Health care, public education, police, and the like unambiguously benefit everybody. (Even those who don't get sick benefit from other people being treated, which reduces contagions, and even those who don't have children or who send them to private school benefit from an educated populace.) Therefore it makes plenty of sense to make everyone pay for them. But it's rather doubtful that public television provides any notable benefit to those who don't receive it.
Perhaps he didn't consider it worthwhile to fight? Obviously he has nothing to hide, and in fact has something to show off (that his TV is tax-exempt). Probably if he had not allowed the inspector in, they would have continued harassing him for not paying, and eventually taken it to court. Now, if they were jackbooted BBC thugs who would have arrested him simply for not letting them in, that would have been worth fighting. But not if it was just an optional way to clear things up. Not everyone has such a strong definition of liberty.
"Informative"? You've got to be kidding. Wikipedia has plenty of good non-geek coverage, as well as editions in many, many languages other than English, and this book will likely be donated or made available damn cheap.
You totally miss the point. Your store owner makes a conscious action by putting up the sign. A user who leaves their AP unsecured because it's the default does not. They don't even know that they're indicating openness.
In 802.11 there are a few ways to communicate your intent. In this case, every possible means of this communication was saying "I'm open". How else, in your opinion, is an AP owner supposed to communicate an intent of openness to clients?
It was open by default! The owner just didn't know to close it.
The point is intent. The owner of the AP did not intend to make it publically accessible. A store owner who puts up an 'OPEN' sign does intend to make their store publically accessible.
And no, they do not deserve it for failing to secure their network. That's like saying I deserve to have my car stolen because I left the keys in it; it's stupid of me, but I did not intend to give anyone license to steal it.
What if the findings were announced prematurely and then found wrong? Do you want children to be taught there are 10 planets, and a month later to be told "we goofed, there are 9"?
Jeez, I put "want" in quotes... I agree that impressionable young minds shouldn't be exposed to this fallacy (and I wince whenever I see any serious text use it), but it can work fine as a metaphor among people who know it's just that.
Information "wants" to be free in the same sense that things "want" to fall to the ground; it's the path of least resistance. What the statement means to me is that information usually becomes free in the absence of measures taken to prevent it from doing so. I think we can agree that that's true.
Well, if it's encrypted, what's the problem? Unless it's DES... actually, knowing the records of some companies, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them used DES. I wouldn't be surprised if a few used rot13. *shudders*
That'd be a very good thing to do, but banning information sharing is still insufficient if the entities that actually need your information (banks, CredCardCos, anybody regularly billing you, etc.) have crap security.
They now know that they're going to get paid for their production no matter how good or bad it is. So they'll value leisure over quality content. And we'll end up in a situation where no content is produced but content producers are still paid.
No, the OP's idea is they get paid according to how many people use their product. A lot like the current system.
On the 'simpler' devices, much of the information necessary to write a driver may be novel ways of, for example, encoding something in software that might otherwise be done in hardware.
I have a good example of this: I have a Smartlink softmodem, which is basically just a sound card connected to a phone jack. Smartlink is nice enough to provide a Linux driver for this, some of which is open-source. However, the two core parts are binary - the interface to the hardware, and the DSP (encoding/decoding of the analog signal). It's pretty obvious why they made the DSP binary-only: any free hints about writing a modem DSP would make any other company's task of writing a softmodem driver a lot easier. As to why they would hide the hardware interface, I don't know; maybe there were also some hints there that would make things easier for their competitors.
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Yes, but it sounds like this doesn't need vacuum or a kilovolt power supply.
Temperatures up to 100000 degrees... in an area less than a millimeter wide. That's not much actual power.
I think that at least as many people with TVs would claim it back as currently don't pay the tax - enforcement would be no easier.
Health care, public education, police, and the like unambiguously benefit everybody. (Even those who don't get sick benefit from other people being treated, which reduces contagions, and even those who don't have children or who send them to private school benefit from an educated populace.) Therefore it makes plenty of sense to make everyone pay for them. But it's rather doubtful that public television provides any notable benefit to those who don't receive it.
