The movie was "Charly," from 1968, starring Cliff Robertson as the retarded young man who gets turned into a genius (Robertson won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance). The original written novella (60 pages or so) was entitled, "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes.
Generating "purely random data" (or, as someone put it, practically random data) ain't that hard, even several hundred megabytes of it
Set up a webcam pointing at a lava lamp.
Turn on the lava lamp.
Take a screenshot every fraction of a second, take the bitmap sequence and XOR sections of the image together.
Voila, random numbers. The probability of generating subsequent screenshots with identical bit values is nil. Especially so the higher the color depth/resolution of each image is... You could easily get a hundred K of random data from each image, and you can get (let's say) 10 of those a second. 1 megabyte of random data per second. Now just run the program for ten minutes...
Robonaut will look like Boba Fett but have the logical and physical capacities of the great IG-88! This will be an unstoppable bounty hunter! Er, that is, I mean, space-walking robot, yeah that's the ticket.
Like I said, the numbers 5 and 100 are variable. They could easily be 14 and 50, or any other parameters that would achieve the goal of making copyright more useful and less prone to abuse. I also think that separate rules for corporations and individuals is a good idea, since corporations have the potential to live much longer than an individual, and they operate in distinctly different ways. But the promotion of the useful arts, as the Constitution put it, is more important than corporate profits (deity knows they have more than enough money and power as is).
My girlfriend suggested the idea of having copyright only extend until you have made a certain amount of profit off of the copyright. It would vary depending on the amount of work put into it (though that is hard to quantify in some cases), the type of the media, etc. (If something never hit its profit limit, then there would still be a time limit on its expiration, or vice versa; i.e. a movie copyright would last for 20 years or $500 million in total revenue, whichever came last, so that would prevent mega-blockbusters from becoming public domain in a year (which probably isn't a good thing), but would prevent corps from holding onto them forever.
I can think of an even better solution: Exponential renewal costs. $100 in five years, $10,000 in 10 years, $1,000,000 in fifteen years... multiply by a factor of 100 (or some other number, whatever works) every five (or some other number) years. Any copyright that needs to be renewed again and again will need to have made enough money for it to be worth it. If something wasn't valuable enough to renew the copyright, it enters the public domain. If it is valuable enough, then you can still renew it for a while, but eventually it will become prohibitively expensive, no matter who you are (the 5/100 system would make the cost $100 million in 20 years).
Part of the idea is that things that end up making a lot of money will justify their continued copyright, whereas things that weren't able to, enter the public domain.
The numbers could be tweaked, certainly, but I'd like to know what people think of this idea.
I don't see how causing satellites to drop from the sky and crush squirrels is a problem. I mean, sure, if they use the satellites to crush OTHER things, that might be bad, but there are so many squirrels around here it would be like hitting the broad side of a... squirrel.
Ah, but which one would need it the least? Geeks are not a discriminated-against minority, by any measure. (Well, maybe socially in high school.) "Women" and "African Americans", or at least the popular conceptions thereof, are.
In other words I'm kind of equating saying "Geeks need a special political lobby" with saying "rich white people need a special political lobby". Geeks are not being oppressed or left out. What need have "we" of a special political lobby?
I must correct myself -- I didn't mean to imply that "women" or "African Americans" are a singular, easily definable group who all want the same things. What I meant to say was that, like "women" or "African Americans", "geeks" are not a singular yadda yadda...
"Geeks" are not a singular group like "African Americans" or "women". Part of the problem with questions like this is that it assumes that there even EXISTS some easily defined, discrete group of people called "geeks" who all believe the same things and want the same things. It should be trivially obvious that this is NOT true. There are quite a lot of people who share in the views of free software, or open source, or what have you, but I think it's a mistake to assume that people who are technologically apt (or who share in "geek-hood") necessarily have the same political leanings. I know that I am less libertarian than many here; and I am more so than others.
Also, I think that highly-paid technical workers are a relative minority in the world, and even in the United States. Since when do we need political advocacy? Maybe we will in the future at some point, but certainly not now.
