Lord Phillips of Sudbury is quoted 'You do not secure the liberty of our country and value of our democracy by undermining them, that's the road to hell.'
What people need to understand is that the current administrations (both in the U.K. and in the U.S.) are not trying to secure the liberty of their respective countries. They're trying to secure their own power and the power of their paymasters (the big multinational corporations). They're intentionally turning both countries into fascist police states, step by step.
I'd say the U.K. is in the lead on that one, but only by a small margin.
The worst thing about it is that once you lose your liberties in this way, you almost never get them back except through bloody revolution, which is something that can no longer succeed thanks to the technological situation (which concentrates much more killing power in the hands of the government than it did back in the 1700's when most of the democratic revolutions took place). That means the loss is essentially permanent.
The "people" making these decisions are, in all the ways that matter, dead. Their bodies just haven't figured that out yet. They have less "soul" (for lack of a better word) than even the dead artists they represent (such as John Lennon). At least the dead artists left some of their soul in their music. The people in the RIAA have none at all to leave.
The world would be a much better place without them. It's only because the universe is such an incredibly perverse place that they have more in the way of resources and wealth than most of us could dream of.
Can anyone really believe that a war was fought for oil if it costs more (just in money!) to FIGHT the war than to just buy the oil?
Yes. The war was fought for control over the oil, not necessarily for the profits arising from said control. There are a number of reasons other than the direct profit from the oil itself for wanting control over that oil, not the least of which is to bolster the dollar as the world's standard of currency. Another reason is likely to be expanding the reserves of oil available to the U.S. military.
Finally, even if there were no other reasons, the powers that be probably wanted to make sure that nobody else had control over that oil.
Possession does not define property. I can lend you my property, so that you possess it, but it is still my property. I can let people swim in my pool, but it is still my pool. Even if I put a sign up saying "free to use", it is still my pool.
But I'm not talking about lending or renting an existing object that you own, I'm talking about possessing a copy of an object you own. A copy that you either gave to me or sold to me. You still have the original. In that case, I, and not you, own the copy by any reasonable definition. Copyright adds restrictions on what I can do with a copy that I own that would not exist under any other rules governing property. Hence, copyright is very definitely not a natural right by your own definition of natural rights.
The FSF takes great pains to emphasis that the GPL is NOT a contract.
I think you misinterpreted what I was saying. The GPL is not a contract right now because it currently exists in an evironment of copyright. What I was saying is that the GPL would probably be a contract in an environment where copyright didn't exist.
If in a world free of copyright, what prevents me from releasing binary-only software?
Nothing at all. That is why I stated that in a world free of copyright, the GPL would probably be a contract. The FSF's goal isn't a world free of copyright, it's a world in which everyone has the same rights to use, modify, and distribute software (and, likely, other forms of information). A world in which everyone is equal in that regard.
The "rights" of the GPL are not natural rights, and require the coercive power of the state to enforce.
The "rights" of the GPL are the right to use, modify, and redistribute code. Those rights are natural rights just as surely as is your right to use, modify, and distribute anything else you own. The GPL adds only one basic restriction: you may not prevent the recipient of your distribution from using, modifying, and distributing what you gave them (that, and you have to give it to them in the same form you received it).
Those rights listed above do not require the coercive power of the state to enforce. The restriction is the only thing that does.
That restriction is the same as the restriction on you that says that you may not hold another cognizant adult on your property against their will. Your argument about self-ownership doesn't fly in that case, because you don't have to violate someone's person in order to hold them against their will. You merely need to make it physically impossible for them to leave. And since they'd have to traverse your property in order to leave, one can easily argue that your property rights trump their right to travel, since that very same argument is used to define tresspass to begin with.
The bottom line is this: as much as you might like to think otherwise, liberty and property are not at all the same thing. The FSF is interested in liberty. And so are you, when you really think about it. Property is about stability and control, but liberty is about freedom of action. In the end, it is freedom of action that we as human beings are ultimately interested in: we want to be able to do what we will. We have property in order to allow us to take certain actions that without said property we would not be able to, or at least not always be able to. But it is freedom of action that we truly crave.
As far as I'm concerned, the terrorists have occomplished one of their goals: we are all living in fear.
Yes, but what we live in fear of isn't necessarily what one would infer from the above.
Only those who choose to live in fear, or who are too stupid to know what freedom really is and what tradeoffs are involved, live in fear of "teh terrists".
Those who understand what freedom really is aren't living in fear of terrorists. They're living in fear of the government, because it's obvious to them where things are headed now: towards an oppressive totalitarian police state. And it's happening everywhere, so there's no place to go to escape it.
The terrorists ain't shit. They can blow up whatever they want and they won't make a dent in the death rate. So don't bother to live in fear of them. Living in fear of terrorists is the same as living in fear of being struck by lightning. Your chances of dying by either are about the same.
No, if you live in fear of anything, live in fear of losing your freedom. That is a real threat, and it is happening right now.
The biggest shame of all is that there's nothing to be done for it. The people who want to convert the world into a choking, oppressive, totalitarian nightmare are the people who control governments and thus all the guns that matter. In this situation, "give me liberty or give me death" means "give me death", because there is no chance of getting your liberty back anymore. We've long passed the point of no return.
While on the surface this sounds pleasingly libertarian, it has a grave flaw, and that flaw is a fundamental misunderstanding of rights. A right is a property. All natural rights can be be traced back to the ownership of property, including the ownership of the self. Likewise, all good law can be traced back to a prohibition against trespass or violation of property. The reason why your right to swing your fist ends at my nose is because my nose is my property.
