supports that through usb, floppy, etc.
And if you wonder why they don't just use a data syncing program instead of exposing the filesystem itself to users, the simple answer is that it's much easier and desirable to the computer to just plug in a usb device anywhere and access it as a mass storage device than it is to have to install software everywhere for every device that you ever plan to connect to any computer you plan to use. Overall I like it this way since it means that if I'm willing to trade accessibility I can use whatever filesystem I please. But odds are I'll still use vfat because I really dislike the idea of not being able to access it wherever I go.
So,
So, surely this means that Nintendo is going to win out in the next console wars. Right? Right?
</overly-optimistic>
But once you know it is standard practice the court would probably rule that you weren't acting in good faith since you could easily avoid the issue by asking about a EULA before the purchase or by simply not buying the software.
I'm not sure I understand what good faith means exactly, but my understand of it is that good faith means to have good intentions when it comes to following the spirit of a contract, not the actual wording. The problem is, sale of a copy of a copyrighted work isn't something uniquely new to software. Even though it is true that it's now common standard to include an EULA with software, I don't think that modifying the software is a violation of good faith.
Here's why. EULAs aren't a new concept. The same idea was tried back in the 20s by book publishers. It became quite common for this EULAs to be attached to the inside cover of the book. And at that time, the courts struct down the whole EULAs in books.
"Why?" you might ask. The courts recognized a concept called First Sale Doctrine. In a nut shell, it means that buying something implies the right to use it. It's for this reason that software companies (though not retailers) have repeatedly tried to talk about "licens(e)"ing boxed software. But, the fact is, boxed software is clearly a sale. As such, it's questionable that even if you did agree to a fair EULA* that it'd be enforceable.
But take it a step further and completely circumvent ever agreeing to the EULA, and it seems even more difficult to somehow claim that the user is somehow covered under the EULA. The claim that "good faith" is somehow a basis for why such a defense wouldn't work seems silly. It's that sort of logic that would indicate that, for example, it's unnecessary to sign a car rental agreement/contract because everyone should just automatically realize that they're bound by such a contract after they hand over the money. Claiming that you being able to get a refund basically opens the flood for every single manufacturer of every good to retroactive force requirements with the option to comply or return the product for a full refund. The simple fact is, one should realize that most companies are assholic enough to try such, so going along with whatever they say should in theory be "acting in good faith".
This idea that copyright is the only law that applies to software is FOSS wet dream.
Obviously not. There's also the 1st amendment (a law to limit govt), libel, slander, fraud, trademark, copyright, patent, and any sort of contract you can manage to link to software. Of course none of those matter to you the end user if you're being selling a copy of a copyrighted work. If you're redistributing under a license, then obviously the whole list of laws can go into effect. It's the understanding that software is speech and copyrightable that is the basis upon with FOSS builds their ideals precisely because it's the one thing assured to occur whenever you receive a copy of software. If you can find some actual law that contradicts how much software is based in speech, I'd welcome the opportunity to read it.
*One of the requirements of a valid contract/license is the concept of consideration. In simple terms, both sides give up something in return for something else. Contracts are simply a way of commiting a non-standard sale, usually in writing. Without an EULA giving the user something, then the user giving up something in return is unfair. You'll notice that even in the simplest of court settlements where one side is basically giving in completely to the other side for reduced damages that the other side will always end up trading some trifle object in return, even if it's only $1. Given that First Sale Doctrine restates the innate right to use what you bought, I'd love to know what good faith there actually is in giving up some rights, like the right to sue for damages from defective software, for nothing in return.
And before you claim things like protection from libel or
It looks like you make these changes before you accept the EULA I wonder if you could use that for an angle.
I absolutely agree with you. While courts have ruled that agreeing to an EULA by signing it is an acceptable to form a contract, until you actually sign the contract you can do whatever is legal under copyright to the work. This obviously includes modifying the work; imagine the stupidity of an author suing you for writing into a copy of his book.
