This is not a conference about public policy, it is about policies within their community.
As I already said, Jews do not generally impose their religious rules on non-Jews, and the ultra-orthodox are not an exception. The reason the Haredi are so militant about their rules in Israel is that they are surrounded by other Jews in Israel, and most of those Jews are not orthodox. Unfortunately, aside from the fact that they are basically demanding that all Jews practice their particular brand of orthodoxy, they also tend to forget that there are large numbers of Muslims in Israel who are also affected by the Israeli government's decisions (perhaps because they have swallowed the "this land is our land" mantra hook, line, and and sinker).
Of course, Israel's domestic politics are irrelevant to America's domestic politics, so there is really no point in getting into an in-depth discussion of the issue. Israeli politics are only relevant to America's foreign policy; we could discuss that issue ad infinitum, but as far as this story is concerned that is equally irrelevant.
This conference is about deciding what sort of rules should be applied to the Internet within the ultra-orthodox community, not banning the Internet all together. As for the issue of child molestation, yes, it is a problem within the community; and guess what? There are Jews standing outside of the conference protesting its purpose and demanding that the issue of child molestation be addressed first. So much for hating the Internet.
You know what the worst thing you can do is? Point fingers at the ultra-orthodox and scream about child molestation, since that is exactly what they are afraid of happening if people speak about it outside of their community -- you are basically validating what they are saying to themselves when they keep it a secret. How about we take the rational approach and just bring child molesters to court, where they can be tried and sentenced like anyone else, without shouting about how they are Jewish?
No, I understand them just fine. I just don't AGREE with them.
Unless you parents are ultra-orthodox, I am going to guess that none of the 40000 people at this conference actually care about whether or not you agree with them. They want to live their lives according to their rules and traditions, and this conference is about deciding how to deal with the Internet in that context -- how to keep traditions alive and relevant, and how to keep the community together, now that society has been fundamentally altered by the Internet. Here is an example of something they are probably concerned about: there is a rule prohibiting gossip, yet on social networking websites gossip is both common and sometimes more severe/malicious than it is offline.
You know what they are not concerned about? Whether or not you are gossiping on a social networking site. Just like they do not care if you go out and eat some pork. You are not part of their community, so as far as they are concerned the rules are not even relevant to you. There is some irony here: you are probably in agreement with them about their rules and your own life.
What you need to understand about the ultra-orthodox is that all their rules and restrictions serve a single purpose: to keep the community together and maintain their traditions, no matter where they are or what sort of attitude the people around them have. One of the issues they are discussing at the conference is the effect that social networking websites have on the community; there are concerns that people will become more disconnected from each other, that they might gossip more, etc., which could create strife within the community itself. Sure, there is the matter of "purity" and abstaining from masturbation or pornography, but pornography is a pretty small issue within that community which has been addressed before -- as you say, "do not go to pornography sites," and additionally that if you accidentally go to one, you should close it and say a prayer (they are religious, after all).
Just keep in mind that the second you start talking about fucking with MY internet
Jews do not generally go around telling non-Jews what to do with their personal lives. If you take a look at the Talmud, there are sections that deal with how Jews should live when they are surrounded by non-Jews; the Talmud was written at a time when non-Jews were pagans whose rituals would be disgusting by modern standards, but the Talmud only commands Jews to stay away from pagan temples and to be careful about letting pagans become to "familiar" with a Jew's animals, and some regulations about wines and eating utensils that might be used by pagans. Note that the Talmud does not command Jews to stop pagans from practicing their religions or to judge them for their rituals. As long as you are not bringing your laptop full of pornography into an ultra-orthodox community, they really do not care what you are doing or what sort of information is on your computer network.
Even without religious influences we are going to be stuck with some stupid laws. Drugs are not illegal because some politician thinks they are immoral; drugs are illegal because some fascist racists discovered a convenient way to increase the power of the police, pump up the profits of certain corporations, and attack minority communities while pretending to be working for the benefit of the people. For every idiotic law that you can attribute to religion, there is a dangerous law that can be attributed to lobbyists.
On the contrary, they could be negatively affected if all those proprietary languages which are locking them in cannot be re-implemented under the force of law.
