I'm sure I'm not the only one who's sick of hearing the scientific community continually bicker amongst themselves.
Hate to break it to you, but that's how science works. We propose ideas, we attack each other's ideas. We argue. We refine our ideas to take into account the weaknesses others have pointed out. This process is iterative, and eventually generates more robust conclusions... often robust enough to make predictions, or even to guide social policy in an intelligent way.
I'm sorry if it sounds like bickering to you. You are most welcome to not listen if you don't like it (and to not read Slashdot stories on topics you are now bored by), but if you want science to continue progressing then accept that the scientific community will be in a constant state of debate. That's a good thing, by the way.
And if you're waiting for "irrefutable proof" and "cure-all solutions" on *any* topic (much less climatology) then you may as well just give up on scientific inquiry entirely. There is no such thing as irrefutable proof, and no such thing as a cure-all solution without drawbacks.
Well, at least with regard to the polar bear populations, TFA states:
While polar bear numbers are increasing in two of these populations, two others are definitely in decline. We don't really know how the rest of the populations are faring, so the truth is that no one can say for sure how overall numbers are changing.
So, the article is clearly stating that right now, we can't know for certain either way. So the point is that they are saying that "Polar Bear populations are definitely rising!" is incorrect: it is a myth inasmuch as it overstates its case. (Furthermore the article points out that conservation efforts have reduced hunting of polar bears and their prey, which would obviously increase their numbers regardless of climate changes.) So again, the article is debunking the myth "global warming can't be true because polar bear populations are rising!" which is not in conflict with the statement "some polar bear populations are rising."
Or did you have some plan for providing these defensive patents to "everyone"?
No. Indeed I agree with you, and that's why in my last few sentences of my post, I supported the case for removing defensive patents entirely. This would improve efficiency for companies that currently waste resources on defensive patents, and level the playing field for smaller companies who currently, as you point out, exist only when they don't anger the "big boys."
I think you're right that the article somewhat overstates its case. It claims that patents exist now purely to allow companies to keep doing business, rather than as means to stop others from stealing your novel ideas. The article says:
In this sense, then, the chief value of patents is to preserve your flexibility. Sophisticated companies now largely take this view. They have patents so that other companies can't stop them from doing what they want to do, not so that they can stop other companies from doing what they don't want them to do.
I'm not sure this is 100% true. First off, the article focuses on the domain of software, where I believe this is largely true, but other domains are perhaps not organized in the same way. And, we have seen lawsuits where companies have tried to prevent others from exploiting their "novel software patent" (whether the lawsuit was valid or not is a separate issue altogether).
Having said that, I do think there's alot of truth to what the article points out. Sure, not all patents are part of a "defensive war chest"--but alot of them are. Maybe even the majority of patents are now taken out as a defensive "what if?" and "we need ammunition against our competitors" rather than a genuine "we have invented something new and need protection if we are going to take this to market" (which is what patents are supposed to be about).
So, in that context, there is almost no difference between this "everyone has defensive patents" world, and the "no one has any patents at all" world. In both cases, companies are free to operate as they see fit (in the latter case, they do so more efficiently because they don't incur the additional costs of dealing with patent bureaucracy).
I guess this has been stated to death on Slashdot, but the answer is simple: far fewer patents should be granted. A patent should be judged not merely on "is this new?" (though certainly that should be required moreso than it is now) but also "is this necessary?" If a patent won't actually encourage development of a technology in a marketplace (e.g. it is purely defensive), then the patent office should just deny it (for all competitors in the marketplace, of course).
Agreed. I once dealt with a small-time hosting company (not the cheapest around, mind you, but not the most expensive). When I initially setup the account, I was surprised and annoyed to see that in the admin control panel, among the various update options, there was a "change password" that listed my password, in plaintext, right on screen. I emailed them telling them that it was ridiculous to: a) Store a password as plaintext instead of hashing. (And, obviously, they were not salting the passwords.) b) To display the password on screen, where anyone shoulder-surfing could take a look.
A few months later, I was running into some problems, and emailed them for support. Somewhere along the interchange (they didn't believe that the option I needed was missing from the control panel), they actually asked me for my password (over email) so that they could go and change it themselves. This baffled me, and I sent them a very long letter explaining in detail why it is a bad idea for a company to ask its own customers for their passwords, and why email should never be used to exchange password data. Moreover the idea that they didn't have the admin privileges to go check for themselves struck me as odd.
Anyways, I never gave them my password, and told them to fix it from their end, which they eventually did. Needless to say, at the end of the contract, I didn't renew. So I guess I have to agree with the article's point: many small or medium hosting companies are not bothering to implement basic security protocols (like hashing). But, more importantly, somehow the employees are not being trained with even the minimum skills regarding security.
I help people with their Linux installs on ubuntuforums.org, and this concern pops up frequently. Many posts say something like "I was halfway through installing but wasn't sure if it was going to delete windows so I stopped" or simply asking "how do I know if it will keep windows?"
The partitioning phase of the installer is the hardest part (actually it's the only hard part--everything else is just clicking "Next"). Now, you might argue that someone who can't do a manual partition shouldn't be installing an OS (especially since the gparted manual system is really quite easy to use)... but on the other hand, if we can make this part of the installation easier or more explicit, that would be great.
Essentially, the installer should scan the hard drives for fat32 and NTFS partitions, and then, during the partitioning phase, the default option should be "Keep Windows (just shrink the partition) and install Ubuntu side-by-side with Windows (dual-boot configuration)"...
The Canadian nanny state isn't even the problem here. What bothers me is the hypocrisy. Either establish a socialist system to encourage the arts (taxes given by government to artists, a levy on blank media, etc.) and make it legal to freely distribute said artwork, OR do not create such a system and let us spend our money how we like.