Perhaps he didn't consider it worthwhile to fight? Obviously he has nothing to hide, and in fact has something to show off (that his TV is tax-exempt). Probably if he had not allowed the inspector in, they would have continued harassing him for not paying, and eventually taken it to court. Now, if they were jackbooted BBC thugs who would have arrested him simply for not letting them in, that would have been worth fighting. But not if it was just an optional way to clear things up. Not everyone has such a strong definition of liberty.
Counter-view.
"Informative"? You've got to be kidding. Wikipedia has plenty of good non-geek coverage, as well as editions in many, many languages other than English, and this book will likely be donated or made available damn cheap.
Book: $10-$20 once. Internet: $20-$40 a month.
Big, big difference. Plus, there are libraries. Plus, books can indeed be given for free - much easier than Internet.
I'm sure entries will be validated first, using a process like this.
Remember, In Rod We Trust!
(It's a Simpsons reference. I'm too lazy to dig up the exact episode.)
You totally miss the point. Your store owner makes a conscious action by putting up the sign. A user who leaves their AP unsecured because it's the default does not. They don't even know that they're indicating openness.
Really! I wonder how they got 0.01ms ping times then...
In 802.11 there are a few ways to communicate your intent. In this case, every possible means of this communication was saying "I'm open". How else, in your opinion, is an AP owner supposed to communicate an intent of openness to clients?
It was open by default! The owner just didn't know to close it.
The point is intent. The owner of the AP did not intend to make it publically accessible. A store owner who puts up an 'OPEN' sign does intend to make their store publically accessible. And no, they do not deserve it for failing to secure their network. That's like saying I deserve to have my car stolen because I left the keys in it; it's stupid of me, but I did not intend to give anyone license to steal it.
What if the findings were announced prematurely and then found wrong? Do you want children to be taught there are 10 planets, and a month later to be told "we goofed, there are 9"?
Jeez, I put "want" in quotes... I agree that impressionable young minds shouldn't be exposed to this fallacy (and I wince whenever I see any serious text use it), but it can work fine as a metaphor among people who know it's just that.
No, in the absence of any measures, information ceases to exist.
I said "the absence of measures taken to prevent it from [becoming free]."
I wonder if the buyer intends to fill it with gasoline...
Information "wants" to be free in the same sense that things "want" to fall to the ground; it's the path of least resistance. What the statement means to me is that information usually becomes free in the absence of measures taken to prevent it from doing so. I think we can agree that that's true.
Wavefunction collapse? We don't need no stinkin' wavefunction collapse! Ever heard of many-worlds?
Well, if it's encrypted, what's the problem? Unless it's DES... actually, knowing the records of some companies, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them used DES. I wouldn't be surprised if a few used rot13. *shudders*
That'd be a very good thing to do, but banning information sharing is still insufficient if the entities that actually need your information (banks, CredCardCos, anybody regularly billing you, etc.) have crap security.
They now know that they're going to get paid for their production no matter how good or bad it is. So they'll value leisure over quality content. And we'll end up in a situation where no content is produced but content producers are still paid.
No, the OP's idea is they get paid according to how many people use their product. A lot like the current system.
You run the server, so you should know what you're hosting. Use Babelfish. Delete anything encrypted. Anyway, it's only open to one person.
On the 'simpler' devices, much of the information necessary to write a driver may be novel ways of, for example, encoding something in software that might otherwise be done in hardware.
I have a good example of this: I have a Smartlink softmodem, which is basically just a sound card connected to a phone jack. Smartlink is nice enough to provide a Linux driver for this, some of which is open-source. However, the two core parts are binary - the interface to the hardware, and the DSP (encoding/decoding of the analog signal). It's pretty obvious why they made the DSP binary-only: any free hints about writing a modem DSP would make any other company's task of writing a softmodem driver a lot easier. As to why they would hide the hardware interface, I don't know; maybe there were also some hints there that would make things easier for their competitors.