If Brown Trousers & Co. weren't ashamed of all the other crap they've been thrusting down peoples' throats both during and subsequent to Generalisimo Blair's reign, then they certainly won't suddenly start being ashamed over this.
"The general public in England would be seriously stupid to let this slide."
The general public in England _is_ seriously stupid, so they'll not only let this slide, but actively support it when the government tell them it's a measure to reduce crime and make the Internet safer for children.
"So? Google is a closed-source company, nothing wrong with it."
I didn't say there was anything wrong with it. Read my posts again: my assertion was that Google's history as a closed source company does not give me your level of confidence in their commitment to open source Android.
"However, they ARE friendly to OpenSource and open standards."
The same can be said of Apple, who've been far more heavily involved with both open source and open standards than Google.
"???? I meant that it was negotiated with satellite imagery providers."
Please provide some evidence for the assertion that Apple negotiated with the satellite image providers rather than Google.
"Do you expect them to work for free? "
No. However, there is a huge difference between you saying Apple negotiated with the satellite image providers, and them actually having negotiated with the satellite image providers.
"Also, Apple forces you to _pay_ for a privilege to access their SDK."
The iPhone SDK is a free download. You have to register as a developer, but as with Google Accounts, all that's required is an EMAIL address and password -- registration is free, and it gives you access to all Apple's development tools and documentation, not just stuff relating to the iPhone.
"MS also has code-signing restrictions for mobile applications, ditto for Symbian."
Have you ever considered the fact that they might have an excellent reason for doing this that has nothing whatsoever to do with being control freaks?
"Actually, Google Android is about the ONLY mobile SDK which will allow user to override default call handlers, address books and audio handling with a simple installation of unsigned application."
Indeed. And you might like to sit and think about why it's the only one that lets unsigned applications replace fundamental things such as default call handlers with (for example) premium rate diallers, spyware, etc.
"I'm sorry, I don't really like Google (especially their data storage policy), but Android is probably going to be the most open mobile platform."
I'm entirely neutral about Google, but nearly 30 years as a developer has taught me to be extremely cynical about proprietary closed source companies who aren't in some sort of trouble bearing "open source" gifts, because they usually end up being neither gifts nor open source.
"I can't remember a Google project which started as Open Source and then was closed-sourced."
That's because there hasn't been a significant Google project that started out as open source. Android is included in this, because Android didn't start out being open source (it didn't start as a Google project either), and is not open source now.
"Phone can not be used as a navigator. It has some _similar_ functionality, but it's nowhere close to, say, TomTom."
It doesn't do turn-by-turn, but it certainly does use its GPS functionality to tell you where you are (the earlier iPhone had a more limited way of doing this via tower triangulation).
"And yes, probably, it was negotiated."
I.e. money changed hands, thereby proving what I've been saying all along: Google are no more or less greedy than any other corporation, do no more or less evil, and have the same view of the public as being a collection of ambulant wallets to be advertised at or sold to.
"I don't understand what is so restrictive in Google Maps."
Because it's Google, who you are obviously deeply in love with. If MS or Apple forced users of an SDK to embed a key that they issued in every application, you'd be screaming about it being a form of DRM, but when Google do it, it's not at all restrictive. There's a word for people who apply double standards of this sort: hypocrite.
"Yes, Google wants to make sure you do not abuse them"
That's the same reasoning all companies use for restricting what people can do.
"What is wrong with it? They don't require you to sign NDAs or provide your real name for Google Maps keys."
The DRM on video game disks doesn't require you to identify yourself or sign an NDA either, but that doesn't mean it isn't DRM.
"Google is going to open all parts that matter: OS, GUI environment, Java VM, codecs."
So you say. Their prior history with applications and APIs does not however support your claims.
"As for Google Maps API - they have to control it because they are legally obliged to do it by contracts with satellite imagery providers. "
The satellite imagery providers don't mandate having a Google account, or obtaining a single unique key from Google that has to be embedded in every web page.
"For example, Google Maps can't be used in stand-alone applications or in car navigators."
But it is apparently allowed to be used in the iPhone 3G, which has a satellite GPS unit much like those in stand-alone car navigators, and can be used in a similar way. Did Apple pay the satellite image providers for this privilege, or did they pay Google? How much of a role did Eric Schmidt's position on Apple's board of directors play in this? Enquiring minds want to know whether Schmidt changes clothes when moving between roles as a Google hero who can do no wrong, and the evil, sneering Jobs-droid that cackles evilly while planning to shackle all the world's developers to horrific beta iPhone SDK EULAs.
"The product hasn't been released yet so they have a right to privacyâ"even if they've given it to members of the public."
So Google have a right to privacy for unreleased items, whereas when Apple do the same, it's a reason for avoiding their products.
"What happens when the product's finished is what determines whether it really is open or not, and that hasn't happened yet."
Ditto for Apple, because the iPhone SDK and its documentation are beta releases.
"I am not singing Google's praises; I'm withholding judgement until the first Android phone is released."
I'll withhold judgement until the first non-beta SDK for the first Android phone is released, because I'm willing to bet that the realities of having to work with networks will result in something that's nowhere near as open as Google lovers are hoping.
"On the other hand I'm unable to justify an iPhone right now, so maybe I'm just trying to rationalise the fact that I'll be in the market for a new phone around the time Android's released"
Sounds like an excellent reason to me. Note though that I'm extremely sceptical about claimed release dates for things, because we usually end up with a feature-light, buggy item that comes out more or less on time, something that's better but late, or in the case of Vista (and to a lesser degree, OS X 10.5), buggy, feature-light software that also misses several announced release dates.
Google Toolbar EULA, Intellectual Property clause:
"You acknowledge that Google or third parties own all rights, title and interest in and to the Google Toolbar"
Google Maps API, terms of service:
"In order to obtain the API, You must have a Google Account. After supplying Google with Your account information, the URL of your service, and agreeing to the Terms of Service, You will be issued an alphanumeric key assigned to You by Google that is uniquely associated with your Google Account and the URL of your service. Your service must import the Google Maps API using an HTML tag that contains this key, as described in the Maps API documentation, and Google will block requests with an invalid key or invalid URL. Google shall have sole and complete control over the map data and format. You may not obtain more than one key for use in the Service."
Read the last one with care to see that Google are every bit as much control freaks as Apple and MS. So while I find your faith in them touching, they have a long way to go before I believe anything they say about Android and openness.