What pisses me off is paying this levy, and yet it is illegal for me to actually take advantage of it. So what's the point? What am I paying for? More generally, it bothers me that my taxes indirectly fund status-quo copyright (enforcement, court cases, levies, radio licensing, etc.), whether or not I actually take advantage of those protected works, and without actually receiving any rights over said works (i.e.: I pay twice--once through my taxes for the government to protect them, and then again when I have to buy them, and possibly a third time due to these hidden levies).
Despite obvious concerns about letting the government be the arbiter of what art & entertainment gets funded, I don't think having a government-sanctioned corporate monopoly have that power instead is turning out to be great, either. So basically I want the government to either formally take over funding of the arts (and let us distribute and modify this publicly funded art as we see fit), or to not intervene at all, and let the free market figure out a way for artists to make money.
Indeed. And there are more than just security concerns from the point of view of the user. I can't help but think that the people who are really pushing for "software as a service" are people like Microsoft, who have a vested interest in keeping control of the application, only letting the user see the GUI. The reasons are obvious: with software as a service, you have automatic customer lock-in, you can charge on a per-use basis if you want, and you don't have to worry about your end users giving copies of the software to friends. In short, it actually achieves for software what DRM and copy-protection cannot: the company has complete control over the software. So, for instance, they can radically change the user interface, or drop support for a file format, and the users can't do anything about it. They don't even have the option of staying with an "old version" since the versions change without your permission. (Google documents currently allow import/export from standards-compliant formats, but really what guarantees do we have for that going into the future.)
My point here is that big software companies find software-as-a-service attractive, and the only thing standing in their way is bandwidth. On the other hand, open-source software doesn't care about those concerns (lock-in, etc.) so what's the point in hosting it on a server? Why not just have it on my actual computer, thereby giving me full control, and a more responsive application. In a certain sense, open-source should be advertising this as an advantage.
And I certainly understand that open-source apps have the unique advantage that you can access them *both* on your local machine and (in principle) over the network. This is indeed a selling point. What I'm trying to get at is that open-source should be reminding people of the advantages of actually having local copies of software (source and binary!), and using this as a selling point.
"the code is open so anyone could host it"
That's right, since it's open-source, it can be hosted anywhere... including on my own computer.
Your idea that cultures without notions of IP were less successful at amassing and publicizing new ideas is quite intriguing. It is something that certainly bears further investigation. Indeed one of the original intents of patents was to encourage public disclosure of implementation details, the fear being that otherwise every invention would involve many trade secrets and purposeful internal obfuscation or anti-tampering measures.
However I also wonder, in the examples you gave, whether other factors like distances and speed of communication played an equally large role. Societies that are denser and more interconnected, in terms of communication, can more rapidly disperse knowledge. Such dispersal/replication of knowledge is catalytic and causes the information to spread more rapidly.
They also still serve the purpose for which they were intended, publishing and retaining useful innovations
On this point, I must question to what extents such arguments still apply. Even if, historically, IP laws were indeed successful in encouraging disclosure and dissemination of information (and thereby promoting progress), I wonder whether they still achieve that end. For instance, modern patents frequently do not disclose critical implementation details (or, worse, no actual implementation yet exists), and software binaries are copyrighted, even though the source is not published. Similarly copyrighted works do not enter the public domain in a timely manner, preventing that information from being fully used by society at large. Thus government protections are being issued to encourage disclosure of information, but the actual disclosure is nowhere to be seen.
Given that, and given the massive interconnectedness of our modern world, I suspect that the equilibrium position for useful IP laws does not lie where it once did. More importantly, I believe our modern laws have strayed far from the optimal position.
In the Dark Ages, one could obtain wealth by raising an army and burning someone else's kingdom to the ground. In the Gilded Age, those on the fast track had a secret weapon of success: they bribed state legislators to obtain canal and railroad contracts. Unfortunately, those career options just aren't as viable as they once were. Instead, we have to invent stuff, and thus people should get compensated for the effort.
It's positively hilarious that he structures the argument in this way. First he presents two methods that were historically used to obtain money. These methodologies are based upon using illicit means to gather power, and then turn this into a monopoly (in the first case, the power is military and the monopoly is the conquered land; in the second case the power is bribes and the monopoly is, well, a monopoly). The subtext is that these are "bad" ways to make a buck.
Then the author immediately describes current "intellectual property." However the current state of "intellectual property" is more of the same: one uses some means (money, lobbying, market domination, bribes, etc.) to persuade the government to create laws that protect your monopoly. Of course instead of concluding that this current incarnation of monopoly-power is just as bad as the previous ones, he goes on to defend it. The analogy with the previous examples is so close that it almost makes me think the entire article is a gigantic joke.
Does the author honestly not see the parallel? At one time, wars and railroad monopolies were certainly considered legitimate business. In 100 years, will our era be looked upon as a similarly barbaric time, where, ridiculously, the citizens were oppressed in the name of profits for a select few elite?
I think you're right that, in principle, people could simply be trained to drive more intelligently (i.e. use less fuel).
However, if people are voluntarily implementing these strategies, it becomes one of those "prisoner dilemma" situations. For instance, I typically do not touch the gas if I see a red light ahead in the distance. In fact, I'm always very proud of myself if I can time it so that I never touch my brakes or gas... I slow down a bit as I approach, then the light turns green and I still have some velocity and smoothly accelerate through the intersection.
That having been said, such strategies don't work with lots of cars around. If you start coasting towards a red light, the cars behind you will start piling up. They will be tailgating you, and the more imprudent among them will even accelerate around you (so that they can get to red light sooner!). So, basically, in order to be "safe" and not create dangerous traffic situations, I have to behave more like "the mob" and accelerate a bit towards the red light, and then break harshly. I feel stupid doing it, but it's safer to do it that way, rather than cause some person behind me to tailgate me.