Then by your own argument (that all natural rights can be traced back to the ownership of property), copyright isn't a natural right. Copyright is a restriction on the freedom to copy a work that, if it were treated the same way as all other property is treated, belongs to the possessor. The work is theirs because they either paid for it, which literally means they exchanged their labor for it, or it was freely given to them. That it happens to be a clone and thus identical to another work is irrelevant -- the concept of property does not distinguish between a copy and an original. Copying is merely another action that one can take involving said property that happens to produce an identical object. If it were as easy to copy material objects as it is to copy information, I rather doubt that you would have any issues with it. In short, I rather doubt you'd insist on artificially restricting someone's ability to do so, because you'd treat the physical object in their possession as their property.
So copyright is an artificial restriction imposed by society for a purpose. It happens that the purpose is spelled out in the Constitution: to promote progress in the sciences and useful arts.
But what of the "right" to modify someone else's software? It depends on your view of copyright. If copyright is a "right", then you do not have the right to distribute someone else's software without their permission, as it is not your property. The FSF supports copyright and views copyright favorably, as evidenced by their rigorous arguments in favor of a copyright-based license.
I think you're somewhat confused (but of course, there is always the possibility that it I who is confused). The FSF's support of the GPL (or, more precisely, the principles it embodies) is independent of the existence of copyright. They would support its stipulations whether or not copyright existed, because as you point out yourself, even if copyright didn't exist, restrictions could be enacted via contract. So the GPL would, in such an environment, likely be a contract rather than a license -- a contract whose purpose is to ensure that all parties are able to do examine, modify, and distribute the software in question.
But because we do have copyright in the real world, you don't have the right to distribute software other people have written. You can argue that you should have that right, that software should not be property. But if you do, you need to also argue AGAINST the GPL and other copyright-based licenses.
Here you are most definitely confused. Argument against copyright is not argument against the GPL as such, because the GPL is the embodiment of a set of principles which are valid regardless of the existence of copyright. That set of principles is, in every way that matters, the same as the set of principles which were used to draw up the Constitution. The primary principle is dirt simple: you have the right to do anything you want, so long as in doing so you don't infringe on someone else's right to do anything they want.
Those who argue in favor of copyright and "intellectual property" are really arguing against that principle. They want to give "intellectual property owners" the ability to limit and control what others do. That is the very antithesis of liberty. I certainly understand why copyrights and patents exist (to promote progress in the sciences and the useful arts), but most
Please explain how this analogy has anything whatsoever to do with GPL vs. BSD.
Versus BSD, the analogy would be between having the law in question and not having it. In other words, would you prefer to live in a society where it was legal to hold a cognizant adult on one's property against that person's will, or where it was illegal to do so?
That's the difference between GPL and BSD. BSD allows you to do anything you want, including restrict the rights of others. GPL does not allow you to restrict the rights of others (it allows you to restrict the actions of others that would, in turn, restrict the rights of others, but that is the limit of the restrictions it allows).
It places a huge restriction on the use of code that more sensical licenses like BSD dont have.
It places a huge restriction on the use of code the same way that a law forbidding you to hold another cognizant adult on your property against their will "restricts" your actions.
If you can't tell the difference between a restriction designed to maximize the freedom of all (which is the entire purpose of the GPL) from a restriction designed to reduce the freedom of all then you're beyond help or hope.
You can get $600,000 in sweetheart deals just by donating $40,000 to a House campaign. Oh, and note that that's 25 people giving money, not 1 person.
If politicians really could be bought that cheaply, then every organization worth anything at all would be doing it and succeeding. Many of them try, of course, but they don't succeed.
No, purchasing a politician is much more expensive than that. All you're looking at are the contributions that are made public. You're not looking at all the additional "contributions", in the form of "favors" and such, that flow under the table.
The under-the-table expenditures are much, much greater.
Finally, don't forget that when it comes to buying a politician, you're in competition with entities that have orders of magnitude more resources than you, who are also vying for the same politician but who want the opposite of what you want. If the politician has to choose between you and a much wealthier entity who does so much more for him under the table, who do you think he's going to choose? Especially since if he doesn't choose the wealthier entity, said entity will make damned sure he doesn't get reelected. Do you have that kind of power? No.
And that is why the people in the U.S. will never again be represented by their "representatives", even if they band together and attempt to play the game as you suggest. It's one of the consequences of the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.
And now, all these things are going on--most of which are orders of magnitude worse-- and they get hardly any news coverage, the president is under no real pressure about them, and the bulk of Americans couldn't care less.
The bulk of Americans couldn't care less because the bulk of Americans aren't very aware of it. They're not very aware of it because they get their information primarily from the mass media. The mass media isn't covering it because the mass media is in favor of it. Or, more precisely, the owners of the mass media are.
Fascism is, by definition, very friendly to big business. Friendlier by far than a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. A government in which the ruler(s) stay in power for decades is, to such people, more stable and more predictable, and thus more easily managed and thus more desirable, than one in which the players can change every few years. I dare say that many/most of those who own big businesses like the mass media want fascism and are doing what they can to make it happen, because it promises to give them greater power than what they have right now (whether or not it will do so in the end remains to be seen).
And, depressingly, the trend towards fascism is happening throughout the world. This, too, isn't surprising, because it promises to benefit those who own the large multinational corporations.
But he says the meetings put a human face on a company he once saw as impenetrable. "You're less willing to publicly humiliate someone you know in real life," he says.'"
The problem with this is that it's an illusion.
Corporations are composed of not just a single person, but of many people, each of whom has an agenda. Most of those people tend to limit their thoughts about the decisions they make on behalf of the company to the benefits that decision may bring to the corporation and to themselves, and perhaps to the possible harm the benefits may bring to the corporation and to themselves. The last thing to enter their mind, in general, is the impact the decision may have on individuals outside the corporation. The more conscientious types may consider that, but such people appear to be rare, and such people in positions of great influence within a corporation appear to be especially rare.
