While I agree, there needs to be protection for those with less extreme claims, there also needs to be more teeth to punishing those who abuse the system.
Another thought pops into my head: abusers tend to be repeat "customers" at the court (and non-abusers don't). Or so I'm lead to think; I don't for sure (somebody collect some numbers...).
But if I'm right, why not make repeat offences carry exponentially increasing punishments---base 2, or base something larger than the average economic growth rate times k, or...?
b) If he can't demonstrate his ability to detect electromagnetic fields under reasonable experimental conditions significantly more than chance, he owes the plaintiff the same amount he's seeking.
Why the amount he's seeking?
Wouldn't it be more fair to compensate the defendant for court fees (if any), lawyer salary, lost income/time and compensate the defendant for undue emotional distress? That is, make repairs exactly for the damage or losses you have caused, no more and no less?
Or should there be a disincentive towards filing suits? We all hate litigious bastards, especially the well-funded kind, but disincentives towards filing suits also impacts the little man.
I'm not saying I know the answer. I'm just suggesting that we should consider all the options (or at least a handful).
"An idea is a dangerous thing to have if it's your only idea." (I can't remember who said it, but I think David Allen quoted that person in Getting Things Done.)
I think you good a good point. I think I have a good counterpoint. I also think the best point is somewhere in between: figuring out where your point applies, where mine applies, and where some compromise or alternative applies.
Stop being a bunch of wussies!
Agreed---to the extent that this is the right solution. Some people need to stop being wussies.
A kid shouldn't be taking medication for anything less than a serious physical problem. You don't give a kid powerful psychotropic drugs just because they're rebellious or shy.
That's an interesting opinion. Is that based on any evidence regarding the safety and effectiveness of the "null" treatment plan? Does it depend on what the psychiatric diagnosis is?
In any case, on to what I think people may want to think about:
Some people really need help!
It may very well be that people are being overdiagnosed. But some people are being diagnosed correctly.
Imagine being bullied every day; each day someone makes fun of you for no reason. They criticize your clothing, your hair, your way of speech, anything, everything. Nobody helps you, even when you cry for help. Nobody comes and talks to you. Nobody tries to be your friend.
Might you start to get the impression that nobody likes you? Or that nobody will ever like you? Nobody will ever love you?
Will that make you shy away from trying to make friends? From asking girls out on a date? Will your subsequent loneliness and lack of affection, love and sex throw you into a depression? Will it make you commit suicide?
If there's a person in this situation, do you think they deserve help? If they could be made less shy, could be taught to approach people and say "Hi, I see you're into ${interest} too. Want to hang out and ${interest} some time?" or "Would you go out with me?" (and have someone answer yes), and that makes said person happy and have a normal (if modest) social and romantic life, isn't that an improvement?
Granted, just because someone calls you ugly and you feel unhappy about it for a few days doesn't mean you should be doped up and talk to a shrink. But if you get into a negative spiral, you should be pulled out.
They'll have plenty of time to dope themselves into a stupor and cry at a psychologist's office when they're adults.
Why not intervene early? If you have poor social skills which causes rejection which causes fewer opportunities to practice your social skills which causes poor social skills---and so forth in a negative spiral---wouldn't you want to be pulled out of it sooner rather than later?
For those who really need help, what you're suggesting is postponing treatment until the condition has worsened and the patient has suffered a very unhappy childhood and adolescence.
Actually, that's quite simple. It's ok when Google (the copyright holder) says it's ok, otherwise it's not.
Agreed. Understanding what Google actually says might not be so simple, though. I think that's why people have a tendency to employ people* who are experts at interpreting law and contracts.
Whats the news here? That MS complied to laws and judge orders?
Yes, that's exactly it.
And that's not meant to be a smartass comment about how often Microsoft does and doesn't do that.
All I'm trying to say is that this Microsoft/XML/Patent story is of interest to the slashdot crowd, and we would like to be informed about how the sequence of events unfold.
Getting confirmation that Microsoft complies with the law and court orders is an important event in this story---perhaps even the most crucial.
Responsible Disclosure [...] is a deliberately positive term for purely demagogic reasons.
Which is why I advocate calling it "Limited disclosure". That's a value-neutral term that fairly accurately describes it---and about as precisely as you can be in only two words.
