I highly doubt that the people who "wouldn't have given a damn" about DMCA before this incident are going to draw any connections between this incident and the DMCA. In their minds, DMCA is just about kids pirating music and movies, not about the larger issues.
The fact that scientific theories will change when new evidence is presented is a STRENGTH, not a weakness. It's evidence of the system WORKING.
A philosophy based on empirical knowlege THRIVES on revision just as much as a philosophy based on divinely revealed knowlege resists revision. Scientists LOVE it when there is a credible challenge to existing theories, because it means there is an oppertunity to learn a lot more.
This doesn't "blow what we knew out of the water." Yes, our idea of what exists in the universw has been revised, thus our theories of how it all formed need to be revised as well. However, it doesn't change our ideas about how gravity functions, or how electro-magintism works, or what the speed of light is, or what causes rain to fall. Our theories of "how things work" are robust enough that one part can take some serious shaking without disturbing the rest. Science is not threatened by taking a good hard look at what it assumed to be true and re-evaluating it.
I don't understand when people try to teach religion as science, because the debate isn't about what is scientifically true. The debate is "when strong empirical evidence conflicts with the literal interpretation of the Bible, which should be given more wieght?". Science (and the vast majority of religious people, who are non-literalists) say the empirical evidence, Bible-literalists say the Bible. It doesn't make sense for Bible-literalists to argue that empirical evidence supports their case, because they are ideologically bound to reject all empirical evidence EXCEPT when it agrees with the literal interpretation of the Bible. Therefore, they are not able (and have no desire ) to look at empirical evidence empirically. Which means what they are doing is NOT science. They are not making a scientific argument, they are making an episthemological one.
Scientific and empirical evidence supports the scientific and empirical point of view. A literal interpretation of the Bible supports a Bible iteralist view. Thus, when literalists try to support a "revealed knowlege" episthemological world-view using the language and evidence of an empirical/scientific episthemological world-view, they only reveal their ignorance of the latter.
The debate is an episthemological one. Empirical evidence clearly supports the scientits' view. The debate is as to whether empirical evidence is a valid way of determining what is true.
A few years ago I went to the parking lot, let myself into my locked car, turned over the ignition-- and then noticed that my upholstry was the wrong color. I stopped the car and got out-- only to see that MY car, with the correct uphostry and my junk in the back, was parked NEXT to it.
Our cars were the same make, same model, same exterior color-- and had the same damn lock & key. If the upholstry hadn't clued me off, I'd have happily driven off with someone else's car, and not noticed until I tried to get my stuff out of the trunk.
Exploring the Guniess Book of World Records sometime back in the 80's, I read that "Mohammed" was the most common first name in the world. (The most common last name was "Chang"-- we were speculating as to how many "Mohammed Chang"'s there might be...)
So, it's essentially like blocking payments to everyone in the English-speaking world named "Smith", because you once encountered someone named "Smith" who was a crook.
Not really. I just wish a few companies would start realizing that all these people out there tinkering with their stuff are enthusiasts, not terrorists
After all their pissing consumers off, this would be an ideal time to make nice and put a foot forward to explore user-run servers as a wave of new interest, rather than an assault upon their business model.
We're talking about the company that "protects" itself against music pirates by compromising the PC's of customers who legitimately purchaced new shrinkwraped music CDs. Pirates are completely unaffected, legitimate customers are punished.
You expect them to see reason with regard to "user-run servers"?
In two words, they propose to use web tools such as wiki and comment areas to let anyone involved in the patent world (inventors, lawyers, competitors...) comment and annotate pa
I really like this idea. The patent examiner can do his/her job as he/she is accustomed, but has access to much more information much more rapidly as to whether someone skilled in the field would find this invention "obvious" and whether there exists "prior art". A patent examiner can't be an expert at every subject that comes across their desk (nor can the patent office keep up with hiring experts in every new field as it is developed).
his proposal would take some of the discussion about prior art and obviousness back to BEFORE a decision is issued, thus BEFORE litigation is needed in order to be heard. Sure, there are likely to be a lot of useless (read: unsubstantiated) comments posted, but with good references ("See prior art here", or "this, this, and this indusry reference talk about similar things, indicating obviousness") could save insane amounts of money in needless litigation later.
P.S.-- thank you for not using that overused and annoying buzzword in your post.