In principle a technological solution, where the cars are sending each other data, could be used to warn all the cars behind, so that they uniformly coast and slow down. That would be a really neat technology, and would probably save alot on gas. The key is that all the cars would have to "play by the rules."
However, people are reluctant to give up their control of their cars, so I don't really see how this could be implemented.
However, I don't think the argument is "the large IPv6 address space provides robust security" but rather "it's an extra roadblock to attackers."
Switching to the large IPv6 address space doesn't mean that we can get lazy with patching our boxes, surfing safely, blocking ports, having strong passwords, and so on. However, it does mean, at least, that one vector of attack (port scanning) is no longer possible, or at least very difficult.
All the workarounds and attacks you describe are certainly possible, but they mean extra effort on the part of the attacker, which induces a corresponding decrease in the frequency and success rate of attacks. And it's worth noting that in addition to the workarounds that the attackers will no doubt employ, there may very well be some clever usages of IPv6 to counter them. For instance, if I'm in control of 10^20 addresses, I may run my web browser from a VM whose IP address changes on every connection. So knowing the IP of my web-browser doesn't give you the IP of my file server, etc. Similarly the 10^20 - 4 addresses that I'm not using can be a very efficient honeypot for detecting attackers.
To re-iterate: the large address space of IPv6 should not be viewed as "killer security"... but nor should we ignore that it will provide a (arguably minor) security advantage.
Creative people who work on music and movies benefit from access to other people's source material (and enforcement of share-alike licenses) just as much as programmers benefit from source code and the GPL provisions.
I think there is a massive amount of creative potential that has never been unleashed because the masses have never had access to the right (nor the source material) required to actively remix and participate in prominent creative projects.
I can think of dozens of movies that I thought were crap... but I bet if some intrepid, creative individual had access to the lost footage (that ended up on the cutting-room floor), and had the legal right to re-edit and then redistribute the movie (with credit to the original movie, of course), then a "better" version of the movie might appear.
Imagine a world where dozens of creative people are all competing (in the FLOSS sense) to create the "best version" of a movie. Of course different people might prefer versions made by different groups. It would be a rich creative environment.
Note: I understand the worry that in such an environment, the original footage wouldn't even have been shot. However my present point is merely that there is massive creative potential being untapped, and moreover that artists of all types (musicians, authors, movie-makers) would benefit creatively from a copyright climate that had lots of share-alike material. Whether it is feasible to encourage or enforce such a climate is, of course, a harder question.
Speaking of which, why doesn't the US just go ahead and tell Brazil: "we give you an exception on that US-origin patent, go ahead and make generic versions of it at no cost" on humanitarian grounds. The US could even compensate Merck financially if that's necessary (e.g. make up the difference between what Brazil can afford and a "fair price"). Why would the US do this, you ask? Well it already spends lots of money on foreign aid. This would amount to just another foreign aid initiative. In fact, doesn't it make more sense from a "foreign aid" perspective to simply lift restrictions, rather than send cash?
Okay, no one is going to argue with your conclusion that "without money, companies cannot research new drugs." However that still leaves wide open these questions:
1. Is it actually safe and sane to leave the future of our medical well-being to the interests of companies?
2. Are patents the most effective way to get that "incentive money" into the hands of the corporations?
With regard to #1, most people would answer "no" which is why so much non-corporate medical research is funded. However it's generally assumed that a purely government-funded medical research infrastructure would be bad because it could not draw upon the innovative power of market competition (where drug companies compete to make the best products). That's fair enough, but it should be noted that patents (a government-granted monopoly), though encouraging innovation at times, are also frequently abused by these companies to stifle the competition (hence innovation) that they are supposedly spurring.
With regard to #2, it's a difficult question, but not one that should be pushed aside without hesitation. Patents are one way to get market money into corporations. However government-granted funds are another way (and to those who, again, don't want the government interfering with the free market, I remind you that patents are already government regulation of that market, with an associated economic cost to the people).
I'm not saying I have all the answers. But I think this current case in Brazil is one salient example of how patents can do real harm (in addition to the good they were intended to do). Thus, it is our moral imperative as concerned citizens to start a discourse on whether patents really, truly, are the best way to encourage medical research. What we need is serious research into alternatives, and then to come up with whether the alternative or the status quo will really bring us the greatest benefits.
who still cannot accomplish everything without having to resort to a command line
Hold on a second... where are you drawing that conclusion from? Is it because 64% of respondents answered "Yes" to the question "Do you use non-graphical tools when installing or administering your Linux operating system?" ??
I don't think that's the correct conclusion to draw. The 64% merely shows that alot of Linux users prefer the commandline, because it is quite powerful and efficient. If anything, the fact that 36% of users are able to install software and administer their box without ever touching the commandline is evidence that you don't need to touch the commandline in a modern Linux distro. (Unless you think that 36% of openSUSE users never install software or make changes to their system?)
I agree that many Linux users are technophiles and love the commandline (I know I do), but in a modern Linux distro, there are graphical tools to do just about everything. So can we stop propagating the myth that only UNIX-gurus can run Linux?
From TFA, House Judiciary Committee member Lamar Smith is quoted as saying:
"Universities have a moral and legal obligation to ensure students do not use campus computers for illegal downloading. These schools do not give away their intellectual property for free, and they should not expect musicians to do so."
So the solution to the problem is either (1) for the universities to act as enforcers of copyright law, or (2) for them to begin giving away their "intellectual property" for free...