Or call that other thing "Effective disclosure" if you feel a need to play the game of rhetoric.
By the way, the tone of your post puts me ever so slightly off.
The "Uh, no" and the "You know" give off a tiny whiff of a smug, condescending attitude. And your "I don't suppose you're a self-styled Asperger's sufferer, are you?" sounds like you think I am and think less of me for it.
It's nothing big, but it's there. At least that's how I interpret your post.
Maybe I'm being a hypersensitive crybaby here. Or maybe other people would feel the same way I do. I don't know; I'm not great at judging that.
I'm sorry to call you on this in public, but I want to say it where you'll hear it, and this is the best option I know (by virtue of being the only).
I'd just hate it if it were the case that (1) you didn't know what kind of effect you had on people; (2) that people would shun you because of the effect you had on them; (3) that you wanted to not be shunned; (4) that I could tell you something that would be informative and helpful to you; and (5) I didn't.
I can only choose what to do about point number 5. I'm sorry if I made the wrong choice.
And if (I don't think so, but if) you actually want to be a prick towards others, (voice of Mr. Hankey) Well I guess you can suck my tiny little balls:P
The conditions differ in that ADHD lacks the classic impairment in reciprocal social interaction, narrow interests, repetitive routines and non-verbal problems of Asperger syndrome.
Often talks excessively. vs lack of social or emotional reciprocity and stereotyped and repetitive use of language or idiosyncratic language
A kid with ADHD will talk about trains all the time. A kid with Asperger's will talk in weird ways about trains all the time. Definitely, def-definitely all the time.
Is often easily distracted. vs encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus
Erm... what? One says "doesn't focus for more than 20 seconds", the other says "focuses for 20 days in a row."
[edited] When people talk about searching for cures for autism, they mean severe autism where the individual is virtually non-functional.
Fair enough, I may have misjudged the situation. Thanks for informing me.
blame all their social problems on Asperger's ([...] having an excuse for being socially awkward)
Explaining and excusing are two different things.
You can't really excuse being an asshole to other people. You can explain, with "I didn't know what I said/did hurt your feelings, because I don't pick up on other people's feelings very well", but just as ignorance of the law isn't a defence, ignorance of unwritten social rules (norms, "laws") doesn't make people less offended when you break them.
they can also be comforted by the fact that they must obviously be brilliant, too
I can't remember exactly how an Asperger diagnosis correlates with IQ scores, but ISTR the general gist being that it isn't a wonderful predictor for being a genius (possibly on the contrary).
However, the intense devotion aspies can show to an interest, combined with a high IQ when it's there, can lead to good things.
Consider the formula "output = time * output/time". If IQ is a good correlate with output/time and aspies devote lots of time, there's a recipe for high output. Plus, of course, the reporting of these cases is biased outside of the scientific literature (e.g. in the mainstream press). Heck, look at the selection bias I showed in my own post:)
I don't suppose you're a self-styled Asperger's sufferer, are you?
No, I'm not. I am a socially awkward geek, though;)
And to all of those who self-diagnose: if you think you suffer from a disorder that's causing you problems and would like help with those problems, go talk to a mental health professional about what help you can get in getting your life to work out for you.
Yeah, he probably wouldn't be able to do such useful things as remembering the whole phone book or recalling which baseball player did what in each year.
(Okay, that's Asperger's Syndrome; but I think that's within the scope of this discussion)
He might be able to button his own shirt or wipe his own ass, though.
Or it might be that he is better able to communicate with other people; he might have an easier time stumbling unto the idea that if he asks someone a question and silence is the answer, it might be because of an internal struggle between not wanting to lie and not wanting to admit the truth. And that he can gain something by not putting people in that situation again.
The only common types of math where "close doesn't count" are basic arithmetic (excepting fractions) and pure algebraic manipulation.
I hope you mean that whether the mathematics "counts" or not is a statement about the utility of applying mathematics as a tool.
That is, as opposed to which mathematical statements are correct. It's emphatically not the case that a function is continuous if roughly all open sets in the codomain have open preimages. The definition says that all open sets have open preimages. The proofs of the properties of continuous functions rely on this, and not just kinda'.
For the purpose of mathematical correctness, close doesn't count. Only being exactly true does.
Close can be useful. That doesn't make it correct.