But, extending that even further, there's no logical reason why you couldn't modify the EULA displaying program such that agreeing or disagreeing with it is sufficient for the program to continue to install. Again with the author analogy, it's like there being "EULA included" on the cover of the book, the EULA being on the inside front cover, and your choices being to rip up the contract or sign it. In reality, the only reason any sane person would sign such a contract is if it gave you things beyond what you're already intrinsicly entitled to (notice, copyright covers distribution and performance, not use). So, the idea that one could somehow technologically force people to sign a contract to use something they already have a right to use is ludicrous.
It's only now because counteracting an EULA is so much work and so few people get punished for violating an EULA now that so little effort is put into trying to circumvent such. It's not like most people are going to be able to sue MS and win when it comes to damages to faulty software even if they didn't sign the EULA, if only for lack of funds. In any case, as you sign the EULA after the modification, logically you're agreeing to terms under the modified version, so this automatic pairing removes any possibility of violating the EULA.
Intel did the same thing with 486SX processors (turning of the FPU, though I've heard part of this was the frequency of bad FPUs) and the 487 (a 486DX that turns off the 486SX). Intel and AMD do it all the time when they underclock chips to meet demand. False advertising would be lying what the product is available to do, not what the product is capable of doing. So, as much as it might seem scummy to only have a two byte difference to differentiate products, it'd be legal. Of course, it sounds like some programs are left off of the XP Home CD, so it's a bit more than two bytes for the whole thing.
I'd recommend gcc be entered in, seeing how much software wouldn't be here today without it. Sadly, it'll be the Han Solo award all over again.
Apparently L1 Cache accesses are as fast as register accesses on Intel chips. Thus, 512KB of L1 Cache translates to 128K 32-bit registers available for the CPU. That's plenty of registers.
Not exactly. Like others have stated, at least one side of the math has to be stuck in a register. Couple this with there being less physical registers than these virtual registers that you need, and you're talking about caching in-out registers as need be. For some algorithms, that's no big deal. But you'd be amazed at how quickly the math spills into many registers. This is why that per mHz RISC processors, with many more registers, tend to easily beat CISC processors often by a factor of 2. Besides, accessing the L1 cache is flukish. There's only so much that can be done to lock the registers into memory. And when you do, you've got to access them with extra-long instructions (32-bit addressing + opcode + other operand(s)) which further sucks down the efficiency of memory throughput/instruction cache size.
Aside from this, CPU registers are heavily renamed (remapped) to a whole host of hidden registers to improve parallelism. Essentially, the old AX, BX, CX, DX register model is is simply the public representation of the CPU architecture, while behind the scenes things are very much more RISC like in their implementation.
True. And with something like the Athlon's multiple apu/fpu pipes there's the supposed potential of 200% added performance over what the apparent clock rating would indicate (ie, such should mean that Athlons should be 50% faster than PPC). Of course, real figures are closer to 30% to 100% (ie, 65% to 100% of PPC per clock). This has a lot to do with, again, the caching-like behavior compiler code spits out. This is ignoring simd.
In any case, given the 0.5 GHz to 1.5 GHz advantage that Intel CPUs have over the current PPC chips, it's entirely likely that native PPC code written for OSX could run quite well on a JIT compiler on x86.
Yea, I don't doubt the CPU will be doable. But what about the rest of the hardware? Qemu's non-hand-optimized x86 on x86 system emulator has all sorts of performance issues when it comes to the video card emulation and the ide emulation. Of course, I'm sure that if Apple is planning on such they'll spend a lot of time getting the performance to be more reasonable.
So, I don't think the question really is whether or not it's doable or even if it the result will at all be usable. The things that make it usable are the things like fast response to keyboard, a quick display, and "fast" disk access. But, odds are that the virtual CPU will have a lower MIPs rating than a PPC CPU. You have to figure in that even if somehow you could get a 1:1 mapping for all PPC instructions and keep all the instructions roughly the same size to remove any extra bandwidth needs that the actual translation takes enough time fetching and processing on its own to greatly negate the extra Hz available.