That is the risk one assumes with a proprietary language, regardless of whether or not APIs can be copyrighted. People who use proprietary languages do not generally view this as being a problem, or at least they consider the risk to be acceptable.
People will only be driven away if they see their privacy being violated -- information exposed to friends, etc. Now, suppose that Facebook just conveniently sells more detailed information to advertisers at higher prices, without telling the users -- nobody will leave the site, and even if they are told what is happening they will just say, "Well so what, I am not that interesting so why should I care?"
âoeWe want to dump a lot of money into Facebook,â one says, citing peersâ(TM) activity on the site as evidence of its longevity. âoeYouâ(TM)re on Facebook half your day, if not more. Itâ(TM)s a necessity. Itâ(TM)s water, itâ(TM)s death and now itâ(TM)s Facebook.â
Do you know that Facebook will have 1 shareholder with 55.8% of the voting shares?
I am pretty sure that Facebook is required to maximize the profit of all its investors, despite the fact that one investor holds a majority stake. As CEO, Zuckerberg does have a duty to all of Facebook's investors, not just his own vision...
The only shareholder that matters doesn't need maximized profits.
How do facts jive with your "reduce privacy to maximise profits" ideology?
...except that Zuckerberg has already attacked privacy rights, both in statements and through Facebook's policies and design. So there is really no reason to think that he would not continue to do so.
Notice how Google neither inserted a joke nor a pitch for its own search engine? In fact, the first hit I get is to an About.com page, which puts Google at #10; then a page that lists a few different surveys; then Dogpile. Google does plenty of things that I would call evil, but in this case they did what I would expect: not try to alter their search results to promote their own product.
If the parent bought a device that requires signing of code, then I am sure they can afford the $99/ year. I always hear on slashdot that it is such a low price it will never hinder anyone.
First of all, I do not know who you hear that from -- that price could be more than someone is willing to pay just to give their kids a chance to write some programs.
More importantly, a young child may never express a desire to program if their computer is designed to stop them from doing so. A lot of people, myself included, broke into programming by experimenting with our computers. Yet a locked-down computer that tries to extract fees from people who want to program is something will discourage kids who are not absolutely determined to learn -- which is going to be quite a few kids. A parent may not spend the money to let their child write programs if their kid does not even ask.
When I think back to my early days of learning to program, here is what I remember: downloading GCC only any computer I could get my hands on, and using it to compile C programs (I did not actually own my first computer until I was 13). Most of the people whose computers I was using did not seem to mind -- they were mystified by programming but did not want to discourage my curiosity. I wonder how much longer such a thing will be possible, with the current trends in computing. Will an 11 year old in 2015 or 2020 be able to sit down and write programs on whatever computer he can find, or will he only be able to find app stores and locked down computers? Will school computers allow students to write their own programs, or will that only be allowed on computers dedicated to programming classes?
I am sure that there will always be hackers in the world, kids who learn to program outside of the assigned curriculum and whose parents do not try to discourage their curiosity. What I fear is that the number will shrink, that it will only be wealthy kids who can be hackers (particularly if they must buy a second computer in order to write programs -- like they must with an iPad), and that they will be surrounded by restrictions and demands for money. It is easy for an adult, especially one who works in a technical job, to forget that kids have no income, that they cannot just buy a high end workstation, and that they must often make due with whatever the adults around them are willing to give them (or throw away). Many adults will not stop to think that the children they care for will be restricted by the "easy to learn" computer they bought, or that those restrictions might be detrimental.
And maybe this 9 lines of code don't seem like a big deal?
It is not; as everyone has pointed out, those nine lines of code check to see if a number is in a particular range, which is a routine and common programming task. We are also talking about nine lines of code here -- people writing nine identical lines of code is not something to even blink an eye over, especially when the nine lines are so simple. Maybe Bloch really did copy those nine lines, as opposed to just writing them from scratch; the point here is that Oracle argument about those nine lines is completely absurd.
What about the other hundreds of lines that were decompiled and copied?
467 lines of code that was found to have been decompiled. Android itself has over a million lines of code, so what you are talking to amounts to a small fraction of a percent of the total Android codebase. It is equally doubtful that those 467 lines of code accelerated the development of Anrdoid in any significant way, but I suppose Oracle is entitle to whatever damages the judge thinks are appropriate for this particular act of infringement.