The causes that "we" (read: "I") are commonly perceived as supporting -- the free exchange of information, open source software development, keeping it legal to embarrass corporations who do stupid things -- are good causes for everyone (except big business, of course, and I don't think anyone will rationally argue that big business needs ANY MORE POWER than it already has). I can see lobbying for such causes, but not on behalf of a mythical "geek" group that is, in reality, about as well defined as "Christians".
Others have posted this as well, but none quite properly, so I will again:
And the common "their encryption sucks, it's their fault" argument is trash. If someone breaks into your house because they could smash down your door, is it your fault that you didn't have steel bars? It's a question of whether or not reverse engineering like this is legal, not a "you suck, get better" situation.
Your analogy is false. Look at it this way. If I buy a safe, and fill it with secret documents, and then SELL YOU THE SAFE without giving you a key or the combination, how can I logically complain if you break into the safe? Manipulating data that you have legally acquired is not even CLOSE to being the same thing as breaking and entering, as you would have us believe. This is a common argument when these things come up, and it is always false.
Because the pair of primers provides a trillion trillion options, she concludes that the code is essentially unbreakable.
Only in the same way that public-key encryption is unbreakable, in that you can't brute-force it in any reasonable amount of time. However this doesn't rule out any weaknesses in the method itself, such as being able to statistically detect the desired data segment, etc.
Also note that steganography in general relies on obscurity; in other words, "Secrets are best kept when no one knows that secrets are being kept." (Nigel Calder, Einstein's Universe) If everyone knows that there's DNA in that there pigeon, it makes it a lot easier to find than if they don't even know that you're transmitting DNA via rabies-infected fowl.
Another favorite steganographic method of mine is to encode data into graphic images, for example, taking a bitmapped image and using a key to encode data onto each pixel, say by incrementing the red RGB value of each pixel by 1 where appropriate. It would be exceedingly difficult to detect that a message even contained data, let alone extracting it without the key.
...I mean, do they really expect us to believe that Ricky Martin is really capable of this? Just look at the patent application, his name's on it! (He shortened it to "Rick" to try and throw us off -- the cad!) I'm sure everyone's favorite Latin pop sensation may think the world of himself, but come on, Ricky, even you can't violate the laws of physics!
The patents that have been issued on the human genome are not patents for the sequences themselves; they are patents for processes of testing for the PRESENCE of those sequences. In theory this wouldn't be a problem, except that the patents that are being granted are patents for *ANY PROCESS* that tests for the presence of those sequences, not any particular process. So it's wrong, but not for the reason everyone seems to think.
Also, there are two competing gene projects. One is the Human Genome Project, which is publicly funded and all of whose results are immediately put into the public domain; the other is run (mostly) by a private corporation called Celera Genomics, partnered with other companies. They're the ones getting the patents, which hopefully will be thrown out.
...by Jack Valenti of the MPAA and Hilary Rosen of the RIAA to implement an invasion by aliens of our planet. How else can you explain the unearthly logic those two employ to achieve their goals?
1. Katz talks about how wonderful the Net is in allowing new artists to make it around the record industries selection procedures. The whopping majority of mp3s being traded, however, are the works of the bigshot celebs who have already made it. Sure the new kids have a chance to distribute their music, but it's not as though they've suddenly found an equal market. The primary purpose of mp3s is (and always has been) to steal the latest best-selling albums so that you don't have to fork out a couple bucks for it.
Bullshit. The PURPOSE of MP3 was as a superior music-encoding format; at the quality it gives, 10:1 compression is leagues beyond anything that existed before. MP3 is very (most?) commonly USED for piracy (although I still have a problem equating robbery and murder on the high seas with unauthorized duplication of data), but that is not MP3's PURPOSE. This is an important distinction.
2. The DMCA is not trying to redefine entertainment on the web. It is trying to reclaim what is legally theirs. Record companies spend millions of dollars signing artists and releasing albums so that they can make a profit -- this is no less noble than any other business. People have found an easy way around this, however, and they're taking advantage of it. The purpose of the DMCA is to defend against outright copyright infringement, which is what we are all doing.
Yes, they do. Unfortunately the WAY that they do it is greedy and immoral. This by itself is not a problem; business are in business to make money. I don't have to like it, but I don't have the right to stop them. But the RIAA has established an illegal monopoly; they have used antitrust practices time and time again to squash smaller competitors; and with the DMCA, they are again using their power to unfairly restrict trade and competition. THIS is why they are so widely hated.