It's in this that I think your Dynamo reference is lacking. While Dynamo might have been able to see a 20% improvement in some programs, actually trying to pull off profiling across an entire system to optimize would be near madness; only a handful of programs are likely to see a real improvement with profiling, while the majority are likely to be slower. This is mostly because profiling is extra work and won't necessarily do the best job. Even if it does, the actual profiling work might counteract this. Something like HLE, with a static list of known constructs, is probably a better trade-off. I'd be amazed that even with this that top of the line x86 32-bit would be any faster than top of the line Apple PPC.
It's a lot like capitalism- in a truly free market, businesses that are clearly doomed to failure from the start are not given capital to work with in the first place.
No. In a truly free market, businesses that are clearly doomed to failure are not *specifically* given capital to work. Those who wish to run the business can still get loans or use their own money to finance a doomed venture. It's only because it's a doomed venture that the waste is minimized. There's no single person/govt who stops them.
But there is plenty of evidence to support the conclusion that plant suffering and animal suffering are not the same, and every reason to believe that animals, particularly vertebrates, and especially mammals are capable of emotion and great suffering which we would not want inflicted upon ourselves.
No kidding. And I'm still an omnivore. If you noticed, I'm still not a vegan. The qualifier for when intentionally creating life is unacceptable to me isn't when I know the life will end in a cruel way. If that were the case, I'd be a fruitarian and trying to avoid killing things. Instead, I was stating that I don't see a reason to unnecessarily cause waste.
It always disturbs me that so many pro-lifers are so inconsistent that they claim to support a "culture of life" while ignoring the suffering of fellow animals, supporting the dealth penalty when it has been shown to have little deterring effect, and ignoring the suffering of their fellow man.
Well, good for you, but I'm not one of them. I don't support the death penalty now because it's not cost effective. The thing is, the death penalty is for people who have so abused the life of another that society has decided to forfeit their life. The decision to let them waste away in jail or to kill them right off only seems a moot one. That being said, I dislike the idea of men suffering. But punishment isn't a deterrent. It's an attempt to directly stop further injustice.
It's "we care about your rights as an individual if you haven't yet been born, or if you're a persistent vegetative state, but everything in between, you're on your own!
I care about the rights of everyone. Beyond that, I find it amoral to have vast wealth and let starve those who through which can be fed. That doesn't mean I think government should step in and solve the problem. I think it means that people should share more, even when they aren't basking in wealth. And it means that more should unionize to avoid circumstances where it's repeatedly necessary to rely on others to survive.
I don't consider it reasonable to expect all sexually mature adults to abstain from sex unless they're willing to have a child should the wheel of chance happen to not fall in their favor.
If all responsible sexually mature adults that didn't want to have a child actually become sterilized through a reversible procedure, perhaps then abstinence wouldn't be necessary.
>And there's plenty of evidence that thievery in the long term is disadvantageous to society. We tend to arrest thieves. We also give warnings if you make a small mistake like shop lift.
That analogy is not comparable or analogous in any way. Thievery is clearly detrimental to society and our ideas of property, and one who is guilty of theivery is still one capable of much suffering, and still may have other traits that would be advantageous to society. a 3-month old fetus is not capable of suffering, and if undesired presents a significant risk to society
My point was more that while a few abortions in the rare circumstance where all other preventions failed might not be a big deal, repeatedly abortions or doing it on selective factors starts to go beyond simply making a want to/don't want to have a child decision is very different. It seems more heinous to me to selectively kill a child than to kill all or not because of genetics.
Yes! I think you're getting it now- a 3-month old
What is the point of having children, and really anything else we do here if it is not to make every effort to maximize our long-term survival and prosperity as a species?