If obvious patents aren't allowed, then IT companies will simply start burying the patent office in such detailed applications that they won't be able to declare them obvious. We are talking money here, lots and lots of money. There is no way that IT companies will roll over and stop patenting crap.
Most companies churning out patents are not patent trolls. Rather, they are acting defensively to avoid getting burned by patent trolls. They are not making money from the patent itself, or trying to-- they are just trying to prevent someone from derailing their business by instigating bogus patent-infringement suits.
IT companies would LOVE it if the bar on what was patentable was higher.
It's true that a higher bar doesn't make patent trolling impossible-- but it makes it harder, and slows it down. Thus it becomes less profitable, so fewer people / companies / divisions bother with it, and go back to sending Nigeria e-mails. This benefits everyone: IT companies (big and small), the patent office (which is less swamped), innovation in general.
Reading comment after comment about how this violates the core principals of the Internet (an obvious truth which I already agreed with) it's beginning to remind me of the cries of "Advertizing on the web?!?!?! But that goes against the core principles of the Internet!!!!)
I hope this can get stopped, rather than go from "unthinkable" to "Just the Way Things Are (TM)"
A PC is a personal computer - emphasis on computer. A thin client is a dumb terminal.
No. A thin client isn't a dumb terminal, it's just "intellectually challenged".
A "dumb terminal" has no processing power of it's own-- all it is is a monitor, a keybord, and a network connection. No hard drive, no CPU, nada.
A "thin client" is designed to work primarily across a network in a client/server environment, but has a bit of processing power of it's own, and a bit of hard-drive space. Little enough that it makes a really crappy stand-alone PC, but enough to help things along.
And as to your client-server horror story: if the plural of "anecdotes" is not "data", then a singular anecdote certainly doesn't prove a point. A bunch of hype about a particular thin client doesn't prove that it's a good idea, but a really bad experience with a really bad thin client system doesn't prove it's a bad idea, either. (Think of your favorite food dish. Now, imagine someone's only experience with that food dish was a single example cooked by me. They would tell you that you were crazy for liking that food dish, because they had it once, and it was horrible.)
I didn't RTFA, so I'm not going to try to judge this particular thin client. Thin clients in general are horrible if applied in a situation where people need to use real processing power, or if they are badly administered. (Your story sounds like it fit both those categories.) But if you have 100 people who only use word-processing, spreadsheets, and e-mail, then a well chosen and well-administered thin client system will be much more maintainable and reliable than a bunch of stand-alone boxes connected to the network.
This was exactly my take. It makes more sense to tell the actor that the "truth" is whatever the character beleives to be the truth-- regardless of whether that's what you have chosen for the objective truth.
Yes, if Decker is intended to be a replicant, Harrison Ford is certainly a good enough actor to play a replicant-who-beleives-himself-to-be-human properly even if he knew he was playing a replicant. But it still makes more sense, from a director's perspective, to tell the actor what the character beleives, rather than what you have chosen as the objective truth for the world you are creating. Why muddy the waters?
no wonder the USA legal system is so fucked if you can do no wrong, tell the truth, and still by charged money that is a significant part of your wages. whereas companies can provably break laws, be found guilty, and still be charged a meaningless fraction of their profit.
"...this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the corporations and by the corporations and for the corporations shall not perish from the earth..."
I don't see why this is a big deal. Average desktop users should not have admin rights -- no?
Fundamental security issue-- added layer of protection. Even if there is reason to give users Admin privliges to those boxes, they shouldn't be in Admin mode all the time-- you don't log in to Linux/Unix as Root to check e-mail and play NetHack. (At least I hope you dont...)
When I first installed XP on one of my boxes at home, (there were reasons to do so, I won't go into them here) the first thing I did after installing all the applications was to create myself a non-admin account, even though I was going to be the only person using the system. I only wanted to be in Admin when I intentionally wanted admin privleges.
After spending hours trying to get some very basic programs working in the #$%& non-admin account, I deleted it later that day. It wasn't worth the effort. As many others have mentioned-- I hope Microsoft developers DO start having to use non-admin modes, and that this encourages them to make it functional!
First, 502 people is not a statistically significant sample of US population.
Also, how did they "randomly" select these people? If they randomly chose people from their subscriber base, (for example), then the sample would be inherantly biased: IIRC, this is a very "conservative" newspaper.
I've been arguing for a long time that completely free and effectively unaccountable speech on-line, particularly when made anonymously, is not necessarily a good thing, and on balance it may do a lot more harm than good.[...]
freedom of speech is not an absolute right, and with that freedom when it does exist must come responsibility for what is spoken.[...]