Autism seems to be on the rise and some families seem to point out patterns - pre vaccines, happy, post vaccines dolphin-esque.
I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if everybody stopped vaccinating their kids until well after autism's typical age of onset.
Although I think I know the answer: we would have just as many autistic kids, which would suggest that it isn't the vaccines causing the autism, yet a few people will cling to their belief no matter the evidence against it.
Since, at a minimum, you can't solve for the state of the lottery lady
I don't see anything which makes it impossible to in principle measure her first, then include her as part of the machine's state.
You'd probably need to model everything she interacts with, transitively, so you have to model the entire universe, which is rather impractical if you're limited to being inside the universe.
But maybe you can measure and model to within a crazy high precision?
What's wrong with entering a entering a username, the site replying with a challenge token? I then sign the token with my PGP key and access is granted.
If I had it my way, I'd point my browser to ~/.gnupg/pubring.gpg or ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub or somesuch (or ~/.online-identity/pubkey) and use SSL client certificates. You know, where instead of just the server proving to be who it claims, the client does as well. Then I would have zero-typing logins, securely.
Unfortunately, crypto takes a lot of CPU horsepower. For that reason, most server operators will want to do as little as they can get away with (which is less than what is required for good security), and the uninformed public won't know that it should scream about this. The informed public will scream and cry, but will be derided as lunatics or ignored (as is the case here on/.).
But you're going to need an auxiliary computer (smart card or usb fob or something) to plug into computers that aren't your own (or rather that you shouldn't trust). And you need to be sure that the alien computer can talk to and understand your auxiliary computer.
Will most people want to pay for this? Or will they prefer to use passwords, because they are free, and to hell with the second-order effects, we don't want to think about the consequences of our actions!
2008: Oh no, someone who's not me knows my password! I need to call Blizzard!
2011: Oh no, someone who's not me stole my crypto widget! I need to call Blizzard!
Malware keyloggers can steal WoW passwords. They can't steal your other computer. Not even if that computer is called an authenticator and is rather special-purpose.
It's not like people are going to forget their World of WarCrack passwords, they type it every day </snarky>;)
You want to err on the side of freedom to do as you please (within the law) in public - I want to err on the side of the freedom to be in public (i.e. people with fairly common allergies being free to use public places*)
The thing is, everybody is free to be on the plane. You may not like the consequences of doing the things you are free to do, but that doesn't mean you aren't free to do them.
I you want to get on a plane and be free from people doing X, that means people's freedom to do X has to be taken away from them.
I suppose they're just different forms of freedom.
No, one is a form of freedom, the other is a form of imposition of restrictions so a certain group of people can have things their way.
Freedom from means taking away others' freedom to.
Now, I've described what the two things are (freedom and restriction); I'm not saying one is always better than the other, or most often. I'm pro-restrictions when they make sense. Isn't the whole point of democracy that We The People impose on We The People a set of rules which are meant to bring about a state of affairs that We The People like?
I like that random people on the street aren't free to kill me, and I'm more than happy to give up my own freedom to kill others to get that. I'm glad politicians are forcing phone companies to let me keep my phone number when I change to a different carrier. I'm also glad I'm free to be a disagreeable asshole on slashdot if I like, although I aim for arguing counterpoints and -arguments in a respectful tone:)
Quality music sometimes requires a serious commitment
Trust me, as a part-time amateur musician, I know this all too well;)
[...] they should be reimbursed for doing that. [...] If so, and if those musicians make a product, shouldn't they get something for their investment?
Why should they be reimbursed for that? Because they are being reimbursed with our current set of laws? Because it's hard work?
Suppose I get really good at making buggy whips, and I invest a lot of time and effort into that. Then I make buggy whips but nobody needs any of them. Shouldn't I get something for my investment? I should be reimbursed for doing that!
No! Whether I deserve reimbursement for making something has nothing to do with the training or production costs, and everything to do with the amount of money people are willing to pay for it.
but are you really ready to say that certain kinds of music shouldn't be created just because it gets in the way of your copyright paradigm?
No I'm not. I don't want to dictate what music people can and cannot create.
What I am suggesting is that (maybe!) a different set of laws works better than our current ones.
If those laws are passed and people choose to no longer make a certain kind work, that's a shame, but if the laws create progress, that loss is the the cost of progress.