"With the inherently poor design decisions that seem to consistently go into FOSS projects, such as Ubuntu and OpenMoko, I have to wonder if they don't have some voracious and vocal corporate plants somewhere in the project actively sabotaging the overall movement."
Or it could just be a result of design by committee, hence the old saw about an elephant being a mouse specified by a committee.
"Or maybe I need a tin foil hat."
You only require the ability to look at FOSS projects and note that most of the really good ones like the Linux kernel have one or two "benevolent dictators" who decide what will and will not go into each version, while the less successful examples that aren't direct rip-offs of already existing commercial apps whose ideas they can copy inevitably have much more democratic design processes.
Those wanting the latest versions of the Android SDK instead of a buggy load of old crap have to sign an NDA that prohibits talking about it, publishing screen shots, or sharing code fragments.
Google are a bunch of dollar-hungry corporate arseholes just like Apple and MS, but at least you know where you stand with the latter two, neither of whom are pretending their SDKs are FOSS while behaving in ways that are the antithesis of the openness that's a central tenet of the movement.
"have you ever thought of the most popular thing done with computers...GAMING! "
Gaming is far from being the most popular thing that people do with computers. 80% of annual PC sales are to companies, hence the fact that Microsoft's income from Office alone in the last fiscal year was $19.8 billion, compared with the entire gaming industry's 1997 sales of $18.85 billion, of which PC games was a mere $14% (3.2 billion).
"Keep in mind that you're taking a very flexible arm and hand with 4 fingers and an opposable thumb, and using it to control a device that's about as complex as a baseball bat."
This is an extremely important point, and one that all those who talk about eye movement sensors (which, like mice, are single-point devices) etc., miss, i.e. that our hands and fingers have evolved to make extremely quick, precise sets of spacial movements in a synchronised way without us having to specifically think about what every finger on each hand is doing. It would for example be impossible to play most non-trivial musical instruments with a mouse or eye-track pointer because they require precise positioning of both hands and the fingers on them for each note (or group of notes with polyphonic instruments).
"Mice are specifically more accurate than fingers when it comes to accurately indicating tiny screen points in a way that strictly logical software can unambiguously interpret"
They're not more accurate than fingers, just thinner than fingers. As people like this (http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/microscopic.asp) and other micro-miniaturists throughout history have amply proven, the human hand is capable of movements that are much finer than the size of individual pixels on any current computer monitor, and few mice have enough mechanical accuracy for reliable single-pixel movements, let alone the sub-pixel ones that fingers can achieve.
"Personally I'm skeptical if touch screens (as they are today) will replace mice, and generally I think Gartner's full of crap when it comes to this and just about everything else they claim to predict"
Agreed. What Gartner (and many other observers) seem to miss is the fact that the key to the success of the iPhone / iPod Touch isn't the fact that they have touch screens (which have been present on a variety of hand-held devices for more than a decade without having any notable success) -- it's the fact that they have multi-touch that uses natural (and therefore easy to learn and remember) gestures, and is implemented consistently throughout the included applications. The touch screen itself is therefore an implementation detail that's necessary because the devices have to fit in one hand rather than a feature of the technology itself, hence the fact that Apple have implemented the same interface on various portable Macs without using touch screens (and without the same level of success because Mac apps aren't written to take advantage of multi-touch yet).
"It just happens to balance accuracy and utility between humans and the current day's computers better than anything else we have at the moment."
I don't think that's actually the case. Imagine for example if the mouse mat that most mice are pushed around on could sense the position and pressure of each individual finger on one's hand, i.e. it could provide the computer with five simultaneous inputs, each of which had (for example) 8 bits of pressure information. The user's hand would still be resting on their desk in the same way as it does with a mouse, but fingers which have evolved for this sort of task would be performing most of the movements instead of wrists (which didn't evolve for such things). In addition to "pinch to zoom" and other things that iPhones do, one would be able to pick up text, pictures, etc. up by making "grasp" gestures with several fingers and a thumb (and drop them by opening the hand slightly), use "chording" to interact with several controls or other items at same time, etc., without incurring problems from dirty screens, tired arms, or uncomfortable neck postures.
It's pretty obvious that such a device could easily be built today, and wouldn't cost much more than a decent mouse if produced in volume. The problem of course comes from the fact that software would have to take advantage of the technology for it to be truly useful, which would mean that it wouldn't work very well with all the legacy stuff (including of course everything being written now). This is a pr
"He said: "They (the inspectors) went through a lot of my stock using their own little scales.
"These regulations are enforced in the United Kingdom with a higher level of rigour than is applied in mainland Europe. There is not a level playing field.""
So, as is usual with such things, the problem does not in fact lie with the EC rules, which the rest of Europe manages to interpret quite sensibly, but is actually due to the peculiarly British penchant for producing legions of bloody-minded jobsworths whose only reason for existing is to find as many ways as possible of making other peoples' lives miserable.
So are the English. However, unlike them, many in the Irish workforce also speak one or more other European languages, so Ireland is an attractive proposition for foreign companies who want a base for European operations. This does of course reinforce your point about its education system, especially when compared to the the UK's pile of shite.
"This is why guilds formed - to protect "guild secrets", and create a competitive advantage for guild members."
This is historically incorrect. Guilds had two main roles in feudal economies: (1) to ensure that information and techniques would be preserved and widely disseminated in societies where most people (and therefore most artisans) were illiterate, and movement of people between communities was rare; and (b) setting fixed national pricing structures, measurements, and in many cases establishing bodies of law to prevent artisans from being abused by the aristocratic power hierarchy with their penchant for regarding everyone else as a serf.
NB: the word "guild" is derived from the Anglo-Saxon "gegildan", which means "to pay". This does not however refer to the guild being paid by others, but comes instead from the fact that they were supported by payments from their members, who were known as "gegilda", a noun used for a subscribing member of a guild. It should also be noted that artisan's guilds were actually a rather small part of the overall mediaeval guild structure (which was largely a Germanic phenomenon), with the vast bulk of guild members belonging to religious, frith, and mercantile guilds.
"The problem is, anyone who was really innovative would more often than not, refuse to share their new process, forcing other people to have to rediscover the secret, a horrible waste of time and energy."
The problem was actually due to 95% of the population being illiterate, while the 5% who were literate tended to come from social classes or organisations (e.g. the Church) who had no interest whatsoever in what artisans, etc. did, so new processes didn't get written down, and therefore tended to die with their inventor if they didn't become part of a guild's practical methodologies (members of artisans' guilds were required to share any new techniques with other guild members to prevent this from happening).
