I've been inspired by your posts here. I think the prospects of an extendable opensource SimCity on OLPC are amazing! If the framework is done right, wouldn't it be possible for user generated content to replace the entire game's original artwork/game play? That would be awesome, just to see what happens.
Also you mentioned you made a C++ tiling engine, I can't find your email anywhere but I was wondering if that's opensourced? I'm working on one myself and it would be great to see an example specifically using cairo! If you are inclined to contact me, my email is enjahova at gmail dot com. thanks!
I may be a thief, but I'm not the biggest one. It's the distributors that are the problem. For the last 100 years its not the artists that have been doing the hard work, its the distributors.
Now they are going crazy because distribution isn't hard work anymore. That is why its a question of technology. They want an artificial restriction on distribution, but technology has enabled the "thieves" to distribute more effectively than the owners.
This is certainly a debate about technology. Technology makes it possible to instantly distribute anything that can be represented in digital form. The cost of distributing is approaching zero, the cost of copying is practically zero. Unfortunately, right now that means a lot of "thievery" is going on, but look to the future a little bit. This technology is not going away, its going to get more efficient. We will have more space, faster connections and smarter programs. Making laws that suggest people ignore this incredibly valuable technology simply won't work when every household has access to it.
So if we want to protect artists and creators, we need to do it with full knowledge and respect for the technology that exists and is soon to exist. We cannot pretend anymore that its profitable to make money by selling copies of something that any monkey can make millions of copies of in minutes. We need to promote the art, not protect the distribution.
Whatever bad health effects are caused by the average person under 18 smoking 1 cigarette, there is some number N cigarettes that would cause the same bad health effects in the average adult who smoked them.
Cigarettes are more like a differentiable equation then some linear function of x cigarettes cause y damage. The addictiveness of cigarettes mean that if you start at a younger age you will be doing more physical damage, but worse yet, cementing the addiction to a higher degree.
I've heard of studies that show that people who start smoking over the age of 21 are more likely to quit. This would imply that starting at a younger age is worse than later, giving another reason to set an arbitrary age ban.
Since I can't link to the study I won't expect anyone to believe it fully, but I think the factor of addiction cannot be ignored in this argument.
You are missing the point. If you have an open standard for a social networking protocol, that means you can make the client whatever you want. If you want plain, original facebook like interface, you get a client that shows just that. When you load it up, it only asks for the basic information from the people you are connected to.
You highlight the problem with too much flexibility within a CLOSED client. With an open client, its like gaim or pidgin, it connects to all the protocols, but the message box looks like whatever you theme it to.
What we are lacking right now are open protocols to the data stored in myspace/facebook. They have obvious incentives NOT to open it up, but facebook apps leave the door cracked.
Only if you discount the mighty struggle that went on for the past hundred years to re-define music as property. As technology made it possible to record sound, then ship that sound, then broadcast that sound we had to find ways to make it fit into our economic model. The latest advancement has been digitizing sound, which completely changed the game. There are no longer (non-trivial) physical limitations to recorded sound and the distribution there of. I don't know which god you got your ethics from, but mine didn't declare that I needed an author's permission to listen to their music. Rather, that was an evolved justification made possible by limited music distribution technology. Open a history book (or search the internet) and find out how young copyright is before you make yourself look silly by talking about ethics like you invented the concept.
It's called civil disobedience. When you have a fundamental issue with a law sometimes the best way to fight it is to break it. Either enough people break it to make enforcement impossible, or you break it publicly to bring attention to the injustice. It may hurt your head, but some laws are passed in undemocratic ways, or have consequences that harm democracy. For those times, you might need civil disobedience. Other times, laws like copyright enforcement just simply go against the grain of human nature and will be broken regardless of government action.
You aren't really understanding the point. Those things are real work, but the reality of the situation is that its going to get harder and harder making money by selling COPIES of the work. I make a living programming for people that make money off my work without copyrighting anything. Have you ever heard of open source? Did you know musicians existed before the 1930s when copyrights started applying to music? Did you know scientists invented things before there was a patent office?