Yes, some things will be lost. Other things will be gained. The import question is whether the gains exceed the losses.
I'm not particularly in favor of any argument that begins by eliminating entire artistic genres.
I think you have misunderstood something. That's not where the argument begins, that point is roughly in the middle. The argument is structured something like
How can we the people change the laws to better meet our needs for music?
how would [some particular change] influence the supply and demand of music?
Given that supply and demand schedule, what the social benefit of music?
How does that benefit compare to other systems?
It has been argued that the most socially beneficial state-of-copyright a piece of music can be in is "public domain". Copyright serves to ensure that some (more) music will exist, such that this music can be in the public domain.
If all music goes straight to public domain, yes, there will be less of some. But we would reap the higher benefit of the rest immediately. That's a trade-off. The question is: is it a good trade-off? Is it the best trade-off?
I'm also not sure how much is gained by a system where it's free to share with your friends (as you note in your comment), but there's not much to share, because people don't make a lot of certain genres (like movies) anymore.
Neither am I, see above. But I sure would like to know. You seem to talk only about what we trade away, not so much of what we gain. Why is that?
Slashdot Mirror
While I agree, there needs to be protection for those with less extreme claims, there also needs to be more teeth to punishing those who abuse the system.
Another thought pops into my head: abusers tend to be repeat "customers" at the court (and non-abusers don't). Or so I'm lead to think; I don't for sure (somebody collect some numbers...).
But if I'm right, why not make repeat offences carry exponentially increasing punishments---base 2, or base something larger than the average economic growth rate times k, or ...?
b) If he can't demonstrate his ability to detect electromagnetic fields under reasonable experimental conditions significantly more than chance, he owes the plaintiff the same amount he's seeking.
Why the amount he's seeking?
Wouldn't it be more fair to compensate the defendant for court fees (if any), lawyer salary, lost income/time and compensate the defendant for undue emotional distress? That is, make repairs exactly for the damage or losses you have caused, no more and no less?
Or should there be a disincentive towards filing suits? We all hate litigious bastards, especially the well-funded kind, but disincentives towards filing suits also impacts the little man.
I'm not saying I know the answer. I'm just suggesting that we should consider all the options (or at least a handful).
"An idea is a dangerous thing to have if it's your only idea." (I can't remember who said it, but I think David Allen quoted that person in Getting Things Done.)
It's sort of like saying that a waiter in a restaurant will now wait on you. Well, by definition someone who waits on me is a waiter.
Someone who waits on people is a waiter. You're being told that one of those waiters will service you (rather than other people).
</pedantic>
I think you good a good point. I think I have a good counterpoint. I also think the best point is somewhere in between: figuring out where your point applies, where mine applies, and where some compromise or alternative applies.
Stop being a bunch of wussies!
Agreed---to the extent that this is the right solution. Some people need to stop being wussies.
A kid shouldn't be taking medication for anything less than a serious physical problem. You don't give a kid powerful psychotropic drugs just because they're rebellious or shy.
That's an interesting opinion. Is that based on any evidence regarding the safety and effectiveness of the "null" treatment plan? Does it depend on what the psychiatric diagnosis is?
In any case, on to what I think people may want to think about:
Some people really need help!
It may very well be that people are being overdiagnosed. But some people are being diagnosed correctly.
Imagine being bullied every day; each day someone makes fun of you for no reason. They criticize your clothing, your hair, your way of speech, anything, everything. Nobody helps you, even when you cry for help. Nobody comes and talks to you. Nobody tries to be your friend.
Might you start to get the impression that nobody likes you? Or that nobody will ever like you? Nobody will ever love you?
Will that make you shy away from trying to make friends? From asking girls out on a date? Will your subsequent loneliness and lack of affection, love and sex throw you into a depression? Will it make you commit suicide?
If there's a person in this situation, do you think they deserve help? If they could be made less shy, could be taught to approach people and say "Hi, I see you're into ${interest} too. Want to hang out and ${interest} some time?" or "Would you go out with me?" (and have someone answer yes), and that makes said person happy and have a normal (if modest) social and romantic life, isn't that an improvement?
Granted, just because someone calls you ugly and you feel unhappy about it for a few days doesn't mean you should be doped up and talk to a shrink. But if you get into a negative spiral, you should be pulled out.