I personally think they should go for option (2). I mean, many universities are already going that route. For example, MIT course material is being made avaiable via Open CourseWare. Also, many academics are pushing for open access to all academic publications.
So, really, given that universities are supposed to be (and frequently are) institutions dedicated to dissemination of information, free speech, intellectual progress, and radical ideas... isn't it entirely consistent with the ethos (even their mandate) to not act as enforcers of copyright law? (Note: I'm not claiming that the universities have to actively encourage copyright infringement, merely suggesting that it is not their role in society to enforce those laws, even on their own campuses.)
Very cute. If the "forbidden number" is fully suppressed, then your post can no longer be decrypted. Hence, suppression of the "forbidden number" does indeed infringe your free speech rights.
But once the information is in the public realm, it effectively becomes a lost "trade secret".
Quite right, and moreover, since it is a "lost trade secret", I would argue it has now become "common knowledge." I don't see how any law (DMCA, copyright, etc.) can be used to suppress common knowledge. For instance, Star Wars may be still protected by copyright, but no one can prevent people from quoting it to their heart's content. So many of the quotes have become a part of our culture, our communal consciousness, that they are very much ours, and no amount of government or corporate power can take them from us.
As others have noted in this discussion, this isn't merely about freedom of speech, it is a spontaneous and massive civil disobedience, basically highlighting how the citizens affected by these DMCA do not respect the law, do not want the law, and increasingly do not tolerate the law.
I was under the impression that US government agencies were not able to claim copyright on their output
Indeed, and in these cases it's not the government trying to exert the copyright. Rather, it is the network who is claiming copyright over their particular rendition of the events (based on their camerawork, etc.). The proposal here is that everyone involved (candidates and the TV networks) agree that the final recordings be released under a CC license (or into the public domain). Frankly this is a very good idea, and one that should be standard policy (if not law) for any governmental discourse.
Incidentally, this has caused some problems with US government agencies wishing to contribute to GPL'd projects, since it is not entirely clear how the GPL operates in the situation where a contributor is unable to exert copyright on their work. Some agencies just release and hope no one causes problems, others are more wary.
I agree that some agencies have this fear, but I believe it is unfounded. Software written by a US government employee is automatically in the public domain. But this makes it trivial to contribute to a GPLed project. The particular contributions of that person will be public domain, but the overall project is still GPL.
Think of it this way: a government employee sees a GPL project. He writes some code that enhances it. He puts his code on his website, saying that it is released to the public domain. The, the GPL project downloads the public domain code (which has no restrictions on it whatsoever) and incorporates it into their GPL project. Their project is GPL, and anyone who tries to copy/fork it must follow the GPL. Of course, if someone wants to copy the particular lines of code written by the government employee, they can certainly do that.
There is no conflict between GPL and US government employees. The only restriction is that if the entire project was written by government workers, then the entire thing is public domain, and they cannot release it as "GPL-only". However, anyone else is free to fork a GPL version of this project.
The important thing to remember is that public domain has no restrictions: including no restriction of incorporating it into GPL projects! (I would appreciate it if someone would correct me, if I'm horribly mistaken.)
I'm against hyperbole as much as the next guy, but in this case things like The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement do actually exist. The idea is that humans should live rich, productive lives, but stop reproducing, because we're doing more harm than good by continuing this way (both to ourselves and the planet). The rationale is further that all the reasons for having kids are ultimately 'bad' or 'selfish' and thus it is our moral responsibility to overcome our natural tendency to have kids, and instead "do the right thing"--become extinct.
Now, most people who subscribe to this "movement" are doing it as a joke, or because they are rationalizing the fact that they don't have kids. But some of them really seem to be arguing honestly for self-extinction of the human race.
Anyways, just thought you'd be interested to know. I'm not trying to diminish your point against exaggeration.
For Matlab code, there is Octave, which is an open-source implementation of the Matlab syntax. However, it is only a partial implementation, and I've had mixed results trying to run Matlab code in Octave. (But it's usually worth a try!)
I'm going to have to give SciPy a try--it looks very cool.
The licensing was the annoying part. If it were not for the licensing, I could have discovered the incompatibility with Linux within 5 minutes, and switch to OS X right away. I could have re-run the code and been done with what I needed to do within an hour, instead of the many days that it took instead.
My main point was that it took so long to even discover the problem, due to artificial licensing restrictions. I'm not really even complaining about the glitches on Linux.
That having been said, I think it's worth noting that if it were fully open-source, it would probably have been properly repacked for my Linux distro of choice. Being open-source is no guarantee of compatibility with OS variants, but it sure helps.
Mathematica is an absolutely fantastic package. The symbol manipulation (derivaties, integration, etc.) are outstanding, the graphing is rich (though the options are obscure), and the data-manipulation is great. It's a very useful tool when doing serious engineering and science, plus it's fun to play around with.
However, I recently ran into one of those "top 10 reasons why proprietary software is annoying" situations. I hadn't used Mathematica in awhile, and wanted to go back to some old code and re-run some analysis. However in the meantime I had migrated from Windows to Linux. No problem--the install disk has the installer for Windows, Linux, and Mac all in one. Great. So I install it in Linux and then get the annoying "you must register this product to use it." (On Windows it gives you two weeks before locking out, but in Linux it won't open unless you enter the code, which changes with each new hardware installation.) The online automatic registration said I had to contact them via email. So I did. Eventually got the reactivation code. Turns out it didn't run properly on Linux. The controls were clunky and I couldn't get individuals block to execute (though I could re-execute an entire workbook.) Okay, no problem--I have a Mac laptop. So I load it up there. Then I have to go through the reactivation process again. Another email, more waiting. Eventually get it running.
