Wow, you'd almost think I didn't write this in the post you JUST RESPONDED TO:
In informing people of things governments need to be held accountable for, Wikileaks *does* provide a valuable service. The problem is, that value is often overshadowed by Assange's attention-seeking and grandstanding behavior.
The question was, "Any innocents harmed by any materials that were outed by wikileaks." The materials outed as a result of PFC Manning's alleged leak are only one part of the "materials outed by wikileaks."
Given that Mr. Assange freely went on the record as saying that "1300 people were killed as a result" of their leak of documents about corruption in the Kenyan government, I'm gonna go with his statements over an AC's apparent illiteracy.
I've neither seen nor heard evidence that any innocents were damaged by the publication of materials that were outed by Wikileaks.
Then you haven't been paying attention, because Assange himself has admitted that innocents have been killed (not just 'damaged') by the publication of materials outed by Wikileaks.
The leak exposed massive corruption by Daniel Arap Moi, and the Kenyan people sat up and took notice. In the ensuing elections, in which corruption became a major issue, violence swept the country. "1,300 people were eventually killed, and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak," says Assange.
He goes on to whitewash that figure by citing malaria statistics - I guess in Africa, if you're responsible for killing fewer people than the average yearly death toll from malaria, you're eligible for sainthood, and all your sins are forgiven.
You can't play it both ways - either there are real world consequences for the publication of the data that you own the responsibility for, or there are no real world consequences and all you're doing is play-acting in front of a camera. Which is it?
I live in the states, and I've been listening to people call for accountability[...]
So you've noticed that there's a difference between what people say, and what they do, have you? Welcome to conscious existence. People have been calling for accountability, and re-electing the same bunch of retards and crooks every couple years, because "it's not MY GUY who's the problem - he's helping us out here! It's those R's or D's from other places who need to get tossed out on their asses!"
Until the public understands and accepts that accountability means more than "bitching to my co-worker who agrees with me while we have lunch," the accountability won't happen. There need to be actual teeth behind the threats of "voting for the other guy," "initiating recalls and impeachments," and other penalties for behaving badly.
In informing people of things governments need to be held accountable for, Wikileaks *does* provide a valuable service. The problem is, that value is often overshadowed by Assange's attention-seeking and grandstanding behavior.
You have it *exactly* backwards. The Bulk mail is what subsidizes cheap first class letter delivery. Or did you really think that sending a stack of photos and a couple page letter from door to door across the country to your dear Aunt Martha ONLY costs 50 cents? The bulk mail is generally pre-sorted by the sender, and requires nearly zero processing by the post office - it is simply given to the carriers to deliver. Your hand-addressed envelope with chicken scratched addressing information, on the other hand, must be handled every step of the way, and costs the USPS far more than the 50 cents that you paid to send it.
The USPS does a "better job of cost control" because it cannot raise prices without the approval of the Postal Regulatory Commission, and it has a legal obligation to provide universal service at "affordable rates." And that's why it's been hemorrhaging money - because the USPS provides services that cost FAR more than they can take in according to their rate charts, and they can't just raise prices to eliminate the shortfall like FedEx and UPS can.
Given a budget of X and expenses of Y (for values of Y > X), your only options to keep functioning are to raise rates to offset the budget shortfall, or cut expenses so you're not overspending - and if you're the post office, one major way to cut expenses by eliminating delivery days.
Raise money for junk mail, and you'll see the volume of junk mail decline rapidly, because it becomes cheaper to advertise online, or on TV, or on the radio. When that happens, I guarantee their shortfall will require a lot more than eliminating one day of delivery service.
Package deliveries will continue under the new plan and were a bright spot in a bleak 2012 fiscal year, with package revenue rising 8.7 percent during the year.
Good to see you read the summary. Last I checked, somebody shipping heart medication isn't doing it as individual pills in envelopes sent by First Class Mail.
Yes, and streaming services like Spotify will mean even fewer are successful.
Please note:
"small venue" does not equal "the local coffe shop's open mic."
There are lots of "small venues" - 200 - 500 people capacity - where people can play. I know that there are clubs here in my home town of Boston that regularly host acts from all over the country. These musicians are generally not making tremendous bank off their performances. The clubs are telling them, "Sure, you come here and perform, and get EXPOSURE, that'll help you sell cds and shirts and merchandise." And now Spotify comes along and says, "Sure, you won't get much money from us, but you'll get EXPOSURE." Except with Spotify - you don't even have to buy the cd!
If every business model is reduced to "everything you do is an advertisement for other advertising you do," you can bet that the ability of talented musicians to do anything, musically speaking, without the support of a major label marketing them tirelessly will be greatly limited. Don't like the major labels and the RIAA? Stop helping them abuse musicians by supporting the musicians directly, instead of downloading their music (or streaming it), and going, "LOL Thanks, chump. I like your song, but you should be better at what you do, maybe I'll buy something then."
I don't collect massive royalties off everything I create.
That's great - neither does a musician. More similarities!
Are musicians going to start sending me music updates?
Sure, it's on a subscription model. You pay them for a copy of the original CD, and then they tour around and you can buy a ticket to hear reworked versions of those songs. And they deliver it to you - sounds like a bargain.
I had some friends who had a band they each got around 150-200 for four hours work... in a bar... drinking free drinks. Yes... yes I would.
No, they made 150 to 200 for a DAY OF WORK.
Actually I average in excess of 50 hours a week. I often have to work at odd hours... travel... hoist 50lb+ servers into racks... blah blah blah... you don't know much about the demands of a career in technology do you? It's not music distribution, it is advertising at best.
Great, so even more similarities to your job then - touring musicians will spend the night driving to their next show; when they arrive in town, they will often have a press appearance of some sort (un-paid), where they'll spend an hour or two at the local radio station, or a local record store, etc., hoping to generate a little buzz for their show later tonight. They might get to walk around town a bit, or they might not. They'll be carrying their gear into the club, setting it up, doing soundchecks, breaking everything down, loading the van up, and driving for several hours to the next gig. Plenty of audio gear will weight 50+ pounds, and they're carrying it in and out of places that are a lot less safe than your server room. You don't know much about the demands of a career in music, do you? You seem to think that it's all just "limo brings me to the red carpet, I lip sync for 15 minutes, then the blowjobs commence." There is at least as much physical labor, a shitload more discomfort, and plenty of long hours and shitty working conditions.