I lived through it, and worked for IBM during the early days of the PC, so I know exactly what the markup was on both the basic machines and their add-ons. Here are some examples of IBM's prices from that period together with those from competitors to highlight the fact that you're spouting tripe:
IBM 5150 with 16K RAM, CGA card (4 colours), no sound, no disks, no monitor: $1695
Commodore 64 with 64K RAM, 16 colours, three channel sound synthesizer, no disks, no monitor: $595
IBM 5150, one floppy drive, 64K RAM, monochrome monitor: $3100
Kaypro II, twin floppies, 64K RAM, monochrome monitor, all built into a transportable case: $1795
"Apple was charging 100% markup on the mac when IBM was charging only 35% markup."
See above, and then explain why the 5150 was so much more expensive than its competition. You might also like to explain the following prices from 1984, when both the Mac and IBM PC/AT were launched:
Apple Macintosh, mono monitor, 128K RAM, one floppy drive: $2495
IBM PC/AT Model 1, two floppies, 256K RAM: $5700.
Note: 128K RAM and a second floppy drive didn't cost $3200.
"That is why IBM pc's became popular, why more software was written for them and apple's market became the sandle wearing, tree hugging graphics design crowd."
1) IBM's PC became popular because it was sold to their large existing corporate user base by the same sales people who sold them mainframes and minicomputers. The 5150, PC/XT, and PC/AT did not sell in any notable quantities to either home or small business users, who were expected to pay the full retail price, whereas corporate buyers got big discounts. IBM's attempt at a cheaper home machine (the PC Jr, also know as the Peanut) was a notable flop.
2) I suggest you check the history of MS Excel and the platform it was originally written for before claiming that Macs didn't have significant business applications during the early days. MS Word was also available for it when the machine was launched.
"Apple was inovative, IBM was cost affective."
The prices quoted above show that your assertions are based on (1) an appalling level of ignorance, and (2), an equally appalling level of bias. I therefore suggest that you come back with some actual historical information proving that Apple were marking their systems up more than IBM during the same period, and explain why a 12 year DOJ anti-trust investigation into IBM's business practices gathered copious evidence of price gouging.
"Can anyone besides me remember back when IBM clones took off while Apple was charging 100% markup?"
I can -- it was when IBM was charging a 300% markup for the basic box, and 1000% for upgrades.
"Jobs/Apple has become what is used to condemn. A bloated company focused on ringing money from it's customers."
Hence the fact that they're still in business, while the companies who started the PC clone revolution (and indeed the others who launched the home computer wave that preceded it) have all disappeared.
"The great advantage I find with the level of restriction that Java puts on your types is that it enables brilliant development tools."
Brilliant development tools for dynamic languages were around long before Java appeared. LISP machines and Smalltalk's browsers and the old PARTS visual component wiring environment come to mind here. These notably sophisticated development environments ran in significantly less memory than a modern CPU has in its internal cache on processors clocking at a few MHz.
"I can say from experience that refactoring of an app written in a dynamic language can be a colossal pain in the ass. Just finding everywhere that a particular class is being used can take hours or days."
I suggest therefore that you explain how people managed to write first refactoring tool (the Refactoring Browser) in and for for Smalltalk, a dynamically typed language.
Forth, an interactive non-typed language, has also used the term "factoring" to refer to what's now called refactoring since the early 1980s. It's something LISP programmers have also been doing since at least the 1960s, although the nature of LISP meant that no special tools were required.
Gandhi was an anarchist, so he's not exactly the best person to cite. A famous quote makes his views perfectly clear:
"that state is perfect and non-violent where the people are governed the least. The nearest approach to purest anarchy would be a democracy based on nonviolence."
Note though that Gandhi's definition of democracy excluded political parties because they're contrary to his ideas of individualism, so he would not have recognised the US and Western Europe as democracies.
"From Wiki [wikipedia.org]: "The doctrine only existed in the U.S. as common law until it was incorporated into the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. 107"."
A doctrine is not a right. Note also the very same article also says the following:
"The Supreme Court of the United States described fair use as an affirmative defense in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc..[15] This means that, in litigation on copyright infringement, the defendant bears the burden of raising and proving that his use was "fair" and not an infringement. "
None of the other articles you've cited state that fair use is a right rather than a legal defence. Telling people how to decide whether something falls under fair use provisions is not the same as saying it's a right.
"A dog, cat, etc., clearly knows that it's an individual distinct from other individuals."
Do they? Please provide some experimental proof for this, because specialists in animal behaviour dispute your assertion.
"Call that what you want, we don't have a computer that is smart in that way, and that's a completely seperate problem than the "abstract problem solving" that AI research seems to focus on."
They don't seem to be concentrating on that capability nowadays because they've realised that the first step on the road to intelligence is becoming aware of the environment in which a machine exists, and that requires the ability to process multiple sensory inputs at least as well as insects do. And it could argued with some success that there are more useful applications for small, disposable robots with the sensory capabilities and environmental awareness of (for example) a lizard than there are for big, expensive, immobile ones that can pass the Turing test.
"We don't know that "strong self-awareness" (your definition) can evolve from abstract probem solving ability."
My definition of self awareness requires the ability to deal with the concept of "self" as an abstract, not abstract problem solving per se (although it's unlikely that one can exist without the other). And while we don't know that self awareness can evolve from the ability to handle abstracts, it's notable that the great apes who are unarguably self-aware have been proven in a wide variety of experiments to be excellent at handling abstracts (they're far better with certain types of abstraction than human children of less than eight years).
"We do know that it can evolve from "weak self-awareness" (my definition)."
Animal behaviour experiments to suggest that self awareness is a threshold rather than a continuum, so I would dispute whether there is such a thing as "weak" self awareness. The primary indicator of this is that (as I said before) even highly developed monkeys such as baboons are incapable of knowing that their reflection in a mirror isn't another animal, whereas apes only take a minute or two to realise that it's an image of themselves, and then become fascinated watching their own antics from a viewpoint that's previously been unavailable to them.
"I'm not sure we even have software "smart" enough to interact in the adaptive way that cells sometimes interact in a complex organism, but that sounds like a fun way to approach the problem."