It's a shame, but the simple truth is that while the unregulated nature of the Internet has been an advantage in developing it, it has also led to serious problems that, at current rates, will bring about its demise just as fast. I'd rather accept putting my name to my words and standing by my comments than the continued and increasing presence of viruses, [...]
So-- then can I presume that "Anonymous Brave Guy" is your actual, legal, name? Your parents must have had a really twisted sense of humor to name their kid "Anoynmous".
If I had known in 1990 that all my postings to Usenet would be publicly available many years after the fact, I might have thought twice before posting some of the articles I did, but now there are some postings from me around, that I am ashamed of 16 years later.
I am pretty sure, I am not the only one this has happened to.
Egads, no. I was going through a really strange period of my life in 96, and if I had any idea that posts I made then would not only be around, but actually searchable from vitually anywhere ten years later with no sign of going away....
Signed my own name to them, too-- because at the time it was considered unethical not to; I forget why. Just from a basic safety perspective, I'm amazed I bought into the "you should always use your own name" thing so strongly back then...
Fortunately, the posts I wrote take digging to find. If you just do a straight search for my first and last names on Usenet, you merely discover that there was once a (no joke!) professional billiards player with the same name as me who was freqently discussed on rec.sport.billiards and alt.sport.pool
But still. I wish I could erase all of my online presence from before I turned 25.
Some co-workers and I were discussing the other day how greatful we all are that blogging didn't exist when we were teenagers-- As embarassing as my undergrad usenet posts were, the stuff I (or any of the co-workers who weighed) would likely have blogged as teenagers would have been even more cringe-worthy. I have a feeling that in about 10 years there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth among people in their twenties and early thirties about what is availble via the Wayback Machine...
Apparently some systems were "tossed out" because they aren't stable enough (variable stars, strong gravity, etc).
Now, is it just me, or does the idea that life may well need some abnormal event to kick-start it in conflict with that very idea?
I'm going to hazard a guess: while system with an unstable star may produce a favorable enviornment for amino-acids to form into something resembling single-celled or other simple life forms, that's not something we're going to be able to detect all the way from our solar system, (not with current technology
We're most likely to actually detect life if it's been evolving for long enough to do something like broadcast "I love Lucy". And while it may not be impossible for such life to evolve in a system with an unstable star, the solar flares are likely to cause occational planet-scorching "reboots" to the evolution process that decrease the probability.
This isn't a list of all systems we think have the possibility of producing life, just of the ones most likely to evolve life that we can actually detect, so that we can check those systems first. It doesn't mean we never check the others, just that we conserve resources by beginning in the places most likely to produce results.
I once herd a NASA scientist give a response to such views.
His point was this: Like any other agency, NASA's biggest problem is the limited funding. If they released pictures that indicated something created by intelligent beings and asked to investigate further, the money would pour in. Thus they would have NO motiviation to keep such a find secret, and EVERY motivation to share it. Such a find would end their finantial difficulties for a very long time.
(After all, it's not like some unauthorized person is going to rush to the archaeological site to loot it or mess it up...)
Do the diversity forms for "race" on these rules say "pick only one"?
I have a close friend who loaths the "pick only one" census and diversity forms because a) they force her to lie, since to tell the truth she'd need to pick at least three, probably four and b) the decision of how to lie is charged, both politically and emotionally. She usually ends up choosing a different "race" each time she fills out one of those forms, because it feels more honest that way.
You can't create five or six broad categories of anything and expect that everyone will fit into exactly one category.
I'd be pretty surprised if you couldn't hack the thing to work as an ordinary GPS. They must have some kind of port for programming...
Wouldn't surprise me one bit. But if you wanted a GPS (and didn't care about legality), I'm sure there are more time-and-cost-effective ways of doing it than stealing and hacking into a pigeon's collar-- so I don't see this being a hot black market item.
Now, the hobbiest who wants to steal and hack one because it's pointless, but interesting-- that the birds might have to watch out for. But I don't see this device as being gee-whiz-nifty enough that vast unwashed hoards of geeks are going to make it open season on pigeons.
(Wouldn't be surprised if one or two fell into hacker hands, however)
Slashdot Mirror
I am Pentium of Borg. Division is futile. You will be approximated.