LOL, so.005 dollars everytime clicks a link to a new page?!?!? Sign me up!!! Do I get the same for each library too!?!?!?
Only if musicians get.005 dollars for every note you listen to. And as we all know, since Amazon gets millions of users per month, EVERY web site must get millions of users per month! You're trying to be cute and dodge the point by being glib, but being glib simply makes you look stupid.
I've yet to see anyone here say that a touring musician should be unable to support themselves.
And you think they're going to magically make a living touring? For most bands playing small venues, touring is not a moneymaker, especially if they're not selling CDs and other merchandise AT those shows. And then after making very little money on the road for 3 months, they go home, to find a $47.83 check from Spotify waiting.
Royalties from streaming are shitty, and a bad deal for musicians. The suggestion that recorded music should be free, or that fractions of a penny per play is some sort of great deal for artists... sort of turns into an argument that "touring musicians should be unable to support themselves."
I also find it odd that so many musicians feel like they should not have to work.
So making music isn't working? Let me guess, you think it's limos everywhere, all the liquor & drugs you can consume, private jets from city to city, and a nonstop parade of 18 year old supermodels through your bedroom?
Compare to me as a programmer. Both have to build their skill set, both have to use creativity and logic, we both have to produce works and others consume these works.
So the jobs are very similar! How much does an average programmer make, versus an average working musician, again? And would you take a programming job offering the same wage as a working musician, without grumbling about how little you got paid?
I have to go into work at least 5 days a week, and they want to sit on their ass and plunk away on an instrument while getting paid a ransom for what they put out.
As opposed to the average programmer, who doesn't sit on his ass all day and plunk away on a keyboard, while demanding a ransom for his work because he knows Visual Basic? I don't think Ms. Keating suggested she wanted a "ransom" for what she put out - she's saying "this style of music distribution sucks for musicians," and she's right - it does.
Thought exercise:
Your employer calls you in and says, "you know, we're moving to a streaming model. You're going to get half a cent every time somebody uses your software, instead of a salary. And since nobody loses anything by copying it, we're going to also take the software you produced, and share it online so that customers can download it for free. Unfortunately, we can't track that usage, so you won't get paid at all for those - but it's not like you lost a sale, if the software wasn't free, they probably wouldn't have bought it anyway! But cheer up, you should be excited just to simply have the skill to be a creative computer professional with the skills to do this - the effort is its own reward!
What's that? You're upset? Why should anybody pay you a ransom every year just so you can keep the same buggy piece of shit running while making a few enhancements and playing with yourself in a bunch of useless meetings? If you want to get paid, get out there and write NEW software that will delight and amaze our customers in return for fractions of a penny per software use! You gotta HUSTLE, son!"
Think that sounds like a great way to live? Would we be justified in telling you to "shut up, you're not entitled to a living writing software, be better at it and you'll probably get paid," or would you take issue with that?
Your general attitude that the creation and performance of music isn't "work," and thus has no value or right to be compensated, Is especially delicious, given the obvious parallels to the comparative physical & mental efforts between music & programming. Do you REALLY think your boss pays you 75k/year to "show up in your cubicle 40 hours a week," regardless of what you actually produce during that time?
No way of being sure. He MIGHT have been referring to students using a Segway to get to their classes in programming & logic design.
I'm not sure why early exposure to Boolean Algebra and Binary Arithmetic would lead students to be more likely to ride segways, but I'm willing to hear his reasoning.
But that of course raises the question of how saying "everything on here defaults to public domain" serves GitHub's or its users' interests. Also, GitHub can't assign copyrights on the behalf of publishers using their platform - they don't have the rights to do so, and would have to first say, "You grant us unrestricted rights to use, modify, redistribute and sub-license your uploaded code anywhere at any time, in perpetuity." (Think Facebook & Instagram's terms are acquisitive? They have to be.)
The best they could to is say, "you MUST specify a license in your project at setup time; you can choose from this handy list of popular ones, or write your own," which of course does nothing - you could still leave the license legally blank (select "Other:" and write whatever you want in that field, or leave it blank - do you really think GitHub's going to hire an army of lawyers to verify that what's entered in the License field is a valid software license?
The author is not trying to wish away IP law - the author is trying to get people who publish to sites like GitHub without specifying a license for their code (even when their intent is clearly that they wish to *share* that code for reuse) by using a permissive license (e.g., CC, WTFPL, etc.) if their intent is to share but they object to terms of the GPL or other popular 'FOSS' licenses.
FFS, people need to read the article. I know it's not cool to do that, since you run the risk of learning something, or being exposed to a thought you haven't already thought up in your own head, but you should take the risk sometime.
Let me summarize here, since you seem too lazy to have even glanced at it: 1) Author notes that some (perhaps a sizable chunk) of developers publishing their code on sites like GitHub (especially GitHub, which makes no recommendation or defaults related to "how this project is licensed") aren't including a license statement of any sort. 2) Author points out that "no license specified" means "all rights reserved" - author retains full copyright control. 3) Author then points out that this is almost certainly NOT the intent of a goodly chunk of people publishing on GitHub. 4) Author then goes on to talk about ways that the choice "not to put in a license" as a political choice can be reflected in a license such as WTFPL, modified Creative Commons, etc., rather than forcing people to say, "If you don't want a license, put in GPL, since that's free," when some may even disagree with the terms of the GPL.
Nothing is stopping people from doing any of this - yet these people who don't choose any license are not doing any of it, either out of laziness, or a misunderstanding of how copyright actually works. His article attempts to address some of that misunderstanding and encourages them to make a choice reflective of their intent if they wish to share.