My point is that I had alot of difficulty getting my (legitimately purchased) copy of Mathematica to actually work for me. I was in a hurry and just wanted to run some code quickly. This 10-minute operation turned into a 4-day ordeal, at the end of which I was very frustrated. It really reminded me the great advantages of programming in standards-based languages, that have open-source implementations. If the code had been written in python (using the Gnu Scientific Library), I would have been able to run it without hassles, and I could send the code to others, knowing that installing Python (on the OS of their choice) was always easy.
I don't want to turn this into a stereotypical OSS vs. proprietary rant... but this very recent experience with Mathematica has left a bad taste in my mouth--and I was previously very much a Mathematica evangelist!
Yes, just about every country has laws against treason, and they are serious laws, applicable when someone really has given away state secrets (e.g. sensitive security information, the location of weapon stores, etc.). So while China saying "please let us know if anyone is guilty of treason" is reasonable in principle, the actual execution of the request makes it obvious that what they mean by "treason" is actually "anything we don't like." Do you really think that treason happens so frequently (on a Myspace page, no less!) that we need a special web-button for reporting it?
Creating an efficient, formalized, and widespread system for reporting traitors can only mean that you are considering a very large percentage of your population to be a traitor. This ceases to be about any real acts of treason--it becomes about labeling as a 'traitor' anyone who opposes the ruling status quo. In short, it is about oppression, control, and spreading fear among the people.
Being objective doesn't mean ignoring the details of each case. You cannot just take China's word for it when they say "this is only to find traitors and protect our country"... you must also look at their actions, which instead suggest they are trying to restrict the free expression of ideas in their land, and that they are trying to co-opt the populace to monitor one another.
I think the usage in question certainly falls under 'fair use.' It certainly fits into the norms in the scientific community. Even though the journals are part owners (or sometimes full owners) of the copyright of papers, it's very normal for scientists to email each other PDFs, post copies on their websites, reproduce graphs in presentations, and so on. This is not only considered "fair" but very much considered "necessary" to maintaining healthy progress in science.
Yet despite the fact that these allegations have little merit (ethical or even legal), they create a very real chilling effect that slows science and decreases the distribution of information. Add to that the fact that most of this published research is funded by tax-dollars through government grants, and it becomes positively infuriating that the very scientists who do all the work are not allowed to freely disseminate the results of that work to the people, who pay for it.
This is why we all need to support the push towards Open Access in scientific publishing. If you are a librarian, student, postdoc, academic or industrial scientist, you should be putting pressure on journals to open their content to the people who do the work and foot the bill. For instance, consider publishing in an open access journal (see list here), or at least sign the petitions (US or Europe). Also see a discussion here which lists a bunch of things (small and large) that you can do to promote open access.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry if it sounds like bickering to you. You are most welcome to not listen if you don't like it (and to not read Slashdot stories on topics you are now bored by), but if you want science to continue progressing then accept that the scientific community will be in a constant state of debate. That's a good thing, by the way.
And if you're waiting for "irrefutable proof" and "cure-all solutions" on *any* topic (much less climatology) then you may as well just give up on scientific inquiry entirely. There is no such thing as irrefutable proof, and no such thing as a cure-all solution without drawbacks.
Having said that, I do think there's alot of truth to what the article points out. Sure, not all patents are part of a "defensive war chest"--but alot of them are. Maybe even the majority of patents are now taken out as a defensive "what if?" and "we need ammunition against our competitors" rather than a genuine "we have invented something new and need protection if we are going to take this to market" (which is what patents are supposed to be about).
So, in that context, there is almost no difference between this "everyone has defensive patents" world, and the "no one has any patents at all" world. In both cases, companies are free to operate as they see fit (in the latter case, they do so more efficiently because they don't incur the additional costs of dealing with patent bureaucracy).
I guess this has been stated to death on Slashdot, but the answer is simple: far fewer patents should be granted. A patent should be judged not merely on "is this new?" (though certainly that should be required moreso than it is now) but also "is this necessary?" If a patent won't actually encourage development of a technology in a marketplace (e.g. it is purely defensive), then the patent office should just deny it (for all competitors in the marketplace, of course).
Agreed. I once dealt with a small-time hosting company (not the cheapest around, mind you, but not the most expensive). When I initially setup the account, I was surprised and annoyed to see that in the admin control panel, among the various update options, there was a "change password" that listed my password, in plaintext, right on screen. I emailed them telling them that it was ridiculous to:
a) Store a password as plaintext instead of hashing. (And, obviously, they were not salting the passwords.)
b) To display the password on screen, where anyone shoulder-surfing could take a look.
A few months later, I was running into some problems, and emailed them for support. Somewhere along the interchange (they didn't believe that the option I needed was missing from the control panel), they actually asked me for my password (over email) so that they could go and change it themselves. This baffled me, and I sent them a very long letter explaining in detail why it is a bad idea for a company to ask its own customers for their passwords, and why email should never be used to exchange password data. Moreover the idea that they didn't have the admin privileges to go check for themselves struck me as odd.
Anyways, I never gave them my password, and told them to fix it from their end, which they eventually did. Needless to say, at the end of the contract, I didn't renew. So I guess I have to agree with the article's point: many small or medium hosting companies are not bothering to implement basic security protocols (like hashing). But, more importantly, somehow the employees are not being trained with even the minimum skills regarding security.
I also found that to be the best point from TFA.
I help people with their Linux installs on ubuntuforums.org, and this concern pops up frequently. Many posts say something like "I was halfway through installing but wasn't sure if it was going to delete windows so I stopped" or simply asking "how do I know if it will keep windows?"