They'll have plenty of time to dope themselves into a stupor and cry at a psychologist's office when they're adults.
Why not intervene early? If you have poor social skills which causes rejection which causes fewer opportunities to practice your social skills which causes poor social skills---and so forth in a negative spiral---wouldn't you want to be pulled out of it sooner rather than later?
For those who really need help, what you're suggesting is postponing treatment until the condition has worsened and the patient has suffered a very unhappy childhood and adolescence.
You don't want that to happen to anyone, do you?
Actually, that's quite simple. It's ok when Google (the copyright holder) says it's ok, otherwise it's not.
Agreed. Understanding what Google actually says might not be so simple, though. I think that's why people have a tendency to employ people* who are experts at interpreting law and contracts.
(*) I mean lawyers.
Whats the news here? That MS complied to laws and judge orders?
Yes, that's exactly it.
And that's not meant to be a smartass comment about how often Microsoft does and doesn't do that.
All I'm trying to say is that this Microsoft/XML/Patent story is of interest to the slashdot crowd, and we would like to be informed about how the sequence of events unfold.
Getting confirmation that Microsoft complies with the law and court orders is an important event in this story---perhaps even the most crucial.
That's the reason it's on slashdot.
or maybe I should be sober enough
I'm quite sure that'd take your level of spelling to new and unprecedented "hights" ;)
what I am trying to say is that from a culture standpoint it is not that far fetched to think that many people were never diagnosed correctly
Ah. Good point.
to many self-important parents and educators
Well there we go, they're not psychiatrists. Don't people not trust the expertise, or do they not recognize where it is absent? Or ...?
(OTOH, according to the holy Adams scripture of the galaxy, psychiatrists are evil and want to run the world :P)
Complete lack of reliance on mail provider and ISP is the only way to be sure.
Aren't you're still relying on your domain name provider?
kind of like wearing a tshirt with a weird slogan on it to the interview, although certainly not so severe.
How about these wearing a shirt that says "NSFW"?
http://www.zazzle.com/nsfw+tshirts
http://www.force18.co.uk/nsfw-tshirt-p-451.html
http://www.kaboodle.com/reviews/nsfw--t-shirt--xl
Oh well, maybe one ought to go for "Will work for Mana."
http://www.geeklabel.com/show_category.php?cat=ccg+tcg
Responsible Disclosure [...] is a deliberately positive term for purely demagogic reasons.
Which is why I advocate calling it "Limited disclosure". That's a value-neutral term that fairly accurately describes it---and about as precisely as you can be in only two words.
Or call that other thing "Effective disclosure" if you feel a need to play the game of rhetoric.
By the way, the tone of your post puts me ever so slightly off.
The "Uh, no" and the "You know" give off a tiny whiff of a smug, condescending attitude. And your "I don't suppose you're a self-styled Asperger's sufferer, are you?" sounds like you think I am and think less of me for it.
It's nothing big, but it's there. At least that's how I interpret your post.
Maybe I'm being a hypersensitive crybaby here. Or maybe other people would feel the same way I do. I don't know; I'm not great at judging that.
I'm sorry to call you on this in public, but I want to say it where you'll hear it, and this is the best option I know (by virtue of being the only).
I'd just hate it if it were the case that (1) you didn't know what kind of effect you had on people; (2) that people would shun you because of the effect you had on them; (3) that you wanted to not be shunned; (4) that I could tell you something that would be informative and helpful to you; and (5) I didn't.
I can only choose what to do about point number 5. I'm sorry if I made the wrong choice.
And if (I don't think so, but if) you actually want to be a prick towards others, (voice of Mr. Hankey) Well I guess you can suck my tiny little balls :P
And if you think ADD is nothing like Asperger's... why not look at the official DSM-IV Criteria
How about we also go looking at differential diagnosis, then?
From http://apt.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/7/4/310
The conditions differ in that ADHD lacks the classic impairment in reciprocal social interaction, narrow interests, repetitive routines and non-verbal problems of Asperger syndrome.
Often talks excessively.
vs
lack of social or emotional reciprocity and stereotyped and repetitive use of language or idiosyncratic language
A kid with ADHD will talk about trains all the time. A kid with Asperger's will talk in weird ways about trains all the time. Definitely, def-definitely all the time.