3. College students don't have the ability to download mp3s onto college sites simply because the schools think it's harmless; They can do it because the schools generally don't know about it. Most schools will attempt to eliminate any type of non-official server they are aware of.
This is true. I spent four years at UCLA, three in the dorms; if they found you running an unauthorized server, they'd more likely than not disconnect your Ethernet without telling you, or (as in the case of one friend) BREAK INTO YOUR ROOM and turn off your computer. (They got a lawsuit for that one!)
4. I hate having to repeat this, but copyright issues are not why schools are concerned. They're primary issue is with *bandwidth*. If napster didn't hog up so much space in the pipes, nobody would give a damn.
Bullshit. UCLA's official position in these kinds of instances was that they didn't want to get sued for millions of dollars. UCLA has more bandwidth than you can shake a stick at; the usage of every dormie on campus wouldn't dent it.
5. Free music sites did not proliferate because they piggy-backed off of educational sites where users. They proliferated because they had FREE MUSIC. Sites run off of school servers are nearly impossible to find. Go to the UC Berkeley web page and tell me where you see mp3s.
Nobody runs them off web pages, they go into #freemp3 and tell everyone they have it. Didn't you ever run an MP3 server in college? I did. That was how I advertised. It worked.
6. Katz admonishes colleges and universities for worrying more about copyright infringement than about free speech; He absolutely fails to realize that these artists' never intended that their work be given away. Free speech doesn't mean "gratis."
Katz isn't saying that it's okay for people to steal the new Limp Bizkit CD; he's saying that by restricting students from using services like Napster, they are also being prevented from using them for LEGAL purposes. Would you ban knives because they can be used to kill people?
7. It all comes down to theft. We want to steal music that other people have spent millions to produce, and they want us to pay for it instead. We're pissed off because they're coming ever closer to preventing us from illegally copying their works. We have no right to be as righteously indignant as Jon Katz has portrayed himself.
For one thing, it does not cost "millions" to produce music. The majority of the cost of a CD (about 80% of it) comes from distribution costs, as well as artificial price jack-ups imposed by middlemen (and the RIAA). Production cost as a percentage of the CD cost actually falls as more CD's are printed; you only have to pay for production once, but each additional CD costs something extra.
But if I download a Limp Bizkit MP3 or two, the RIAA has lost nothing. Why? If I listen to the tracks and decide I don't like them, then I don't buy the CD. I haven't wasted my money. If I listen to the tracks and decide I want to be able to listen to them in my car, then I go and buy the CD. And guess what? THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I DID. On Saturday I bought the Limp Bizkit CD SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE I HAD DOWNLOADED THE TRACKS FROM NAPSTER AND I LIKED THEM. If Napster were illegal, and I had never been able to acquire those MP3s in the first place, then the RIAA would not have gotten the money that I spent on the CD. In fact, I have done this three or four times so far (Cake's "Fashion Nugget", Chris Cornell's "Euphoria Morning," and so on) and I intend to keep doing so. (Yes, I know I can often hear them on the radio, but often not. "Euphoria Morning" only had ONE single on the radio ("Can't Change Me"), and that's not enough for me to go on. Only after hearing a second song by Limp Bizkit, "Break Stuff", did I download some other tracks and listen to them. I liked it, and so I bought the CD.)
The point that Katz is making is that the RIAA is attempting to illegally (further) restrain trade and act as a monopoly. If the government isn't going to break it up, then I guess someone has to. Might as well be those of us who agree with Katz.
Before this article, I was die-hard against Amazon. How dare they patent something obvious! How dare they not be morally pure at all times!
As I was reading this article I began to realize that I'd been extreme. Bezos does make some good points; and Amazon has so far done nothing worse than sue Barnes and Noble, who are definitely guilty of copying Amazon's site (tacky, at best), as well as pulling a "You've Got Mail" and putting lots of small independent bookstores out of business. Amazon on the other hand has done neither of these things. And in certain areas, they really have innovated.
Nonetheless I'm going to withhold my judgment for a while yet. I haven't bought anything from Amazon since the 1-Click patent; and I don't intend to until there appears to be some resolution to this.
