Which is why we need not worry about Linus because he certainly doesn't fit the psychopathic CEO mold. One of the beautiful properties about free software is that it allows people to do the work they really enjoy while attaining more power through the trust and reputation they generate for doing good work, without moving "up" into positions with assumed trust and reputation (CEO, etc) that are the goals of the untrustworthy psychopaths.
ADDITIONAL INFO REQUIRED TO FULLY UNDERSTAND THIS ARTICLE: Below are some additional bits of information that may change your understanding of why this heavily-editorialized piece is appearing in Wired at this time.
1. The editor of the Threat Level blog at Wired, Kevin Poulsen, has recently been questioned by journalists and privacy activists for his strange role in the recent Wikileaks / Bradley Manning story. A number of questions have been asked of Poulsen in order to clear up any suspicions of impropriety or violation of journalistic ethics by Poulsen but he hasn’t been able to answer those questions, resulting in stronger suspicions and newly-revealed information that strengthens the suspicions further still. This entire matter could be cleared up and resolved except for Poulsen’s on-going non-cooperation.
2. Kevin Poulsen apparently did not like even being *asked* about conflicts of interest (something that all journalists are questioned on all the time as part of the job). To make matters worse, Poulsen is resorting to retaliation, as if this was a BBS war between pre-teens and not an important discussion about law enforcement abuses in the US, abuses committed by occupation soldier abuses in Iraq, a co-ordinated campaign to discredit Wikileaks and the unethical, allegedly illegal manner in which PFC Bradley Manning was interrogated by someone who Poulsen has known and worked with for years and years.
If you look at Poulsen’s Twitter feed (@kpoulsen), it is sparsely updated. It appears that Poulsen only posts on Twitter when he is announcing a new Threat Level blog post or he is openly attacking Wikileaks. It seems safe to say that the “editorial line” over in Poulsen’s corner of Wired is sharply opposed to Wikileaks.
Any journalist should be prepared to respond, without getting emotional or defensive, if legitimate questions about conflict-of-interest or ethics are asked of them. That’s part of the job.
3. In the If-It-Wasn’t-So-Serious-It’d-Be-Funny Department, both Poulsen and known police informant Adrian Lamo are WELL AWARE of the SERIOUS implications of Poulsen being involved with law enforcement in any way. As a result, they both say the exact same thing when anyone asks about the nature of the relationship: “It’s a reporter-source relationship,” they’ll both recite. Lamo, who has much less to lose than Poulsen and possibly has reason to feel resentful that he has to take all the heat for something that benefited both of them, recites that line with a hint of sarcasm. But, maybe I’m reading something in the tone that isn’t actually there. Could be.
4. Poulsen was asked (you might even say “challenged”) by Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald to release the unedited, un-redacted portions of the chat transcripts between Poulsen’s long-time source/friend (Lamo) and PFC Bradley Manning also, releasing the logs would help clear up any perceived impropriety by Poulsen or Wired.
Poulsen refused to do so then and continues to refuse the many requests by Greenwald and others to release the logs. Even worse, the reason Poulsen gave about why he wouldn’t release them was shown to be untrue, as documented by Greenwald. Poulsen has never said ANYTHING MORE AT ALL about THAT maybe under the advice of his attorney?
The logs that Poulsen won’t release would have enormous value in the public domain — they would help individuals & government/law enforcement watchdog groups deal with the increasing erosion of our civil liberties. They also show an unfortunately side effect of California’s progressive Shield Law for journalists: it creates a false sense of safety for whistle-blowers like PFC Manning, who was told by Lamo that he was a journalist and offered Manning legally-protected, confidential communication while, at the same time, Lamo was really
Excellent points both parent and grandparent. I'm actually quite disappointed that people as well known as Pinker and Carr don't seem to be thinking very deeply about the terms "deep" and "shallow" thinking and information processing techniques.
Perhaps I'm completely abnormal, but when I think (deeply?) about a subject it tends to be in dialogue with either myself in my notebook or with others knowledgeable about the subject. The exploration and testing of ideas for me has little to do with the material on which I read, the length of the format, or even how distracted I am or how many interruptions I have. If I'm interested in subject I'll come back to it, even if it is years later.
They also both seem to have weird views of the plasticity of the brain. Likely a pattern of multitasking, interruptions, etc will cause certain behaviour and habits, but those effects are likely as temporary/permanent as every other environmental stimuli that we are constantly perceiving each moment. They seem to be caught up on the wrong thing. Carr seems to be arguing whether one particular (cast as "normal" by the media articles, but what I consider extreme) lifestyle is harmful.