So while this person may being to believe that the corporation he's dealing with is somehow now more "human" as a result of his dealings with specific individuals, he's making quite a few bad assumptions, not the least of which is that the people he's dealing with have a large amount of influence over the actions of the corporation. That's almost certainly not the case, and yet the actual "humanity" of the corporation depends on it.
The bottom line is that this guy (Moore) isn't nearly cynical enough, and is likely to get burned.
The very purpose and nature of the corporation, to shield the corporation's stakeholders from the consequences of the corporation's actions, are exactly why the corporation can never be "human" in any meaningful way, except perhaps in a psychopathic sense. The numerous experiments (e.g., those involving simulated torture, imprisonment, etc.) that have been done in which the individual is shielded from the consequences of his actions are proof of how much of a person's humanity is lost from that. The corporation is a formal embodiment of that separation. In light of said experiments, the consequences should be obvious, and the typical behaviour of corporations is further proof.
God damn, you are an unsympathetic little fuck, aren't you? Anybody ever told you you have issues? 'Cause I'm telling you now.
Sure, I'm sympathetic. The people who give others a hard time for no good reason simply shouldn't be doing it.
But the original poster, and many other here, are making the claim that it is because of this that women in particular aren't found in "male dominated" fields, computers in particular.
I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. The same factors that these people claim are driving women away are the same factors that many/most people who get into the field to begin with have had to deal with from the beginning.
So I'm sympathetic with someone in that it sucks that they have to deal with that sort of nonsense. I'm not sympathetic with them when that's the reason for their decision to do something else.
And what peers would those be?
Uh....other women who are also interested in computers?
If women who are interested in computers can't find other women who are also interested in computers, then guess what? That means there aren't very many women who are interested in computers! And that means that the root cause of women being scarce in the field of computers has little to do with the attitudes of the people who are already in it and everything to do with the lack of interest on the part of women.
So make up your mind: which is it, that few women are interested in computers to begin with, or that many are but they're "driven away" by the people who are already participating in the field? If it's the latter then the women who are "driven away" have nobody to blame but themselves for that decision, because it's not like they can't find each other and support each other in pursuit of their common interest. Nerds have been doing that from the beginning, and that's despite the fact that they're at a severe disadvantage when it comes to social interaction -- something that women in general are better at than men (which means that women who like computers should be able to find each other more easily than men do).
He says if structural engineers who specify epoxy for dowels and the like believe that the work is being done correctly then they live in a world unfamiliar to him.
So what exactly is an engineer supposed to do? Add another factor of 4 or so tolerance to the design or something? Make the design even more expensive than it already is?? It already has to account for variations in materials strength, weather, overloading, safety factors, etc.
The more the engineer attempts to account for such things, the worse the actual implementation will get, as the contractors in question do even more shoddy, substandard work in order to make as much money as possible at the expense of the customer. After all, it's already accounted for in the design, right?
No. The engineer should design the structure to the best of his abilities to meet the stated requirements. It's not his problem if the builders can't get their shit together.
the skills you need for this activity aren't solitary in nature - they are acquired through classwork, reading books (often through recommendations), online and offline (face-to-face) discussions, mentoring, and by browsing discussion sites
Classwork is optional, as it was for so many of us. Reading books is a solitary activity, not requiring interaction with others. Recommendations can be had by browsing forums and such, which doesn't require interaction.
My point is that if you're motivated to do what you want to do, then the opinions of others won't stop you.
When all of these communities are comprised of horny single males constantly talking about Natalie Portman's nipples, is it suprising that many females might choose to do something else? I may not think discussing women's body parts is particularly offensive, but I don't get to decide what other people take offense to.
Who gives a shit what the people in these communities are discussing? In most of them, because they're online, you can participate without revealing your gender.
My point, which seems to have whizzed right over your head, is that if you want to do something, you do it, and it doesn't matter what other people think. You grow a spine and deal with all the shit thrown your way because what really matters is what you really want to do.
You're talking about group 'A' (jocks) that is picking on you for choosing to do activity 'b' (computers). Presumably your peers in compsci were supportive of your efforts.
In other words, your peers, the people who have the same interest as you and the same problems as you, were supportive of you. No shit. If women need and want that then they can form their own groups. Just like us nerds had to. Nobody is stopping them. Hell, women are better at forming support groups than men are, because men tend to try to be self-reliant.
People who are in the same situation and have the same set of problems tend to find each other. Just like we nerds did.
How many people here who got into computers got the crap ridiculed out of them in high school or wherever because of it? Lots. Did you stick with it? You bet.
We're not talking about an activity, like sports, where you have to have the support of other people in order to pursue it. We're not talking about careers, where you have to have the approval of someone else (those who are hiring and managing) in order to get anywhere. We're talking about a hobby that is solitary in nature.
So if a woman wants to get into computers, there is nothing stopping her. It's her choice. It's as simple as that.
I don't give a shit if a bunch of other people give me crap about it. If it's something I want to do and something I can do, I'm going to do it. Why? Because I have a spine, unlike (it seems) a lot of people.
So the bottom line is that any woman who wants to get into computers but gets "turned off" of it or whatever because of what other people think needs to grow a spine and get with it. Because many of us here who are male had to deal with the same sort of thing, just from a different crowd (the jocks). We stuck with it because it's what we love to do.
And that is what it's all about: if it's something you love doing, then you're a spineless wimp if you don't pursue it, and to hell with what anyone else thinks or says.