BUT KEEP THIS IN MIND: So far Amazon has NOT sued ANYONE except B&N over the patent. It's not like the eToys business; they're not running over any little guys. Maybe we all just have a problem with the theory of what Amazon is doing; but they don't seem to actually have DONE anything wrong. Regardless of whether the patent is valid or not, that by itself should not be enough to condemn a company.
I'm an American born and raised here, so I think I'm qualified to answer this. "Ass" is far more common than "arse" here, but since "arse" isn't a native swear word, it has less of an impact when it IS used.
...and tools that are not is a fine one. Obviously a lockpick is unlikely to assist in any crimes if it's just sitting there; you have to actually use it. What about more dangerous tools? Where do we draw the line? An atomic bomb doesn't hurt anyone unless you set it off, but it's not legal for an American citizen to possess one. How about a fuel-air explosive bomb (often called the poor man's atomic bomb)? Less destructive than an atom bomb but still very dangerous. How about a thousand pound iron bomb? Well, that could destroy a bunch of houses near yours. How about a hand grenade? An M-80?
The problem comes because there is a level at which something isn't dangerous enough that it needs to be illegal. Obviously we can't use the argument that something MIGHT be used to harm someone, therefore it should be illegal to possess, since just about any piece of matter in the universe could be used to hurt someone in some way. (Ban books, because big heavy ones can be dropped on people from ten stories up!)
The point is that we eventually do draw a line somewhere. However I don't think that, in general, things that aren't intended for causing injury to other people should be illegal. (Burglary tools, for example, or cracking programs.) I say SHOULD because, in general, things that aren't intended for harming people are NOT illegal. So why should software be any different? The only way I can see this being justified is if the software is designed to circumvent safety locks/overrides on, say, an elevator, or the air traffic control system, or a nuclear reactor -- things that, if they break, will almost certainly cause injury. And much as I appreciate and agree with the old saw about cracking to show that the security is weak, when people's lives are at stake, I don't think it holds up any longer.
void main(void) { while(1) { switch(rand()%10) { case 0: sleep(); break; case 1: pounce(); break; case 2: toy(); break; case 3: sleep(); break; case 4: eat(); break; case 5: defecate(); break; case 6: shred(); break; case 7: sleep(); break; case 8: sleep(); break; case 9: walk_on_keyboard(); break; } } }
This is only true for the VERY short-term. Within a few days, all of the major holes will have been plugged, and every minor one will be plugged very soon after it pops up.
The only difference between an OS that starts out open (like Linux) and one that opens after eight years of development (like W95) is how many bugs there will be to fix in that short period.
Not that I think anyone should spend the effort to fix W95. Spend your effort improving Linux, instead.
Actually it took about twenty years from the time continental drift was first proposed to the time it was fully accepted by the mainstream scientific community. The reason was not resistance; the reason was that Wegener didn't have a valid mechanism for how the continents were drifting. His theory did explain quite a lot, but no one (including Wegener) had any idea how the continents would actually be able to move as he had proposed. Once that mechanism (plate tectonics, deep-sea vents, subduction zones, etc.) was discovered, continenal drift was accepted almost immediately.
Remember, just because a theory is a thousand times better than one we currently accept, doesn't mean that it will be obvious that it is is correct. If we immediately accepted as superior every theory that seemed better upon cursory inspection, we'd end up accepting a lot of theories that ultimately didn't do as well as the original one did.
I think that mental inertia because of scientists attached to older theories is definitely part of it; but even a new theory takes time to find its evidence and mechanisms before it can be accepted.
Einstein's unwillingness to accept quantum mechanics was mostly for the same reason. He thought it was too bizarre to be true, but very little in the way of experimentation had been done by the time he died in 1955. If he had lived another twenty years, to see what could be done with large particle accelerators and other experiments, I'm fairly sure he would have come around.
I'm afraid I don't know much about Clovis' theories, however.
Slashdot Mirror
The movie was "Charly," from 1968, starring Cliff Robertson as the retarded young man who gets turned into a genius (Robertson won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance). The original written novella (60 pages or so) was entitled, "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes.
- Set up a webcam pointing at a lava lamp.
- Turn on the lava lamp.
