And if you look around the planet at the humans that are here and happy, they have learned to live with Nature, and not against it, as mankind has for the last 200 years or so.
This myth, again? Humans in the middle ages were somehow happier than we are today? Did you ever learn any history? And even without thinking about all of the cruelty that people imposed on each other (let's assume that that hasn't changed since the middle ages), for most of human history one out of every two children (if not more) died before the age of five. Yeah, I'm sure all those parents, long ago, were really much happier than we are, with all our modern technology and modern medicine.
> It also assumes you have such a trusted compiler. This has always been the tough part.
When Thompson wrote the original paper, it was tough. In the meantime, many more compiler options have arisen, and the complexity (measured in size of injected, specialized code) of Thompson's "attack" is O(n^2) where n is the total number of compilers to be compromised. When you combine this fact with the now-documented aversion of the NSA to having its methods uncovered, one quickly comes to the conclusion that it's not very likely that DCC is unproductive because all (or even most) combinations of compilers have been trojaned.
Actually, it's just more likely to affect the US economy (as foreigners run away from using resources under the thumb of the NSA), causing its entire population to be less safe against all those real dangers, like cancer, heart disease, traffic accidents, depression, undernourishment, domestic crime, not having sufficient retirement benefits, etc.
Frankly, I don't trust the intelligence community (and especially not Michael Hayden), to be able to evaluate the real risks and dangers to the US. For example, they didn't listen to Snowden when he complained that the NSA was vulnerable to what later ended up being his own attack, and we see that either this is going to be really bad for the US economy, or if, somehow, you are correct, it's going to cause "the terrorists to win" --- either way, one would think that the people whose opinion you're believing would have figured this out, no?
Well, maybe you should reconsider, then, believing them? Tell me, can you provide some examples of evidence which would cause you to stop believing what you've been posting about Snowden and the intelligence community?
I posted something similar, but wish I could have retracted it... since the bet, as stated, is in USD. AFAIK, the contracts part of bitcoin can only manipulate bitcoin.
My understanding of the situation is that in the long term (because of the cap on the total amount of bitcoin), there is a limit to how small bitcoin microtransactions can be (and still be practical), because transaction fees for mining blocks will need to replace the current incentive to mine (which is the production of new bitcoin).
He said "I MIGHT [emphasis mine] want you to die a painful death..."
I see the elegance of producing a terrific strawman troll by merely omitting one word, but really, this doesn't qualify for Insightful mods, puh-leeze!
Based on a tweet by one of Zerocoin's developers, they have decided to launch it as an independent currency, therefore requiring that one or more Bitcoin / Zerocoin exchanges will spring up to enable increased Bitcoin anonymity.
> Since mixing services have fundamental problems of a non-technical nature, it just won't work.
OK, interesting. What are these problems? Isn't Tor just a "mixing service", yet the documents from the NSA which have been revealed up to now claim that even that bastion of binary processing power is capable of de-anonymizing only a small fraction of the Tor network's throughput?
And while I have the chance, thanks for all of your innovations, and best of luck in your endeavors (including in court). The original mp3.com site rocked; I can only speak for myself, but it was totally eye-opening for me to understand how many good, unknown, indie musicians there are, and to partially glimpse (what I believe is) the future direction of music.
Last time I checked, it's possible to write spaghetti code in any language. Of course, there are some languages in which it is impossible to write anything _but_ spaghetti code, but he wasn't talking about them.
If google are allowed to do it, why can't I? I only want to make one copy of each book from the library.
is addressed in the decision. On page 21, Judge Chin addresses the first of the four traditional criteria for fair use, whether the unauthorized copy is used in a transformative manner:
Google Books does not supersede or supplant books because it is not a tool to be used to read books. Instead, it "adds value to the original" and allows for "the creation of new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings." Leval, Toward a Fair Use Standard, 103 Harv. L. Rev. at 1111. Hence, the use is transformative.
So there's your answer. You're (probably) 100% OK if you make those copies of those library books, as long as you don't use them as you would use a library book (your use should also be such that others would be prevent from using them as such, also --- oh, and IANAL, and TINLA (this is not legal advice)).
Of course, the fact that you would be 100% in the right wouldn't help you pay lawyers licensed for Federal courts. If the facts of your case corresponded closely to those of this one, you might be able to squeeze by representing yourself "pro se", and hope for quick summary judgment, but I think that would be dangerous, since the other side would probably start the whole thing by arguing about everything which distinguished your case from this one.
Google was guilty of breaking into facilities they don't own, hacking a computer network, and releasing every page of every book ever printed???
Last time I checked, the facts were that: (1) Swartz had free and open access to both the building and the closet in which he placed his computer, (2) any hacking he did amounted to (possibly) changing his MAC address and violating terms of service, and (3) none of the material he downloaded was released by him to the public. Have any reliable sources to contradict this?