I'm not saying people will have to do something else, but they will have to find different ways to make money off it. The value for the last 100 years has been in the copies, but since copies are becoming worthless (in the sense that the work in reproduction/distribution is nearing 0) it's my prediction that the value will go back to being in the artist/musician/programmer.
It's only worse in the artificial world of IP. The reason most people don't steal is not because its against the law, its because the law just reinforces human nature. Copyright and IP is contrived in response to the slow and uneven development of technology. At this point it has become unnatural and goes against the grain of human nature. Ever noticed that when you have a good idea you want to tell somebody? Yeah, sure it would be great if you could make money off it, but just because its a good idea doesn't mean you deserve to bank on it. It's not a RIGHT to make money off of ideas, its a just a pleasant idea:) Unfortunately it's not working, we are finding out that its not possible to create the artificial scarcity that would let us treat ideas as property. Every DRM scheme invented has been cracked, every work that has been digitally encoded can be transmitted to millions of people over the entire globe within seconds. You CAN'T lock it down, you can't stop it, and it will just get easier as the technology gets polished. Trying to hold on to the idea that we can make a market of ideas will leave you in the same camp as scribes, printing press operators, typists, etc. that is to say, obsolete.
Your post makes sense, but I don't understand why encrypted data would have such an impact on the network. You could still look at the shape of the traffic, just not its contents, still allowing you to prioritize devices based on their usage. Encrypted or not you would still know how many packets are coming from something, and going somewhere.
With the 4 openness principles, I don't think any provider would even attempt to shape the traffic based on content. There wouldn't be enough regularity to make it profitable.
Fact of the matter is, you are probably better off going with the flow of information and giving it away for free as you do. Sure IF you WANTED to make more you could try and sell your information in the future, but in all likely-hood we are moving to a future where data transmission is so rapid and easy, only one person will buy your data and then it gets shared beyond your control immediately.
This is what we are discovering as the internet and computers take hold across the world. People WANT to make money off copyright, but its becoming less and less practical. Just because a bunch of rich people WANT to keep making money the same way, doesn't mean that its right or how it should be. I think you really missed the parents point in that sharing information is part of human nature and has been temporarily been perverted by "imperfect" technology.
Sounds like if a car ever runs you over, you're simply going to DIE, because...
People fantasize about roughing it all the time, and some people actually enjoy putting themselves in that situation, but really ignorance of your present situation is much more dangerous than ignorance of some chance catastrophy. People die all the time from starvation and disease in our modern world, but most of us on slashdot aren't in that position. And most of us won't be... how about spreading modern knowledge to those in need of it, instead of making people feel stupid for not knowing practically useless things.
I'm all for limited time copyrights, but you need to read some Google news. China is the last place you would consider a bastion of copyright law (or communism). I know its fun to bring up communism to get people emotional, but it really doesn't help your point here.
Alright, lets go with the least impact scenario: Only pirates get their computers disabled. The thing is, that nowadays pirates aren't just software hackers that spend hours in their mom's basement downloading the latest version of some software just to crack it. Pirates are your average joe who is reinstalling because he let his comp get muddled with malware and he lost his OEM cd. Pirates are the average college student who would rather drink away the couple hundred they could spend on legitimate software. The point is, this will affect many people, many people who thought what they were doing was a casual act that could be made right again someday.
The reason this is news is that a large number of people will probably find their computer completely disabled and have no idea why. Yeah, sure, they SHOULD have paid for it. The fact is that they didn't, and for whatever reason they didn't think it through. Well now they will be forced to think it through. What will they think? That's right, the thought of linux might pop into their heads. This is news for slashdot because it just got easier to convert people to linux. We have one more reason, one more avenue to recruit more users.
Thank you! We need to wipe out all the broadcasters and use the spectrum for the internet. Then you can let people "broadcast" their shows over the internet that would then blanket 100% of the US.
Proportion? So what if the proportion is smaller? The AMOUNT of interesting sites/videos on the net has to be larger than interesting TV programs, which is all that matters. Who cares how much crap is on the web, since you don't have to look at it. You just go to your friendly neighborhood search engine, or click on a link sent by your friend and you have instant access to interesting entertainment.