It'd certainly be an interesting approach, although it's doubtful whether anything useful (in the AI sense) would be achieved by modelling all nature's mechanisms, because they have a large number of limitations imposed on them by the need to avoid using materials that aren't compatible with organic processes. Nerve impulses for example travel at 20 m/second, which is very slow indeed when compared with electrical signals in non-organic conductors, and the wide variety of chemical messages used by organisms are slower still. This isn't particularly noticeable in small creatures, but it's a significant factor in big ones like people, where the low speed of nerve impulses means that we take significant fractions of a second to respond to certain stimuli.
Fair use is (1) a legal defence in a copyright violation case, not a right; so (b) whether a snippet counts as infringement is therefore up to a judge (and possibly a jury) rather than being a hard and fast rule.
"It seems to me that you consider an individual's right to be self-destructive to be so absolute that - no matter the circumstances and how it might affect another person - it simply can NOT be immoral. "
Don't mistake an argument for a person's own beliefs.
"I will leave the discussion here."
It's usually a good idea to end such discussions before they degenerate into hair splitting exercises.
"I thank you for your thoughts on the matter"
Likewise.
"I think it is an interesting topic."
It is indeed, but it's unfortunately one whose implications strike at the very definition of morality, i.e. whether preventing a demonstrably sane adult from risking their own life for what you consider to be a poor reason is more justifiable in a moral sense than giving that demonstrably sane adult the right to do whatever they choose with their own life.
Here's another one you might like to consider just for the sake of it:
Should a person obey speed limits even in conditions where it is imprudent to do so, e.g. in thick fog, or is it better (i.e. more moral) to use one's own judgement in such cases? And if it's more moral to use one's own judgement in these cases, then how can it be immoral to use one's own judgement in _all_ cases?
"That depends on your definition of "self awareness" I guess."
My definition of self awareness is inherent in the term, i.e. to be aware of one's self as a distinct entity rather than simply a concentration point for a set of senses that fulfils a (possibly complex) set of survival-driven goals.
"There's the Victorian definition "what makes us better than the animals and closer to God", but I don't find that particularly convincing."
I don't either, hence the fact that I don't use it.
" A dog, or even a hamster, clearly has emotions, interacts with others as different entities from itself, and participates in social groups"
If interacting with a group of other individuals is sufficient to qualify for self awareness, then the cells in complex organisms are self aware. The same goes for emotions: they're chemical in nature (hence the fact that chemicals are used to treat depression), so if they are used to gauge self awareness, then we must conclude that bacteria are also self aware.
"Recognizing one's self in a mirror/photograph is just too contrived of a test - it's reqires not just self-awareness but the ability to work with abstractions (especially for photographs)"
That's because self awareness is an abstraction by definition, so it cannot be possessed by creatures (or machines) that can't handle abstractions.
"and of course only primarily visual animals are going to make that jump."
It's due to the fact that the visual cortex is the most complex sensory processor, so animals without one wouldn't be likely to develop brains large enough to process abstracts (at least on Earth: alien creatures that evolved separately are beyond the scope of this discussion). And before you bring up bats and cetaceans, you should be aware of the fact that their SONAR systems are processed in their visual cortexes as images (a human disorder known as synesthesia results in humans seeing sounds and hearing colours, and as this is likely to occur in other animals too, the evolutionary path to processing sounds in the visual cortex is a fairly obvious one).
"I don't think a dog could distinguish individuals without scent, for example, but they can clearly accoiate a particular scent with a particular indivdual."
Self awareness isn't a necessary prerequisite for distinguishing one set of signals from other sets of signals, identifying them, and modifying behaviour based on that identification. Ants for example know whether other ants belong to their nest based on chemical signals, and will react hostilely to ants from other nests even if they're the same species, while cooperating with ants from their own nests to bring down much larger creatures than themselves and drag them home, farm aphids or fungi, etc. Does this mean that an ant is self aware, or is it simply proof of the fact that senses evolved to facilitate survival by helping animals to distinguish food, threats, and potential mates from one another?
"Neither of your examples have anything to do with acting _recklessly_ or _self-endangerment_. This a straw man with a bit of false equivalence thrown in for decoration. "
The entire premise of your claim for reckless self-endangerment being immoral is the fact that it has consequences for third parties, so my assertion is within the parameters of your claim. It is not therefore a straw man to anyone with the wherewithal to know what a straw man actually is.
"The modifier "reckless" is important as well, because it does not allow you to come in with examples that have some reasoned or rational excuse. They are by definition NOT reckless. "
Now you're throwing out a straw man, because you said that it was immoral _due to its effect on third parties_, not because it was reckless. You're attempting to shift the goal posts to avoid being caught in a logical trap of your own making.
"Furthermore, I did not say all such actions were immoral, only that they MAY be immoral. Are you taking the position that there is NO circumstance under which reckless self-endangerment can be immoral? "
I am indeed taking that position. If a person doesn't have the right to decide whether to risk, or for that matter take their own life, then they cannot be said to have any rights at all, and any moral system that negates such basic rights is a moral system in name only.
"In other words, is your argument that so long as I continuously act recklessly and am a danger to myself, I am guaranteed to have led a moral life?"
This is an excellent example of a straw man. Please note it so that you know what they are, and can therefore avoid falsely accusing others of using them. It should also be noted that they're regarded by debaters as a tactic used by hose with extremely weak arguments.
"Because it is exceedingly rare that an individual bears the entire burden of his actions solely on his own shoulders. In reality, actions have consequences _that affect other people as well as the actor_. So, recklessly endangering oneself may well be immoral."
Your argument would only hold water if any action with negative consequences for others is immoral, including things such as buying a product from one vendor instead of another (which deprives the other vendor of income from me), or choosing to walk a couple of miles to a destination instead of paying a taxi driver to take me there, which has a negative effect on the taxi driver's income.
Modern society is such a complex web of interdependencies that it's absolutely impossible to live in it without negatively affecting somebody in ways that are completely predictable if we take the time to think about them. So by your definition of morality, it's impossible for us to avoid being immoral, which means that recklessly endangering one's self is merely one of the several immoral acts that we're all guilty of on a daily basis.
Slashdot Mirror
"The government should be ashamed out itself"
If Brown Trousers & Co. weren't ashamed of all the other crap they've been thrusting down peoples' throats both during and subsequent to Generalisimo Blair's reign, then they certainly won't suddenly start being ashamed over this.
"The general public in England would be seriously stupid to let this slide."
The general public in England _is_ seriously stupid, so they'll not only let this slide, but actively support it when the government tell them it's a measure to reduce crime and make the Internet safer for children.