So you are also implying that there do not exist any people who use drugs over the course of their whole lifetime without getting addicted? I rather doubt that, especially considering that alcohol is a (legal) drug.
As for lucky or not lucky, it has no relevance to the topic, which is whether my comment on that post made sense. I stated no claim that taking drugs is totally safe.
Last time I checked: taking drugs != being addicted to drugs, especially since our everything-is-a-crime-happy society has made drugs a lot less addictive than nicotine illegal... As for a false dichotomy, the way I read it, the post implies that there are only two alternatives: not taking drugs, or having them totally mess up your life.
It may be useful to have anchors for these concepts, but ignoring the fact that humans are swayed by how language is couched is simply naive. I personally prefer to communicate as I think best, rather than mindlessly subjugate myself to whatever convention is currently accepted by society. I can understand the other position, however... a lot of people don't feel comfortable wearing the non-conformist hat...
Whether or not Swartz was naive, or not, or his suicide was justified, or not, all of us who respected what he stood for can continue his work on such a low flame that none of us runs any significant risk.
> Committing suicide to avoid this process, for example, is not a responsible thing to do.
What is your opinion of armed rebellion against an unjust government? Because the particular case of Swartz's suicide strikes me as a strange kind of passive-aggressive version of armed rebellion.
Oh, I was well aware of that, but thought that the age threshold example was most cogent. Other ambiguities, besides the one you state which I was not aware of, are:
Some jurisdictions (IIRC, an example is Germany) define child porn by what is depicted and not the age of the participants, so unless the content itself explicitly reveals the depiction intended to be infringing, a court of law would have to decide if other elements of the depiction implicitly cause it to infringe.
Some jurisdictions include exceptions for works "which have artistic value" --- something, again, which necessarily needs to be decided in a court of law.
Most people are not up-to-date on the definition of CP in every jurisdiction, and therefore, while traveling, would probably not be able to unerringly recognize it in an unfamiliar jurisdiction (even assuming all other ambiguities were absent). Given the average level of legal knowledge in the general public, I wouldn't be surprised if "unfamiliar jurisdiction" in this case included many people's jurisdiction of residence.
Many (if not most) jurisdictions define the crime as possession, and since CP is content and therefore information, the existence of steganography precludes ordinary humans from knowing if any given digital file contains CP or not.
Unfortunately, it's much more difficult than that. Mathematics alone is not enough. What you really meant was: "Victory through OPSEC".
Even more unfortunately, I'm sure that both of us have already failed, by making these posts. Unless, of course, our only goal was to distract attention from others.
Slashdot Mirror
This myth, again? Humans in the middle ages were somehow happier than we are today? Did you ever learn any history? And even without thinking about all of the cruelty that people imposed on each other (let's assume that that hasn't changed since the middle ages), for most of human history one out of every two children (if not more) died before the age of five. Yeah, I'm sure all those parents, long ago, were really much happier than we are, with all our modern technology and modern medicine.
> It also assumes you have such a trusted compiler. This has always been the tough part.
When Thompson wrote the original paper, it was tough. In the meantime, many more compiler options have arisen, and the complexity (measured in size of injected, specialized code) of Thompson's "attack" is O(n^2) where n is the total number of compilers to be compromised. When you combine this fact with the now-documented aversion of the NSA to having its methods uncovered, one quickly comes to the conclusion that it's not very likely that DCC is unproductive because all (or even most) combinations of compilers have been trojaned.
Actually, it's just more likely to affect the US economy (as foreigners run away from using resources under the thumb of the NSA), causing its entire population to be less safe against all those real dangers, like cancer, heart disease, traffic accidents, depression, undernourishment, domestic crime, not having sufficient retirement benefits, etc.
Frankly, I don't trust the intelligence community (and especially not Michael Hayden), to be able to evaluate the real risks and dangers to the US. For example, they didn't listen to Snowden when he complained that the NSA was vulnerable to what later ended up being his own attack, and we see that either this is going to be really bad for the US economy, or if, somehow, you are correct, it's going to cause "the terrorists to win" --- either way, one would think that the people whose opinion you're believing would have figured this out, no?
Well, maybe you should reconsider, then, believing them? Tell me, can you provide some examples of evidence which would cause you to stop believing what you've been posting about Snowden and the intelligence community?
Gawd, how I wish Slashdot would go back to using SRAM...
I posted something similar, but wish I could have retracted it... since the bet, as stated, is in USD. AFAIK, the contracts part of bitcoin can only manipulate bitcoin.
Ooops. Just not in USD... ouch.. .need coffee....
> Since it would be almost impossible to take the parent up on this offer, what would you call it?
No, once the "contracts" part of bitcoin reaches adoption, it should be trivial... I think.
> It's stunningly good for microtransactions.
My understanding of the situation is that in the long term (because of the cap on the total amount of bitcoin), there is a limit to how small bitcoin microtransactions can be (and still be practical), because transaction fees for mining blocks will need to replace the current incentive to mine (which is the production of new bitcoin).