And if there aren't very many women with spines, well, then maybe that is what really needs to be addressed. Hell, it may even be that the average woman is genetically (not nurture) less aggressive in general (but not necessarily in some specific situations, e.g., when their child is in danger) than the average man. Has that ever occurred to you? It seems not.
The pursuit of one's dreams and desires requires a certain amount of aggressiveness. It requires a spine. If someone doesn't have that, they're not going to pursue their dreams and desires in the face of any real adversity. The solution isn't to remove the adversity, it's to teach them how to grow a spine. That will be immensely more useful in real life than making things easier for them.
If this were some other group of men we were talking about here, most people here, women included, would be laughing at them for being such wimps.
Say I'm the government. I pass a law that says that you cannot legally hold another sane, cognizant person hostage on your property against their will.
Here I mean an adult. Children are obviously an exception.
In one sense, the GPLv3 is allowing software to be free of hardware lock in and be free in all circumstances. In another sense, it is constraining hardware in its ability to allow certain types of designs. So, while the GPL crowd says they are promoting freedom...looking at it from a different perspective they are actually putting in constraints. It is all a matter of perspective.
Man, you guys suck.
Say I'm the government. I pass a law that says that you cannot legally hold another sane, cognizant person hostage on your property against their will.
Have I restricted your rights, or protected theirs?
It should be obvious: your rights end where my person and/or my property begins. Therefore, in the above example, I am protecting the rights of others. That I had to restrict your actions to do so is irrelvant, because your actions would infringe on the rights of another.
In the case of the GPL v3, it is protecting the rights of everyone by mandating the actions of a few. The only kind of "liberty" it is suppressing is the liberty to take away someone else's freedom.
If you can't tell the difference between those two types of freedom, or believe that the freedom to restrict the liberty of others is at least as important as the freedom to otherwise do what you want, then you are truly lost.
I'm sorry, but I don't buy this description. The reason is that if it works the way you describe, then the entire process is vulnerable to replay attacks (send the same set of hashes to the TPM to be signed, and you'll get the same message back that you would if you were the *real* software in question -- so all one needs to know are the hashes in question).
Furthermore, it implies that all one need do is supply their own BIOS and bootloader code that uploads the hashes from the original BIOS and bootloader and the OS underneath will be none the wiser because the message it gets back from the TPM will be exactly what it's expecting to see.
So what, exactly, is secure about this arrangement?
No. Specifications are operating system agnostic. Several members have Linux-based software stacks available. In addition to our work on the PC platform, we have a specification for Trusted Servers and are working to finalize specifications for other computing devices, including peripherals, mobile devices, storage and infrastructure.
This doesn't answer the question at all.
It all depends on who controls the root certificates that are used by the trusted computing hardware to verify the signatures of the BIOS and of the boot image. If you think it'll ultimately be someone who is "friendly" to Linux and open source in general, think again. There's a very good chance that Microsoft, or someone beholden to them, will wind up with control.
If that happens, Microsoft will have complete control over the set of OSes that can run in "trusted mode" on these computers. And you can expect entities like the Army to insist that there be no way to run an "untrusted" OS on these computers without some sort of magic certificate or something, which conveniently only entities like the Army will get.
I, for one, don't want to depend on the good graces of a company like Microsoft for such a thing.
So yes, it does lock out linux, unless we get really, really lucky. Who here wants to bet on that? Not I.
I don't know, of course, but you shouldn't be surprised at all if there are absolutely no privately-owned (like Bell Labs was. Not talking about private universities here) pure research labs in the U.S. anymore.
The U.S. is run almost entirely by bureaucrats, lawyers, and accountants now. Such people have no interest in anything beyond next quarter's profits and their own stock options. Why would they care about something so "unprofitable" as pure, undirected research?
Worse, I think the rest of the world is following suit. But I could be wrong about that, too.
Either way, it's quite depressing. Actually, most of the current trends are quite depressing. I should probably stop thinking about them, and probably would if it weren't so useful to have some idea of what to expect...
It's never to late so long as people are willing to stand up and fight! Fear is a tirents greatest weapon, and thous with out fear there greatest enemy. The founders of our country at one time all said the same thing, "Give me freedom, or give me death!". You can't be afraid of them or the consequences of standing up to them. No matter what the cost you can't be afraid, it is only when we fear that truly fall.
You don't understand, do you? The founders of the U.S. were able to succeed because the firepower of the average armed civilian was roughly the same as the firepower of the average soldier. When that's the case, the number of people you have on your side is what matters the most. Get the citizenry on your side in that situation and you have a truly solid chance of winning.
The founders of the U.S. took a big risk, but it was a reasonable risk, one that had a reasonable chance of succeeding. In their case, it paid off.
That's not the case anymore. The average soldier has thousands of times more firepower than the average armed civilian, because of all the supporting hardware he has at his disposal. And that's assuming that the military is being "nice" about the whole thing and is refraining from using their really big weapons. And that's just the guy on the ground. The guy in the bomber cruising at 45,000 feet is essentially invincible: the average armed civilian has absolutely no chance of shooting him down.
You have a greater chance of commanding a bolt of lightning to strike down the enemy leader than you do of winning an armed revolution against a government with a modern military.
The people who said "give me liberty or give me death" did so under the assumption that there was a chance at achieving liberty, that maybe by fighting they would actually gain their liberty. That assumption is false today. Today there is effectively no chance at all of achieving liberty via armed revolution. So today, if you say "give me liberty or give me death", you are literally saying "give me death". That's the only possible outcome. There's a term for someone who says that: suicidal.