"So? Google is a closed-source company, nothing wrong with it."
I didn't say there was anything wrong with it. Read my posts again: my assertion was that Google's history as a closed source company does not give me your level of confidence in their commitment to open source Android.
"However, they ARE friendly to OpenSource and open standards."
The same can be said of Apple, who've been far more heavily involved with both open source and open standards than Google.
"???? I meant that it was negotiated with satellite imagery providers."
Please provide some evidence for the assertion that Apple negotiated with the satellite image providers rather than Google.
"Do you expect them to work for free? "
No. However, there is a huge difference between you saying Apple negotiated with the satellite image providers, and them actually having negotiated with the satellite image providers.
"Also, Apple forces you to _pay_ for a privilege to access their SDK."
The iPhone SDK is a free download. You have to register as a developer, but as with Google Accounts, all that's required is an EMAIL address and password -- registration is free, and it gives you access to all Apple's development tools and documentation, not just stuff relating to the iPhone.
"MS also has code-signing restrictions for mobile applications, ditto for Symbian."
Have you ever considered the fact that they might have an excellent reason for doing this that has nothing whatsoever to do with being control freaks?
"Actually, Google Android is about the ONLY mobile SDK which will allow user to override default call handlers, address books and audio handling with a simple installation of unsigned application."
Indeed. And you might like to sit and think about why it's the only one that lets unsigned applications replace fundamental things such as default call handlers with (for example) premium rate diallers, spyware, etc.
"I'm sorry, I don't really like Google (especially their data storage policy), but Android is probably going to be the most open mobile platform."
I'm entirely neutral about Google, but nearly 30 years as a developer has taught me to be extremely cynical about proprietary closed source companies who aren't in some sort of trouble bearing "open source" gifts, because they usually end up being neither gifts nor open source.
"What "prior history"?"
A prior history of being a closed source company.
"I can't remember a Google project which started as Open Source and then was closed-sourced."
That's because there hasn't been a significant Google project that started out as open source. Android is included in this, because Android didn't start out being open source (it didn't start as a Google project either), and is not open source now.
"Phone can not be used as a navigator. It has some _similar_ functionality, but it's nowhere close to, say, TomTom."
It doesn't do turn-by-turn, but it certainly does use its GPS functionality to tell you where you are (the earlier iPhone had a more limited way of doing this via tower triangulation).
"And yes, probably, it was negotiated."
I.e. money changed hands, thereby proving what I've been saying all along: Google are no more or less greedy than any other corporation, do no more or less evil, and have the same view of the public as being a collection of ambulant wallets to be advertised at or sold to.
"I don't understand what is so restrictive in Google Maps."
Because it's Google, who you are obviously deeply in love with. If MS or Apple forced users of an SDK to embed a key that they issued in every application, you'd be screaming about it being a form of DRM, but when Google do it, it's not at all restrictive. There's a word for people who apply double standards of this sort: hypocrite.
"Yes, Google wants to make sure you do not abuse them"
That's the same reasoning all companies use for restricting what people can do.
"What is wrong with it? They don't require you to sign NDAs or provide your real name for Google Maps keys."
The DRM on video game disks doesn't require you to identify yourself or sign an NDA either, but that doesn't mean it isn't DRM.
"Google is going to open all parts that matter: OS, GUI environment, Java VM, codecs."
So you say. Their prior history with applications and APIs does not however support your claims.
"As for Google Maps API - they have to control it because they are legally obliged to do it by contracts with satellite imagery providers. "
The satellite imagery providers don't mandate having a Google account, or obtaining a single unique key from Google that has to be embedded in every web page.
"For example, Google Maps can't be used in stand-alone applications or in car navigators."
But it is apparently allowed to be used in the iPhone 3G, which has a satellite GPS unit much like those in stand-alone car navigators, and can be used in a similar way. Did Apple pay the satellite image providers for this privilege, or did they pay Google? How much of a role did Eric Schmidt's position on Apple's board of directors play in this? Enquiring minds want to know whether Schmidt changes clothes when moving between roles as a Google hero who can do no wrong, and the evil, sneering Jobs-droid that cackles evilly while planning to shackle all the world's developers to horrific beta iPhone SDK EULAs.
I stand corrected.
"The product hasn't been released yet so they have a right to privacyâ"even if they've given it to members of the public."
So Google have a right to privacy for unreleased items, whereas when Apple do the same, it's a reason for avoiding their products.
"What happens when the product's finished is what determines whether it really is open or not, and that hasn't happened yet."
Ditto for Apple, because the iPhone SDK and its documentation are beta releases.
"I am not singing Google's praises; I'm withholding judgement until the first Android phone is released."
I'll withhold judgement until the first non-beta SDK for the first Android phone is released, because I'm willing to bet that the realities of having to work with networks will result in something that's nowhere near as open as Google lovers are hoping.
"On the other hand I'm unable to justify an iPhone right now, so maybe I'm just trying to rationalise the fact that I'll be in the market for a new phone around the time Android's released"
Sounds like an excellent reason to me. Note though that I'm extremely sceptical about claimed release dates for things, because we usually end up with a feature-light, buggy item that comes out more or less on time, something that's better but late, or in the case of Vista (and to a lesser degree, OS X 10.5), buggy, feature-light software that also misses several announced release dates.
"It's pretty clear that Google NDAs are temporary."
Is it?
"Google officials pledged (several times) that they are going to open most of the SDK"
"Most" is not all.
"Personally, I believe them."
I base my opinions on past behaviour, which indicates that Google are, like Apple and MS, only open when it benefits them financially:
http://picasa.google.com/linux/faq.html#26
"Picasa for Linux isn't open source"
Google Toolbar EULA, Intellectual Property clause:
"You acknowledge that Google or third parties own all rights, title and interest in and to the Google Toolbar"
Google Maps API, terms of service:
"In order to obtain the API, You must have a Google Account. After supplying Google with Your account information, the URL of your service, and agreeing to the Terms of Service, You will be issued an alphanumeric key assigned to You by Google that is uniquely associated with your Google Account and the URL of your service. Your service must import the Google Maps API using an HTML tag that contains this key, as described in the Maps API documentation, and Google will block requests with an invalid key or invalid URL. Google shall have sole and complete control over the map data and format. You may not obtain more than one key for use in the Service."
Read the last one with care to see that Google are every bit as much control freaks as Apple and MS. So while I find your faith in them touching, they have a long way to go before I believe anything they say about Android and openness.