Am I wrong?
He said "I MIGHT [emphasis mine] want you to die a painful death..."
I see the elegance of producing a terrific strawman troll by merely omitting one word, but really, this doesn't qualify for Insightful mods, puh-leeze!
Or (for those who think there shouldn't be the death penalty) triage.
Based on a tweet by one of Zerocoin's developers, they have decided to launch it as an independent currency, therefore requiring that one or more Bitcoin / Zerocoin exchanges will spring up to enable increased Bitcoin anonymity.
> Since mixing services have fundamental problems of a non-technical nature, it just won't work.
OK, interesting. What are these problems? Isn't Tor just a "mixing service", yet the documents from the NSA which have been revealed up to now claim that even that bastion of binary processing power is capable of de-anonymizing only a small fraction of the Tor network's throughput?
Zerocoin should be launched soon. It uses zero-knowledge proofs to add in a lot of anonymity that bitcoin lacks.
> It's worth nothing that the broadcaster
I think you meant "It's worth noting", no?
And while I have the chance, thanks for all of your innovations, and best of luck in your endeavors (including in court). The original mp3.com site rocked; I can only speak for myself, but it was totally eye-opening for me to understand how many good, unknown, indie musicians there are, and to partially glimpse (what I believe is) the future direction of music.
Last time I checked, it's possible to write spaghetti code in any language. Of course, there are some languages in which it is impossible to write anything _but_ spaghetti code, but he wasn't talking about them.
The answer to your question
is addressed in the decision. On page 21, Judge Chin addresses the first of the four traditional criteria for fair use, whether the unauthorized copy is used in a transformative manner:
So there's your answer. You're (probably) 100% OK if you make those copies of those library books, as long as you don't use them as you would use a library book (your use should also be such that others would be prevent from using them as such, also --- oh, and IANAL, and TINLA (this is not legal advice)).
Of course, the fact that you would be 100% in the right wouldn't help you pay lawyers licensed for Federal courts. If the facts of your case corresponded closely to those of this one, you might be able to squeeze by representing yourself "pro se", and hope for quick summary judgment, but I think that would be dangerous, since the other side would probably start the whole thing by arguing about everything which distinguished your case from this one.
Google was guilty of breaking into facilities they don't own, hacking a computer network, and releasing every page of every book ever printed???
Last time I checked, the facts were that: (1) Swartz had free and open access to both the building and the closet in which he placed his computer, (2) any hacking he did amounted to (possibly) changing his MAC address and violating terms of service, and (3) none of the material he downloaded was released by him to the public. Have any reliable sources to contradict this?
So you are also implying that there do not exist any people who use drugs over the course of their whole lifetime without getting addicted? I rather doubt that, especially considering that alcohol is a (legal) drug.
As for lucky or not lucky, it has no relevance to the topic, which is whether my comment on that post made sense. I stated no claim that taking drugs is totally safe.
Last time I checked: taking drugs != being addicted to drugs, especially since our everything-is-a-crime-happy society has made drugs a lot less addictive than nicotine illegal... As for a false dichotomy, the way I read it, the post implies that there are only two alternatives: not taking drugs, or having them totally mess up your life.
Er, even though your post is interesting and insightful, as a reply to someone saying "I buy drugs" it's either a strawman or a false dichotomy...
It may be useful to have anchors for these concepts, but ignoring the fact that humans are swayed by how language is couched is simply naive. I personally prefer to communicate as I think best, rather than mindlessly subjugate myself to whatever convention is currently accepted by society. I can understand the other position, however... a lot of people don't feel comfortable wearing the non-conformist hat...
Whether or not Swartz was naive, or not, or his suicide was justified, or not, all of us who respected what he stood for can continue his work on such a low flame that none of us runs any significant risk.
For example, I just finished using my $14.90 "quarterly free" allocation on PACER to upload documents to RECAP. Some history about RECAP can be found here. I encourage everyone who admired Swartz to open a PACER account and continue the work of populating RECAP.
> Committing suicide to avoid this process, for example, is not a responsible thing to do.
What is your opinion of armed rebellion against an unjust government? Because the particular case of Swartz's suicide strikes me as a strange kind of passive-aggressive version of armed rebellion.
On a related note, I just finished using my $14.90 "quarterly free" allocation on PACER to upload documents to RECAP. Some history about RECAP can be found here. I encourage everyone who admired Swartz to open a PACER account and continue the work of populating RECAP.
> There are plenty of other ambiguities as well.
Oh, I was well aware of that, but thought that the age threshold example was most cogent. Other ambiguities, besides the one you state which I was not aware of, are:
> Victory through mathematics!
Unfortunately, it's much more difficult than that. Mathematics alone is not enough. What you really meant was: "Victory through OPSEC".
Even more unfortunately, I'm sure that both of us have already failed, by making these posts. Unless, of course, our only goal was to distract attention from others.