We should wish for internet over radio, pray even! Forget all these lame broadcasters and their one-way communication, they are doing nothing but holding our country back. If we could blanket the entire nation with internet using the broadcast spectrums, not only would we see huge progress in streaming-over-IP and better delivery of entertainment, but we would have internet EVERYWHERE. Can you imagine? Forget suffocating cell phone data plans that roam, no matter where in the US, you could send and receive messages, surf the web, watch video, check email etc.
Why do people still hold on to this notion that you won't be able to find the good stuff if there is a lot of crap? With every technological change, from books to radio to TV and now to the internet there is a massive increase in publishers, yet somehow people still manage to find the good stuff!
I also generally agree with what your saying. I'd like to emphasize that the nature of the internet and advancements of technology will make the intentions or even the person doing the photography irrelevant because camera technology will be so pervasive. If everyone becomes connected, pictures become super easy to upload (and obviously share) then the net result will be that everyone is under surveillance. I feel like I'm starting to preach doomsday or something, thats not really the case. I just feel like Google is only scratching the tip of the iceberg when it comes to internet affecting our privacy and we will see much more happen.
If you live in America, you'd be surprised what you can get away with. There are very few privacy laws on the books, and the ones that are there are on the state level. Ever wonder why paparazzi still have jobs? Because there are no laws against taking pictures of people that are in your line of site. Don't you think with all the money celebrities have they could have hired a decent lawyer by now?
Most laws that might defend some of your privacy are not intended to protect your privacy, but rather your wallet. You can sue the crap out of someone for using your image/likeness (thats why TV shows always have those waivers) especially if its for a commercial purpose.
I challenge you to find those laws you are talking about. I would be willing to bet if you walked down the street taking pictures through peoples windows, and the police got called on you the only thing that would happen is they would tell you to stop. Maybe worse if you look like a terrorist;)
Technology is rapidly changing our whole environment. You may notice from observing people that they hate it when their own privacy is violated, but they will violate someone elses privacy in a heartbeat. What happens when everybody (not just your big brother) has cameras and access to the internet? Well, the definition of privacy will change. It has already changed quite a bit, ignoring the big brother surveillance going on, we can look at facebook and myspace. People over 40 generally don't go near these sites because they feel like it would violate the hell out of their privacy, yet students and youngsters use these sites to broadcast their lives to the internet everyday. A lot of slashdotters mourn the loss of privacy with stories about governments and organizations using technology to invade our lives, but sooner rather than later we are going to see our brothers and sisters have the capability to do the very same.
Personally, I think its quite exciting to see how we will adapt to the changing environment. Has anyone ever talked to an old person (over 60) that hates cell phones, or only carries one during the day because they feel like they have no privacy if they carry it at all times? We picked up cell phones like they were there all along, and I believe we will do the same with cameras+gps+internet.
But seriously, how is anyone supposed to support illegal immigration? Since when does anyone support something illegal in the context of government. What we do is support things that are currently illegal in the hope that in the future they will be legal. So when it comes to immigration, the parent poster supports a cheap workforce no matter who its made up of. Some of the people who reply to you are the xenophobes, because they only want the workforce to be people like them. You aren't racist or xenophobe, you just have a different perspective on whats fair. You can throw around words like "slave" but these people are in a situation where being taken advantage of is still to their advantage. I do advocate making it better, lets make immigration easier so that sadistic human smugglers can't leach off the hopes and dreams of poor people.
You act like its the government or some organization that is solely responsible for this invasion of privacy. It's just the natural progression of technology. You ask when do we get upset, where do we draw the line? There is no line, there is no revolution to be had. Cell phones are in the hundreds of millions world wide, camera phones are in the millions. How long before every camera is also has gps, and effortlessly syncs with any computer. Hell, it could just hop on whatever wifi and dump your pics online. Do you really think you could rebel against every person? This is technology you are against, not Big Brother.
