software should not be owned ? who said that ? the only reason for copyrighting and patents is to get around the stupid laws which exist to deny people the right to share code. thats the whole point of the free software movement.
You can share all you can muster under public domain. No laws are restricting you. I think you have misunderstood the concept of giving. If you give something with a constraint or expectation, you really haven't given anything at all.
if we patent all our ideas and make em freely available it prevents others from patenting them and locking them up in proprietary licenses. its a way to get around the stupid situation which exists in this country.
Just publicize the ideas and blueprints. It will become prior art, public knowledge and an unrestrictive benefit to the entire society.
and i dont see how hypocrisy has anything to do with the goals of making open source software available to anyone who wants it with the minimum of restrictions..
I wouldn't call it hypocricy, but rather lack of understanding. You see anything that isn't benefiting you as bad and something that is to be avoided. That's sad, for you, because you'll never be happy when you're not giving.
What if I decide to do the same thing, just with the BSD-kernel? Will I suddenly become target for a patent license threat, just because this guy hates the BSD-license? How about all the other gazillion variations of licenses, or if I create my own?
Why should he be granted a government controlled and enforced monopoly on such a trivial idea? As you had the brilliance of seeing, having people working for him for free. Why should I join the project or even bother porting it?
I don't believe any means is necessary towards an end, and this is another example of that. Justifying something because it benefits you and your ideals, is a display of ego, narrow-mindedness and lack of understanding and compassion for others. Everyone has many good reasons (and bad ones) to do what they do, even in the corporate world. I know I didn't explain this well, but I hope you got the point.
Btw, how can the GPL and a patent be legally combined? It can not, because the GPL states that further restrictions may not be imposed on the software (not the excact words). Especially not on use. Patents are such a restriction, so this is neither morally nor legally defendable IMHO.
I really wonder why people think this is great, just because it seems to "benefit" free software. I can assure you, it does not. This can further alienate people in the corporate world from the GPL license. But you were going to use force and violence all along weren't you? (talking to those supporting this idea, not the parent poster who was rather sensible)
There is no good side, the only good side is neutral.
Look at chess as an example. This is like having a chess computer that has to learn the rules. Compared to playing chess (which is computable), learning the moves is relatively easy.
Wrong. Let's suppose this program gets a list of available moves every turn. How is it to even know the board is a 8x8 board and the relations between each square? How is it supposed to know the significance and difference between a king, queen, rook, knight, bishop and pawn? In order to play intelligently, it will have to learn that sacrifices can be a good thing, but is generally bad if you aren't guaranteed an advantage later in the game. That making one little mistake in your tactic/strategy can quickly lose you the game against a strong player.
Without assumptions you're really screwed. So it very much depends on the interface, how much and what information the program gets every turn. There'll always be some assumptions left too, as what you choose will always have some limitations.
so I'm fairly confident I'll live to see computers at least as intelligent as I am. And I'm 54.
Well, that doesn't say much. Because either A) you're not very bright or B) you live a very safe and healthy life, so you expect it to be looong.;-)
But seriously, don't you think there's a huge step from building an artificial neurological brain to making it actually work. We may imitate some internal processes in the neurons, but the brain has a huge and complex architecture suited for human activity and body. I believe it can be done, roughly, but if it's going to be in MY lifetime there'll have to be HUUGE advances soon.
I don't believe these AIs will be comparable to humans that soon though. Much of human thinking is not logical at all. If we were to only live perfectly logical lives, I think I'd vote myself out of "humanity". Because much of our joy and fun is not logical at all.
Then again, it all really depends what you mean with intelligence too. That's just another can of worms, making such statements completely arbitrary.
1) A robot shall not through action or inaction allow a human come to harm.
2) A robot shall always obey the orders of a human unless it violates the first law.
3) A robot shall attempt to save itself, unless this violates the first and second laws.
How in the world are we going to build robots that follow these laws, when even most humans can't? These robots would have to be 100% perfect psychic. Also, if you had really read those novels, you would have noticed that the plot was usually about how the robots somehow did harm anyways, even when following these rules.