- Take a screenshot every fraction of a second, take the bitmap sequence and XOR sections of the image together.
Voila, random numbers. The probability of generating subsequent screenshots with identical bit values is nil. Especially so the higher the color depth/resolution of each image is... You could easily get a hundred K of random data from each image, and you can get (let's say) 10 of those a second. 1 megabyte of random data per second. Now just run the program for ten minutes...Robonaut will look like Boba Fett but have the logical and physical capacities of the great IG-88! This will be an unstoppable bounty hunter! Er, that is, I mean, space-walking robot, yeah that's the ticket.
...that MS-OS can spend time fighting the ruling while MS-AP goes on to continue being monopolistic?
My girlfriend suggested the idea of having copyright only extend until you have made a certain amount of profit off of the copyright. It would vary depending on the amount of work put into it (though that is hard to quantify in some cases), the type of the media, etc. (If something never hit its profit limit, then there would still be a time limit on its expiration, or vice versa; i.e. a movie copyright would last for 20 years or $500 million in total revenue, whichever came last, so that would prevent mega-blockbusters from becoming public domain in a year (which probably isn't a good thing), but would prevent corps from holding onto them forever.
Part of the idea is that things that end up making a lot of money will justify their continued copyright, whereas things that weren't able to, enter the public domain.
The numbers could be tweaked, certainly, but I'd like to know what people think of this idea.
Wouldn't they really be the tragic hero of a Geek drama?
I don't see how causing satellites to drop from the sky and crush squirrels is a problem. I mean, sure, if they use the satellites to crush OTHER things, that might be bad, but there are so many squirrels around here it would be like hitting the broad side of a... squirrel.
Actually, I believe each digit was in base 2^4096, so they probably had a ways left to go.
In other words I'm kind of equating saying "Geeks need a special political lobby" with saying "rich white people need a special political lobby". Geeks are not being oppressed or left out. What need have "we" of a special political lobby?
I must correct myself -- I didn't mean to imply that "women" or "African Americans" are a singular, easily definable group who all want the same things. What I meant to say was that, like "women" or "African Americans", "geeks" are not a singular yadda yadda...
Also, I think that highly-paid technical workers are a relative minority in the world, and even in the United States. Since when do we need political advocacy? Maybe we will in the future at some point, but certainly not now.
The causes that "we" (read: "I") are commonly perceived as supporting -- the free exchange of information, open source software development, keeping it legal to embarrass corporations who do stupid things -- are good causes for everyone (except big business, of course, and I don't think anyone will rationally argue that big business needs ANY MORE POWER than it already has). I can see lobbying for such causes, but not on behalf of a mythical "geek" group that is, in reality, about as well defined as "Christians".
Your analogy is false. Look at it this way. If I buy a safe, and fill it with secret documents, and then SELL YOU THE SAFE without giving you a key or the combination, how can I logically complain if you break into the safe? Manipulating data that you have legally acquired is not even CLOSE to being the same thing as breaking and entering, as you would have us believe. This is a common argument when these things come up, and it is always false.
Only in the same way that public-key encryption is unbreakable, in that you can't brute-force it in any reasonable amount of time. However this doesn't rule out any weaknesses in the method itself, such as being able to statistically detect the desired data segment, etc.
Also note that steganography in general relies on obscurity; in other words, "Secrets are best kept when no one knows that secrets are being kept." (Nigel Calder, Einstein's Universe) If everyone knows that there's DNA in that there pigeon, it makes it a lot easier to find than if they don't even know that you're transmitting DNA via rabies-infected fowl.
Another favorite steganographic method of mine is to encode data into graphic images, for example, taking a bitmapped image and using a key to encode data onto each pixel, say by incrementing the red RGB value of each pixel by 1 where appropriate. It would be exceedingly difficult to detect that a message even contained data, let alone extracting it without the key.
...I mean, do they really expect us to believe that Ricky Martin is really capable of this? Just look at the patent application, his name's on it! (He shortened it to "Rick" to try and throw us off -- the cad!) I'm sure everyone's favorite Latin pop sensation may think the world of himself, but come on, Ricky, even you can't violate the laws of physics!