It is literally more likely that those who control the government will spontaneously, on their own, decide to change the government back into a form that protects your liberties than it is that you'll win an armed revolution against the government. That means you're better off living with whatever comes than trying to fight. The odds of winning a fight are that small.
Yes. But in the end, the people left standing will be the fascists, the people who control all the guns that matter.
This is the real world. The real world cares nothing for your hopes, dreams, or desires. It cares nothing for your pain or suffering. It cares nothing for your freedom, or for your lack of it. The rules which govern the real world are more unyielding than stone. They are immutable, absolute. It is those rules which will determine the fate of those who are bold enough to challenge a ruling entity which has a millions-to-one firepower advantage. And that fate is as certain as anything can be in the real world: death.
Dead people pose no threat at all.
Be warned: the people in power will do anything at all to get more, and anything at all to keep it. Pose a credible threat to them, and you will find yourself dead. Chances are your family will also wind up dead, in order to eliminate from the gene pool those characteristics that would make men bold enough to challenge authority that way.
You who escaped police states in the past know that what I say is true. Back then, you had someplace to escape to. But I dare say you wouldn't have bothered if there had been no place to go. When this latest push towards fascism is over with, there will be no such place to go. There will be no escape.
It is already far too late to reverse it. This is why there is no hope left to be found anywhere, and why you should enjoy the last moments of the freedom you still have. It will not be seen again for many hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Seems everyone has their own version of the end of the world, and so many seem to think it's happening right now. As if nobody before in history ever thought that.
Oh, this isn't the end of the world. Life will go on. Humans have spent most of their recorded history in servitude, so it's not like we're not used to being slaves or anything.
But it is disappointing, though unsurprising, that freedom for the masses has lasted only a fraction of that time.
So enjoy it while you can, because it's not going to last long.
One other thing: you say that "so many seem to think it's happening right now". As if the number of people who think that today is unusual. If it's unusual, then you might want to ask why so many believe it now when they didn't before.
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What people need to understand is that the current administrations (both in the U.K. and in the U.S.) are not trying to secure the liberty of their respective countries. They're trying to secure their own power and the power of their paymasters (the big multinational corporations). They're intentionally turning both countries into fascist police states, step by step.
I'd say the U.K. is in the lead on that one, but only by a small margin.
The worst thing about it is that once you lose your liberties in this way, you almost never get them back except through bloody revolution, which is something that can no longer succeed thanks to the technological situation (which concentrates much more killing power in the hands of the government than it did back in the 1700's when most of the democratic revolutions took place). That means the loss is essentially permanent.
Enjoy what freedom you have left. I won't last,
The "people" making these decisions are, in all the ways that matter, dead. Their bodies just haven't figured that out yet. They have less "soul" (for lack of a better word) than even the dead artists they represent (such as John Lennon). At least the dead artists left some of their soul in their music. The people in the RIAA have none at all to leave.
The world would be a much better place without them. It's only because the universe is such an incredibly perverse place that they have more in the way of resources and wealth than most of us could dream of.
Yes. The war was fought for control over the oil, not necessarily for the profits arising from said control. There are a number of reasons other than the direct profit from the oil itself for wanting control over that oil, not the least of which is to bolster the dollar as the world's standard of currency. Another reason is likely to be expanding the reserves of oil available to the U.S. military.
Finally, even if there were no other reasons, the powers that be probably wanted to make sure that nobody else had control over that oil.
But I'm not talking about lending or renting an existing object that you own, I'm talking about possessing a copy of an object you own. A copy that you either gave to me or sold to me. You still have the original. In that case, I, and not you, own the copy by any reasonable definition. Copyright adds restrictions on what I can do with a copy that I own that would not exist under any other rules governing property. Hence, copyright is very definitely not a natural right by your own definition of natural rights.
I think you misinterpreted what I was saying. The GPL is not a contract right now because it currently exists in an evironment of copyright. What I was saying is that the GPL would probably be a contract in an environment where copyright didn't exist.
Nothing at all. That is why I stated that in a world free of copyright, the GPL would probably be a contract. The FSF's goal isn't a world free of copyright, it's a world in which everyone has the same rights to use, modify, and distribute software (and, likely, other forms of information). A world in which everyone is equal in that regard.
The "rights" of the GPL are the right to use, modify, and redistribute code. Those rights are natural rights just as surely as is your right to use, modify, and distribute anything else you own. The GPL adds only one basic restriction: you may not prevent the recipient of your distribution from using, modifying, and distributing what you gave them (that, and you have to give it to them in the same form you received it).
Those rights listed above do not require the coercive power of the state to enforce. The restriction is the only thing that does.
That restriction is the same as the restriction on you that says that you may not hold another cognizant adult on your property against their will. Your argument about self-ownership doesn't fly in that case, because you don't have to violate someone's person in order to hold them against their will. You merely need to make it physically impossible for them to leave. And since they'd have to traverse your property in order to leave, one can easily argue that your property rights trump their right to travel, since that very same argument is used to define tresspass to begin with.
The bottom line is this: as much as you might like to think otherwise, liberty and property are not at all the same thing. The FSF is interested in liberty. And so are you, when you really think about it. Property is about stability and control, but liberty is about freedom of action. In the end, it is freedom of action that we as human beings are ultimately interested in: we want to be able to do what we will. We have property in order to allow us to take certain actions that without said property we would not be able to, or at least not always be able to. But it is freedom of action that we truly crave.
Yes, but what we live in fear of isn't necessarily what one would infer from the above.
Only those who choose to live in fear, or who are too stupid to know what freedom really is and what tradeoffs are involved, live in fear of "teh terrists".