I believe I have every right under fair use to alter content that I download to my computer. If CNN doesn't want me excercising fair use, they shouldn't let me have access to their website. CNN should have absolutely no control over the content as soon as it enters my computer. I choose how I wish to view it.
That people are installing and running the software unknowingly is what's bad here, not that web-content can be altered _locally_ by third-party software. Incidentally, I'm already viewing/editing this through two third-party software: Internet Explorer and Web Washer.
All the whining on here basically comes down to: "I want control over my content. They can't do this to me!". It's not a very rational or mature statement. In fact, if you're against the DMCA and it's restrictions on fair use, it's a very hypocritical and selfish attitude. No wonder there are so much war and conflict on this planet when people change attitude immediately when they feel threatened.
Joe Sixpack installed the friggin' program. If it was deceptively installed along with a totally unrelated product, that's where we can nail them. But if Joe Sixpack knows about its features and uses them, he should be allowed to have automatic links to pr0n-images for words like 'rape' and 'teensex' for all you care. THAT's what fair use is all about. There's nothing inherently bad with this type of program, as long as the user is not deceived of what it does.
According to your argument, I would need to write my own WWW-browser. After all, using a third-party program that formats everything, like IE, is giving business to THEM. Clearly not a good thing for you. Duh! It all boils down to what YOU like or dislike. That's egoistic, small-minded and hypocritical.
Here's my point. If I want a third party to translate your page on my computer, or do whatever I want with it, that's my choice. It's supposed to be a free market out there. If you can't see this, you're just too emotional about the issue.
I'm not saying I agree with the deceptive tactic of installing crap with a totally unrelated product. That's the bad thing here, that the users are kept in the dark of why they're suddenly getting yellow ad-links. Then they start complaining to the webmasters and suing them. I think we found the root of the problem here., don't you?
What's so wrong with this has nothing to do with the websites themselves I believe. What is so wrong with this and not with various sites offering translation into german, chef-style or whatever? As long as the user wants it, there should be nothing wrong with it. You don't own the bytes on his/her computer, or how he/she chooses to display your webpage.
What's wrong is the deception it can create in the user who just wanted to install Kazaa and got their IE-installation changed without any real warning. Smart tags/top text has nothing to do with the installed software itself. Of course, people will start to learn to choose No the next time, so it's not a good way to lose future customers to lure them into your trap. Of course, this businessmodel is doomed from the start.
At 1600x1200 and X at 100 dpi, readably-sized anti-alised TrueType fonts in KDE/Konq look MUCH better than the bitmapped fonts or even scaled Type 1 fonts do. I once thought as you do -- that AA wasn't a big deal and as a Linux user, I could well do without it. But now, it's a real hardship when I have to use other non-AA browsers.
Have you tried Microsoft or other commercial fonts? Many of them are free downloads (as in beer). I've yet to see good Free fonts.
Anyways, that you have to have resolution of 1600x1200, truetype fonts with anti-aliasing to enjoy reading the web is your problem isn't it?;-) Personally I think AA makes the text look blurred, washed out and harder to read. I guess it's different from system to system and person to person, so let's just be content with what we got:-)
Well, I'm sorry for the bad analogy. I don't really believe in analogies, because they're all detracting from the real issue. However, sometimes they do get the point across. Other times, people need the spoon though.
What I meant is that society is not benefited by bounty-hunters, because of all the possibilities of fraud, violence and abuse. That's why we have a police-force. They're properly trained, monitored and trusted to do their work properly. The recent debacle over rogue lawyers sending a $5,000 fee to the author of Killustrator without Adobe's knowledge, illustrates these problems in reality.