According to the indictment, Kazaryan gained unauthorized access to – in other words, hacked into – the victims’ accounts, and changed the passwords, which locked victims out of their own online accounts. Once he controlled the accounts, Kazaryan searched emails or other files for naked or semi-naked pictures of the victims, as well as other information, such as passwords and the names of their friends. Using that information, Kazaryan posed online as women, sent instant messages to their friends, and persuaded the friends to remove their clothing so that he could view and take pictures of them.
So, he hacked into the victims' accounts, then posed as the victim and began searching for useful pictures and other information to blackmail the victims and their friends. He's being charged with 2 batches of 15 counts - 15 x computer intrusion, and 15 x aggravated identity theft.
Would you consider 7 years to be an appropriate punishment for one count of computer intrusion and one count of aggravated identity theft? (Why or why not?)
And regardless of whether or not 7 years is the appropriate punishment - why should he not serve the same sentence per pair of charges, when he's done this repeatedly, and engaged in a pattern of abuse that's far more egregious than "I found this phone on the ground, and it had some nudes that I looked at and showed a couple of my friends?"
Yes, and the entire point of TFA is pointing out that the people on Github (and similar sites) who are electing not to specify a license, are setting this trap when that is obviously not their intent. Their intent is, as the twitter quote suggests, "I don't care about licensing, do whatever you want with this," but they are not *stating that* in the code, and thus are, legally, retaining all copyrights to their code.
No company (or sane independent developer) looking to reuse someone else's code and wants to be sure of no legal hassles down the line will touch code that is not clearly licensed as usable. If you want to encourage use of your code without any restriction, you have to state it - and that's pretty much all that TFA has to say, along with some suggestions about "what method might somebody electing to make the 'political' statement of eschewing the standard FLOSS licenses use to both encourage reuse of their code, and keep their political statement intact?"
Think of it this way - If I don't like any of the major political party options, the election results will be pretty much identical whether or not I stay home and do nothing (choose no licensing), or vote for a third-party candidate (select a specific license which indicates my displeasure with the major options, and shows that I'm making a choice, even if it's not the 'popular one' and has no realistic chance of being the dominant choice in the field).
tl;dr - TFS is awful, TFA isn't all that mind-blowing either, but TFS (esp. kthreadd's editorializing) is misleading a lot of people about what TFA is actually saying.
And the WTFPL is one of the first ones he brings up in his "fixing the problem" section of TFA, and CC+modifications is the second.
His point is that people "rejecting the permission culture" should do so explicitly, by licensing their software in such a way that explicitly states their rejection. Omitting a license, as he notes (and other people who haven't RTFA have also pointed out here) defaults copyright to "all rights reserved," and so creates a legal minefield, which limits the ability of people to reuse that code if they're concerned at all about copyright issues.
Since it's clear that at least some of these people WANT to reject licensing altogether, he's arguing that it's better to come up with a license scheme that rejects that licensing / permission culture than it is to skip thinking about any license.
The point that the author is making is that there should be some sort of option to allow you to specify this - "do whatever the hell you want, stop asking me if you can use it, I don't care."
He's making the point because, as he notes, a significant portion of the code on GitHub doesn't specify a license, which means it defaults to "all rights reserved," even though that's clearly not the intent of at least some portion of the "no-license" authors there.
Frankly I don't share your faith in the critical thinking skills of the US military.
And frankly, I think your comment strongly suggests that everything you know about the US military and its service men and women, you learned from Hollywood.
And if you're right, then case why is it necessary for fat conspiracy theorists to go round armed like Rambo? You'd have thought George III was still on the throne the way some of them talk.
Is it necessary? Nope. Is it their right? You bet.
Similarly, we could ask: Is it necessary for you to run around talking shit about a large segment of the population who has never once, in your entire life, harmed you? Nope. Is it your right? You bet.
If it was necessary, one side or the other would arm the volunteers anyway, though I suspect they'd be little more than cannon fodder or low grade auxiliaries to the regular forces anyway.
Let's wargame, shall we? In 2016, Jeb Bush is elected to the Presidency, and immediately declares his intent to double down on George Bush's policies, disbands congress, executes liberal supreme court justices ("to make a little room for more friendly judges!"), and begins cracking down on minorities all over the country. In response, northern California, Washington, and Oregon declare their intention to secede and form the free and democratic people's state of Cascadia. (don't laught, it's actually a thing).
President Bush, in response, orders his uncritical, unthinking military worker bees to decimate the population of the pacific northwest, not wanting to lose important strategic national Spotted Owl, Flannel, and Facial Hair reserves. The people of Cascadia, having dutifully turned over all their guns to the government, are unable to raise a hand in resistance, and so their dreams of a free, democratic, liberal state are dashed as they are all relocated to re-education camps in the swamps of Louisiana, and vast tracts of coastal woodland and pot farms are turned to ash.
This scenario, of course, raises the question: 1) If the government is as crazy-powerful as you suggest; 2) AND, If the military is as unthinkingly beholden to the president's edicts as you suggest; 3) AND, if your entire life & freedom hangs on the random whims of a man thousands of miles away;... then why the fuck don't you have a couple weapons of your own? Would you really just roll over and beg for whatever scraps of life and dignity are left to you in the face of that sort of oppression? Or would you want the chance to fight? Because I can assure you that throughout history, many people have chosen to fight in situations just like that, even in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds.
In reality, small groups of armed civilians can do quite a bit even against a well-armed military - numerous conflicts in the last 50 years have proven this (Vietnam; Ireland; Iraq; Afghanistan; to name a few). The argument that any conflict must eventually devolve into fixed lines exchanging shots, and the argument that insurgents would be dumb enough to face off against entrenched elements of the 1st Infantry & 1st Armored divisions flies in the face of even the most basic common sense relative to asymmetric warfare, are both completely bogus.
If you're weaker, you don't charge at your enemy's fortified, heavily armed compound - you bleed him by hitting at his soft points - and I assure you, all those soldiers need sleep, food, and water; all those tanks, guns, planes, and cruise missiles need fuel, ammunition, and maintenance.