Also, there are two competing gene projects. One is the Human Genome Project, which is publicly funded and all of whose results are immediately put into the public domain; the other is run (mostly) by a private corporation called Celera Genomics, partnered with other companies. They're the ones getting the patents, which hopefully will be thrown out.
...by Jack Valenti of the MPAA and Hilary Rosen of the RIAA to implement an invasion by aliens of our planet. How else can you explain the unearthly logic those two employ to achieve their goals?
Bullshit. The PURPOSE of MP3 was as a superior music-encoding format; at the quality it gives, 10:1 compression is leagues beyond anything that existed before. MP3 is very (most?) commonly USED for piracy (although I still have a problem equating robbery and murder on the high seas with unauthorized duplication of data), but that is not MP3's PURPOSE. This is an important distinction.
2. The DMCA is not trying to redefine entertainment on the web. It is trying to reclaim what is legally theirs. Record companies spend millions of dollars signing artists and releasing albums so that they can make a profit -- this is no less noble than any other business. People have found an easy way around this, however, and they're taking advantage of it. The purpose of the DMCA is to defend against outright copyright infringement, which is what we are all doing.
Yes, they do. Unfortunately the WAY that they do it is greedy and immoral. This by itself is not a problem; business are in business to make money. I don't have to like it, but I don't have the right to stop them. But the RIAA has established an illegal monopoly; they have used antitrust practices time and time again to squash smaller competitors; and with the DMCA, they are again using their power to unfairly restrict trade and competition. THIS is why they are so widely hated.
3. College students don't have the ability to download mp3s onto college sites simply because the schools think it's harmless; They can do it because the schools generally don't know about it. Most schools will attempt to eliminate any type of non-official server they are aware of.
This is true. I spent four years at UCLA, three in the dorms; if they found you running an unauthorized server, they'd more likely than not disconnect your Ethernet without telling you, or (as in the case of one friend) BREAK INTO YOUR ROOM and turn off your computer. (They got a lawsuit for that one!)
4. I hate having to repeat this, but copyright issues are not why schools are concerned. They're primary issue is with *bandwidth*. If napster didn't hog up so much space in the pipes, nobody would give a damn.
Bullshit. UCLA's official position in these kinds of instances was that they didn't want to get sued for millions of dollars. UCLA has more bandwidth than you can shake a stick at; the usage of every dormie on campus wouldn't dent it.
5. Free music sites did not proliferate because they piggy-backed off of educational sites where users. They proliferated because they had FREE MUSIC. Sites run off of school servers are nearly impossible to find. Go to the UC Berkeley web page and tell me where you see mp3s.
Nobody runs them off web pages, they go into #freemp3 and tell everyone they have it. Didn't you ever run an MP3 server in college? I did. That was how I advertised. It worked.
6. Katz admonishes colleges and universities for worrying more about copyright infringement than about free speech; He absolutely fails to realize that these artists' never intended that their work be given away. Free speech doesn't mean "gratis."
Katz isn't saying that it's okay for people to steal the new Limp Bizkit CD; he's saying that by restricting students from using services like Napster, they are also being prevented from using them for LEGAL purposes. Would you ban knives because they can be used to kill people?
7. It all comes down to theft. We want to steal music that other people have spent millions to produce, and they want us to pay for it instead. We're pissed off because they're coming ever closer to preventing us from illegally copying their works. We have no right to be as righteously indignant as Jon Katz has portrayed himself.
For one thing, it does not cost "millions" to produce music. The majority of the cost of a CD (about 80% of it) comes from distribution costs, as well as artificial price jack-ups imposed by middlemen (and the RIAA). Production cost as a percentage of the CD cost actually falls as more CD's are printed; you only have to pay for production once, but each additional CD costs something extra.