IOW: It's good for a society to separate government and corporations. Corporations should NOT enforce law, not even by legalese blackmailing.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. There's no magic algorithm that allows 100% perfect censorship or even close to that. The "better" omelet it becomes, the more eggs you spoil. What if I want to send you a Word-document? Have you had a peek inside one, they're binary. UUencode can convert to 7-bit ASCII. Stenography would become an obvious choice to use against a better algorithm doing an FFT on the data or whatnot. Not to mention how much scanning every packet will hurt performance on the network. What will tech-support tell a customer when he's denied sending an Excel-spreadsheet or Matlab-file to his friend? Hell, I can't even play Quake with that kind of lag! (eek!;) This idea is plainly dumb. I'll break a hell of a lot more than it fixes. It's simply unrealistic. Imagine your past months free downloads. You would be denied them unless the sites started converting to stenographic form. Like any personal struggle: idiotic resistance to the inevitable.
Ok, sounds like a good business opportunity by market segmentation... those who want more freedom will also have to pay more.
Okies, so you "pay to play". Not to mention corrupt, you just pay yourself out of criminal status. Sounds like a plan for ISPs, but the original authors will remain unpaid. Just who are we doing this for anyways? To preserve bloated conglomerations?
If the ISPs start treating them badly, the backlash will hurt bad.
Well, people will learn to complain. They will get more and more computer savvy. Not like those on/. perhaps (thank God), but enough to know when they get screwed on a deal or get their "desktop real-estate" completely sold out. These times are just in the infancy of the IT-age. If we can't have patience, we deserve the emotional turmoil.
That's what we have police for. Or maybe you wouldn't mind if I followed you all day, took videos of you jaywalking and doing other minor stuff, then send you a blackmail letter demanding USD $2,000? After all, you are a criminal..
Banning encrypted traffic to and from unapproved sites is an obvious step and shouldn't get too much resistance from the majority of the home net users. How would it work? Let's say that if the IP address to which you've connected doesn't have a valid SSL certificate it's illegal to establish an encrypted link with it. That way encryption can still be used by banks and corporations whereas private, peer to peer encryption becomes illegal.
Port banning is the most braindead form of security/limitation I can think of (for an ISP, not for individual computers). What about the Quake-players!?;) Banning sites will just open up a can of worms and more work for the poor providers. Banning encryption by technological means doesn't necessarily mean peer-to-peer encryption becomes illegal, and it's a good way of losing customers. People start to realize encryption is a good thing and should always be used when plugged to the internet. Just how are you going to enforce a ban on encryption anyways? Read every packet to see if you understand all their content? What about people developing stuff, making open source/free software?
Remember, ISPs serve lots of different customers. If the ISPs start treating them badly, the backlash will hurt bad. This is not like discussing firewalling at work, it's a completely another topic. Also remember, that all of these measures are counter-productive to the benefits of internet. File sharing is a feature, not a bug or flaw. Instead of concentrating how we can limit it, we should concentrate on how we can build upon the already existing infrastructure without artificial limitations, borders and barriers. Nobody should be allowed to own it to twart the whole network to their own ends only.
Ah, I didn't think of it that way, but I guess it's basically the same argument as zero-cost copies. That's why I propose creative thinking, and also that people will learn to support what they find valueable and convenient. I would much rather live in a society without push-marketing everywhere and huge mass-marketing blitz of fancy fluff. It seems technology will disrupt the market enough to make that a reality, but of course it's a double-edged sword too. I don't see it as a disadvantage that people will be forced to consider what money really is, that it has no inherent value and that we're all in this together.
Good post. I just like to add that the issue is greater than what you seem to realize. You see, those creating information need to eat too. So basically, what "basic economic law" says is that to sustain that activity people will need to share their money, even though they can get it for free.
Sounds impossible? Maybe, that's why people need to change themselves, not technology. As long as people don't want to share fairly, they'll fight over "their right to listen" as others will fight for "their right to sell". In this process, huge companies and powerful executives will probably have to adjust their malpractice to more reasonable levels and become more human.
On other news today, Microsoft defended consumer rights against AOL!
Slashdot Mirror
software should not be owned ? who said that ? the only reason for copyrighting and patents is to get around the stupid laws which exist to deny people the right to share code. thats the whole point of the free software movement.