Even the ENTIRE US military - approximately 3 million total, active + reserve - poured into an area the size of Oregon + Washington + northern California, and charged with "pacifying" the area, would have difficulty managing that task against an actively hos
Indeed, that would be just about step zero for any sort of investigation here. Without testing of many, many fundamentals of manufacturing, mining, and refinement & processing in microgravity, this whole thing is just bizarrely ass-backwards.
As I said, there's certainly an engineering solution to this, if cost is no object. But the hand-waving assertion that "of course it'll be cheaper if we don't have to lift all the materials out of earths' gravity" glosses over the fact that we have NEVER done these things in space, and in fact, have barely even scratched the surface of what's necessary, knowledge-wise, to attempt this with any hope of reaching a break-even point. And no enterprise has limitless funds, so cost *is* an object.
"Win a war?" It won't in the sense that the it won't completely destroy the military capabilities of the US government. What it will do is inflict enough damage that an attacker loses its political will to fight and give up or negotiate a truce - history is full of examples of asymmetric warfare forcing this sort of conclusion where both sides claim "victory."
You're also overlooking the obvious fact that if the federal government were to direct the US military to begin assaulting American cities and communities with tanks, subs, aircraft, and tomahawk missles, there'd be significant fallout from that - likely a schism in the military where different factions turn on one another, perhaps even the military acting to depose the president in a coup. Their oath, after all, is to support & defend the Constitution (not the president) against all enemies, foreign and domestic (that piece was included for a reason, and that reason was not because "we need to protect ourselves from them homosexuals and their massive destabilizing influence!"
This is like saying "gene mapping and recombinant dna is how we'll solve all our health problems!" You've named a current technique with promise, and hand-waved over all of the critical steps in between "current understanding" and "effectively doing the things I've claimed are possible." And those steps are LEGION.
All of those technologies MAY be useful in microgravity; NONE of them have been tested or proven. The addition of machinery materials and gear for every one of those techniques will require: 1) Massive launches of materials & machinery into space; You don't build a blast furnace by banging a couple asteroid rocks together a few hundred times; 2) Massive expenditures of energy and engineering know-how to develop and test the processes in microgravity to ensure that they're safe, and that the materials created are substantially similar in characteristic to the materials we produce here on earth.
As one example: has anybody studied how raw metals and alloys solidify from a molten state in zero gravity, and what effect that has on the metal produced? Is it stronger in some ways? weaker in others? Does it have different properties? Many materials do - for instance, glass: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/14apr_zeroglass/ - turns out it's "purer" at least in small batches, because they can eliminate the container the glass is melted in, which eliminates impurities from that container. Of course, these tests are done on 1/4 inch diameter droplets of molten glass... how do you scale that up to industrial capacities?
Same applies for metals - how do we scale up production to an industrial capacity allowing us to effectively build large projects in microgravity? We can't smelt metal an ounce at a time. Where do the materials and energy come from? Ever see the machinery that goes into mining here on earth? Any of those tested in microgravity yet? No? Shit, there's a whole new field of industry you'll have to reinvent.
The point is not that we "can't do it," - it's fundamentally an engineering problem, and if cost is no object, there's certainly an engineering solution to it. The point remains though that, no matter how "free" those materials in that asteroid are, they are going to require VAST expenditures of materials, engineering, and energy here on earth to develop the technology to make use of them. Which means that there's effectively no point in the near future when any endeavor to harvest them will break even, or even be remotely possible in any near-term time frame.
Actually, I'd love it if Google offered a subscription-based, ad-free/tracking-free consumer version of their services. That's not much of a threat, I wish they'd start charging for services that we get for free.
They have to make their money from something, if you don't like it, don't use it.
The problem here is that people specifically set their browser in a way that said, "don't track me," and Google said, "Well, since you couldn't possibly have meant to exclude US with that setting, we'll just circumvent that setting and track you anyway using a known bug in your browser." People tried not to use it, and Google still tracked them.
Oh my god! You're right! Except... wait! what's one important thing all 3 of those satellites have in common? Hint: They were built here on earth, using precise & very expensive equipment, and launched into orbit largely pre-assembled!
You seem to be having trouble comprehending the *size* of the refining, processing, and manufacturing equipment required to make these instruments here on earth. So, you can either launch a steel mill and tooling plant into space... after testing and redesigning all of your processes to ensure they'll work and be safe in low gravity environments... or you can do all the manufacturing here, and launch everything up. Either way, this comes with - once again - a tremendous engineering & material & energy cost. To your sassy little magnet video, I'll respond with, "Steel Production, how does it work?"
The fact that here on earth we can use mirrors to concentrate sunlight on a single block of refined metal and heat it enough to liquify the metal means very little - it's like saying, "Look, I can hold my breath for 30 seconds, I could TOTALLY survive the vacuum of space, just give me an oxygen mask for when I have to go outside!"
Most metal comes out of the ground (or asteroids) in the form of oxidized ore, which must be refined into pure metal (and thence into appropriate, precisely mixed & treated alloys) at extremely high heat, with particular reducing additives and chemicals driving the process. It is then cast, molded, forged, drawn, and tooled into specific shapes for specific uses. There is a tremendous amount of heating, reheating, chemical additives, waste products produced JUST to create a slab of steel from ore. So either you're shipping ore from asteroids down to be processed on the ground, then shipping the finished steel back up from the ground, or you're shipping a lot of chemicals & machinery to produce it in orbit - if you do the former, you're not saving any money; if you do the latter, the cost of re-engineering all of the machinery & all of the processes to work in zero gravity would quickly eliminate any "10k / kg" benefit you think you'd get by avoiding launching the finished steel from the ground.
I'm not sure why this seems so hard to you - "heating a block of metal" is not the same thing as "producing usable steel parts from iron ore dug out of an asteroid." It is one SMALL part in the overall process, which requires all kinds of machinery, chemicals, and energy, a re-evaluation of all its processes so they're suited for microgravity environments, and the tolerance of a tremendous amount of catastrophic risk - something goes wrong with even your tiny furnace holding a couple hundred kilograms of molten steel and slag, and you've got the potential for wiping out your entire facility in seconds. Go ahead and try getting Flo from Nationwide to insure that.