"With the inherently poor design decisions that seem to consistently go into FOSS projects, such as Ubuntu and OpenMoko, I have to wonder if they don't have some voracious and vocal corporate plants somewhere in the project actively sabotaging the overall movement."
Or it could just be a result of design by committee, hence the old saw about an elephant being a mouse specified by a committee.
"Or maybe I need a tin foil hat."
You only require the ability to look at FOSS projects and note that most of the really good ones like the Linux kernel have one or two "benevolent dictators" who decide what will and will not go into each version, while the less successful examples that aren't direct rip-offs of already existing commercial apps whose ideas they can copy inevitably have much more democratic design processes.
Those wanting the latest versions of the Android SDK instead of a buggy load of old crap have to sign an NDA that prohibits talking about it, publishing screen shots, or sharing code fragments.
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/112945
http://osnews.com/thread?323230
http://www.newmobilecomputing.com/comments/20069
Google are a bunch of dollar-hungry corporate arseholes just like Apple and MS, but at least you know where you stand with the latter two, neither of whom are pretending their SDKs are FOSS while behaving in ways that are the antithesis of the openness that's a central tenet of the movement.
"have you ever thought of the most popular thing done with computers...GAMING! "
Gaming is far from being the most popular thing that people do with computers. 80% of annual PC sales are to companies, hence the fact that Microsoft's income from Office alone in the last fiscal year was $19.8 billion, compared with the entire gaming industry's 1997 sales of $18.85 billion, of which PC games was a mere $14% (3.2 billion).
"Keep in mind that you're taking a very flexible arm and hand with 4 fingers and an opposable thumb, and using it to control a device that's about as complex as a baseball bat."
This is an extremely important point, and one that all those who talk about eye movement sensors (which, like mice, are single-point devices) etc., miss, i.e. that our hands and fingers have evolved to make extremely quick, precise sets of spacial movements in a synchronised way without us having to specifically think about what every finger on each hand is doing. It would for example be impossible to play most non-trivial musical instruments with a mouse or eye-track pointer because they require precise positioning of both hands and the fingers on them for each note (or group of notes with polyphonic instruments).
"Mice are specifically more accurate than fingers when it comes to accurately indicating tiny screen points in a way that strictly logical software can unambiguously interpret"
They're not more accurate than fingers, just thinner than fingers. As people like this (http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/microscopic.asp) and other micro-miniaturists throughout history have amply proven, the human hand is capable of movements that are much finer than the size of individual pixels on any current computer monitor, and few mice have enough mechanical accuracy for reliable single-pixel movements, let alone the sub-pixel ones that fingers can achieve.
"Personally I'm skeptical if touch screens (as they are today) will replace mice, and generally I think Gartner's full of crap when it comes to this and just about everything else they claim to predict"
Agreed. What Gartner (and many other observers) seem to miss is the fact that the key to the success of the iPhone / iPod Touch isn't the fact that they have touch screens (which have been present on a variety of hand-held devices for more than a decade without having any notable success) -- it's the fact that they have multi-touch that uses natural (and therefore easy to learn and remember) gestures, and is implemented consistently throughout the included applications. The touch screen itself is therefore an implementation detail that's necessary because the devices have to fit in one hand rather than a feature of the technology itself, hence the fact that Apple have implemented the same interface on various portable Macs without using touch screens (and without the same level of success because Mac apps aren't written to take advantage of multi-touch yet).
"It just happens to balance accuracy and utility between humans and the current day's computers better than anything else we have at the moment."
I don't think that's actually the case. Imagine for example if the mouse mat that most mice are pushed around on could sense the position and pressure of each individual finger on one's hand, i.e. it could provide the computer with five simultaneous inputs, each of which had (for example) 8 bits of pressure information. The user's hand would still be resting on their desk in the same way as it does with a mouse, but fingers which have evolved for this sort of task would be performing most of the movements instead of wrists (which didn't evolve for such things). In addition to "pinch to zoom" and other things that iPhones do, one would be able to pick up text, pictures, etc. up by making "grasp" gestures with several fingers and a thumb (and drop them by opening the hand slightly), use "chording" to interact with several controls or other items at same time, etc., without incurring problems from dirty screens, tired arms, or uncomfortable neck postures.
It's pretty obvious that such a device could easily be built today, and wouldn't cost much more than a decent mouse if produced in volume. The problem of course comes from the fact that software would have to take advantage of the technology for it to be truly useful, which would mean that it wouldn't work very well with all the legacy stuff (including of course everything being written now). This is a pr
The article in your own link also says:
"He said: "They (the inspectors) went through a lot of my stock using their own little scales.
"These regulations are enforced in the United Kingdom with a higher level of rigour than is applied in mainland Europe. There is not a level playing field.""
So, as is usual with such things, the problem does not in fact lie with the EC rules, which the rest of Europe manages to interpret quite sensibly, but is actually due to the peculiarly British penchant for producing legions of bloody-minded jobsworths whose only reason for existing is to find as many ways as possible of making other peoples' lives miserable.
"(3) English speaking"
So are the English. However, unlike them, many in the Irish workforce also speak one or more other European languages, so Ireland is an attractive proposition for foreign companies who want a base for European operations. This does of course reinforce your point about its education system, especially when compared to the the UK's pile of shite.
"This is why guilds formed - to protect "guild secrets", and create a competitive advantage for guild members."
This is historically incorrect. Guilds had two main roles in feudal economies: (1) to ensure that information and techniques would be preserved and widely disseminated in societies where most people (and therefore most artisans) were illiterate, and movement of people between communities was rare; and (b) setting fixed national pricing structures, measurements, and in many cases establishing bodies of law to prevent artisans from being abused by the aristocratic power hierarchy with their penchant for regarding everyone else as a serf.
NB: the word "guild" is derived from the Anglo-Saxon "gegildan", which means "to pay". This does not however refer to the guild being paid by others, but comes instead from the fact that they were supported by payments from their members, who were known as "gegilda", a noun used for a subscribing member of a guild. It should also be noted that artisan's guilds were actually a rather small part of the overall mediaeval guild structure (which was largely a Germanic phenomenon), with the vast bulk of guild members belonging to religious, frith, and mercantile guilds.
"The problem is, anyone who was really innovative would more often than not, refuse to share their new process, forcing other people to have to rediscover the secret, a horrible waste of time and energy."