But if I download a Limp Bizkit MP3 or two, the RIAA has lost nothing. Why? If I listen to the tracks and decide I don't like them, then I don't buy the CD. I haven't wasted my money. If I listen to the tracks and decide I want to be able to listen to them in my car, then I go and buy the CD. And guess what? THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I DID. On Saturday I bought the Limp Bizkit CD SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE I HAD DOWNLOADED THE TRACKS FROM NAPSTER AND I LIKED THEM. If Napster were illegal, and I had never been able to acquire those MP3s in the first place, then the RIAA would not have gotten the money that I spent on the CD. In fact, I have done this three or four times so far (Cake's "Fashion Nugget", Chris Cornell's "Euphoria Morning," and so on) and I intend to keep doing so. (Yes, I know I can often hear them on the radio, but often not. "Euphoria Morning" only had ONE single on the radio ("Can't Change Me"), and that's not enough for me to go on. Only after hearing a second song by Limp Bizkit, "Break Stuff", did I download some other tracks and listen to them. I liked it, and so I bought the CD.)
The point that Katz is making is that the RIAA is attempting to illegally (further) restrain trade and act as a monopoly. If the government isn't going to break it up, then I guess someone has to. Might as well be those of us who agree with Katz.
As I was reading this article I began to realize that I'd been extreme. Bezos does make some good points; and Amazon has so far done nothing worse than sue Barnes and Noble, who are definitely guilty of copying Amazon's site (tacky, at best), as well as pulling a "You've Got Mail" and putting lots of small independent bookstores out of business. Amazon on the other hand has done neither of these things. And in certain areas, they really have innovated.
Nonetheless I'm going to withhold my judgment for a while yet. I haven't bought anything from Amazon since the 1-Click patent; and I don't intend to until there appears to be some resolution to this.
BUT KEEP THIS IN MIND: So far Amazon has NOT sued ANYONE except B&N over the patent. It's not like the eToys business; they're not running over any little guys. Maybe we all just have a problem with the theory of what Amazon is doing; but they don't seem to actually have DONE anything wrong. Regardless of whether the patent is valid or not, that by itself should not be enough to condemn a company.
I'm an American born and raised here, so I think I'm qualified to answer this. "Ass" is far more common than "arse" here, but since "arse" isn't a native swear word, it has less of an impact when it IS used.
The problem comes because there is a level at which something isn't dangerous enough that it needs to be illegal. Obviously we can't use the argument that something MIGHT be used to harm someone, therefore it should be illegal to possess, since just about any piece of matter in the universe could be used to hurt someone in some way. (Ban books, because big heavy ones can be dropped on people from ten stories up!)
The point is that we eventually do draw a line somewhere. However I don't think that, in general, things that aren't intended for causing injury to other people should be illegal. (Burglary tools, for example, or cracking programs.) I say SHOULD because, in general, things that aren't intended for harming people are NOT illegal. So why should software be any different? The only way I can see this being justified is if the software is designed to circumvent safety locks/overrides on, say, an elevator, or the air traffic control system, or a nuclear reactor -- things that, if they break, will almost certainly cause injury. And much as I appreciate and agree with the old saw about cracking to show that the security is weak, when people's lives are at stake, I don't think it holds up any longer.
cat.c
#include "normals.h"
#include "catfuncs.h"
void main(void) {
while(1) {
switch(rand()%10) {
case 0: sleep(); break;
case 1: pounce(); break;
case 2: toy(); break;
case 3: sleep(); break;
case 4: eat(); break;
case 5: defecate(); break;
case 6: shred(); break;
case 7: sleep(); break;
case 8: sleep(); break;
case 9: walk_on_keyboard(); break;
}
}
}
Wouldn't this make you a Kaarma whore? :)
The only difference between an OS that starts out open (like Linux) and one that opens after eight years of development (like W95) is how many bugs there will be to fix in that short period.
Not that I think anyone should spend the effort to fix W95. Spend your effort improving Linux, instead.
Remember, just because a theory is a thousand times better than one we currently accept, doesn't mean that it will be obvious that it is is correct. If we immediately accepted as superior every theory that seemed better upon cursory inspection, we'd end up accepting a lot of theories that ultimately didn't do as well as the original one did.
I think that mental inertia because of scientists attached to older theories is definitely part of it; but even a new theory takes time to find its evidence and mechanisms before it can be accepted.
Einstein's unwillingness to accept quantum mechanics was mostly for the same reason. He thought it was too bizarre to be true, but very little in the way of experimentation had been done by the time he died in 1955. If he had lived another twenty years, to see what could be done with large particle accelerators and other experiments, I'm fairly sure he would have come around.
I'm afraid I don't know much about Clovis' theories, however.