Obviously are are some negatives to certain actions/lifestyles for at least for some period of time, but I have much more faith (perhaps misguided) that average people will be able to tell that their choices are having a negative impact on their lives and will change their behaviour to be more successful. I.E. if they feel too interrupted and distracted they will take steps to reduce that feeling. An entire culture that feels unsuccessful and unhealthy and yet does nothing about it is fairly rare and these days generally requires millions if not billions of dollars in marketing and the support of many vested interests.
I never understood this argument.
Why would someone who has worked so hard to get into a position of power throw it all away? The only case I see is if they are on their deathbed and want to be known in history as the person who attacked the US with nukes, but you can be damn sure their potential successors will actively block any attempts to ruin the wealth and power they stand to inherit. These "crazy" leaders are supported by enough people that they get into these positions of power, and I'd guess that much of this support is negotiated for by promises of wealth and power. No one is going to support someone who might turn their estates and fortune into a smoking ruin.
"Crazy" leaders use your sort of paranoia to sow fear in foreign countries or otherwise improve their bargaining position. For example, the best actor amongst the recent US presidents, "crazy" Ronny Reagan.
Assuming a good education that teaches people about their nature to form packs and be suspicious and the benefits of being aware of that nature and using democracy and other positive forms of social disagreement I think you could reasonably expect large scale violence to basically disappear. I'm no expert historian but I'd wager that in every case of mass violence there were a small number of people manipulating a large number of mostly uneducated and/or ignorant people. It is easy to underestimate the level of ignorance in this world (and especially in our past) brought about by lack of access to education and the effects of malnutrition/hunger making people more aggressive and anti-social.
In "developed" democratic countries it is basically impossible for a country to wage an aggressive war without many years of very expensive and pervasive propaganda designed to make people ignorant.
Because the original drug was patented, the method of producing it was well documented and in the public domain.
This assumes that reverse engineering the drug is of sufficient complexity that it would lock out most/all competitors. I know nothing of the pharmaceutical industry so I can't comment.
Your worse assumption is that without patents the industry would somehow still (badly) function the way it does today. Rather, without patents things would be very different. One possible future might be more like script writers and the movie industry. Researchers would be sending how to make particular drugs to the manufacturers of them, trying to convince the manufacturers that retooling for their particular drug is a good investment. Perhaps drugs become highly personalized such that many researchers spend most of their time personalizing drugs for particular individuals who then contract out to a local drug manufacturer for the prescription. In any case, the industry certainly won't look like a non-functional version of the patent-system based one we have today.
I see the development of these services and other recommendation services as far more important and useful than marketing, so the recording industry really has few places to go. What I'd like to see them evolve into is a focus on artist support and development services, where the artists are their customers and they help them prosper artistically and financially. Theoretically this is already part of the service the recording industry provides, and perhaps this side of it will improve when the corrupting influences of distribution control and marketing fade. Many artists need someone to help them deal with finances, the stress of the job, set up collaborations and inspiring life experiences, etc. It is very valuable for everyone (fans, artists, etc) to let artists focus on what they do best. The real trick is to protect artists so that when they let someone manage the finances the accountants don't take all the money for themselves (i.e. the current situation).
I think it is an interesting approach, sort of a fun play on words. An artist whose medium is the scam? It isn't like the patrons of his work are unknowingly duped, they know the work is "built with scam", purposely investigating just how scammy the work feels to different people. At the same time he is investigating alternate forms of funding for artists, which is an incredibly contemporary and important issue in a digital world. Until you literally buy into one of the works and participate, you only have an outsiders feeling/experience whether the new funding model just seems like a scam because it is so foreign.
The real AGW arguments (and the motivation of all the parties involved) seem to be about the remedies rather than the climate. The AGW believers want to use governments to force people to lead objectively poorer lives. Many of them have wanted this since before Global Warming was even theorized.
What do you mean "people would lead objectively poorer lives"? By reducing energy consumption and waste?
As a bad analogy, some "poor" people are/stay poor because they can't manage their money. People grow rich by conserving and saving. Spending our energy and materials budget wisely makes us richer. Truly green products have a total cost (including externalities) of manufacture, maintenance, and disposal that is lower than non-green products. That is the definition of a green product. Reducing consumption means we can spend our energy and non-renewable materials on the most valuable and useful products.
I second Little Brother. For high school students I could see it being a great inspiration to pursue further scifi, learn about all the deeper aspects of how freedom and technology interact, and most importantly feel like they can get engaged and make a difference.