Great, we can reach high temperatures with a very precise, stationary configuration of mirrors.
Now, how do we do that in zero gravity? (think a glob of molten steel floating around in your habitat might be a problem in space?) How do we pour molten steel into some sort of 3d printer reservoir for use? How do we keep it molten for the printing process? How do we add and combine the various reduction agents and fluxes required in smelting?
There are immense engineering challenges around making all of this work in zero gravity, and doing so in an economically viable manner.
How do you propose we smelt, process, cast, and mold all that ore into useful forms to build a space station? I suspect the price of lifting a space station module into orbit is not the majority component of its total cost, which would include the engineering & manufacturing costs (and cost of building that manufacturing infrastructure in orbit) associated with building all those components here on earth.
Saving the lift costs is probably not going to reduce the costs that much, because you'd have to design, test, and build all that infrastructure to operate in zero gravity, then lift it into orbit, or come up with some way of boot-strapping it somehow from raw materials.
This isn't just "launch something, leave it up for a while, bring it back down," we're talking about industrializing zero-gravity.
Slashdot Mirror
But mostly, it's ad impressions driven by letting people complain about religion.
Not so much the rest.
Wow, you'd almost think I didn't write this in the post you JUST RESPONDED TO:
The question was, "Any innocents harmed by any materials that were outed by wikileaks." The materials outed as a result of PFC Manning's alleged leak are only one part of the "materials outed by wikileaks."
Given that Mr. Assange freely went on the record as saying that "1300 people were killed as a result" of their leak of documents about corruption in the Kenyan government, I'm gonna go with his statements over an AC's apparent illiteracy.
Then you haven't been paying attention, because Assange himself has admitted that innocents have been killed (not just 'damaged') by the publication of materials outed by Wikileaks.
(source)
He goes on to whitewash that figure by citing malaria statistics - I guess in Africa, if you're responsible for killing fewer people than the average yearly death toll from malaria, you're eligible for sainthood, and all your sins are forgiven.
You can't play it both ways - either there are real world consequences for the publication of the data that you own the responsibility for, or there are no real world consequences and all you're doing is play-acting in front of a camera. Which is it?
So you've noticed that there's a difference between what people say, and what they do, have you? Welcome to conscious existence. People have been calling for accountability, and re-electing the same bunch of retards and crooks every couple years, because "it's not MY GUY who's the problem - he's helping us out here! It's those R's or D's from other places who need to get tossed out on their asses!"
Until the public understands and accepts that accountability means more than "bitching to my co-worker who agrees with me while we have lunch," the accountability won't happen. There need to be actual teeth behind the threats of "voting for the other guy," "initiating recalls and impeachments," and other penalties for behaving badly.
In informing people of things governments need to be held accountable for, Wikileaks *does* provide a valuable service. The problem is, that value is often overshadowed by Assange's attention-seeking and grandstanding behavior.
You have it *exactly* backwards. The Bulk mail is what subsidizes cheap first class letter delivery. Or did you really think that sending a stack of photos and a couple page letter from door to door across the country to your dear Aunt Martha ONLY costs 50 cents? The bulk mail is generally pre-sorted by the sender, and requires nearly zero processing by the post office - it is simply given to the carriers to deliver. Your hand-addressed envelope with chicken scratched addressing information, on the other hand, must be handled every step of the way, and costs the USPS far more than the 50 cents that you paid to send it.
The USPS does a "better job of cost control" because it cannot raise prices without the approval of the Postal Regulatory Commission, and it has a legal obligation to provide universal service at "affordable rates." And that's why it's been hemorrhaging money - because the USPS provides services that cost FAR more than they can take in according to their rate charts, and they can't just raise prices to eliminate the shortfall like FedEx and UPS can.
Given a budget of X and expenses of Y (for values of Y > X), your only options to keep functioning are to raise rates to offset the budget shortfall, or cut expenses so you're not overspending - and if you're the post office, one major way to cut expenses by eliminating delivery days.
Raise money for junk mail, and you'll see the volume of junk mail decline rapidly, because it becomes cheaper to advertise online, or on TV, or on the radio. When that happens, I guarantee their shortfall will require a lot more than eliminating one day of delivery service.
Good to see you read the summary. Last I checked, somebody shipping heart medication isn't doing it as individual pills in envelopes sent by First Class Mail.
Yes, and streaming services like Spotify will mean even fewer are successful.
Please note:
"small venue" does not equal "the local coffe shop's open mic."
There are lots of "small venues" - 200 - 500 people capacity - where people can play. I know that there are clubs here in my home town of Boston that regularly host acts from all over the country. These musicians are generally not making tremendous bank off their performances. The clubs are telling them, "Sure, you come here and perform, and get EXPOSURE, that'll help you sell cds and shirts and merchandise." And now Spotify comes along and says, "Sure, you won't get much money from us, but you'll get EXPOSURE." Except with Spotify - you don't even have to buy the cd!
If every business model is reduced to "everything you do is an advertisement for other advertising you do," you can bet that the ability of talented musicians to do anything, musically speaking, without the support of a major label marketing them tirelessly will be greatly limited. Don't like the major labels and the RIAA? Stop helping them abuse musicians by supporting the musicians directly, instead of downloading their music (or streaming it), and going, "LOL Thanks, chump. I like your song, but you should be better at what you do, maybe I'll buy something then."
That's great - neither does a musician. More similarities!
Sure, it's on a subscription model. You pay them for a copy of the original CD, and then they tour around and you can buy a ticket to hear reworked versions of those songs. And they deliver it to you - sounds like a bargain.
No, they made 150 to 200 for a DAY OF WORK.