I highly doubt that the people who "wouldn't have given a damn" about DMCA before this incident are going to draw any connections between this incident and the DMCA. In their minds, DMCA is just about kids pirating music and movies, not about the larger issues.
Yeah, I hate it when my windshield rusts...
The fact that scientific theories will change when new evidence is presented is a STRENGTH, not a weakness. It's evidence of the system WORKING. A philosophy based on empirical knowlege THRIVES on revision just as much as a philosophy based on divinely revealed knowlege resists revision. Scientists LOVE it when there is a credible challenge to existing theories, because it means there is an oppertunity to learn a lot more. This doesn't "blow what we knew out of the water." Yes, our idea of what exists in the universw has been revised, thus our theories of how it all formed need to be revised as well. However, it doesn't change our ideas about how gravity functions, or how electro-magintism works, or what the speed of light is, or what causes rain to fall. Our theories of "how things work" are robust enough that one part can take some serious shaking without disturbing the rest. Science is not threatened by taking a good hard look at what it assumed to be true and re-evaluating it. I don't understand when people try to teach religion as science, because the debate isn't about what is scientifically true. The debate is "when strong empirical evidence conflicts with the literal interpretation of the Bible, which should be given more wieght?". Science (and the vast majority of religious people, who are non-literalists) say the empirical evidence, Bible-literalists say the Bible. It doesn't make sense for Bible-literalists to argue that empirical evidence supports their case, because they are ideologically bound to reject all empirical evidence EXCEPT when it agrees with the literal interpretation of the Bible. Therefore, they are not able (and have no desire ) to look at empirical evidence empirically. Which means what they are doing is NOT science. They are not making a scientific argument, they are making an episthemological one. Scientific and empirical evidence supports the scientific and empirical point of view. A literal interpretation of the Bible supports a Bible iteralist view. Thus, when literalists try to support a "revealed knowlege" episthemological world-view using the language and evidence of an empirical/scientific episthemological world-view, they only reveal their ignorance of the latter. The debate is an episthemological one. Empirical evidence clearly supports the scientits' view. The debate is as to whether empirical evidence is a valid way of determining what is true.
A few years ago I went to the parking lot, let myself into my locked car, turned over the ignition-- and then noticed that my upholstry was the wrong color. I stopped the car and got out-- only to see that MY car, with the correct uphostry and my junk in the back, was parked NEXT to it. Our cars were the same make, same model, same exterior color-- and had the same damn lock & key. If the upholstry hadn't clued me off, I'd have happily driven off with someone else's car, and not noticed until I tried to get my stuff out of the trunk.
Exploring the Guniess Book of World Records sometime back in the 80's, I read that "Mohammed" was the most common first name in the world. (The most common last name was "Chang"-- we were speculating as to how many "Mohammed Chang"'s there might be...)
So, it's essentially like blocking payments to everyone in the English-speaking world named "Smith", because you once encountered someone named "Smith" who was a crook.
Not really. I just wish a few companies would start realizing that all these people out there tinkering with their stuff are enthusiasts, not terrorists
AMEN.
After all their pissing consumers off, this would be an ideal time to make nice and put a foot forward to explore user-run servers as a wave of new interest, rather than an assault upon their business model.
We're talking about the company that "protects" itself against music pirates by compromising the PC's of customers who legitimately purchaced new shrinkwraped music CDs. Pirates are completely unaffected, legitimate customers are punished.
You expect them to see reason with regard to "user-run servers"?
In two words, they propose to use web tools such as wiki and comment areas to let anyone involved in the patent world (inventors, lawyers, competitors...) comment and annotate pa
I really like this idea. The patent examiner can do his/her job as he/she is accustomed, but has access to much more information much more rapidly as to whether someone skilled in the field would find this invention "obvious" and whether there exists "prior art". A patent examiner can't be an expert at every subject that comes across their desk (nor can the patent office keep up with hiring experts in every new field as it is developed).
his proposal would take some of the discussion about prior art and obviousness back to BEFORE a decision is issued, thus BEFORE litigation is needed in order to be heard. Sure, there are likely to be a lot of useless (read: unsubstantiated) comments posted, but with good references ("See prior art here", or "this, this, and this indusry reference talk about similar things, indicating obviousness") could save insane amounts of money in needless litigation later.
P.S.-- thank you for not using that overused and annoying buzzword in your post.
If obvious patents aren't allowed, then IT companies will simply start burying the patent office in such detailed applications that they won't be able to declare them obvious. We are talking money here, lots and lots of money. There is no way that IT companies will roll over and stop patenting crap.