You don't need to have a hate on for video games to think that reading might be more valuable. While there is a lot of social interaction and fun to be had playing WoW, there is value that is missing from the experience that can be delivered by good stories. Good stories, in the words of Robert McKee, are "creative demonstrations of the truth". WoW can creatively demonstrate a bunch of truths about teamwork, social interaction, overcoming challenges, etc, but a diverse reading of good stories will deliver a broader set of truths. Playing WoW is more like reading the same story (farming) or writer (game designers) over and over.
First of all, corporations aren't running unfettered through society. There are so many government regulations in place they'd make your head spin. While some of these very necessary, many have them have done little more than ensure that it's primarily the largest, wealthiest and best connected corporations which thrive. Small upstarts are forced to be a part of the system, basically, if they want to get anywhere.
Exactly! You prove the parents point. When large corporations "run unfettered" they will use the government to make laws that benefit only themselves. See copyright legislation for an example.
The big lesson for me was that big collaborations were the most successful.
In creating solutions for hard problems most of everything fails and is horribly difficult. No big surprise there. Kinda odd that was the quoted lesson...
Specs: 3.93" x 2.39" x 0.74" x5 optical zoom 3.5" wide display with full touch screen panel Wi-Fi (802.11 b / g), Bluetooth 2.0, GPS for Geo-tagging and Location Name
The intent of the hate speech law (in Canada) is to stop people from encouraging others to commit violent, illegal acts. It has nothing to do with calling people names or political correctness. It is much more similar to yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. Wikipedia says:
"In Canada, advocating genocide or inciting hatred against any 'identifiable group' is an indictable offense under the Criminal Code of Canada with maximum terms of two to fourteen years. An 'identifiable group' is defined as 'any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.' It makes exceptions for cases of statements of truth, and subjects of public debate and religious doctrine."
RMS actually makes a distinction between different types of information and how free it needs to be. At one of his talks he discussed 3 categories:
1) works of practical use (educational materials, software tools, etc):
- should be free (GPL)
2) works of testimony (what people experienced or believe):
- republishing with modification is misrepresentation,
- commercial use covered by existing copyright
3) works of art and entertainment:
- commercial use requires permission, personal use is fine
His position is nuanced, not stupid. I actually think the distinction is too difficult to make and it is best to error on the side of freedom, but there are certainly some tricky "moral rights" or artistic integrity issues for categories 2 and 3 with GPL-style freedom.
You miss his point. His works are available for other search engines to index because they are available at his site. No gatekeeper controls access to his work because it is all freely available at his own site: http://craphound.com/
I doubt that is how most election fraud is carried out. I suspect that individuals and small groups looking to be rewarded, or hoping to at least not be punished for losing the election in their district, commit election fraud. Since they are uncoordinated and concerned only for their own safety and/or power you get weird results like this that are obvious fabrications.
Software companies provide the service of creating games, but regardless, this leads to an Art vs Entertainment vs Industry argument that is off-topic. Only in industry could the case be made that the entire point of creation is to generate profit (and longterm profitability usually means this isn't the case for many shorter term projects... see Google).
There is obviously something unethical about making money in ways that harms other people. While the amount of harm caused by addiction would be hard to quantify and is different for each person, it would hard to prove that it causes no harm. Addiction gameplay is entirely unnecessary for profitability as numerous profitable games have been made without those mechanics. I don't think addition gameplay should be illegal, but only that serious game designers should abandon it for ethical reasons. Non-serious (i.e. profit is higher priority than the game) game designers and companies can create an profitable industry in the same manner as the candy, gambling, or tobacco industries.
For me there is also always an ethical choice about the priority levels that you set when creating things. I consider it a mistake to place personal profit above all else, since that makes too easy to make bad decisions that cause suffering and harm to others. Thus there is nothing wrong with running a for-profit business, or having a goal of being profitable, but it is wrong if profit is the only goal or the highest priority or your profit results in harm to others.
There are potentially serious ethical issues when creating games whose design is closely linked revenue generation. For monthly subscription style games, there is a strong incentive for developers to make the game more addicting, using all the known human "vulnerabilities" (reward schemes, etc) to keep people paying. This is where I think game designers can be called to task, or at least the relationship between the design and the revenue model.
It is a path towards "evil": 1) Make the game more addictive for the players and encourage them to recruit more players. 2) Charge subscription for access to the game. 3) Profit!
I call most MMORPG's gambling games rather than role-playing games... MMOGGs I suppose. The game designers can be held even more culpable for the ethics of their designs then those that design traditional gambling games, since the central (addictive) mechanic of gambling is staking a wager and potentially receiving rewards but the central mechanics of MMORPGs certain don't have to be self-serving addiction mechanics.