You and I may think its wrong or rude or a "problem" that people invade our privacy and post pictures on line, but give it one or two generations of myspace and facebook, and whatever else the internet and technology throws our way. To you, it will look like the world has gone to shit, that privacy is non-existant and everybody is crazy. It has already happened to some extent, just like you said. Look 20 years ago, or look at people who were adults 20 years ago. A large percentage of them won't go anywhere near facebook or myspace. They don't understand it, they think if you do that everyone can see your life and your privacy is totally gone. But we do it everyday.
I don't think his examples are false. You aren't looking at what this shift would mean. It essentially eliminates the idea of broadcaster AND one-to-one "conversations." Everybody would have the capability of broadcasting or sending to just one person. The data would be named and signed so as long as you trust the signature and you know what you are looking for you can get the data. So take nytimes for example, if you are looking for the uptodate information you could get it from anyone who has it. Just because you are imposing a time constraint doesn't mean you are outside the capabilities of the system. You may be the first person to download todays version of the times, but since its signed you can distribute it to others who can then trust you didnt' tamper with it. So what if it expires in one day? Its still more efficient. Even more so, if the content is very specific you aren't losing anything by this new protocol because it will act just like the underlying tcp/ip connection thats one-to-one. If you are the only one getting special content from slashdot, sure it will be just like it is now, but if everybody is loading the front page then it will be more efficient. It boils down to a bunch of networking "freebies." We would have efficient caching, data integrity and security along with all the old things we know and love like direct connecting AND broadcasting.
When you abstract out you don't lose any of the original functionality, but if you do it right you gain extra. It's a really nice idea.
You give a pretty good short summary of a long and interesting talk.
One thing I pulled most out of it was the analogy to 60s and 70s networking and how it is only after technology has been adopted that we see what its used for.
When the telephone was invented Bell didn't know what it would be used for, its a strange concept but he really didn't know what a "phone call" was. He just knew he could transmit voice. Not only that but you had to have wires to connect people, so there was this very expensive business of putting wires everywhere. What happened was that people used those wires to make conversations. To establish a conversation you had to have a path between two nodes. This encouraged a monopoly because the best known way to make paths was to have control of all the wires. When the idea of what TCP/IP was to become was introduced people thought it was lunacy. What they were proposing was adding all this crap onto your data to explicitly name your destination so that it could travel any path to get to its conversation partner. All the networking researchers didn't get it because they already had implicit addresses by way of making the path. Turns out that the supposed innefficiency solved several problems simply by construction. Being able to take any path meant not caring about the underlying topology.
What Van Jacobsen is proposing is another abstraction. Essentially adding another layer of "crap" that will allow us to ignore the underlying network. He mentions how several technologies are working towards these ends to some degree like bittorrent and akami CDN, but I think he is advocating for something like a new protocol. This new protocol would then end up solving some of our current problems simply by construction. Broadcast and one-to-one will become the same thing. Whether you are sending a secure email (pgp signed and named) or downloading the front page of the nytimes you could rely on the nature of the new protocol to deliver you authentic data, no matter where it comes from.
Personally I think its genius, I'd like to follow the progress of such a protocol if it exists. I just got done watching the talk so I'll be googling around for a little I suppose.
How is that surprising. I believe that poverty thrives mostly on the ignorance of a population. So yes, poor people are poor because they are too "dumb." But dumb isn't really the right word, and the reason they are "dumb" may or may not be the poor persons fault. With better access to education as well as information I think everyone is better off.
The GP's example with the emergency room is specifically addressed in the article, and the solution proposed is capitalistic. The state is already NOT caring for a whole lot of people, and if you'd RTFA you would know that the whole campaign is focused on solving the problem for everybody, not the rich.
Pretty soon we will see hundreds of campuses mapped in 3D and available everywhere on google maps. How hard would it be to convert the Google 3D data to a CS or Quake map? Not hard at all. I guess Google is supporting the next generation of school shooters eh?
Slashdot Mirror
I've been inspired by your posts here. I think the prospects of an extendable opensource SimCity on OLPC are amazing! If the framework is done right, wouldn't it be possible for user generated content to replace the entire game's original artwork/game play? That would be awesome, just to see what happens.