Most companies churning out patents are not patent trolls. Rather, they are acting defensively to avoid getting burned by patent trolls. They are not making money from the patent itself, or trying to-- they are just trying to prevent someone from derailing their business by instigating bogus patent-infringement suits.
IT companies would LOVE it if the bar on what was patentable was higher.
It's true that a higher bar doesn't make patent trolling impossible-- but it makes it harder, and slows it down. Thus it becomes less profitable, so fewer people / companies / divisions bother with it, and go back to sending Nigeria e-mails. This benefits everyone: IT companies (big and small), the patent office (which is less swamped), innovation in general.
>> No, that's the SPANISH Inquisition. Hawking is an American.
Um, just like Jesus, Gallileo, and Ghengus Khan?
Reading comment after comment about how this violates the core principals of the Internet (an obvious truth which I already agreed with) it's beginning to remind me of the cries of "Advertizing on the web?!?!?! But that goes against the core principles of the Internet!!!!)
I hope this can get stopped, rather than go from "unthinkable" to "Just the Way Things Are (TM)"
A PC is a personal computer - emphasis on computer. A thin client is a dumb terminal.
No. A thin client isn't a dumb terminal, it's just "intellectually challenged".
A "dumb terminal" has no processing power of it's own-- all it is is a monitor, a keybord, and a network connection. No hard drive, no CPU, nada.
A "thin client" is designed to work primarily across a network in a client/server environment, but has a bit of processing power of it's own, and a bit of hard-drive space. Little enough that it makes a really crappy stand-alone PC, but enough to help things along.
And as to your client-server horror story: if the plural of "anecdotes" is not "data", then a singular anecdote certainly doesn't prove a point. A bunch of hype about a particular thin client doesn't prove that it's a good idea, but a really bad experience with a really bad thin client system doesn't prove it's a bad idea, either. (Think of your favorite food dish. Now, imagine someone's only experience with that food dish was a single example cooked by me. They would tell you that you were crazy for liking that food dish, because they had it once, and it was horrible.)
I didn't RTFA, so I'm not going to try to judge this particular thin client. Thin clients in general are horrible if applied in a situation where people need to use real processing power, or if they are badly administered. (Your story sounds like it fit both those categories.) But if you have 100 people who only use word-processing, spreadsheets, and e-mail, then a well chosen and well-administered thin client system will be much more maintainable and reliable than a bunch of stand-alone boxes connected to the network.
This was exactly my take. It makes more sense to tell the actor that the "truth" is whatever the character beleives to be the truth-- regardless of whether that's what you have chosen for the objective truth.
Yes, if Decker is intended to be a replicant, Harrison Ford is certainly a good enough actor to play a replicant-who-beleives-himself-to-be-human properly even if he knew he was playing a replicant. But it still makes more sense, from a director's perspective, to tell the actor what the character beleives, rather than what you have chosen as the objective truth for the world you are creating. Why muddy the waters?
no wonder the USA legal system is so fucked if you can do no wrong, tell the truth, and still by charged money that is a significant part of your wages. whereas companies can provably break laws, be found guilty, and still be charged a meaningless fraction of their profit.
"...this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the corporations and by the corporations and for the corporations shall not perish from the earth..."
I don't see why this is a big deal. Average desktop users should not have admin rights -- no?
Fundamental security issue-- added layer of protection. Even if there is reason to give users Admin privliges to those boxes, they shouldn't be in Admin mode all the time-- you don't log in to Linux/Unix as Root to check e-mail and play NetHack. (At least I hope you dont...)
When I first installed XP on one of my boxes at home, (there were reasons to do so, I won't go into them here) the first thing I did after installing all the applications was to create myself a non-admin account, even though I was going to be the only person using the system. I only wanted to be in Admin when I intentionally wanted admin privleges.
After spending hours trying to get some very basic programs working in the #$%& non-admin account, I deleted it later that day. It wasn't worth the effort. As many others have mentioned-- I hope Microsoft developers DO start having to use non-admin modes, and that this encourages them to make it functional!
First, 502 people is not a statistically significant sample of US population.
Also, how did they "randomly" select these people? If they randomly chose people from their subscriber base, (for example), then the sample would be inherantly biased: IIRC, this is a very "conservative" newspaper.
Ahhh! Thanks!
That says a lot more about your social circle than it does about women in general.