Great, so even more similarities to your job then - touring musicians will spend the night driving to their next show; when they arrive in town, they will often have a press appearance of some sort (un-paid), where they'll spend an hour or two at the local radio station, or a local record store, etc., hoping to generate a little buzz for their show later tonight. They might get to walk around town a bit, or they might not. They'll be carrying their gear into the club, setting it up, doing soundchecks, breaking everything down, loading the van up, and driving for several hours to the next gig. Plenty of audio gear will weight 50+ pounds, and they're carrying it in and out of places that are a lot less safe than your server room. You don't know much about the demands of a career in music, do you? You seem to think that it's all just "limo brings me to the red carpet, I lip sync for 15 minutes, then the blowjobs commence." There is at least as much physical labor, a shitload more discomfort, and plenty of long hours and shitty working conditions.
Only if musicians get .005 dollars for every note you listen to. And as we all know, since Amazon gets millions of users per month, EVERY web site must get millions of users per month! You're trying to be cute and dodge the point by being glib, but being glib simply makes you look stupid.
And you think they're going to magically make a living touring? For most bands playing small venues, touring is not a moneymaker, especially if they're not selling CDs and other merchandise AT those shows. And then after making very little money on the road for 3 months, they go home, to find a $47.83 check from Spotify waiting.
Royalties from streaming are shitty, and a bad deal for musicians. The suggestion that recorded music should be free, or that fractions of a penny per play is some sort of great deal for artists... sort of turns into an argument that "touring musicians should be unable to support themselves."
So making music isn't working? Let me guess, you think it's limos everywhere, all the liquor & drugs you can consume, private jets from city to city, and a nonstop parade of 18 year old supermodels through your bedroom?
So the jobs are very similar! How much does an average programmer make, versus an average working musician, again? And would you take a programming job offering the same wage as a working musician, without grumbling about how little you got paid?
As opposed to the average programmer, who doesn't sit on his ass all day and plunk away on a keyboard, while demanding a ransom for his work because he knows Visual Basic? I don't think Ms. Keating suggested she wanted a "ransom" for what she put out - she's saying "this style of music distribution sucks for musicians," and she's right - it does.
Thought exercise:
Your employer calls you in and says, "you know, we're moving to a streaming model. You're going to get half a cent every time somebody uses your software, instead of a salary. And since nobody loses anything by copying it, we're going to also take the software you produced, and share it online so that customers can download it for free. Unfortunately, we can't track that usage, so you won't get paid at all for those - but it's not like you lost a sale, if the software wasn't free, they probably wouldn't have bought it anyway! But cheer up, you should be excited just to simply have the skill to be a creative computer professional with the skills to do this - the effort is its own reward!
What's that? You're upset? Why should anybody pay you a ransom every year just so you can keep the same buggy piece of shit running while making a few enhancements and playing with yourself in a bunch of useless meetings? If you want to get paid, get out there and write NEW software that will delight and amaze our customers in return for fractions of a penny per software use! You gotta HUSTLE, son!"
Think that sounds like a great way to live? Would we be justified in telling you to "shut up, you're not entitled to a living writing software, be better at it and you'll probably get paid," or would you take issue with that?
Your general attitude that the creation and performance of music isn't "work," and thus has no value or right to be compensated, Is especially delicious, given the obvious parallels to the comparative physical & mental efforts between music & programming. Do you REALLY think your boss pays you 75k/year to "show up in your cubicle 40 hours a week," regardless of what you actually produce during that time?
No way of being sure. He MIGHT have been referring to students using a Segway to get to their classes in programming & logic design.
I'm not sure why early exposure to Boolean Algebra and Binary Arithmetic would lead students to be more likely to ride segways, but I'm willing to hear his reasoning.
But that of course raises the question of how saying "everything on here defaults to public domain" serves GitHub's or its users' interests. Also, GitHub can't assign copyrights on the behalf of publishers using their platform - they don't have the rights to do so, and would have to first say, "You grant us unrestricted rights to use, modify, redistribute and sub-license your uploaded code anywhere at any time, in perpetuity." (Think Facebook & Instagram's terms are acquisitive? They have to be.)
The best they could to is say, "you MUST specify a license in your project at setup time; you can choose from this handy list of popular ones, or write your own," which of course does nothing - you could still leave the license legally blank (select "Other:" and write whatever you want in that field, or leave it blank - do you really think GitHub's going to hire an army of lawyers to verify that what's entered in the License field is a valid software license?
The author is not trying to wish away IP law - the author is trying to get people who publish to sites like GitHub without specifying a license for their code (even when their intent is clearly that they wish to *share* that code for reuse) by using a permissive license (e.g., CC, WTFPL, etc.) if their intent is to share but they object to terms of the GPL or other popular 'FOSS' licenses.
There is nothing stopping them from adding it.
FFS, people need to read the article. I know it's not cool to do that, since you run the risk of learning something, or being exposed to a thought you haven't already thought up in your own head, but you should take the risk sometime.
Let me summarize here, since you seem too lazy to have even glanced at it:
1) Author notes that some (perhaps a sizable chunk) of developers publishing their code on sites like GitHub (especially GitHub, which makes no recommendation or defaults related to "how this project is licensed") aren't including a license statement of any sort.
2) Author points out that "no license specified" means "all rights reserved" - author retains full copyright control.
3) Author then points out that this is almost certainly NOT the intent of a goodly chunk of people publishing on GitHub.
4) Author then goes on to talk about ways that the choice "not to put in a license" as a political choice can be reflected in a license such as WTFPL, modified Creative Commons, etc., rather than forcing people to say, "If you don't want a license, put in GPL, since that's free," when some may even disagree with the terms of the GPL.
Nothing is stopping people from doing any of this - yet these people who don't choose any license are not doing any of it, either out of laziness, or a misunderstanding of how copyright actually works. His article attempts to address some of that misunderstanding and encourages them to make a choice reflective of their intent if they wish to share.
So, he hacked into the victims' accounts, then posed as the victim and began searching for useful pictures and other information to blackmail the victims and their friends. He's being charged with 2 batches of 15 counts - 15 x computer intrusion, and 15 x aggravated identity theft.
Would you consider 7 years to be an appropriate punishment for one count of computer intrusion and one count of aggravated identity theft? (Why or why not?)