Is often easily distracted.
vs
encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus
Erm... what? One says "doesn't focus for more than 20 seconds", the other says "focuses for 20 days in a row."
[edited] When people talk about searching for cures for autism, they mean severe autism where the individual is virtually non-functional.
Fair enough, I may have misjudged the situation. Thanks for informing me.
blame all their social problems on Asperger's ([...] having an excuse for being socially awkward)
Explaining and excusing are two different things.
You can't really excuse being an asshole to other people. You can explain, with "I didn't know what I said/did hurt your feelings, because I don't pick up on other people's feelings very well", but just as ignorance of the law isn't a defence, ignorance of unwritten social rules (norms, "laws") doesn't make people less offended when you break them.
they can also be comforted by the fact that they must obviously be brilliant, too
I can't remember exactly how an Asperger diagnosis correlates with IQ scores, but ISTR the general gist being that it isn't a wonderful predictor for being a genius (possibly on the contrary).
However, the intense devotion aspies can show to an interest, combined with a high IQ when it's there, can lead to good things.
Consider the formula "output = time * output/time". If IQ is a good correlate with output/time and aspies devote lots of time, there's a recipe for high output. Plus, of course, the reporting of these cases is biased outside of the scientific literature (e.g. in the mainstream press). Heck, look at the selection bias I showed in my own post :)
I don't suppose you're a self-styled Asperger's sufferer, are you?
No, I'm not. I am a socially awkward geek, though ;)
And to all of those who self-diagnose: if you think you suffer from a disorder that's causing you problems and would like help with those problems, go talk to a mental health professional about what help you can get in getting your life to work out for you.
Yeah, he probably wouldn't be able to do such useful things as remembering the whole phone book or recalling which baseball player did what in each year.
Or design and implement bittorrent, and run a company around it; see http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_43/b4105046863317.htm
Or win the Nobel Prize in economics; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_L._Smith and http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/03/vernon_smith_on_1.html
(Okay, that's Asperger's Syndrome; but I think that's within the scope of this discussion)
He might be able to button his own shirt or wipe his own ass, though.
Or it might be that he is better able to communicate with other people; he might have an easier time stumbling unto the idea that if he asks someone a question and silence is the answer, it might be because of an internal struggle between not wanting to lie and not wanting to admit the truth. And that he can gain something by not putting people in that situation again.
We know what would happen: Far more people would suffer from complications of diseases
Ah yes, of course. I probably should have mentioned that too.
You should be modded up for pointing this out. It's rather important that people see your post and are aware of this point.
The only common types of math where "close doesn't count" are basic arithmetic (excepting fractions) and pure algebraic manipulation.
I hope you mean that whether the mathematics "counts" or not is a statement about the utility of applying mathematics as a tool.
That is, as opposed to which mathematical statements are correct. It's emphatically not the case that a function is continuous if roughly all open sets in the codomain have open preimages. The definition says that all open sets have open preimages. The proofs of the properties of continuous functions rely on this, and not just kinda'.
For the purpose of mathematical correctness, close doesn't count. Only being exactly true does.
Close can be useful. That doesn't make it correct.
Autism seems to be on the rise and some families seem to point out patterns - pre vaccines, happy, post vaccines dolphin-esque.
I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if everybody stopped vaccinating their kids until well after autism's typical age of onset.
Although I think I know the answer: we would have just as many autistic kids, which would suggest that it isn't the vaccines causing the autism, yet a few people will cling to their belief no matter the evidence against it.
Firefox is a great operating system, it just needs a decent web browser.
Perhaps someone should write one in flisp?
Since, at a minimum, you can't solve for the state of the lottery lady
I don't see anything which makes it impossible to in principle measure her first, then include her as part of the machine's state.
You'd probably need to model everything she interacts with, transitively, so you have to model the entire universe, which is rather impractical if you're limited to being inside the universe.
But maybe you can measure and model to within a crazy high precision?
The golden ratio turns up in anything that has a pentagon, so d12s, d20s
Clarified that for you.
I wish there was more geometry in the mathematics syllabus.
I think someone wants more statistics ;)
What's wrong with entering a entering a username, the site replying with a challenge token? I then sign the token with my PGP key and access is granted.