It would be completely possible to make WoW and other MMORPGs without leveling, drops, and other addiction mechanics and instead focus on overcoming challenges/monsters, socializing, role-playing and competition (PvP). Certainly the latter gameplay can be addicting, but I think you can make a clear distinction between mechanics that give the illusion of reward (items, XP, basically anything that just changes a number) and those that are intrinsically rewarding (defeating a monster or other player, making friends, etc).
In my eyes Blizzard has gone from a respected developer of a classic like Starcraft to an ethically challenged producer of a gambling game. However, it has been the fault of all game designers and game players to not bring up the issue more clearly and widely. We failed to talk about games in a serious way to help designers avoid falling into the trap of equating fun with addiction. Hopefully in the future addiction gameplay will be avoided by any designers who take games seriously and be relegated to a "sleazy" profit-centric industry more similar to the gambling industry.
Where do creators get the right to deny others from copying their work?
Indeed, after a certain period of time creators lose that right, they are only granted it temporarily. Copyright law is just an arbitrary legal mechanism, not a "natural law" whose purpose is to help creators get paid (enough times, not every time) for their work (so that creators have the time and incentive to create). If there were other mechanisms available that ensured that creators got paid (as well or better then they are currently) that didn't restrict distribution or copying - we'd use them.
Many/.ers feel that alternate mechanisms are here or very close and, more importantly, that creative work should be a service rather than product-based industry. Many people, like Clay Shirky, understand that we've developed better solutions (digital networks and P2P, etc) to the manufacturing and distribution problems that copyright and copyright industries evolved to solve. What TPB is doing is legally dubious, but there is a great deal of sympathy for them because using TPB feels like what will be mainstream, legal practice in the future. The is no escaping the reality of digital networks and the shift to digital work as a service.
This change is inevitable because the freedom to distribute and copy is so immensely valuable to the world as a whole (this is already recognized even for physical goods which is why creators control over copying is already limited). In industries like software development where creative work generally results in valuable tools it has already been recognized that more freedom is (on the whole) more valuable then any temporary monopoly rights. i.e. Freedom to use/access/modify every other tool is more valuable then charging for access to your tools, especially when you are trying to make another tool. (*ahem*)
Obviously, tools != entertainment/cultural work but as the great Hans Rosling (http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/hans_rosling.html) said, "Culture is what makes life worth living." Applying similar freedoms to cultural work should see different but equal or greater value for all of us.
It isn't the end of the world to shift from products to services, and in the bargain you get freedom to (access, modify, redistribute) every digital tool that helps you create new tools and every digital cultural work that makes your life worth living... 1) Get paid for your services 2) Freedom to (access, modify, redistribute) everything digital 3) Profit!
Right now if something is patented, you need to figure out another way to do the same thing. Sometimes the new method is even better than the original. THAT IS THE [IMPLIED] GOAL.
This assumes that people are lazier then they are competitive. Without intellectual property new inventions or "forks" / modifications of existing inventions would happen anytime someone thinks there is a better way to do things. Unlike you I assume that people often disagree about what is the right/best way to do things which creates the diversity needed to explore the landscape of potential solutions.
The free software community has shown that diversity and experimentation are natural even if there are no copyright/patents forcing people to try another approach. We need nothing to force us to disagree.:)
"This paper involved two research efforts: first, the authors developed a history of the evolution of a certain class of proteins. That is, they came up with a model that described which mutations occurred to proteins in this class, mutation by mutation, since proteins that look like these proteins first appeared. They looked at how each of these mutations changed a certain property of the proteins, and found that rather drifting gradually through all possible values of this property, each mutation forced the property to go to an extreme of its possible values: either maximizing it or minimizing it.
In the second part of the work, they applied a mathematical theory called "optimal control theory" to the history developed in the first part. This theory allows for the creation of a bunch of mathematical abstractions corresponding to "systems" with "inputs" and "outputs", and it describes how to most efficiently change a system such that, given a defined input, it produces a desired output. It turns out that the evolutionary history of this class of proteins is consistent with a kind of optimal control; that is, the mutations that appear over the history of this class of proteins--those same mutations that flip back and forth between a set of extremes--behave as if they are determined by an efficient solution to a control problem."
Slashdot Mirror
Which is why we need not worry about Linus because he certainly doesn't fit the psychopathic CEO mold. One of the beautiful properties about free software is that it allows people to do the work they really enjoy while attaining more power through the trust and reputation they generate for doing good work, without moving "up" into positions with assumed trust and reputation (CEO, etc) that are the goals of the untrustworthy psychopaths.