Those who understand what freedom really is aren't living in fear of terrorists. They're living in fear of the government, because it's obvious to them where things are headed now: towards an oppressive totalitarian police state. And it's happening everywhere, so there's no place to go to escape it.
The terrorists ain't shit. They can blow up whatever they want and they won't make a dent in the death rate. So don't bother to live in fear of them. Living in fear of terrorists is the same as living in fear of being struck by lightning. Your chances of dying by either are about the same.
No, if you live in fear of anything, live in fear of losing your freedom. That is a real threat, and it is happening right now.
The biggest shame of all is that there's nothing to be done for it. The people who want to convert the world into a choking, oppressive, totalitarian nightmare are the people who control governments and thus all the guns that matter. In this situation, "give me liberty or give me death" means "give me death", because there is no chance of getting your liberty back anymore. We've long passed the point of no return.
Then by your own argument (that all natural rights can be traced back to the ownership of property), copyright isn't a natural right. Copyright is a restriction on the freedom to copy a work that, if it were treated the same way as all other property is treated, belongs to the possessor. The work is theirs because they either paid for it, which literally means they exchanged their labor for it, or it was freely given to them. That it happens to be a clone and thus identical to another work is irrelevant -- the concept of property does not distinguish between a copy and an original. Copying is merely another action that one can take involving said property that happens to produce an identical object. If it were as easy to copy material objects as it is to copy information, I rather doubt that you would have any issues with it. In short, I rather doubt you'd insist on artificially restricting someone's ability to do so, because you'd treat the physical object in their possession as their property.
So copyright is an artificial restriction imposed by society for a purpose. It happens that the purpose is spelled out in the Constitution: to promote progress in the sciences and useful arts.
I think you're somewhat confused (but of course, there is always the possibility that it I who is confused). The FSF's support of the GPL (or, more precisely, the principles it embodies) is independent of the existence of copyright. They would support its stipulations whether or not copyright existed, because as you point out yourself, even if copyright didn't exist, restrictions could be enacted via contract. So the GPL would, in such an environment, likely be a contract rather than a license -- a contract whose purpose is to ensure that all parties are able to do examine, modify, and distribute the software in question.
Here you are most definitely confused. Argument against copyright is not argument against the GPL as such, because the GPL is the embodiment of a set of principles which are valid regardless of the existence of copyright. That set of principles is, in every way that matters, the same as the set of principles which were used to draw up the Constitution. The primary principle is dirt simple: you have the right to do anything you want, so long as in doing so you don't infringe on someone else's right to do anything they want.
Those who argue in favor of copyright and "intellectual property" are really arguing against that principle. They want to give "intellectual property owners" the ability to limit and control what others do. That is the very antithesis of liberty. I certainly understand why copyrights and patents exist (to promote progress in the sciences and the useful arts), but most
Versus BSD, the analogy would be between having the law in question and not having it. In other words, would you prefer to live in a society where it was legal to hold a cognizant adult on one's property against that person's will, or where it was illegal to do so?
That's the difference between GPL and BSD. BSD allows you to do anything you want, including restrict the rights of others. GPL does not allow you to restrict the rights of others (it allows you to restrict the actions of others that would, in turn, restrict the rights of others, but that is the limit of the restrictions it allows).
It places a huge restriction on the use of code the same way that a law forbidding you to hold another cognizant adult on your property against their will "restricts" your actions.
If you can't tell the difference between a restriction designed to maximize the freedom of all (which is the entire purpose of the GPL) from a restriction designed to reduce the freedom of all then you're beyond help or hope.
If politicians really could be bought that cheaply, then every organization worth anything at all would be doing it and succeeding. Many of them try, of course, but they don't succeed.
No, purchasing a politician is much more expensive than that. All you're looking at are the contributions that are made public. You're not looking at all the additional "contributions", in the form of "favors" and such, that flow under the table.
The under-the-table expenditures are much, much greater.
Finally, don't forget that when it comes to buying a politician, you're in competition with entities that have orders of magnitude more resources than you, who are also vying for the same politician but who want the opposite of what you want. If the politician has to choose between you and a much wealthier entity who does so much more for him under the table, who do you think he's going to choose? Especially since if he doesn't choose the wealthier entity, said entity will make damned sure he doesn't get reelected. Do you have that kind of power? No.
And that is why the people in the U.S. will never again be represented by their "representatives", even if they band together and attempt to play the game as you suggest. It's one of the consequences of the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.
The bulk of Americans couldn't care less because the bulk of Americans aren't very aware of it. They're not very aware of it because they get their information primarily from the mass media. The mass media isn't covering it because the mass media is in favor of it. Or, more precisely, the owners of the mass media are.
Fascism is, by definition, very friendly to big business. Friendlier by far than a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. A government in which the ruler(s) stay in power for decades is, to such people, more stable and more predictable, and thus more easily managed and thus more desirable, than one in which the players can change every few years. I dare say that many/most of those who own big businesses like the mass media want fascism and are doing what they can to make it happen, because it promises to give them greater power than what they have right now (whether or not it will do so in the end remains to be seen).
And, depressingly, the trend towards fascism is happening throughout the world. This, too, isn't surprising, because it promises to benefit those who own the large multinational corporations.
Possibly. But then, I wouldn't be very cynical if I thought that it was just his facade, would I? :-)
The problem with this is that it's an illusion.
Corporations are composed of not just a single person, but of many people, each of whom has an agenda. Most of those people tend to limit their thoughts about the decisions they make on behalf of the company to the benefits that decision may bring to the corporation and to themselves, and perhaps to the possible harm the benefits may bring to the corporation and to themselves. The last thing to enter their mind, in general, is the impact the decision may have on individuals outside the corporation. The more conscientious types may consider that, but such people appear to be rare, and such people in positions of great influence within a corporation appear to be especially rare.