If I had it my way, I'd point my browser to ~/.gnupg/pubring.gpg or ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub or somesuch (or ~/.online-identity/pubkey) and use SSL client certificates. You know, where instead of just the server proving to be who it claims, the client does as well. Then I would have zero-typing logins, securely.
Unfortunately, crypto takes a lot of CPU horsepower. For that reason, most server operators will want to do as little as they can get away with (which is less than what is required for good security), and the uninformed public won't know that it should scream about this. The informed public will scream and cry, but will be derided as lunatics or ignored (as is the case here on /.).
But you're going to need an auxiliary computer (smart card or usb fob or something) to plug into computers that aren't your own (or rather that you shouldn't trust). And you need to be sure that the alien computer can talk to and understand your auxiliary computer.
Will most people want to pay for this? Or will they prefer to use passwords, because they are free, and to hell with the second-order effects, we don't want to think about the consequences of our actions!
2008: Oh no, someone who's not me knows my password! I need to call Blizzard!
2011: Oh no, someone who's not me stole my crypto widget! I need to call Blizzard!
Malware keyloggers can steal WoW passwords. They can't steal your other computer. Not even if that computer is called an authenticator and is rather special-purpose.
It's not like people are going to forget their World of WarCrack passwords, they type it every day </snarky> ;)
You want to err on the side of freedom to do as you please (within the law) in public - I want to err on the side of the freedom to be in public (i.e. people with fairly common allergies being free to use public places*)
The thing is, everybody is free to be on the plane. You may not like the consequences of doing the things you are free to do, but that doesn't mean you aren't free to do them.
I you want to get on a plane and be free from people doing X, that means people's freedom to do X has to be taken away from them.
I suppose they're just different forms of freedom.
No, one is a form of freedom, the other is a form of imposition of restrictions so a certain group of people can have things their way.
Freedom from means taking away others' freedom to.
Now, I've described what the two things are (freedom and restriction); I'm not saying one is always better than the other, or most often. I'm pro-restrictions when they make sense. Isn't the whole point of democracy that We The People impose on We The People a set of rules which are meant to bring about a state of affairs that We The People like?
I like that random people on the street aren't free to kill me, and I'm more than happy to give up my own freedom to kill others to get that. I'm glad politicians are forcing phone companies to let me keep my phone number when I change to a different carrier. I'm also glad I'm free to be a disagreeable asshole on slashdot if I like, although I aim for arguing counterpoints and -arguments in a respectful tone :)
Quality music sometimes requires a serious commitment
Trust me, as a part-time amateur musician, I know this all too well ;)
[...] they should be reimbursed for doing that. [...] If so, and if those musicians make a product, shouldn't they get something for their investment?
Why should they be reimbursed for that? Because they are being reimbursed with our current set of laws? Because it's hard work?
Suppose I get really good at making buggy whips, and I invest a lot of time and effort into that. Then I make buggy whips but nobody needs any of them. Shouldn't I get something for my investment? I should be reimbursed for doing that!
No! Whether I deserve reimbursement for making something has nothing to do with the training or production costs, and everything to do with the amount of money people are willing to pay for it.
but are you really ready to say that certain kinds of music shouldn't be created just because it gets in the way of your copyright paradigm?
No I'm not. I don't want to dictate what music people can and cannot create.
What I am suggesting is that (maybe!) a different set of laws works better than our current ones.
If those laws are passed and people choose to no longer make a certain kind work, that's a shame, but if the laws create progress, that loss is the the cost of progress.
Yes, some things will be lost. Other things will be gained. The import question is whether the gains exceed the losses.
I'm not particularly in favor of any argument that begins by eliminating entire artistic genres.
I think you have misunderstood something. That's not where the argument begins, that point is roughly in the middle. The argument is structured something like
It has been argued that the most socially beneficial state-of-copyright a piece of music can be in is "public domain". Copyright serves to ensure that some (more) music will exist, such that this music can be in the public domain.
If all music goes straight to public domain, yes, there will be less of some. But we would reap the higher benefit of the rest immediately. That's a trade-off. The question is: is it a good trade-off? Is it the best trade-off?
I'm also not sure how much is gained by a system where it's free to share with your friends (as you note in your comment), but there's not much to share, because people don't make a lot of certain genres (like movies) anymore.
Neither am I, see above. But I sure would like to know. You seem to talk only about what we trade away, not so much of what we gain. Why is that?