The problem was actually due to 95% of the population being illiterate, while the 5% who were literate tended to come from social classes or organisations (e.g. the Church) who had no interest whatsoever in what artisans, etc. did, so new processes didn't get written down, and therefore tended to die with their inventor if they didn't become part of a guild's practical methodologies (members of artisans' guilds were required to share any new techniques with other guild members to prevent this from happening).
"Huh? Review your history."
I lived through it, and worked for IBM during the early days of the PC, so I know exactly what the markup was on both the basic machines and their add-ons. Here are some examples of IBM's prices from that period together with those from competitors to highlight the fact that you're spouting tripe:
IBM 5150 with 16K RAM, CGA card (4 colours), no sound, no disks, no monitor: $1695
Commodore 64 with 64K RAM, 16 colours, three channel sound synthesizer, no disks, no monitor: $595
IBM 5150, one floppy drive, 64K RAM, monochrome monitor: $3100
Kaypro II, twin floppies, 64K RAM, monochrome monitor, all built into a transportable case: $1795
Intertec Superbrain: twin floppies, dual CPU, monochrome monitor, $1725.
"Apple was charging 100% markup on the mac when IBM was charging only 35% markup."
See above, and then explain why the 5150 was so much more expensive than its competition. You might also like to explain the following prices from 1984, when both the Mac and IBM PC/AT were launched:
Apple Macintosh, mono monitor, 128K RAM, one floppy drive: $2495
IBM PC/AT Model 1, two floppies, 256K RAM: $5700.
Note: 128K RAM and a second floppy drive didn't cost $3200.
"That is why IBM pc's became popular, why more software was written for them and apple's market became the sandle wearing, tree hugging graphics design crowd."
1) IBM's PC became popular because it was sold to their large existing corporate user base by the same sales people who sold them mainframes and minicomputers. The 5150, PC/XT, and PC/AT did not sell in any notable quantities to either home or small business users, who were expected to pay the full retail price, whereas corporate buyers got big discounts. IBM's attempt at a cheaper home machine (the PC Jr, also know as the Peanut) was a notable flop.
2) I suggest you check the history of MS Excel and the platform it was originally written for before claiming that Macs didn't have significant business applications during the early days. MS Word was also available for it when the machine was launched.
"Apple was inovative, IBM was cost affective."
The prices quoted above show that your assertions are based on (1) an appalling level of ignorance, and (2), an equally appalling level of bias. I therefore suggest that you come back with some actual historical information proving that Apple were marking their systems up more than IBM during the same period, and explain why a 12 year DOJ anti-trust investigation into IBM's business practices gathered copious evidence of price gouging.
"Can anyone besides me remember back when IBM clones took off while Apple was charging 100% markup?"
I can -- it was when IBM was charging a 300% markup for the basic box, and 1000% for upgrades.
"Jobs/Apple has become what is used to condemn. A bloated company focused on ringing money from it's customers."
Hence the fact that they're still in business, while the companies who started the PC clone revolution (and indeed the others who launched the home computer wave that preceded it) have all disappeared.
"The great advantage I find with the level of restriction that Java puts on your types is that it enables brilliant development tools."
Brilliant development tools for dynamic languages were around long before Java appeared. LISP machines and Smalltalk's browsers and the old PARTS visual component wiring environment come to mind here. These notably sophisticated development environments ran in significantly less memory than a modern CPU has in its internal cache on processors clocking at a few MHz.
"I can say from experience that refactoring of an app written in a dynamic language can be a colossal pain in the ass. Just finding everywhere that a particular class is being used can take hours or days."
I suggest therefore that you explain how people managed to write first refactoring tool (the Refactoring Browser) in and for for Smalltalk, a dynamically typed language.
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?HistoryOfRefactoring
Forth, an interactive non-typed language, has also used the term "factoring" to refer to what's now called refactoring since the early 1980s. It's something LISP programmers have also been doing since at least the 1960s, although the nature of LISP meant that no special tools were required.
Gandhi was an anarchist, so he's not exactly the best person to cite. A famous quote makes his views perfectly clear:
"that state is perfect and non-violent where the people are governed the least. The nearest approach to purest anarchy would be a democracy based on nonviolence."
Note though that Gandhi's definition of democracy excluded political parties because they're contrary to his ideas of individualism, so he would not have recognised the US and Western Europe as democracies.
"From Wiki [wikipedia.org]:
"The doctrine only existed in the U.S. as common law until it was incorporated into the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. 107"."
A doctrine is not a right. Note also the very same article also says the following:
"The Supreme Court of the United States described fair use as an affirmative defense in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc..[15] This means that, in litigation on copyright infringement, the defendant bears the burden of raising and proving that his use was "fair" and not an infringement. "
None of the other articles you've cited state that fair use is a right rather than a legal defence. Telling people how to decide whether something falls under fair use provisions is not the same as saying it's a right.
"A dog, cat, etc., clearly knows that it's an individual distinct from other individuals."
Do they? Please provide some experimental proof for this, because specialists in animal behaviour dispute your assertion.
"Call that what you want, we don't have a computer that is smart in that way, and that's a completely seperate problem than the "abstract problem solving" that AI research seems to focus on."
They don't seem to be concentrating on that capability nowadays because they've realised that the first step on the road to intelligence is becoming aware of the environment in which a machine exists, and that requires the ability to process multiple sensory inputs at least as well as insects do. And it could argued with some success that there are more useful applications for small, disposable robots with the sensory capabilities and environmental awareness of (for example) a lizard than there are for big, expensive, immobile ones that can pass the Turing test.
"We don't know that "strong self-awareness" (your definition) can evolve from abstract probem solving ability."
My definition of self awareness requires the ability to deal with the concept of "self" as an abstract, not abstract problem solving per se (although it's unlikely that one can exist without the other). And while we don't know that self awareness can evolve from the ability to handle abstracts, it's notable that the great apes who are unarguably self-aware have been proven in a wide variety of experiments to be excellent at handling abstracts (they're far better with certain types of abstraction than human children of less than eight years).
"We do know that it can evolve from "weak self-awareness" (my definition)."
Animal behaviour experiments to suggest that self awareness is a threshold rather than a continuum, so I would dispute whether there is such a thing as "weak" self awareness. The primary indicator of this is that (as I said before) even highly developed monkeys such as baboons are incapable of knowing that their reflection in a mirror isn't another animal, whereas apes only take a minute or two to realise that it's an image of themselves, and then become fascinated watching their own antics from a viewpoint that's previously been unavailable to them.