So while this person may being to believe that the corporation he's dealing with is somehow now more "human" as a result of his dealings with specific individuals, he's making quite a few bad assumptions, not the least of which is that the people he's dealing with have a large amount of influence over the actions of the corporation. That's almost certainly not the case, and yet the actual "humanity" of the corporation depends on it.
The bottom line is that this guy (Moore) isn't nearly cynical enough, and is likely to get burned.
The very purpose and nature of the corporation, to shield the corporation's stakeholders from the consequences of the corporation's actions, are exactly why the corporation can never be "human" in any meaningful way, except perhaps in a psychopathic sense. The numerous experiments (e.g., those involving simulated torture, imprisonment, etc.) that have been done in which the individual is shielded from the consequences of his actions are proof of how much of a person's humanity is lost from that. The corporation is a formal embodiment of that separation. In light of said experiments, the consequences should be obvious, and the typical behaviour of corporations is further proof.
Lessee...the plane:
So why, exactly, would I spend money on this? It might have a larger coolness factor, but that'll wear off fast.
Sure, I'm sympathetic. The people who give others a hard time for no good reason simply shouldn't be doing it.
But the original poster, and many other here, are making the claim that it is because of this that women in particular aren't found in "male dominated" fields, computers in particular.
I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. The same factors that these people claim are driving women away are the same factors that many/most people who get into the field to begin with have had to deal with from the beginning.
So I'm sympathetic with someone in that it sucks that they have to deal with that sort of nonsense. I'm not sympathetic with them when that's the reason for their decision to do something else.
Uh....other women who are also interested in computers?
If women who are interested in computers can't find other women who are also interested in computers, then guess what? That means there aren't very many women who are interested in computers! And that means that the root cause of women being scarce in the field of computers has little to do with the attitudes of the people who are already in it and everything to do with the lack of interest on the part of women.
So make up your mind: which is it, that few women are interested in computers to begin with, or that many are but they're "driven away" by the people who are already participating in the field? If it's the latter then the women who are "driven away" have nobody to blame but themselves for that decision, because it's not like they can't find each other and support each other in pursuit of their common interest. Nerds have been doing that from the beginning, and that's despite the fact that they're at a severe disadvantage when it comes to social interaction -- something that women in general are better at than men (which means that women who like computers should be able to find each other more easily than men do).
So what exactly is an engineer supposed to do? Add another factor of 4 or so tolerance to the design or something? Make the design even more expensive than it already is?? It already has to account for variations in materials strength, weather, overloading, safety factors, etc.
The more the engineer attempts to account for such things, the worse the actual implementation will get, as the contractors in question do even more shoddy, substandard work in order to make as much money as possible at the expense of the customer. After all, it's already accounted for in the design, right?
No. The engineer should design the structure to the best of his abilities to meet the stated requirements. It's not his problem if the builders can't get their shit together.
Classwork is optional, as it was for so many of us. Reading books is a solitary activity, not requiring interaction with others. Recommendations can be had by browsing forums and such, which doesn't require interaction.
My point is that if you're motivated to do what you want to do, then the opinions of others won't stop you.
Who gives a shit what the people in these communities are discussing? In most of them, because they're online, you can participate without revealing your gender.
My point, which seems to have whizzed right over your head, is that if you want to do something, you do it, and it doesn't matter what other people think. You grow a spine and deal with all the shit thrown your way because what really matters is what you really want to do.
In other words, your peers, the people who have the same interest as you and the same problems as you, were supportive of you. No shit. If women need and want that then they can form their own groups. Just like us nerds had to. Nobody is stopping them. Hell, women are better at forming support groups than men are, because men tend to try to be self-reliant.
People who are in the same situation and have the same set of problems tend to find each other. Just like we nerds did.
No, you don't get it.
How many people here who got into computers got the crap ridiculed out of them in high school or wherever because of it? Lots. Did you stick with it? You bet.
We're not talking about an activity, like sports, where you have to have the support of other people in order to pursue it. We're not talking about careers, where you have to have the approval of someone else (those who are hiring and managing) in order to get anywhere. We're talking about a hobby that is solitary in nature.
So if a woman wants to get into computers, there is nothing stopping her. It's her choice. It's as simple as that.
I don't give a shit if a bunch of other people give me crap about it. If it's something I want to do and something I can do, I'm going to do it. Why? Because I have a spine, unlike (it seems) a lot of people.
So the bottom line is that any woman who wants to get into computers but gets "turned off" of it or whatever because of what other people think needs to grow a spine and get with it. Because many of us here who are male had to deal with the same sort of thing, just from a different crowd (the jocks). We stuck with it because it's what we love to do.
And that is what it's all about: if it's something you love doing, then you're a spineless wimp if you don't pursue it, and to hell with what anyone else thinks or says.
And if there aren't very many women with spines, well, then maybe that is what really needs to be addressed. Hell, it may even be that the average woman is genetically (not nurture) less aggressive in general (but not necessarily in some specific situations, e.g., when their child is in danger) than the average man. Has that ever occurred to you? It seems not.
The pursuit of one's dreams and desires requires a certain amount of aggressiveness. It requires a spine. If someone doesn't have that, they're not going to pursue their dreams and desires in the face of any real adversity. The solution isn't to remove the adversity, it's to teach them how to grow a spine. That will be immensely more useful in real life than making things easier for them.
If this were some other group of men we were talking about here, most people here, women included, would be laughing at them for being such wimps.
So cut the two-faced double-standards crap.
Here I mean an adult. Children are obviously an exception.
Man, you guys suck.