Also you mentioned you made a C++ tiling engine, I can't find your email anywhere but I was wondering if that's opensourced? I'm working on one myself and it would be great to see an example specifically using cairo! If you are inclined to contact me, my email is enjahova at gmail dot com. thanks!
I may be a thief, but I'm not the biggest one. It's the distributors that are the problem. For the last 100 years its not the artists that have been doing the hard work, its the distributors.
Now they are going crazy because distribution isn't hard work anymore. That is why its a question of technology. They want an artificial restriction on distribution, but technology has enabled the "thieves" to distribute more effectively than the owners.
This is certainly a debate about technology. Technology makes it possible to instantly distribute anything that can be represented in digital form. The cost of distributing is approaching zero, the cost of copying is practically zero. Unfortunately, right now that means a lot of "thievery" is going on, but look to the future a little bit. This technology is not going away, its going to get more efficient. We will have more space, faster connections and smarter programs. Making laws that suggest people ignore this incredibly valuable technology simply won't work when every household has access to it.
So if we want to protect artists and creators, we need to do it with full knowledge and respect for the technology that exists and is soon to exist. We cannot pretend anymore that its profitable to make money by selling copies of something that any monkey can make millions of copies of in minutes. We need to promote the art, not protect the distribution.
Cigarettes are more like a differentiable equation then some linear function of x cigarettes cause y damage. The addictiveness of cigarettes mean that if you start at a younger age you will be doing more physical damage, but worse yet, cementing the addiction to a higher degree.
I've heard of studies that show that people who start smoking over the age of 21 are more likely to quit. This would imply that starting at a younger age is worse than later, giving another reason to set an arbitrary age ban.
Since I can't link to the study I won't expect anyone to believe it fully, but I think the factor of addiction cannot be ignored in this argument.
You are missing the point. If you have an open standard for a social networking protocol, that means you can make the client whatever you want. If you want plain, original facebook like interface, you get a client that shows just that. When you load it up, it only asks for the basic information from the people you are connected to.
You highlight the problem with too much flexibility within a CLOSED client. With an open client, its like gaim or pidgin, it connects to all the protocols, but the message box looks like whatever you theme it to.
What we are lacking right now are open protocols to the data stored in myspace/facebook. They have obvious incentives NOT to open it up, but facebook apps leave the door cracked.
I think it will be quite the opposite. He will drain the pool of intelligent voters.
Only if you discount the mighty struggle that went on for the past hundred years to re-define music as property. As technology made it possible to record sound, then ship that sound, then broadcast that sound we had to find ways to make it fit into our economic model. The latest advancement has been digitizing sound, which completely changed the game. There are no longer (non-trivial) physical limitations to recorded sound and the distribution there of.
I don't know which god you got your ethics from, but mine didn't declare that I needed an author's permission to listen to their music. Rather, that was an evolved justification made possible by limited music distribution technology.
Open a history book (or search the internet) and find out how young copyright is before you make yourself look silly by talking about ethics like you invented the concept.
It's called civil disobedience. When you have a fundamental issue with a law sometimes the best way to fight it is to break it. Either enough people break it to make enforcement impossible, or you break it publicly to bring attention to the injustice.
It may hurt your head, but some laws are passed in undemocratic ways, or have consequences that harm democracy. For those times, you might need civil disobedience.
Other times, laws like copyright enforcement just simply go against the grain of human nature and will be broken regardless of government action.
You aren't really understanding the point. Those things are real work, but the reality of the situation is that its going to get harder and harder making money by selling COPIES of the work.
I make a living programming for people that make money off my work without copyrighting anything. Have you ever heard of open source? Did you know musicians existed before the 1930s when copyrights started applying to music? Did you know scientists invented things before there was a patent office?
I'm not saying people will have to do something else, but they will have to find different ways to make money off it. The value for the last 100 years has been in the copies, but since copies are becoming worthless (in the sense that the work in reproduction/distribution is nearing 0) it's my prediction that the value will go back to being in the artist/musician/programmer.