The most interesting point is if Bloch did work on the code for OpenJDK and also worked on Andriod code, doesn't that throw the whole "cleanroom implementation" out the window?
Maybe, but so far Oracle has never even be able to convince a jury (whose technical expertise I seriously doubt) that Bloch copied more than 9 lines of code. Oracle was not even able to convince the jury that the 8 decompiled files were copyright infringement; the judge had to rule on that one.
The issue of whether or not an API can be copyrighted has nothing to do with whether or not the judge is a programmer. APIs can be complex, and a lot of design may go into an API (what patterns to expose to programmers, etc.). Some programmers would not even object to APIs being copyrightable; many people use proprietary languages that are implemented by a single vendor, and would not even be affected by such a ruling (unless they also use Java).
What does it matter how easy the code was to write?
It matters in determining whether or not the copyright infringement in any way helped Google. Oracle is trying to claim that Google got to market faster because they copied the code; but if the code is so simple that it could be written as quickly as copied, that argument basically falls apart.
And if it was so easy why did google need to copy it?
I am not even convinced that Google copied those 9 lines. They do not do something particularly unique, and we are only talking about 9 lines -- 3 of which are generic things like braces. It would be pretty easy for a programmer who is adhering to Java conventions to produce identical lines of code without having seen those lines.
Please resolve this amicably soon. I don't like it when mommy and daddy fight.
Programming languages should not be ruled by mommy and daddy. You are asking for trouble when you use a programming language whose fate is left to the hands of industry titans.
I did not even have access to a computer until I was 11; it is not always a question of stupidity. That being said, I am pretty sure that some time shortly after I started programming, I wrote a function like rangeCheck (although in C, so using return values instead of exceptions). This is not an issue of age; someone with two weeks of programming experience could have written that function.
And these are the people that judge and impose laws on us techies.
Hopefully those who impose laws and those who judge are two separate branches of government, even in Canada.
The problem is that both law enforcement and judges are (a) technically incompetent and (b) tend to side with corporate interests when it comes to technology.
these are the people that judge and impose laws on us techies
You are not "supposed" to be a techie; you are "supposed" to do technical work at your job, then go home, drink beer, and watch whatever propaganda is on TV. Advanced technology is "supposed" to be the secret, non-disclosable lore of corporations, not something you just play with in your home.
I think it should be clear that we need anonymity systems, when comments made on Twitter and Flickr are used to justfiy ruining a person's life like this. It is a sad thing to say, but we need the tools developed to help dissidents in China to protect people here in the "free world."
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, Israel's domestic politics are irrelevant to America's domestic politics, so there is really no point in getting into an in-depth discussion of the issue. Israeli politics are only relevant to America's foreign policy; we could discuss that issue ad infinitum, but as far as this story is concerned that is equally irrelevant.
Yup, the ultra-orthodox really hate the Internet:
http://www.chabad.org/
This conference is about deciding what sort of rules should be applied to the Internet within the ultra-orthodox community, not banning the Internet all together. As for the issue of child molestation, yes, it is a problem within the community; and guess what? There are Jews standing outside of the conference protesting its purpose and demanding that the issue of child molestation be addressed first. So much for hating the Internet.
You know what the worst thing you can do is? Point fingers at the ultra-orthodox and scream about child molestation, since that is exactly what they are afraid of happening if people speak about it outside of their community -- you are basically validating what they are saying to themselves when they keep it a secret. How about we take the rational approach and just bring child molesters to court, where they can be tried and sentenced like anyone else, without shouting about how they are Jewish?
No, I understand them just fine. I just don't AGREE with them.
Unless you parents are ultra-orthodox, I am going to guess that none of the 40000 people at this conference actually care about whether or not you agree with them. They want to live their lives according to their rules and traditions, and this conference is about deciding how to deal with the Internet in that context -- how to keep traditions alive and relevant, and how to keep the community together, now that society has been fundamentally altered by the Internet. Here is an example of something they are probably concerned about: there is a rule prohibiting gossip, yet on social networking websites gossip is both common and sometimes more severe/malicious than it is offline.
You know what they are not concerned about? Whether or not you are gossiping on a social networking site. Just like they do not care if you go out and eat some pork. You are not part of their community, so as far as they are concerned the rules are not even relevant to you. There is some irony here: you are probably in agreement with them about their rules and your own life.