Say I'm the government. I pass a law that says that you cannot legally hold another sane, cognizant person hostage on your property against their will.
Have I restricted your rights, or protected theirs?
It should be obvious: your rights end where my person and/or my property begins. Therefore, in the above example, I am protecting the rights of others. That I had to restrict your actions to do so is irrelvant, because your actions would infringe on the rights of another.
In the case of the GPL v3, it is protecting the rights of everyone by mandating the actions of a few. The only kind of "liberty" it is suppressing is the liberty to take away someone else's freedom.
If you can't tell the difference between those two types of freedom, or believe that the freedom to restrict the liberty of others is at least as important as the freedom to otherwise do what you want, then you are truly lost.
I'm sorry, but I don't buy this description. The reason is that if it works the way you describe, then the entire process is vulnerable to replay attacks (send the same set of hashes to the TPM to be signed, and you'll get the same message back that you would if you were the *real* software in question -- so all one needs to know are the hashes in question).
Furthermore, it implies that all one need do is supply their own BIOS and bootloader code that uploads the hashes from the original BIOS and bootloader and the OS underneath will be none the wiser because the message it gets back from the TPM will be exactly what it's expecting to see.
So what, exactly, is secure about this arrangement?
This doesn't answer the question at all.
It all depends on who controls the root certificates that are used by the trusted computing hardware to verify the signatures of the BIOS and of the boot image. If you think it'll ultimately be someone who is "friendly" to Linux and open source in general, think again. There's a very good chance that Microsoft, or someone beholden to them, will wind up with control.
If that happens, Microsoft will have complete control over the set of OSes that can run in "trusted mode" on these computers. And you can expect entities like the Army to insist that there be no way to run an "untrusted" OS on these computers without some sort of magic certificate or something, which conveniently only entities like the Army will get.
I, for one, don't want to depend on the good graces of a company like Microsoft for such a thing.
So yes, it does lock out linux, unless we get really, really lucky. Who here wants to bet on that? Not I.
I don't know, of course, but you shouldn't be surprised at all if there are absolutely no privately-owned (like Bell Labs was. Not talking about private universities here) pure research labs in the U.S. anymore.
The U.S. is run almost entirely by bureaucrats, lawyers, and accountants now. Such people have no interest in anything beyond next quarter's profits and their own stock options. Why would they care about something so "unprofitable" as pure, undirected research?
Worse, I think the rest of the world is following suit. But I could be wrong about that, too.
Either way, it's quite depressing. Actually, most of the current trends are quite depressing. I should probably stop thinking about them, and probably would if it weren't so useful to have some idea of what to expect...
You don't understand, do you? The founders of the U.S. were able to succeed because the firepower of the average armed civilian was roughly the same as the firepower of the average soldier. When that's the case, the number of people you have on your side is what matters the most. Get the citizenry on your side in that situation and you have a truly solid chance of winning.
The founders of the U.S. took a big risk, but it was a reasonable risk, one that had a reasonable chance of succeeding. In their case, it paid off.
That's not the case anymore. The average soldier has thousands of times more firepower than the average armed civilian, because of all the supporting hardware he has at his disposal. And that's assuming that the military is being "nice" about the whole thing and is refraining from using their really big weapons. And that's just the guy on the ground. The guy in the bomber cruising at 45,000 feet is essentially invincible: the average armed civilian has absolutely no chance of shooting him down.
You have a greater chance of commanding a bolt of lightning to strike down the enemy leader than you do of winning an armed revolution against a government with a modern military.
The people who said "give me liberty or give me death" did so under the assumption that there was a chance at achieving liberty, that maybe by fighting they would actually gain their liberty. That assumption is false today. Today there is effectively no chance at all of achieving liberty via armed revolution. So today, if you say "give me liberty or give me death", you are literally saying "give me death". That's the only possible outcome. There's a term for someone who says that: suicidal.
It is literally more likely that those who control the government will spontaneously, on their own, decide to change the government back into a form that protects your liberties than it is that you'll win an armed revolution against the government. That means you're better off living with whatever comes than trying to fight. The odds of winning a fight are that small.
Yes. But in the end, the people left standing will be the fascists, the people who control all the guns that matter.
This is the real world. The real world cares nothing for your hopes, dreams, or desires. It cares nothing for your pain or suffering. It cares nothing for your freedom, or for your lack of it. The rules which govern the real world are more unyielding than stone. They are immutable, absolute. It is those rules which will determine the fate of those who are bold enough to challenge a ruling entity which has a millions-to-one firepower advantage. And that fate is as certain as anything can be in the real world: death.
Dead people pose no threat at all.
Be warned: the people in power will do anything at all to get more, and anything at all to keep it. Pose a credible threat to them, and you will find yourself dead. Chances are your family will also wind up dead, in order to eliminate from the gene pool those characteristics that would make men bold enough to challenge authority that way.
You who escaped police states in the past know that what I say is true. Back then, you had someplace to escape to. But I dare say you wouldn't have bothered if there had been no place to go. When this latest push towards fascism is over with, there will be no such place to go. There will be no escape.
It is already far too late to reverse it. This is why there is no hope left to be found anywhere, and why you should enjoy the last moments of the freedom you still have. It will not be seen again for many hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Oh, this isn't the end of the world. Life will go on. Humans have spent most of their recorded history in servitude, so it's not like we're not used to being slaves or anything.
But it is disappointing, though unsurprising, that freedom for the masses has lasted only a fraction of that time.
So enjoy it while you can, because it's not going to last long.
One other thing: you say that "so many seem to think it's happening right now". As if the number of people who think that today is unusual. If it's unusual, then you might want to ask why so many believe it now when they didn't before.