It's only worse in the artificial world of IP. The reason most people don't steal is not because its against the law, its because the law just reinforces human nature. Copyright and IP is contrived in response to the slow and uneven development of technology. At this point it has become unnatural and goes against the grain of human nature. :) Unfortunately it's not working, we are finding out that its not possible to create the artificial scarcity that would let us treat ideas as property. Every DRM scheme invented has been cracked, every work that has been digitally encoded can be transmitted to millions of people over the entire globe within seconds. You CAN'T lock it down, you can't stop it, and it will just get easier as the technology gets polished. Trying to hold on to the idea that we can make a market of ideas will leave you in the same camp as scribes, printing press operators, typists, etc. that is to say, obsolete.
Ever noticed that when you have a good idea you want to tell somebody? Yeah, sure it would be great if you could make money off it, but just because its a good idea doesn't mean you deserve to bank on it. It's not a RIGHT to make money off of ideas, its a just a pleasant idea
Your post makes sense, but I don't understand why encrypted data would have such an impact on the network. You could still look at the shape of the traffic, just not its contents, still allowing you to prioritize devices based on their usage. Encrypted or not you would still know how many packets are coming from something, and going somewhere.
With the 4 openness principles, I don't think any provider would even attempt to shape the traffic based on content. There wouldn't be enough regularity to make it profitable.
I think if Google won this, it would be an exciting time for networking. You reminded me of this speech called "A New Way to Look at Networking" by Van Jacobsen
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6972678839686672840&q=networking&total=84269&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
Fact of the matter is, you are probably better off going with the flow of information and giving it away for free as you do. Sure IF you WANTED to make more you could try and sell your information in the future, but in all likely-hood we are moving to a future where data transmission is so rapid and easy, only one person will buy your data and then it gets shared beyond your control immediately.
This is what we are discovering as the internet and computers take hold across the world. People WANT to make money off copyright, but its becoming less and less practical. Just because a bunch of rich people WANT to keep making money the same way, doesn't mean that its right or how it should be. I think you really missed the parents point in that sharing information is part of human nature and has been temporarily been perverted by "imperfect" technology.
Sounds like if a car ever runs you over, you're simply going to DIE, because...
People fantasize about roughing it all the time, and some people actually enjoy putting themselves in that situation, but really ignorance of your present situation is much more dangerous than ignorance of some chance catastrophy. People die all the time from starvation and disease in our modern world, but most of us on slashdot aren't in that position. And most of us won't be... how about spreading modern knowledge to those in need of it, instead of making people feel stupid for not knowing practically useless things.
I'm all for limited time copyrights, but you need to read some Google news. China is the last place you would consider a bastion of copyright law (or communism). I know its fun to bring up communism to get people emotional, but it really doesn't help your point here.
Alright, lets go with the least impact scenario: Only pirates get their computers disabled. The thing is, that nowadays pirates aren't just software hackers that spend hours in their mom's basement downloading the latest version of some software just to crack it. Pirates are your average joe who is reinstalling because he let his comp get muddled with malware and he lost his OEM cd. Pirates are the average college student who would rather drink away the couple hundred they could spend on legitimate software. The point is, this will affect many people, many people who thought what they were doing was a casual act that could be made right again someday.
The reason this is news is that a large number of people will probably find their computer completely disabled and have no idea why. Yeah, sure, they SHOULD have paid for it. The fact is that they didn't, and for whatever reason they didn't think it through. Well now they will be forced to think it through. What will they think? That's right, the thought of linux might pop into their heads. This is news for slashdot because it just got easier to convert people to linux. We have one more reason, one more avenue to recruit more users.
Thank you! We need to wipe out all the broadcasters and use the spectrum for the internet. Then you can let people "broadcast" their shows over the internet that would then blanket 100% of the US.
Proportion? So what if the proportion is smaller? The AMOUNT of interesting sites/videos on the net has to be larger than interesting TV programs, which is all that matters. Who cares how much crap is on the web, since you don't have to look at it. You just go to your friendly neighborhood search engine, or click on a link sent by your friend and you have instant access to interesting entertainment.