...ignoring that there being others with "defects" in society heightens one's compassion for others. That doesn't benefit society or the future of the species, right?
Actually, the point of having a child is to selfishly try to propagate one's own genetic line as far as possible. It's only because most everyone else is just as determined to do the same thing that as a whole it maximizes the long-term survivability of the species. Think how the invisible hand of capitalism works.
I'm saying there is reasonable evidence to conclude that this electrochemical computational phenomenon we call "life" does not develop beyond that of a very rudimentary organism until around halfway in the pregnancy, and there is some evidence which shows that giving people the option to do so greatly improves the peace and and quality of life in a community, which in turn increases long-term survivability and prosperity of the species.
Oh, so as long we can build some justification to end define level of development, it's okay to then try to weed out some for the benefit of the society? How is this not like killing a 10 year old that's got a negative genetic defect? Or do they have to not be talking yet for you to think it's okay?
But are you seriously not able to distinguish between leaving a baby to the wolves and destroying what is clearly a non-sentient mass of tissue? It's significantly less sentient than that animal you just ate was. I don't suppose you're a vegan?
Distinguishing between a human and a wolf does not give justification for having some innate right to kill one over the other. Instead, one only has to consider the waste of creating life just to destroy it. Being a vegan I'd be killing life as well (plants). It's only through something like being a fruitarian that I'd pose any chance of not killing life to eat. I'm an omnivore. And I have issue with the needless suffering of the animals I eat. At least those animals that are raised for food fill some useful purpose to other life.
It's not just for one's own selfish wants, but the benefit to society and the future of the species.
Do the benefits of a society without unwanted children outweigh giving you the satisfaction of making people suffer "the consequences of their actions"?
It doesn't satisfy me that others should suffer. It startles me that people should suffer for having to raise and care for another living being or the mere prospect of having to do so. If such people are really that fearful of the consequences of their actions, perhaps they should remove the 99.9% chance of it occuring (ie, a vasectomy). Yes, that still leaves risk, but perhaps then there'd be more compassion for them not wanting to have the child and there'd be more room for others who can't have children to adopt such a child.
So instead you'd have society suffer for years the consequences of irrational inaction?
And of course, there's always the final point. It's not necessary to have sex. If you don't want to risk having defective children, then you don't have to have kids. In turn, if you're willing to love your child regardless of any flaws that others see, then your child is not unwanted and their presence in the community will almost certainly advantage it.
No matter how much sex education you give people, some will still make mistakes or have accidents. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that unwanted and unprepared pregnancies often result in poverty, psychological problems, and crime.
And there's plenty of evidence that thievery in the long term is disadvantageous to society. We tend to arrest thieves. We also give warnings if you make a small mistake like shop lift.
There is also plenty of evidence that a large part
don't be so quick to judge those who don't make the same decisions as you. in other cultures a child born with such a defect would be left in the woods, or similarly cast out. there are many of us who would rather invest our parenting efforts and limited time raising a child who will grow up to be independent and able to carry on our genetic line.
Ie, you're more interested in creating a child to carry your genetics than in creating a life to love, hold, and care for. Perhaps I should ask why you care so much about your specific genetic line. Unless you can prove that your genetic line will be advantageous in the future (which you can't), I can't begin to see why you'd decide to go off and end a life to maximize the chances of creating the single life you're able to financially insure.
not all of us believe that that cluster of cells which has implanted itself in a woman's uterus has a soul, or is even yet a human being with all the rights that accompany such status, and would rather stop a frustrating and problematic situation before it develops into an irreversible one.
But is it alive?
don't get me wrong- i respect your choice. it's noble, and all that. but nobody should be forced to live with an avoidable anomalous situation and accept it as "god's will", as not everyone believes that.
So, if you could only find out your child had Down's syndrome at 10 years, would you be okay with people killing their children then? Would you require a doctor's note? What if it wasn't until 19 years that symptoms showed up?