Just keep in mind that the second you start talking about fucking with MY internet
Jews do not generally go around telling non-Jews what to do with their personal lives. If you take a look at the Talmud, there are sections that deal with how Jews should live when they are surrounded by non-Jews; the Talmud was written at a time when non-Jews were pagans whose rituals would be disgusting by modern standards, but the Talmud only commands Jews to stay away from pagan temples and to be careful about letting pagans become to "familiar" with a Jew's animals, and some regulations about wines and eating utensils that might be used by pagans. Note that the Talmud does not command Jews to stop pagans from practicing their religions or to judge them for their rituals. As long as you are not bringing your laptop full of pornography into an ultra-orthodox community, they really do not care what you are doing or what sort of information is on your computer network.
We should make a movie about that...
The person would not discuss the names of others who attended to protect their privacy.
Oh the irony...
Is this "news for nerds?"
Drug use encourages a chaotic populace, it pushes society away from order
[citation needed]
Even without religious influences we are going to be stuck with some stupid laws. Drugs are not illegal because some politician thinks they are immoral; drugs are illegal because some fascist racists discovered a convenient way to increase the power of the police, pump up the profits of certain corporations, and attack minority communities while pretending to be working for the benefit of the people. For every idiotic law that you can attribute to religion, there is a dangerous law that can be attributed to lobbyists.
On the contrary, they could be negatively affected if all those proprietary languages which are locking them in cannot be re-implemented under the force of law.
That is the risk one assumes with a proprietary language, regardless of whether or not APIs can be copyrighted. People who use proprietary languages do not generally view this as being a problem, or at least they consider the risk to be acceptable.
We all know that this is part of Satan's trick, right?
http://chick.com/reading/tracts/1079/1079_01.asp
Hint:
People will only be driven away if they see their privacy being violated -- information exposed to friends, etc. Now, suppose that Facebook just conveniently sells more detailed information to advertisers at higher prices, without telling the users -- nobody will leave the site, and even if they are told what is happening they will just say, "Well so what, I am not that interesting so why should I care?"
Here is one view to think about:
âoeWe want to dump a lot of money into Facebook,â one says, citing peersâ(TM) activity on the site as evidence of its longevity. âoeYouâ(TM)re on Facebook half your day, if not more. Itâ(TM)s a necessity. Itâ(TM)s water, itâ(TM)s death and now itâ(TM)s Facebook.â
People have high hopes for Facebook.
Do you know that Facebook will have 1 shareholder with 55.8% of the voting shares?
I am pretty sure that Facebook is required to maximize the profit of all its investors, despite the fact that one investor holds a majority stake. As CEO, Zuckerberg does have a duty to all of Facebook's investors, not just his own vision...
The only shareholder that matters doesn't need maximized profits.
How do facts jive with your "reduce privacy to maximise profits" ideology?
http://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+best+search+engine%3F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a
Notice how Google neither inserted a joke nor a pitch for its own search engine? In fact, the first hit I get is to an About.com page, which puts Google at #10; then a page that lists a few different surveys; then Dogpile. Google does plenty of things that I would call evil, but in this case they did what I would expect: not try to alter their search results to promote their own product.
If the parent bought a device that requires signing of code, then I am sure they can afford the $99/ year. I always hear on slashdot that it is such a low price it will never hinder anyone.
First of all, I do not know who you hear that from -- that price could be more than someone is willing to pay just to give their kids a chance to write some programs.
More importantly, a young child may never express a desire to program if their computer is designed to stop them from doing so. A lot of people, myself included, broke into programming by experimenting with our computers. Yet a locked-down computer that tries to extract fees from people who want to program is something will discourage kids who are not absolutely determined to learn -- which is going to be quite a few kids. A parent may not spend the money to let their child write programs if their kid does not even ask.
When I think back to my early days of learning to program, here is what I remember: downloading GCC only any computer I could get my hands on, and using it to compile C programs (I did not actually own my first computer until I was 13). Most of the people whose computers I was using did not seem to mind -- they were mystified by programming but did not want to discourage my curiosity. I wonder how much longer such a thing will be possible, with the current trends in computing. Will an 11 year old in 2015 or 2020 be able to sit down and write programs on whatever computer he can find, or will he only be able to find app stores and locked down computers? Will school computers allow students to write their own programs, or will that only be allowed on computers dedicated to programming classes?