And regardless of whether or not 7 years is the appropriate punishment - why should he not serve the same sentence per pair of charges, when he's done this repeatedly, and engaged in a pattern of abuse that's far more egregious than "I found this phone on the ground, and it had some nudes that I looked at and showed a couple of my friends?"
Yes, and the entire point of TFA is pointing out that the people on Github (and similar sites) who are electing not to specify a license, are setting this trap when that is obviously not their intent. Their intent is, as the twitter quote suggests, "I don't care about licensing, do whatever you want with this," but they are not *stating that* in the code, and thus are, legally, retaining all copyrights to their code.
No company (or sane independent developer) looking to reuse someone else's code and wants to be sure of no legal hassles down the line will touch code that is not clearly licensed as usable. If you want to encourage use of your code without any restriction, you have to state it - and that's pretty much all that TFA has to say, along with some suggestions about "what method might somebody electing to make the 'political' statement of eschewing the standard FLOSS licenses use to both encourage reuse of their code, and keep their political statement intact?"
Think of it this way - If I don't like any of the major political party options, the election results will be pretty much identical whether or not I stay home and do nothing (choose no licensing), or vote for a third-party candidate (select a specific license which indicates my displeasure with the major options, and shows that I'm making a choice, even if it's not the 'popular one' and has no realistic chance of being the dominant choice in the field).
tl;dr - TFS is awful, TFA isn't all that mind-blowing either, but TFS (esp. kthreadd's editorializing) is misleading a lot of people about what TFA is actually saying.
And the WTFPL is one of the first ones he brings up in his "fixing the problem" section of TFA, and CC+modifications is the second.
His point is that people "rejecting the permission culture" should do so explicitly, by licensing their software in such a way that explicitly states their rejection. Omitting a license, as he notes (and other people who haven't RTFA have also pointed out here) defaults copyright to "all rights reserved," and so creates a legal minefield, which limits the ability of people to reuse that code if they're concerned at all about copyright issues.
Since it's clear that at least some of these people WANT to reject licensing altogether, he's arguing that it's better to come up with a license scheme that rejects that licensing / permission culture than it is to skip thinking about any license.
The point that the author is making is that there should be some sort of option to allow you to specify this - "do whatever the hell you want, stop asking me if you can use it, I don't care."
He's making the point because, as he notes, a significant portion of the code on GitHub doesn't specify a license, which means it defaults to "all rights reserved," even though that's clearly not the intent of at least some portion of the "no-license" authors there.
And frankly, I think your comment strongly suggests that everything you know about the US military and its service men and women, you learned from Hollywood.
Is it necessary? Nope. Is it their right? You bet.
Similarly, we could ask: Is it necessary for you to run around talking shit about a large segment of the population who has never once, in your entire life, harmed you? Nope. Is it your right? You bet.
Let's wargame, shall we? In 2016, Jeb Bush is elected to the Presidency, and immediately declares his intent to double down on George Bush's policies, disbands congress, executes liberal supreme court justices ("to make a little room for more friendly judges!"), and begins cracking down on minorities all over the country. In response, northern California, Washington, and Oregon declare their intention to secede and form the free and democratic people's state of Cascadia. (don't laught, it's actually a thing).
President Bush, in response, orders his uncritical, unthinking military worker bees to decimate the population of the pacific northwest, not wanting to lose important strategic national Spotted Owl, Flannel, and Facial Hair reserves. The people of Cascadia, having dutifully turned over all their guns to the government, are unable to raise a hand in resistance, and so their dreams of a free, democratic, liberal state are dashed as they are all relocated to re-education camps in the swamps of Louisiana, and vast tracts of coastal woodland and pot farms are turned to ash.
This scenario, of course, raises the question: ... then why the fuck don't you have a couple weapons of your own? Would you really just roll over and beg for whatever scraps of life and dignity are left to you in the face of that sort of oppression? Or would you want the chance to fight? Because I can assure you that throughout history, many people have chosen to fight in situations just like that, even in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds.
1) If the government is as crazy-powerful as you suggest;
2) AND, If the military is as unthinkingly beholden to the president's edicts as you suggest;
3) AND, if your entire life & freedom hangs on the random whims of a man thousands of miles away;
In reality, small groups of armed civilians can do quite a bit even against a well-armed military - numerous conflicts in the last 50 years have proven this (Vietnam; Ireland; Iraq; Afghanistan; to name a few). The argument that any conflict must eventually devolve into fixed lines exchanging shots, and the argument that insurgents would be dumb enough to face off against entrenched elements of the 1st Infantry & 1st Armored divisions flies in the face of even the most basic common sense relative to asymmetric warfare, are both completely bogus.
If you're weaker, you don't charge at your enemy's fortified, heavily armed compound - you bleed him by hitting at his soft points - and I assure you, all those soldiers need sleep, food, and water; all those tanks, guns, planes, and cruise missiles need fuel, ammunition, and maintenance.
Even the ENTIRE US military - approximately 3 million total, active + reserve - poured into an area the size of Oregon + Washington + northern California, and charged with "pacifying" the area, would have difficulty managing that task against an actively hos
Indeed, that would be just about step zero for any sort of investigation here. Without testing of many, many fundamentals of manufacturing, mining, and refinement & processing in microgravity, this whole thing is just bizarrely ass-backwards.
As I said, there's certainly an engineering solution to this, if cost is no object. But the hand-waving assertion that "of course it'll be cheaper if we don't have to lift all the materials out of earths' gravity" glosses over the fact that we have NEVER done these things in space, and in fact, have barely even scratched the surface of what's necessary, knowledge-wise, to attempt this with any hope of reaching a break-even point. And no enterprise has limitless funds, so cost *is* an object.
"Win a war?" It won't in the sense that the it won't completely destroy the military capabilities of the US government. What it will do is inflict enough damage that an attacker loses its political will to fight and give up or negotiate a truce - history is full of examples of asymmetric warfare forcing this sort of conclusion where both sides claim "victory."