The partitioning phase of the installer is the hardest part (actually it's the only hard part--everything else is just clicking "Next"). Now, you might argue that someone who can't do a manual partition shouldn't be installing an OS (especially since the gparted manual system is really quite easy to use)... but on the other hand, if we can make this part of the installation easier or more explicit, that would be great.
Essentially, the installer should scan the hard drives for fat32 and NTFS partitions, and then, during the partitioning phase, the default option should be "Keep Windows (just shrink the partition) and install Ubuntu side-by-side with Windows (dual-boot configuration)"...
The Canadian nanny state isn't even the problem here. What bothers me is the hypocrisy. Either establish a socialist system to encourage the arts (taxes given by government to artists, a levy on blank media, etc.) and make it legal to freely distribute said artwork, OR do not create such a system and let us spend our money how we like.
What pisses me off is paying this levy, and yet it is illegal for me to actually take advantage of it. So what's the point? What am I paying for? More generally, it bothers me that my taxes indirectly fund status-quo copyright (enforcement, court cases, levies, radio licensing, etc.), whether or not I actually take advantage of those protected works, and without actually receiving any rights over said works (i.e.: I pay twice--once through my taxes for the government to protect them, and then again when I have to buy them, and possibly a third time due to these hidden levies).
Despite obvious concerns about letting the government be the arbiter of what art & entertainment gets funded, I don't think having a government-sanctioned corporate monopoly have that power instead is turning out to be great, either. So basically I want the government to either formally take over funding of the arts (and let us distribute and modify this publicly funded art as we see fit), or to not intervene at all, and let the free market figure out a way for artists to make money.
My point here is that big software companies find software-as-a-service attractive, and the only thing standing in their way is bandwidth. On the other hand, open-source software doesn't care about those concerns (lock-in, etc.) so what's the point in hosting it on a server? Why not just have it on my actual computer, thereby giving me full control, and a more responsive application. In a certain sense, open-source should be advertising this as an advantage.
And I certainly understand that open-source apps have the unique advantage that you can access them *both* on your local machine and (in principle) over the network. This is indeed a selling point. What I'm trying to get at is that open-source should be reminding people of the advantages of actually having local copies of software (source and binary!), and using this as a selling point. That's right, since it's open-source, it can be hosted anywhere... including on my own computer.
However I also wonder, in the examples you gave, whether other factors like distances and speed of communication played an equally large role. Societies that are denser and more interconnected, in terms of communication, can more rapidly disperse knowledge. Such dispersal/replication of knowledge is catalytic and causes the information to spread more rapidly.
On this point, I must question to what extents such arguments still apply. Even if, historically, IP laws were indeed successful in encouraging disclosure and dissemination of information (and thereby promoting progress), I wonder whether they still achieve that end. For instance, modern patents frequently do not disclose critical implementation details (or, worse, no actual implementation yet exists), and software binaries are copyrighted, even though the source is not published. Similarly copyrighted works do not enter the public domain in a timely manner, preventing that information from being fully used by society at large. Thus government protections are being issued to encourage disclosure of information, but the actual disclosure is nowhere to be seen.
Given that, and given the massive interconnectedness of our modern world, I suspect that the equilibrium position for useful IP laws does not lie where it once did. More importantly, I believe our modern laws have strayed far from the optimal position.
Then the author immediately describes current "intellectual property." However the current state of "intellectual property" is more of the same: one uses some means (money, lobbying, market domination, bribes, etc.) to persuade the government to create laws that protect your monopoly. Of course instead of concluding that this current incarnation of monopoly-power is just as bad as the previous ones, he goes on to defend it. The analogy with the previous examples is so close that it almost makes me think the entire article is a gigantic joke.
Does the author honestly not see the parallel? At one time, wars and railroad monopolies were certainly considered legitimate business. In 100 years, will our era be looked upon as a similarly barbaric time, where, ridiculously, the citizens were oppressed in the name of profits for a select few elite?
I think you're right that, in principle, people could simply be trained to drive more intelligently (i.e. use less fuel).
However, if people are voluntarily implementing these strategies, it becomes one of those "prisoner dilemma" situations. For instance, I typically do not touch the gas if I see a red light ahead in the distance. In fact, I'm always very proud of myself if I can time it so that I never touch my brakes or gas... I slow down a bit as I approach, then the light turns green and I still have some velocity and smoothly accelerate through the intersection.
That having been said, such strategies don't work with lots of cars around. If you start coasting towards a red light, the cars behind you will start piling up. They will be tailgating you, and the more imprudent among them will even accelerate around you (so that they can get to red light sooner!). So, basically, in order to be "safe" and not create dangerous traffic situations, I have to behave more like "the mob" and accelerate a bit towards the red light, and then break harshly. I feel stupid doing it, but it's safer to do it that way, rather than cause some person behind me to tailgate me.
In principle a technological solution, where the cars are sending each other data, could be used to warn all the cars behind, so that they uniformly coast and slow down. That would be a really neat technology, and would probably save alot on gas. The key is that all the cars would have to "play by the rules."
However, people are reluctant to give up their control of their cars, so I don't really see how this could be implemented.
Everything you've said is true...
However, I don't think the argument is "the large IPv6 address space provides robust security" but rather "it's an extra roadblock to attackers."
Switching to the large IPv6 address space doesn't mean that we can get lazy with patching our boxes, surfing safely, blocking ports, having strong passwords, and so on. However, it does mean, at least, that one vector of attack (port scanning) is no longer possible, or at least very difficult.
All the workarounds and attacks you describe are certainly possible, but they mean extra effort on the part of the attacker, which induces a corresponding decrease in the frequency and success rate of attacks. And it's worth noting that in addition to the workarounds that the attackers will no doubt employ, there may very well be some clever usages of IPv6 to counter them. For instance, if I'm in control of 10^20 addresses, I may run my web browser from a VM whose IP address changes on every connection. So knowing the IP of my web-browser doesn't give you the IP of my file server, etc. Similarly the 10^20 - 4 addresses that I'm not using can be a very efficient honeypot for detecting attackers.