You can share all you can muster under public domain. No laws are restricting you. I think you have misunderstood the concept of giving. If you give something with a constraint or expectation, you really haven't given anything at all.
if we patent all our ideas and make em freely available it prevents others from patenting them and locking them up in proprietary licenses. its a way to get around the stupid situation which exists in this country.
Just publicize the ideas and blueprints. It will become prior art, public knowledge and an unrestrictive benefit to the entire society.
and i dont see how hypocrisy has anything to do with the goals of making open source software available to anyone who wants it with the minimum of restrictions..
I wouldn't call it hypocricy, but rather lack of understanding. You see anything that isn't benefiting you as bad and something that is to be avoided. That's sad, for you, because you'll never be happy when you're not giving.
- Steeltoe
What if I decide to do the same thing, just with the BSD-kernel? Will I suddenly become target for a patent license threat, just because this guy hates the BSD-license? How about all the other gazillion variations of licenses, or if I create my own?
Why should he be granted a government controlled and enforced monopoly on such a trivial idea? As you had the brilliance of seeing, having people working for him for free. Why should I join the project or even bother porting it?
I don't believe any means is necessary towards an end, and this is another example of that. Justifying something because it benefits you and your ideals, is a display of ego, narrow-mindedness and lack of understanding and compassion for others. Everyone has many good reasons (and bad ones) to do what they do, even in the corporate world. I know I didn't explain this well, but I hope you got the point.
Btw, how can the GPL and a patent be legally combined? It can not, because the GPL states that further restrictions may not be imposed on the software (not the excact words). Especially not on use. Patents are such a restriction, so this is neither morally nor legally defendable IMHO.
I really wonder why people think this is great, just because it seems to "benefit" free software. I can assure you, it does not. This can further alienate people in the corporate world from the GPL license. But you were going to use force and violence all along weren't you? (talking to those supporting this idea, not the parent poster who was rather sensible)
There is no good side, the only good side is neutral.
- Steeltoe
Look at chess as an example. This is like having a chess computer that has to learn the rules. Compared to playing chess (which is computable), learning the moves is relatively easy.
Wrong. Let's suppose this program gets a list of available moves every turn. How is it to even know the board is a 8x8 board and the relations between each square? How is it supposed to know the significance and difference between a king, queen, rook, knight, bishop and pawn? In order to play intelligently, it will have to learn that sacrifices can be a good thing, but is generally bad if you aren't guaranteed an advantage later in the game. That making one little mistake in your tactic/strategy can quickly lose you the game against a strong player.
Without assumptions you're really screwed. So it very much depends on the interface, how much and what information the program gets every turn. There'll always be some assumptions left too, as what you choose will always have some limitations.
- Steeltoe
If you continue this, my brain is gonna melt for sure! ;-)
- Steeltoe
so I'm fairly confident I'll live to see computers at least as intelligent as I am. And I'm 54.
;-)
Well, that doesn't say much. Because either A) you're not very bright or B) you live a very safe and healthy life, so you expect it to be looong.
But seriously, don't you think there's a huge step from building an artificial neurological brain to making it actually work. We may imitate some internal processes in the neurons, but the brain has a huge and complex architecture suited for human activity and body. I believe it can be done, roughly, but if it's going to be in MY lifetime there'll have to be HUUGE advances soon.
I don't believe these AIs will be comparable to humans that soon though. Much of human thinking is not logical at all. If we were to only live perfectly logical lives, I think I'd vote myself out of "humanity". Because much of our joy and fun is not logical at all.
Then again, it all really depends what you mean with intelligence too. That's just another can of worms, making such statements completely arbitrary.
- Steeltoe
1) A robot shall not through action or inaction allow a human come to harm.
2) A robot shall always obey the orders of a human unless it violates the first law.
3) A robot shall attempt to save itself, unless this violates the first and second laws.