I am sure that there will always be hackers in the world, kids who learn to program outside of the assigned curriculum and whose parents do not try to discourage their curiosity. What I fear is that the number will shrink, that it will only be wealthy kids who can be hackers (particularly if they must buy a second computer in order to write programs -- like they must with an iPad), and that they will be surrounded by restrictions and demands for money. It is easy for an adult, especially one who works in a technical job, to forget that kids have no income, that they cannot just buy a high end workstation, and that they must often make due with whatever the adults around them are willing to give them (or throw away). Many adults will not stop to think that the children they care for will be restricted by the "easy to learn" computer they bought, or that those restrictions might be detrimental.
Little kids may not have access to computers that they can run their own programs on...
And maybe this 9 lines of code don't seem like a big deal?
It is not; as everyone has pointed out, those nine lines of code check to see if a number is in a particular range, which is a routine and common programming task. We are also talking about nine lines of code here -- people writing nine identical lines of code is not something to even blink an eye over, especially when the nine lines are so simple. Maybe Bloch really did copy those nine lines, as opposed to just writing them from scratch; the point here is that Oracle argument about those nine lines is completely absurd.
What about the other hundreds of lines that were decompiled and copied?
467 lines of code that was found to have been decompiled. Android itself has over a million lines of code, so what you are talking to amounts to a small fraction of a percent of the total Android codebase. It is equally doubtful that those 467 lines of code accelerated the development of Anrdoid in any significant way, but I suppose Oracle is entitle to whatever damages the judge thinks are appropriate for this particular act of infringement.
The most interesting point is if Bloch did work on the code for OpenJDK and also worked on Andriod code, doesn't that throw the whole "cleanroom implementation" out the window?
Maybe, but so far Oracle has never even be able to convince a jury (whose technical expertise I seriously doubt) that Bloch copied more than 9 lines of code. Oracle was not even able to convince the jury that the 8 decompiled files were copyright infringement; the judge had to rule on that one.
The issue of whether or not an API can be copyrighted has nothing to do with whether or not the judge is a programmer. APIs can be complex, and a lot of design may go into an API (what patterns to expose to programmers, etc.). Some programmers would not even object to APIs being copyrightable; many people use proprietary languages that are implemented by a single vendor, and would not even be affected by such a ruling (unless they also use Java).
What does it matter how easy the code was to write?
It matters in determining whether or not the copyright infringement in any way helped Google. Oracle is trying to claim that Google got to market faster because they copied the code; but if the code is so simple that it could be written as quickly as copied, that argument basically falls apart.
And if it was so easy why did google need to copy it?
I am not even convinced that Google copied those 9 lines. They do not do something particularly unique, and we are only talking about 9 lines -- 3 of which are generic things like braces. It would be pretty easy for a programmer who is adhering to Java conventions to produce identical lines of code without having seen those lines.
Please resolve this amicably soon. I don't like it when mommy and daddy fight.
Programming languages should not be ruled by mommy and daddy. You are asking for trouble when you use a programming language whose fate is left to the hands of industry titans.
I did not even have access to a computer until I was 11; it is not always a question of stupidity. That being said, I am pretty sure that some time shortly after I started programming, I wrote a function like rangeCheck (although in C, so using return values instead of exceptions). This is not an issue of age; someone with two weeks of programming experience could have written that function.
And these are the people that judge and impose laws on us techies.
Hopefully those who impose laws and those who judge are two separate branches of government, even in Canada.
The problem is that both law enforcement and judges are (a) technically incompetent and (b) tend to side with corporate interests when it comes to technology.
these are the people that judge and impose laws on us techies
You are not "supposed" to be a techie; you are "supposed" to do technical work at your job, then go home, drink beer, and watch whatever propaganda is on TV. Advanced technology is "supposed" to be the secret, non-disclosable lore of corporations, not something you just play with in your home.
What, did you not get the memo?
I think it should be clear that we need anonymity systems, when comments made on Twitter and Flickr are used to justfiy ruining a person's life like this. It is a sad thing to say, but we need the tools developed to help dissidents in China to protect people here in the "free world."