You're also overlooking the obvious fact that if the federal government were to direct the US military to begin assaulting American cities and communities with tanks, subs, aircraft, and tomahawk missles, there'd be significant fallout from that - likely a schism in the military where different factions turn on one another, perhaps even the military acting to depose the president in a coup. Their oath, after all, is to support & defend the Constitution (not the president) against all enemies, foreign and domestic (that piece was included for a reason, and that reason was not because "we need to protect ourselves from them homosexuals and their massive destabilizing influence!"
This is like saying "gene mapping and recombinant dna is how we'll solve all our health problems!" You've named a current technique with promise, and hand-waved over all of the critical steps in between "current understanding" and "effectively doing the things I've claimed are possible." And those steps are LEGION.
All of those technologies MAY be useful in microgravity; NONE of them have been tested or proven. The addition of machinery materials and gear for every one of those techniques will require:
1) Massive launches of materials & machinery into space; You don't build a blast furnace by banging a couple asteroid rocks together a few hundred times;
2) Massive expenditures of energy and engineering know-how to develop and test the processes in microgravity to ensure that they're safe, and that the materials created are substantially similar in characteristic to the materials we produce here on earth.
As one example: has anybody studied how raw metals and alloys solidify from a molten state in zero gravity, and what effect that has on the metal produced? Is it stronger in some ways? weaker in others? Does it have different properties? Many materials do - for instance, glass: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/14apr_zeroglass/ - turns out it's "purer" at least in small batches, because they can eliminate the container the glass is melted in, which eliminates impurities from that container. Of course, these tests are done on 1/4 inch diameter droplets of molten glass... how do you scale that up to industrial capacities?
Same applies for metals - how do we scale up production to an industrial capacity allowing us to effectively build large projects in microgravity? We can't smelt metal an ounce at a time. Where do the materials and energy come from? Ever see the machinery that goes into mining here on earth? Any of those tested in microgravity yet? No? Shit, there's a whole new field of industry you'll have to reinvent.
The point is not that we "can't do it," - it's fundamentally an engineering problem, and if cost is no object, there's certainly an engineering solution to it. The point remains though that, no matter how "free" those materials in that asteroid are, they are going to require VAST expenditures of materials, engineering, and energy here on earth to develop the technology to make use of them. Which means that there's effectively no point in the near future when any endeavor to harvest them will break even, or even be remotely possible in any near-term time frame.
Actually, I'd love it if Google offered a subscription-based, ad-free/tracking-free consumer version of their services. That's not much of a threat, I wish they'd start charging for services that we get for free.
The problem here is that people specifically set their browser in a way that said, "don't track me," and Google said, "Well, since you couldn't possibly have meant to exclude US with that setting, we'll just circumvent that setting and track you anyway using a known bug in your browser." People tried not to use it, and Google still tracked them.
Oh my god! You're right! Except... wait! what's one important thing all 3 of those satellites have in common? Hint: They were built here on earth, using precise & very expensive equipment, and launched into orbit largely pre-assembled!
You seem to be having trouble comprehending the *size* of the refining, processing, and manufacturing equipment required to make these instruments here on earth. So, you can either launch a steel mill and tooling plant into space... after testing and redesigning all of your processes to ensure they'll work and be safe in low gravity environments... or you can do all the manufacturing here, and launch everything up. Either way, this comes with - once again - a tremendous engineering & material & energy cost. To your sassy little magnet video, I'll respond with, "Steel Production, how does it work?"
The fact that here on earth we can use mirrors to concentrate sunlight on a single block of refined metal and heat it enough to liquify the metal means very little - it's like saying, "Look, I can hold my breath for 30 seconds, I could TOTALLY survive the vacuum of space, just give me an oxygen mask for when I have to go outside!"
Most metal comes out of the ground (or asteroids) in the form of oxidized ore, which must be refined into pure metal (and thence into appropriate, precisely mixed & treated alloys) at extremely high heat, with particular reducing additives and chemicals driving the process. It is then cast, molded, forged, drawn, and tooled into specific shapes for specific uses. There is a tremendous amount of heating, reheating, chemical additives, waste products produced JUST to create a slab of steel from ore. So either you're shipping ore from asteroids down to be processed on the ground, then shipping the finished steel back up from the ground, or you're shipping a lot of chemicals & machinery to produce it in orbit - if you do the former, you're not saving any money; if you do the latter, the cost of re-engineering all of the machinery & all of the processes to work in zero gravity would quickly eliminate any "10k / kg" benefit you think you'd get by avoiding launching the finished steel from the ground.
I'm not sure why this seems so hard to you - "heating a block of metal" is not the same thing as "producing usable steel parts from iron ore dug out of an asteroid." It is one SMALL part in the overall process, which requires all kinds of machinery, chemicals, and energy, a re-evaluation of all its processes so they're suited for microgravity environments, and the tolerance of a tremendous amount of catastrophic risk - something goes wrong with even your tiny furnace holding a couple hundred kilograms of molten steel and slag, and you've got the potential for wiping out your entire facility in seconds. Go ahead and try getting Flo from Nationwide to insure that.
Great, we can reach high temperatures with a very precise, stationary configuration of mirrors.
Now, how do we do that in zero gravity? (think a glob of molten steel floating around in your habitat might be a problem in space?) How do we pour molten steel into some sort of 3d printer reservoir for use? How do we keep it molten for the printing process? How do we add and combine the various reduction agents and fluxes required in smelting?
There are immense engineering challenges around making all of this work in zero gravity, and doing so in an economically viable manner.
How do you propose we smelt, process, cast, and mold all that ore into useful forms to build a space station? I suspect the price of lifting a space station module into orbit is not the majority component of its total cost, which would include the engineering & manufacturing costs (and cost of building that manufacturing infrastructure in orbit) associated with building all those components here on earth.
Saving the lift costs is probably not going to reduce the costs that much, because you'd have to design, test, and build all that infrastructure to operate in zero gravity, then lift it into orbit, or come up with some way of boot-strapping it somehow from raw materials.
This isn't just "launch something, leave it up for a while, bring it back down," we're talking about industrializing zero-gravity.