I think it funny you'd decide to go through an act which you know risks the creation of an "anomalous" person, then bitch about being forced to live with an "unavoidable" situation. Unless God comes down and inseminates someone, I don't think "God's will" is involved.
Life is life. It's a sad state of affairs when people place their own selfish wants over the responsibility that goes with it, just like it's a sad state of affairs that people would inhibit risk reduction (ie, go out of their way to block contraceptive use). It's one thing to block the contract of sperm and egg (analogous to not having sex at all). It's quite another to, even with contraceptives, having egg and sperm unite, then deciding you're not able to take the responsibility.
If people were taught early on (ie, as soon as 2yrs old) where children come from, then no one could claim ignorance. And maybe then we'd have less need for abortions for people totally ill-equiped to handle raising a child. But in any other situations that don't involve the risk of death to the mother and/or child, I can't begin to imagine how you could feel justified in killing life purely because you're not happy with it. Killing is for survival.
It is not really secret if the searched person is ever told about it.
So by your logic, if you don't tell your child they were adopted until they are 18, it's not a secret that they were adopted?
If a terrorist is warned of a search, then they know that the game is up, and that they should flee and tell their co-conspirators to do the same.
The terrorist is only warned of a search so far as they the cops/fbi show up with a warrant and begin a search of the place. The fact is, the warrant and the arrest almost certainly will be occuring at the same time. The only reason this is not true is if there is an intention to spy on people, terrorist or not, and possibly bug equipment. Clearly one is no longer secure in their persons, houses, papers, or effects if this is true.
Warrants are for collecting evidence, not fishing for it. They're for strengthing a case, not creating one. If it's somehow possible that you can perform the warrant in front of the suspect and still manage to not arrest them, then there's something seriously wrong with your investigation. The answer isn't to allow secret searches. The answer is to build better cases in the first place.
Just a few small notes. One, I think you mean MS hasn't released a desktop OS for going on four years now (there's 2003 server). Second, now we finally know what the eXPerience is. It's MS giving people the middle finger cause they "know" everyone has to upgrade or fear spyware/viruses/etc. Okay, that'd mean MS was a bit psychic. I'm sure the plan was to unveil something else to entice people to upgrade.
Of course, with Linux and Firefox out there, giving people the middle finger like they are is really only going to motivate people to switch. The fact is, corporations are really in the best situation to switch. They'll need to retrain everyone anyways when they upgrade. Might as well used the savings in free software to supplement that as necessary and account for the rest as cost savings. Then everyone can give MS the middle finger back.
Why'd you bring up P2P users? P2P != copyright infringement. Never the less, it is times like this that I wish commercial piracy and non-commercial piracy were separated. It's a stretch to claim that commercial piracy does much to fund terrorist (like another child mentioned: protection money), but how would non-commercial piracy fund terrorist? A lower TCO somehow making more money available to terrorists? Well, if that were the logic, then Linux would surely fit in that too.
Of course put another way, all commercial piracy is related to terrorism is the same way in which selling drugs relates to terrorism: terrorist use capitalism to make money. If terrorist had a store open selling 'legitimate' goods, do you think there'd be news stories there too? Oh, of course.. Cause then it's charity that funds terrorism. Well, if we had a socialist state, then we'd just have to worry about terrorist states. Hmm.. This really sounds like you can't change the economic system to avoid terrorism.
Perhaps, then, there should work to avoid terrorism by removing the basis for terrorism, like the forcing of other countries to do what you want. Instead of telling Iran to not build nukes and making threats, perhaps we could become their friends so they don't feel a need to make them? I don't mean paying them off. I mean literally becoming their friends. And if they don't want to be friends and want to be left alone, we can leave them alone. It's only if they actually go about attacking another country preemptively or other selfish ends that we really need to use force; the terrorism that stems from that is unstoppable except on a case-by-case basis.
At least, that's my ideological take on the situation. It's a shame the US and Soviet Union so corrupted the lines of trust in the past.