Oh, and Greenwald's article on Manning, Lamo and Poulson is detailed and fantastic:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/18/wikileaks/index.html
For the lazy, the comment in question:
Posted by: mpineiro | 07/1/10 | 9:21 am |
ADDITIONAL INFO REQUIRED TO FULLY UNDERSTAND THIS ARTICLE:
Below are some additional bits of information that may change your understanding of why this heavily-editorialized piece is appearing in Wired at this time.
1. The editor of the Threat Level blog at Wired, Kevin Poulsen, has recently been questioned by journalists and privacy activists for his strange role in the recent Wikileaks / Bradley Manning story. A number of questions have been asked of Poulsen in order to clear up any suspicions of impropriety or violation of journalistic ethics by Poulsen but he hasn’t been able to answer those questions, resulting in stronger suspicions and newly-revealed information that strengthens the suspicions further still. This entire matter could be cleared up and resolved except for Poulsen’s on-going non-cooperation.
2. Kevin Poulsen apparently did not like even being *asked* about conflicts of interest (something that all journalists are questioned on all the time as part of the job). To make matters worse, Poulsen is resorting to retaliation, as if this was a BBS war between pre-teens and not an important discussion about law enforcement abuses in the US, abuses committed by occupation soldier abuses in Iraq, a co-ordinated campaign to discredit Wikileaks and the unethical, allegedly illegal manner in which PFC Bradley Manning was interrogated by someone who Poulsen has known and worked with for years and years.
If you look at Poulsen’s Twitter feed (@kpoulsen), it is sparsely updated. It appears that Poulsen only posts on Twitter when he is announcing a new Threat Level blog post or he is openly attacking Wikileaks. It seems safe to say that the “editorial line” over in Poulsen’s corner of Wired is sharply opposed to Wikileaks.
Any journalist should be prepared to respond, without getting emotional or defensive, if legitimate questions about conflict-of-interest or ethics are asked of them. That’s part of the job.
3. In the If-It-Wasn’t-So-Serious-It’d-Be-Funny Department, both Poulsen and known police informant Adrian Lamo are WELL AWARE of the SERIOUS implications of Poulsen being involved with law enforcement in any way. As a result, they both say the exact same thing when anyone asks about the nature of the relationship: “It’s a reporter-source relationship,” they’ll both recite. Lamo, who has much less to lose than Poulsen and possibly has reason to feel resentful that he has to take all the heat for something that benefited both of them, recites that line with a hint of sarcasm. But, maybe I’m reading something in the tone that isn’t actually there. Could be.
4. Poulsen was asked (you might even say “challenged”) by Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald to release the unedited, un-redacted portions of the chat transcripts between Poulsen’s long-time source/friend (Lamo) and PFC Bradley Manning also, releasing the logs would help clear up any perceived impropriety by Poulsen or Wired.
Poulsen refused to do so then and continues to refuse the many requests by Greenwald and others to release the logs. Even worse, the reason Poulsen gave about why he wouldn’t release them was shown to be untrue, as documented by Greenwald. Poulsen has never said ANYTHING MORE AT ALL about THAT maybe under the advice of his attorney?
The logs that Poulsen won’t release would have enormous value in the public domain — they would help individuals & government/law enforcement watchdog groups deal with the increasing erosion of our civil liberties. They also show an unfortunately side effect of California’s progressive Shield Law for journalists: it creates a false sense of safety for whistle-blowers like PFC Manning, who was told by Lamo that he was a journalist and offered Manning legally-protected, confidential communication while, at the same time, Lamo was really
Excellent points both parent and grandparent. I'm actually quite disappointed that people as well known as Pinker and Carr don't seem to be thinking very deeply about the terms "deep" and "shallow" thinking and information processing techniques.
Perhaps I'm completely abnormal, but when I think (deeply?) about a subject it tends to be in dialogue with either myself in my notebook or with others knowledgeable about the subject. The exploration and testing of ideas for me has little to do with the material on which I read, the length of the format, or even how distracted I am or how many interruptions I have. If I'm interested in subject I'll come back to it, even if it is years later.
They also both seem to have weird views of the plasticity of the brain. Likely a pattern of multitasking, interruptions, etc will cause certain behaviour and habits, but those effects are likely as temporary/permanent as every other environmental stimuli that we are constantly perceiving each moment. They seem to be caught up on the wrong thing. Carr seems to be arguing whether one particular (cast as "normal" by the media articles, but what I consider extreme) lifestyle is harmful.
Obviously are are some negatives to certain actions/lifestyles for at least for some period of time, but I have much more faith (perhaps misguided) that average people will be able to tell that their choices are having a negative impact on their lives and will change their behaviour to be more successful. I.E. if they feel too interrupted and distracted they will take steps to reduce that feeling. An entire culture that feels unsuccessful and unhealthy and yet does nothing about it is fairly rare and these days generally requires millions if not billions of dollars in marketing and the support of many vested interests.