We should wish for internet over radio, pray even! Forget all these lame broadcasters and their one-way communication, they are doing nothing but holding our country back. If we could blanket the entire nation with internet using the broadcast spectrums, not only would we see huge progress in streaming-over-IP and better delivery of entertainment, but we would have internet EVERYWHERE. Can you imagine? Forget suffocating cell phone data plans that roam, no matter where in the US, you could send and receive messages, surf the web, watch video, check email etc.
Why do people still hold on to this notion that you won't be able to find the good stuff if there is a lot of crap? With every technological change, from books to radio to TV and now to the internet there is a massive increase in publishers, yet somehow people still manage to find the good stuff!
because the one spamming us is the one who is in need of these proxy servers... A spam for a spam and the whole world's inbox is full.
I also generally agree with what your saying. I'd like to emphasize that the nature of the internet and advancements of technology will make the intentions or even the person doing the photography irrelevant because camera technology will be so pervasive. If everyone becomes connected, pictures become super easy to upload (and obviously share) then the net result will be that everyone is under surveillance.
I feel like I'm starting to preach doomsday or something, thats not really the case. I just feel like Google is only scratching the tip of the iceberg when it comes to internet affecting our privacy and we will see much more happen.
If you live in America, you'd be surprised what you can get away with. There are very few privacy laws on the books, and the ones that are there are on the state level. Ever wonder why paparazzi still have jobs? Because there are no laws against taking pictures of people that are in your line of site. Don't you think with all the money celebrities have they could have hired a decent lawyer by now?
;)
Most laws that might defend some of your privacy are not intended to protect your privacy, but rather your wallet. You can sue the crap out of someone for using your image/likeness (thats why TV shows always have those waivers) especially if its for a commercial purpose.
I challenge you to find those laws you are talking about. I would be willing to bet if you walked down the street taking pictures through peoples windows, and the police got called on you the only thing that would happen is they would tell you to stop. Maybe worse if you look like a terrorist
Technology is rapidly changing our whole environment. You may notice from observing people that they hate it when their own privacy is violated, but they will violate someone elses privacy in a heartbeat. What happens when everybody (not just your big brother) has cameras and access to the internet? Well, the definition of privacy will change. It has already changed quite a bit, ignoring the big brother surveillance going on, we can look at facebook and myspace. People over 40 generally don't go near these sites because they feel like it would violate the hell out of their privacy, yet students and youngsters use these sites to broadcast their lives to the internet everyday. A lot of slashdotters mourn the loss of privacy with stories about governments and organizations using technology to invade our lives, but sooner rather than later we are going to see our brothers and sisters have the capability to do the very same.
Personally, I think its quite exciting to see how we will adapt to the changing environment. Has anyone ever talked to an old person (over 60) that hates cell phones, or only carries one during the day because they feel like they have no privacy if they carry it at all times? We picked up cell phones like they were there all along, and I believe we will do the same with cameras+gps+internet.
life isn't fair baby!
But seriously, how is anyone supposed to support illegal immigration? Since when does anyone support something illegal in the context of government. What we do is support things that are currently illegal in the hope that in the future they will be legal. So when it comes to immigration, the parent poster supports a cheap workforce no matter who its made up of. Some of the people who reply to you are the xenophobes, because they only want the workforce to be people like them. You aren't racist or xenophobe, you just have a different perspective on whats fair. You can throw around words like "slave" but these people are in a situation where being taken advantage of is still to their advantage. I do advocate making it better, lets make immigration easier so that sadistic human smugglers can't leach off the hopes and dreams of poor people.
You act like its the government or some organization that is solely responsible for this invasion of privacy. It's just the natural progression of technology. You ask when do we get upset, where do we draw the line? There is no line, there is no revolution to be had. Cell phones are in the hundreds of millions world wide, camera phones are in the millions. How long before every camera is also has gps, and effortlessly syncs with any computer. Hell, it could just hop on whatever wifi and dump your pics online. Do you really think you could rebel against every person? This is technology you are against, not Big Brother.