To re-iterate: the large address space of IPv6 should not be viewed as "killer security"... but nor should we ignore that it will provide a (arguably minor) security advantage.
Creative people who work on music and movies benefit from access to other people's source material (and enforcement of share-alike licenses) just as much as programmers benefit from source code and the GPL provisions.
I think there is a massive amount of creative potential that has never been unleashed because the masses have never had access to the right (nor the source material) required to actively remix and participate in prominent creative projects.
I can think of dozens of movies that I thought were crap... but I bet if some intrepid, creative individual had access to the lost footage (that ended up on the cutting-room floor), and had the legal right to re-edit and then redistribute the movie (with credit to the original movie, of course), then a "better" version of the movie might appear.
Imagine a world where dozens of creative people are all competing (in the FLOSS sense) to create the "best version" of a movie. Of course different people might prefer versions made by different groups. It would be a rich creative environment.
Note: I understand the worry that in such an environment, the original footage wouldn't even have been shot. However my present point is merely that there is massive creative potential being untapped, and moreover that artists of all types (musicians, authors, movie-makers) would benefit creatively from a copyright climate that had lots of share-alike material. Whether it is feasible to encourage or enforce such a climate is, of course, a harder question.
Speaking of which, why doesn't the US just go ahead and tell Brazil: "we give you an exception on that US-origin patent, go ahead and make generic versions of it at no cost" on humanitarian grounds. The US could even compensate Merck financially if that's necessary (e.g. make up the difference between what Brazil can afford and a "fair price"). Why would the US do this, you ask? Well it already spends lots of money on foreign aid. This would amount to just another foreign aid initiative. In fact, doesn't it make more sense from a "foreign aid" perspective to simply lift restrictions, rather than send cash?
Okay, no one is going to argue with your conclusion that "without money, companies cannot research new drugs." However that still leaves wide open these questions:
1. Is it actually safe and sane to leave the future of our medical well-being to the interests of companies?
2. Are patents the most effective way to get that "incentive money" into the hands of the corporations?
With regard to #1, most people would answer "no" which is why so much non-corporate medical research is funded. However it's generally assumed that a purely government-funded medical research infrastructure would be bad because it could not draw upon the innovative power of market competition (where drug companies compete to make the best products). That's fair enough, but it should be noted that patents (a government-granted monopoly), though encouraging innovation at times, are also frequently abused by these companies to stifle the competition (hence innovation) that they are supposedly spurring.
With regard to #2, it's a difficult question, but not one that should be pushed aside without hesitation. Patents are one way to get market money into corporations. However government-granted funds are another way (and to those who, again, don't want the government interfering with the free market, I remind you that patents are already government regulation of that market, with an associated economic cost to the people).
I'm not saying I have all the answers. But I think this current case in Brazil is one salient example of how patents can do real harm (in addition to the good they were intended to do). Thus, it is our moral imperative as concerned citizens to start a discourse on whether patents really, truly, are the best way to encourage medical research. What we need is serious research into alternatives, and then to come up with whether the alternative or the status quo will really bring us the greatest benefits.
(I know, I know... I'm a hopeless dreamer.)
I don't think that's the correct conclusion to draw. The 64% merely shows that alot of Linux users prefer the commandline, because it is quite powerful and efficient. If anything, the fact that 36% of users are able to install software and administer their box without ever touching the commandline is evidence that you don't need to touch the commandline in a modern Linux distro. (Unless you think that 36% of openSUSE users never install software or make changes to their system?)
I agree that many Linux users are technophiles and love the commandline (I know I do), but in a modern Linux distro, there are graphical tools to do just about everything. So can we stop propagating the myth that only UNIX-gurus can run Linux?
I personally think they should go for option (2). I mean, many universities are already going that route. For example, MIT course material is being made avaiable via Open CourseWare. Also, many academics are pushing for open access to all academic publications.
So, really, given that universities are supposed to be (and frequently are) institutions dedicated to dissemination of information, free speech, intellectual progress, and radical ideas... isn't it entirely consistent with the ethos (even their mandate) to not act as enforcers of copyright law? (Note: I'm not claiming that the universities have to actively encourage copyright infringement, merely suggesting that it is not their role in society to enforce those laws, even on their own campuses.)
Quite right, and moreover, since it is a "lost trade secret", I would argue it has now become "common knowledge." I don't see how any law (DMCA, copyright, etc.) can be used to suppress common knowledge. For instance, Star Wars may be still protected by copyright, but no one can prevent people from quoting it to their heart's content. So many of the quotes have become a part of our culture, our communal consciousness, that they are very much ours, and no amount of government or corporate power can take them from us.
As others have noted in this discussion, this isn't merely about freedom of speech, it is a spontaneous and massive civil disobedience, basically highlighting how the citizens affected by these DMCA do not respect the law, do not want the law, and increasingly do not tolerate the law.
I agree that some agencies have this fear, but I believe it is unfounded. Software written by a US government employee is automatically in the public domain. But this makes it trivial to contribute to a GPLed project. The particular contributions of that person will be public domain, but the overall project is still GPL.
Think of it this way: a government employee sees a GPL project. He writes some code that enhances it. He puts his code on his website, saying that it is released to the public domain. The, the GPL project downloads the public domain code (which has no restrictions on it whatsoever) and incorporates it into their GPL project. Their project is GPL, and anyone who tries to copy/fork it must follow the GPL. Of course, if someone wants to copy the particular lines of code written by the government employee, they can certainly do that.