I never understood this argument. Why would someone who has worked so hard to get into a position of power throw it all away? The only case I see is if they are on their deathbed and want to be known in history as the person who attacked the US with nukes, but you can be damn sure their potential successors will actively block any attempts to ruin the wealth and power they stand to inherit. These "crazy" leaders are supported by enough people that they get into these positions of power, and I'd guess that much of this support is negotiated for by promises of wealth and power. No one is going to support someone who might turn their estates and fortune into a smoking ruin. "Crazy" leaders use your sort of paranoia to sow fear in foreign countries or otherwise improve their bargaining position. For example, the best actor amongst the recent US presidents, "crazy" Ronny Reagan.
Assuming a good education that teaches people about their nature to form packs and be suspicious and the benefits of being aware of that nature and using democracy and other positive forms of social disagreement I think you could reasonably expect large scale violence to basically disappear. I'm no expert historian but I'd wager that in every case of mass violence there were a small number of people manipulating a large number of mostly uneducated and/or ignorant people. It is easy to underestimate the level of ignorance in this world (and especially in our past) brought about by lack of access to education and the effects of malnutrition/hunger making people more aggressive and anti-social. In "developed" democratic countries it is basically impossible for a country to wage an aggressive war without many years of very expensive and pervasive propaganda designed to make people ignorant.
Because the original drug was patented, the method of producing it was well documented and in the public domain.
This assumes that reverse engineering the drug is of sufficient complexity that it would lock out most/all competitors. I know nothing of the pharmaceutical industry so I can't comment. Your worse assumption is that without patents the industry would somehow still (badly) function the way it does today. Rather, without patents things would be very different. One possible future might be more like script writers and the movie industry. Researchers would be sending how to make particular drugs to the manufacturers of them, trying to convince the manufacturers that retooling for their particular drug is a good investment. Perhaps drugs become highly personalized such that many researchers spend most of their time personalizing drugs for particular individuals who then contract out to a local drug manufacturer for the prescription. In any case, the industry certainly won't look like a non-functional version of the patent-system based one we have today.
I see the development of these services and other recommendation services as far more important and useful than marketing, so the recording industry really has few places to go. What I'd like to see them evolve into is a focus on artist support and development services, where the artists are their customers and they help them prosper artistically and financially. Theoretically this is already part of the service the recording industry provides, and perhaps this side of it will improve when the corrupting influences of distribution control and marketing fade. Many artists need someone to help them deal with finances, the stress of the job, set up collaborations and inspiring life experiences, etc. It is very valuable for everyone (fans, artists, etc) to let artists focus on what they do best. The real trick is to protect artists so that when they let someone manage the finances the accountants don't take all the money for themselves (i.e. the current situation).
I think it is an interesting approach, sort of a fun play on words. An artist whose medium is the scam? It isn't like the patrons of his work are unknowingly duped, they know the work is "built with scam", purposely investigating just how scammy the work feels to different people. At the same time he is investigating alternate forms of funding for artists, which is an incredibly contemporary and important issue in a digital world. Until you literally buy into one of the works and participate, you only have an outsiders feeling/experience whether the new funding model just seems like a scam because it is so foreign.
I have no plans on being one of his patrons. :)
The real AGW arguments (and the motivation of all the parties involved) seem to be about the remedies rather than the climate. The AGW believers want to use governments to force people to lead objectively poorer lives. Many of them have wanted this since before Global Warming was even theorized.
What do you mean "people would lead objectively poorer lives"? By reducing energy consumption and waste?
As a bad analogy, some "poor" people are/stay poor because they can't manage their money. People grow rich by conserving and saving. Spending our energy and materials budget wisely makes us richer. Truly green products have a total cost (including externalities) of manufacture, maintenance, and disposal that is lower than non-green products. That is the definition of a green product. Reducing consumption means we can spend our energy and non-renewable materials on the most valuable and useful products.
I second Little Brother. For high school students I could see it being a great inspiration to pursue further scifi, learn about all the deeper aspects of how freedom and technology interact, and most importantly feel like they can get engaged and make a difference.
You don't need to have a hate on for video games to think that reading might be more valuable. While there is a lot of social interaction and fun to be had playing WoW, there is value that is missing from the experience that can be delivered by good stories. Good stories, in the words of Robert McKee, are "creative demonstrations of the truth". WoW can creatively demonstrate a bunch of truths about teamwork, social interaction, overcoming challenges, etc, but a diverse reading of good stories will deliver a broader set of truths. Playing WoW is more like reading the same story (farming) or writer (game designers) over and over.