You and I may think its wrong or rude or a "problem" that people invade our privacy and post pictures on line, but give it one or two generations of myspace and facebook, and whatever else the internet and technology throws our way. To you, it will look like the world has gone to shit, that privacy is non-existant and everybody is crazy. It has already happened to some extent, just like you said. Look 20 years ago, or look at people who were adults 20 years ago. A large percentage of them won't go anywhere near facebook or myspace. They don't understand it, they think if you do that everyone can see your life and your privacy is totally gone. But we do it everyday.
I don't think his examples are false. You aren't looking at what this shift would mean. It essentially eliminates the idea of broadcaster AND one-to-one "conversations." Everybody would have the capability of broadcasting or sending to just one person. The data would be named and signed so as long as you trust the signature and you know what you are looking for you can get the data.
So take nytimes for example, if you are looking for the uptodate information you could get it from anyone who has it. Just because you are imposing a time constraint doesn't mean you are outside the capabilities of the system. You may be the first person to download todays version of the times, but since its signed you can distribute it to others who can then trust you didnt' tamper with it. So what if it expires in one day? Its still more efficient. Even more so, if the content is very specific you aren't losing anything by this new protocol because it will act just like the underlying tcp/ip connection thats one-to-one. If you are the only one getting special content from slashdot, sure it will be just like it is now, but if everybody is loading the front page then it will be more efficient.
It boils down to a bunch of networking "freebies." We would have efficient caching, data integrity and security along with all the old things we know and love like direct connecting AND broadcasting.
When you abstract out you don't lose any of the original functionality, but if you do it right you gain extra. It's a really nice idea.
You give a pretty good short summary of a long and interesting talk.
One thing I pulled most out of it was the analogy to 60s and 70s networking and how it is only after technology has been adopted that we see what its used for.
When the telephone was invented Bell didn't know what it would be used for, its a strange concept but he really didn't know what a "phone call" was. He just knew he could transmit voice. Not only that but you had to have wires to connect people, so there was this very expensive business of putting wires everywhere. What happened was that people used those wires to make conversations. To establish a conversation you had to have a path between two nodes. This encouraged a monopoly because the best known way to make paths was to have control of all the wires.
When the idea of what TCP/IP was to become was introduced people thought it was lunacy. What they were proposing was adding all this crap onto your data to explicitly name your destination so that it could travel any path to get to its conversation partner. All the networking researchers didn't get it because they already had implicit addresses by way of making the path. Turns out that the supposed innefficiency solved several problems simply by construction. Being able to take any path meant not caring about the underlying topology.
What Van Jacobsen is proposing is another abstraction. Essentially adding another layer of "crap" that will allow us to ignore the underlying network. He mentions how several technologies are working towards these ends to some degree like bittorrent and akami CDN, but I think he is advocating for something like a new protocol. This new protocol would then end up solving some of our current problems simply by construction. Broadcast and one-to-one will become the same thing. Whether you are sending a secure email (pgp signed and named) or downloading the front page of the nytimes you could rely on the nature of the new protocol to deliver you authentic data, no matter where it comes from.
Personally I think its genius, I'd like to follow the progress of such a protocol if it exists. I just got done watching the talk so I'll be googling around for a little I suppose.
How is that surprising. I believe that poverty thrives mostly on the ignorance of a population. So yes, poor people are poor because they are too "dumb." But dumb isn't really the right word, and the reason they are "dumb" may or may not be the poor persons fault. With better access to education as well as information I think everyone is better off.
The GP's example with the emergency room is specifically addressed in the article, and the solution proposed is capitalistic. The state is already NOT caring for a whole lot of people, and if you'd RTFA you would know that the whole campaign is focused on solving the problem for everybody, not the rich.
http://contest.sketchup.com/entry.php?rules=1
Pretty soon we will see hundreds of campuses mapped in 3D and available everywhere on google maps. How hard would it be to convert the Google 3D data to a CS or Quake map? Not hard at all. I guess Google is supporting the next generation of school shooters eh?