"I'm not sure we even have software "smart" enough to interact in the adaptive way that cells sometimes interact in a complex organism, but that sounds like a fun way to approach the problem."
It'd certainly be an interesting approach, although it's doubtful whether anything useful (in the AI sense) would be achieved by modelling all nature's mechanisms, because they have a large number of limitations imposed on them by the need to avoid using materials that aren't compatible with organic processes. Nerve impulses for example travel at 20 m/second, which is very slow indeed when compared with electrical signals in non-organic conductors, and the wide variety of chemical messages used by organisms are slower still. This isn't particularly noticeable in small creatures, but it's a significant factor in big ones like people, where the low speed of nerve impulses means that we take significant fractions of a second to respond to certain stimuli.
Fair use is (1) a legal defence in a copyright violation case, not a right; so (b) whether a snippet counts as infringement is therefore up to a judge (and possibly a jury) rather than being a hard and fast rule.
"It seems to me that you consider an individual's right to be self-destructive to be so absolute that - no matter the circumstances and how it might affect another person - it simply can NOT be immoral. "
Don't mistake an argument for a person's own beliefs.
"I will leave the discussion here."
It's usually a good idea to end such discussions before they degenerate into hair splitting exercises.
"I thank you for your thoughts on the matter"
Likewise.
"I think it is an interesting topic."
It is indeed, but it's unfortunately one whose implications strike at the very definition of morality, i.e. whether preventing a demonstrably sane adult from risking their own life for what you consider to be a poor reason is more justifiable in a moral sense than giving that demonstrably sane adult the right to do whatever they choose with their own life.
Here's another one you might like to consider just for the sake of it:
Should a person obey speed limits even in conditions where it is imprudent to do so, e.g. in thick fog, or is it better (i.e. more moral) to use one's own judgement in such cases? And if it's more moral to use one's own judgement in these cases, then how can it be immoral to use one's own judgement in _all_ cases?
As you say, it's an interesting topic.
"That depends on your definition of "self awareness" I guess."
My definition of self awareness is inherent in the term, i.e. to be aware of one's self as a distinct entity rather than simply a concentration point for a set of senses that fulfils a (possibly complex) set of survival-driven goals.
"There's the Victorian definition "what makes us better than the animals and closer to God", but I don't find that particularly convincing."
I don't either, hence the fact that I don't use it.
" A dog, or even a hamster, clearly has emotions, interacts with others as different entities from itself, and participates in social groups"
If interacting with a group of other individuals is sufficient to qualify for self awareness, then the cells in complex organisms are self aware. The same goes for emotions: they're chemical in nature (hence the fact that chemicals are used to treat depression), so if they are used to gauge self awareness, then we must conclude that bacteria are also self aware.
"Recognizing one's self in a mirror/photograph is just too contrived of a test - it's reqires not just self-awareness but the ability to work with abstractions (especially for photographs)"
That's because self awareness is an abstraction by definition, so it cannot be possessed by creatures (or machines) that can't handle abstractions.
"and of course only primarily visual animals are going to make that jump."
It's due to the fact that the visual cortex is the most complex sensory processor, so animals without one wouldn't be likely to develop brains large enough to process abstracts (at least on Earth: alien creatures that evolved separately are beyond the scope of this discussion). And before you bring up bats and cetaceans, you should be aware of the fact that their SONAR systems are processed in their visual cortexes as images (a human disorder known as synesthesia results in humans seeing sounds and hearing colours, and as this is likely to occur in other animals too, the evolutionary path to processing sounds in the visual cortex is a fairly obvious one).
"I don't think a dog could distinguish individuals without scent, for example, but they can clearly accoiate a particular scent with a particular indivdual."
Self awareness isn't a necessary prerequisite for distinguishing one set of signals from other sets of signals, identifying them, and modifying behaviour based on that identification. Ants for example know whether other ants belong to their nest based on chemical signals, and will react hostilely to ants from other nests even if they're the same species, while cooperating with ants from their own nests to bring down much larger creatures than themselves and drag them home, farm aphids or fungi, etc. Does this mean that an ant is self aware, or is it simply proof of the fact that senses evolved to facilitate survival by helping animals to distinguish food, threats, and potential mates from one another?
"Neither of your examples have anything to do with acting _recklessly_ or _self-endangerment_. This a straw man with a bit of false equivalence thrown in for decoration. "
The entire premise of your claim for reckless self-endangerment being immoral is the fact that it has consequences for third parties, so my assertion is within the parameters of your claim. It is not therefore a straw man to anyone with the wherewithal to know what a straw man actually is.
"The modifier "reckless" is important as well, because it does not allow you to come in with examples that have some reasoned or rational excuse. They are by definition NOT reckless. "
Now you're throwing out a straw man, because you said that it was immoral _due to its effect on third parties_, not because it was reckless. You're attempting to shift the goal posts to avoid being caught in a logical trap of your own making.
"Furthermore, I did not say all such actions were immoral, only that they MAY be immoral. Are you taking the position that there is NO circumstance under which reckless self-endangerment can be immoral? "
I am indeed taking that position. If a person doesn't have the right to decide whether to risk, or for that matter take their own life, then they cannot be said to have any rights at all, and any moral system that negates such basic rights is a moral system in name only.
"In other words, is your argument that so long as I continuously act recklessly and am a danger to myself, I am guaranteed to have led a moral life?"
This is an excellent example of a straw man. Please note it so that you know what they are, and can therefore avoid falsely accusing others of using them. It should also be noted that they're regarded by debaters as a tactic used by hose with extremely weak arguments.
"Because it is exceedingly rare that an individual bears the entire burden of his actions solely on his own shoulders. In reality, actions have consequences _that affect other people as well as the actor_. So, recklessly endangering oneself may well be immoral."
Your argument would only hold water if any action with negative consequences for others is immoral, including things such as buying a product from one vendor instead of another (which deprives the other vendor of income from me), or choosing to walk a couple of miles to a destination instead of paying a taxi driver to take me there, which has a negative effect on the taxi driver's income.
Modern society is such a complex web of interdependencies that it's absolutely impossible to live in it without negatively affecting somebody in ways that are completely predictable if we take the time to think about them. So by your definition of morality, it's impossible for us to avoid being immoral, which means that recklessly endangering one's self is merely one of the several immoral acts that we're all guilty of on a daily basis.