First of all, corporations aren't running unfettered through society. There are so many government regulations in place they'd make your head spin. While some of these very necessary, many have them have done little more than ensure that it's primarily the largest, wealthiest and best connected corporations which thrive. Small upstarts are forced to be a part of the system, basically, if they want to get anywhere.
Exactly! You prove the parents point. When large corporations "run unfettered" they will use the government to make laws that benefit only themselves. See copyright legislation for an example.
The big lesson for me was that big collaborations were the most successful.
In creating solutions for hard problems most of everything fails and is horribly difficult. No big surprise there. Kinda odd that was the quoted lesson...
I agree. That is why I'm excited about the Samsung CL65 that should be coming out soon:
http://www.samsung.com/us/consumer/photography/digital-cameras/compact/EC-CL65ZZBPBUS/index.idx?pagetype=prd_detail
Specs:
3.93" x 2.39" x 0.74"
x5 optical zoom
3.5" wide display with full touch screen panel
Wi-Fi (802.11 b / g), Bluetooth 2.0, GPS for Geo-tagging and Location Name
The intent of the hate speech law (in Canada) is to stop people from encouraging others to commit violent, illegal acts. It has nothing to do with calling people names or political correctness. It is much more similar to yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. Wikipedia says:
"In Canada, advocating genocide or inciting hatred against any 'identifiable group' is an indictable offense under the Criminal Code of Canada with maximum terms of two to fourteen years. An 'identifiable group' is defined as 'any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.' It makes exceptions for cases of statements of truth, and subjects of public debate and religious doctrine."
Hmm, I suppose according to RMS the parent post is messing with his work of testimony. I'm gunna claim fair use while I still have some rights left. :)
RMS actually makes a distinction between different types of information and how free it needs to be. At one of his talks he discussed 3 categories:
1) works of practical use (educational materials, software tools, etc):
- should be free (GPL)
2) works of testimony (what people experienced or believe):
- republishing with modification is misrepresentation,
- commercial use covered by existing copyright
3) works of art and entertainment:
- commercial use requires permission, personal use is fine
His position is nuanced, not stupid. I actually think the distinction is too difficult to make and it is best to error on the side of freedom, but there are certainly some tricky "moral rights" or artistic integrity issues for categories 2 and 3 with GPL-style freedom.
You miss his point. His works are available for other search engines to index because they are available at his site. No gatekeeper controls access to his work because it is all freely available at his own site: http://craphound.com/
I doubt that is how most election fraud is carried out. I suspect that individuals and small groups looking to be rewarded, or hoping to at least not be punished for losing the election in their district, commit election fraud. Since they are uncoordinated and concerned only for their own safety and/or power you get weird results like this that are obvious fabrications.
Software companies provide the service of creating games, but regardless, this leads to an Art vs Entertainment vs Industry argument that is off-topic. Only in industry could the case be made that the entire point of creation is to generate profit (and longterm profitability usually means this isn't the case for many shorter term projects... see Google).
There is obviously something unethical about making money in ways that harms other people. While the amount of harm caused by addiction would be hard to quantify and is different for each person, it would hard to prove that it causes no harm. Addiction gameplay is entirely unnecessary for profitability as numerous profitable games have been made without those mechanics. I don't think addition gameplay should be illegal, but only that serious game designers should abandon it for ethical reasons. Non-serious (i.e. profit is higher priority than the game) game designers and companies can create an profitable industry in the same manner as the candy, gambling, or tobacco industries.
For me there is also always an ethical choice about the priority levels that you set when creating things. I consider it a mistake to place personal profit above all else, since that makes too easy to make bad decisions that cause suffering and harm to others. Thus there is nothing wrong with running a for-profit business, or having a goal of being profitable, but it is wrong if profit is the only goal or the highest priority or your profit results in harm to others.
There are potentially serious ethical issues when creating games whose design is closely linked revenue generation. For monthly subscription style games, there is a strong incentive for developers to make the game more addicting, using all the known human "vulnerabilities" (reward schemes, etc) to keep people paying. This is where I think game designers can be called to task, or at least the relationship between the design and the revenue model.
It is a path towards "evil":
1) Make the game more addictive for the players and encourage them to recruit more players.
2) Charge subscription for access to the game.
3) Profit!
I call most MMORPG's gambling games rather than role-playing games... MMOGGs I suppose. The game designers can be held even more culpable for the ethics of their designs then those that design traditional gambling games, since the central (addictive) mechanic of gambling is staking a wager and potentially receiving rewards but the central mechanics of MMORPGs certain don't have to be self-serving addiction mechanics.