There is no conflict between GPL and US government employees. The only restriction is that if the entire project was written by government workers, then the entire thing is public domain, and they cannot release it as "GPL-only". However, anyone else is free to fork a GPL version of this project.
The important thing to remember is that public domain has no restrictions: including no restriction of incorporating it into GPL projects! (I would appreciate it if someone would correct me, if I'm horribly mistaken.)
I'm against hyperbole as much as the next guy, but in this case things like The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement do actually exist. The idea is that humans should live rich, productive lives, but stop reproducing, because we're doing more harm than good by continuing this way (both to ourselves and the planet). The rationale is further that all the reasons for having kids are ultimately 'bad' or 'selfish' and thus it is our moral responsibility to overcome our natural tendency to have kids, and instead "do the right thing"--become extinct.
Now, most people who subscribe to this "movement" are doing it as a joke, or because they are rationalizing the fact that they don't have kids. But some of them really seem to be arguing honestly for self-extinction of the human race.
Anyways, just thought you'd be interested to know. I'm not trying to diminish your point against exaggeration.
For Matlab code, there is Octave, which is an open-source implementation of the Matlab syntax. However, it is only a partial implementation, and I've had mixed results trying to run Matlab code in Octave. (But it's usually worth a try!)
I'm going to have to give SciPy a try--it looks very cool.
Thanks!
The licensing was the annoying part. If it were not for the licensing, I could have discovered the incompatibility with Linux within 5 minutes, and switch to OS X right away. I could have re-run the code and been done with what I needed to do within an hour, instead of the many days that it took instead.
My main point was that it took so long to even discover the problem, due to artificial licensing restrictions. I'm not really even complaining about the glitches on Linux.
That having been said, I think it's worth noting that if it were fully open-source, it would probably have been properly repacked for my Linux distro of choice. Being open-source is no guarantee of compatibility with OS variants, but it sure helps.
Mathematica is an absolutely fantastic package. The symbol manipulation (derivaties, integration, etc.) are outstanding, the graphing is rich (though the options are obscure), and the data-manipulation is great. It's a very useful tool when doing serious engineering and science, plus it's fun to play around with.
However, I recently ran into one of those "top 10 reasons why proprietary software is annoying" situations. I hadn't used Mathematica in awhile, and wanted to go back to some old code and re-run some analysis. However in the meantime I had migrated from Windows to Linux. No problem--the install disk has the installer for Windows, Linux, and Mac all in one. Great. So I install it in Linux and then get the annoying "you must register this product to use it." (On Windows it gives you two weeks before locking out, but in Linux it won't open unless you enter the code, which changes with each new hardware installation.) The online automatic registration said I had to contact them via email. So I did. Eventually got the reactivation code. Turns out it didn't run properly on Linux. The controls were clunky and I couldn't get individuals block to execute (though I could re-execute an entire workbook.) Okay, no problem--I have a Mac laptop. So I load it up there. Then I have to go through the reactivation process again. Another email, more waiting. Eventually get it running.
My point is that I had alot of difficulty getting my (legitimately purchased) copy of Mathematica to actually work for me. I was in a hurry and just wanted to run some code quickly. This 10-minute operation turned into a 4-day ordeal, at the end of which I was very frustrated. It really reminded me the great advantages of programming in standards-based languages, that have open-source implementations. If the code had been written in python (using the Gnu Scientific Library), I would have been able to run it without hassles, and I could send the code to others, knowing that installing Python (on the OS of their choice) was always easy.
I don't want to turn this into a stereotypical OSS vs. proprietary rant... but this very recent experience with Mathematica has left a bad taste in my mouth--and I was previously very much a Mathematica evangelist!
Yes, just about every country has laws against treason, and they are serious laws, applicable when someone really has given away state secrets (e.g. sensitive security information, the location of weapon stores, etc.). So while China saying "please let us know if anyone is guilty of treason" is reasonable in principle, the actual execution of the request makes it obvious that what they mean by "treason" is actually "anything we don't like." Do you really think that treason happens so frequently (on a Myspace page, no less!) that we need a special web-button for reporting it?
Creating an efficient, formalized, and widespread system for reporting traitors can only mean that you are considering a very large percentage of your population to be a traitor. This ceases to be about any real acts of treason--it becomes about labeling as a 'traitor' anyone who opposes the ruling status quo. In short, it is about oppression, control, and spreading fear among the people.
Being objective doesn't mean ignoring the details of each case. You cannot just take China's word for it when they say "this is only to find traitors and protect our country"... you must also look at their actions, which instead suggest they are trying to restrict the free expression of ideas in their land, and that they are trying to co-opt the populace to monitor one another.
I think the usage in question certainly falls under 'fair use.' It certainly fits into the norms in the scientific community. Even though the journals are part owners (or sometimes full owners) of the copyright of papers, it's very normal for scientists to email each other PDFs, post copies on their websites, reproduce graphs in presentations, and so on. This is not only considered "fair" but very much considered "necessary" to maintaining healthy progress in science.
Yet despite the fact that these allegations have little merit (ethical or even legal), they create a very real chilling effect that slows science and decreases the distribution of information. Add to that the fact that most of this published research is funded by tax-dollars through government grants, and it becomes positively infuriating that the very scientists who do all the work are not allowed to freely disseminate the results of that work to the people, who pay for it.
This is why we all need to support the push towards Open Access in scientific publishing. If you are a librarian, student, postdoc, academic or industrial scientist, you should be putting pressure on journals to open their content to the people who do the work and foot the bill. For instance, consider publishing in an open access journal (see list here), or at least sign the petitions (US or Europe). Also see a discussion here which lists a bunch of things (small and large) that you can do to promote open access.