I've been arguing for a long time that completely free and effectively unaccountable speech on-line, particularly when made anonymously, is not necessarily a good thing, and on balance it may do a lot more harm than good.[...]
freedom of speech is not an absolute right, and with that freedom when it does exist must come responsibility for what is spoken.[...]
It's a shame, but the simple truth is that while the unregulated nature of the Internet has been an advantage in developing it, it has also led to serious problems that, at current rates, will bring about its demise just as fast. I'd rather accept putting my name to my words and standing by my comments than the continued and increasing presence of viruses, [...]
So-- then can I presume that "Anonymous Brave Guy" is your actual, legal, name? Your parents must have had a really twisted sense of humor to name their kid "Anoynmous".
If I had known in 1990 that all my postings to Usenet would be publicly available many years after the fact, I might have thought twice before posting some of the articles I did, but now there are some postings from me around, that I am ashamed of 16 years later.
I am pretty sure, I am not the only one this has happened to.
Egads, no. I was going through a really strange period of my life in 96, and if I had any idea that posts I made then would not only be around, but actually searchable from vitually anywhere ten years later with no sign of going away....
Signed my own name to them, too-- because at the time it was considered unethical not to; I forget why. Just from a basic safety perspective, I'm amazed I bought into the "you should always use your own name" thing so strongly back then...
Fortunately, the posts I wrote take digging to find. If you just do a straight search for my first and last names on Usenet, you merely discover that there was once a (no joke!) professional billiards player with the same name as me who was freqently discussed on rec.sport.billiards and alt.sport.pool
But still. I wish I could erase all of my online presence from before I turned 25.
Some co-workers and I were discussing the other day how greatful we all are that blogging didn't exist when we were teenagers-- As embarassing as my undergrad usenet posts were, the stuff I (or any of the co-workers who weighed) would likely have blogged as teenagers would have been even more cringe-worthy. I have a feeling that in about 10 years there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth among people in their twenties and early thirties about what is availble via the Wayback Machine...
Apparently some systems were "tossed out" because they aren't stable enough (variable stars, strong gravity, etc).
Now, is it just me, or does the idea that life may well need some abnormal event to kick-start it in conflict with that very idea?
I'm going to hazard a guess: while system with an unstable star may produce a favorable enviornment for amino-acids to form into something resembling single-celled or other simple life forms, that's not something we're going to be able to detect all the way from our solar system, (not with current technology
We're most likely to actually detect life if it's been evolving for long enough to do something like broadcast "I love Lucy". And while it may not be impossible for such life to evolve in a system with an unstable star, the solar flares are likely to cause occational planet-scorching "reboots" to the evolution process that decrease the probability.
This isn't a list of all systems we think have the possibility of producing life, just of the ones most likely to evolve life that we can actually detect, so that we can check those systems first. It doesn't mean we never check the others, just that we conserve resources by beginning in the places most likely to produce results.
I once herd a NASA scientist give a response to such views.
His point was this: Like any other agency, NASA's biggest problem is the limited funding. If they released pictures that indicated something created by intelligent beings and asked to investigate further, the money would pour in. Thus they would have NO motiviation to keep such a find secret, and EVERY motivation to share it. Such a find would end their finantial difficulties for a very long time.
(After all, it's not like some unauthorized person is going to rush to the archaeological site to loot it or mess it up...)
Do the diversity forms for "race" on these rules say "pick only one"?
I have a close friend who loaths the "pick only one" census and diversity forms because a) they force her to lie, since to tell the truth she'd need to pick at least three, probably four and b) the decision of how to lie is charged, both politically and emotionally. She usually ends up choosing a different "race" each time she fills out one of those forms, because it feels more honest that way.
You can't create five or six broad categories of anything and expect that everyone will fit into exactly one category.
I'd be pretty surprised if you couldn't hack the thing to work as an ordinary GPS. They must have some kind of port for programming...
Wouldn't surprise me one bit. But if you wanted a GPS (and didn't care about legality), I'm sure there are more time-and-cost-effective ways of doing it than stealing and hacking into a pigeon's collar-- so I don't see this being a hot black market item.
Now, the hobbiest who wants to steal and hack one because it's pointless, but interesting-- that the birds might have to watch out for. But I don't see this device as being gee-whiz-nifty enough that vast unwashed hoards of geeks are going to make it open season on pigeons.
(Wouldn't be surprised if one or two fell into hacker hands, however)