It would be completely possible to make WoW and other MMORPGs without leveling, drops, and other addiction mechanics and instead focus on overcoming challenges/monsters, socializing, role-playing and competition (PvP). Certainly the latter gameplay can be addicting, but I think you can make a clear distinction between mechanics that give the illusion of reward (items, XP, basically anything that just changes a number) and those that are intrinsically rewarding (defeating a monster or other player, making friends, etc).
In my eyes Blizzard has gone from a respected developer of a classic like Starcraft to an ethically challenged producer of a gambling game. However, it has been the fault of all game designers and game players to not bring up the issue more clearly and widely. We failed to talk about games in a serious way to help designers avoid falling into the trap of equating fun with addiction. Hopefully in the future addiction gameplay will be avoided by any designers who take games seriously and be relegated to a "sleazy" profit-centric industry more similar to the gambling industry.
Where do creators get the right to deny others from copying their work?
Indeed, after a certain period of time creators lose that right, they are only granted it temporarily. Copyright law is just an arbitrary legal mechanism, not a "natural law" whose purpose is to help creators get paid (enough times, not every time) for their work (so that creators have the time and incentive to create). If there were other mechanisms available that ensured that creators got paid (as well or better then they are currently) that didn't restrict distribution or copying - we'd use them.
Many /.ers feel that alternate mechanisms are here or very close and, more importantly, that creative work should be a service rather than product-based industry. Many people, like Clay Shirky, understand that we've developed better solutions (digital networks and P2P, etc) to the manufacturing and distribution problems that copyright and copyright industries evolved to solve. What TPB is doing is legally dubious, but there is a great deal of sympathy for them because using TPB feels like what will be mainstream, legal practice in the future. The is no escaping the reality of digital networks and the shift to digital work as a service.
This change is inevitable because the freedom to distribute and copy is so immensely valuable to the world as a whole (this is already recognized even for physical goods which is why creators control over copying is already limited). In industries like software development where creative work generally results in valuable tools it has already been recognized that more freedom is (on the whole) more valuable then any temporary monopoly rights. i.e. Freedom to use/access/modify every other tool is more valuable then charging for access to your tools, especially when you are trying to make another tool. (*ahem*)
Obviously, tools != entertainment/cultural work but as the great Hans Rosling (http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/hans_rosling.html) said, "Culture is what makes life worth living." Applying similar freedoms to cultural work should see different but equal or greater value for all of us.
It isn't the end of the world to shift from products to services, and in the bargain you get freedom to (access, modify, redistribute) every digital tool that helps you create new tools and every digital cultural work that makes your life worth living...
1) Get paid for your services
2) Freedom to (access, modify, redistribute) everything digital
3) Profit!
Right now if something is patented, you need to figure out another way to do the same thing. Sometimes the new method is even better than the original. THAT IS THE [IMPLIED] GOAL.
This assumes that people are lazier then they are competitive. Without intellectual property new inventions or "forks" / modifications of existing inventions would happen anytime someone thinks there is a better way to do things. Unlike you I assume that people often disagree about what is the right/best way to do things which creates the diversity needed to explore the landscape of potential solutions.
The free software community has shown that diversity and experimentation are natural even if there are no copyright/patents forcing people to try another approach. We need nothing to force us to disagree. :)
This is the best description of what the paper is likely about, from mr_roboto over on metafilter:
http://www.metafilter.com/76452/Darwin-extended#2336682
"This paper involved two research efforts: first, the authors developed a history of the evolution of a certain class of proteins. That is, they came up with a model that described which mutations occurred to proteins in this class, mutation by mutation, since proteins that look like these proteins first appeared. They looked at how each of these mutations changed a certain property of the proteins, and found that rather drifting gradually through all possible values of this property, each mutation forced the property to go to an extreme of its possible values: either maximizing it or minimizing it.
In the second part of the work, they applied a mathematical theory called "optimal control theory" to the history developed in the first part. This theory allows for the creation of a bunch of mathematical abstractions corresponding to "systems" with "inputs" and "outputs", and it describes how to most efficiently change a system such that, given a defined input, it produces a desired output. It turns out that the evolutionary history of this class of proteins is consistent with a kind of optimal control; that is, the mutations that appear over the history of this class of proteins--those same mutations that flip back and forth between a set of extremes--behave as if they are determined by an efficient solution to a control problem."
Metafilter also links to the paper itself (behind a paywall):
http://scitation.aip.org/getpdf/servlet/GetPDFServlet?filetype=pdf&id=PRLTAO000100000025258103000001&idtype=cvips&prog=normal