How in the world are we going to build robots that follow these laws, when even most humans can't? These robots would have to be 100% perfect psychic. Also, if you had really read those novels, you would have noticed that the plot was usually about how the robots somehow did harm anyways, even when following these rules.
- Steeltoe
I believe I have every right under fair use to alter content that I download to my computer. If CNN doesn't want me excercising fair use, they shouldn't let me have access to their website. CNN should have absolutely no control over the content as soon as it enters my computer. I choose how I wish to view it.
That people are installing and running the software unknowingly is what's bad here, not that web-content can be altered _locally_ by third-party software. Incidentally, I'm already viewing/editing this through two third-party software: Internet Explorer and Web Washer.
All the whining on here basically comes down to: "I want control over my content. They can't do this to me!". It's not a very rational or mature statement. In fact, if you're against the DMCA and it's restrictions on fair use, it's a very hypocritical and selfish attitude. No wonder there are so much war and conflict on this planet when people change attitude immediately when they feel threatened.
- Steeltoe
Nice slogan they've chosen for themselves. Take a peek on the upper right corner of their page, right below Contact Ezula: Own the Net!
Hehe, yeah. That's right 3ZU14 0WNZ Y00!
- Steeltoe
What is wrong with it if it is what the user wants?
- Steeltoe
Joe Sixpack installed the friggin' program. If it was deceptively installed along with a totally unrelated product, that's where we can nail them. But if Joe Sixpack knows about its features and uses them, he should be allowed to have automatic links to pr0n-images for words like 'rape' and 'teensex' for all you care. THAT's what fair use is all about. There's nothing inherently bad with this type of program, as long as the user is not deceived of what it does.
- Steeltoe
According to your argument, I would need to write my own WWW-browser. After all, using a third-party program that formats everything, like IE, is giving business to THEM. Clearly not a good thing for you. Duh! It all boils down to what YOU like or dislike. That's egoistic, small-minded and hypocritical.
Here's my point. If I want a third party to translate your page on my computer, or do whatever I want with it, that's my choice. It's supposed to be a free market out there. If you can't see this, you're just too emotional about the issue.
I'm not saying I agree with the deceptive tactic of installing crap with a totally unrelated product. That's the bad thing here, that the users are kept in the dark of why they're suddenly getting yellow ad-links. Then they start complaining to the webmasters and suing them. I think we found the root of the problem here., don't you?
- Steeltoe
What's so wrong with this has nothing to do with the websites themselves I believe. What is so wrong with this and not with various sites offering translation into german, chef-style or whatever? As long as the user wants it, there should be nothing wrong with it. You don't own the bytes on his/her computer, or how he/she chooses to display your webpage.
What's wrong is the deception it can create in the user who just wanted to install Kazaa and got their IE-installation changed without any real warning. Smart tags/top text has nothing to do with the installed software itself. Of course, people will start to learn to choose No the next time, so it's not a good way to lose future customers to lure them into your trap. Of course, this businessmodel is doomed from the start.
- Steeltoe
At 1600x1200 and X at 100 dpi, readably-sized anti-alised TrueType fonts in KDE/Konq look MUCH better than the bitmapped fonts or even scaled Type 1 fonts do. I once thought as you do -- that AA wasn't a big deal and as a Linux user, I could well do without it. But now, it's a real hardship when I have to use other non-AA browsers.
;-) Personally I think AA makes the text look blurred, washed out and harder to read. I guess it's different from system to system and person to person, so let's just be content with what we got :-)
Have you tried Microsoft or other commercial fonts? Many of them are free downloads (as in beer). I've yet to see good Free fonts.
Anyways, that you have to have resolution of 1600x1200, truetype fonts with anti-aliasing to enjoy reading the web is your problem isn't it?
- Steeltoe
YOUR lawyers makes the cost go up, yes?
;-)
Send him a bill!
- Steeltoe
What is depressing is when you have to look for the +5 Funny before you start laughing..
- Steeltoe
Well, I'm sorry for the bad analogy. I don't really believe in analogies, because they're all detracting from the real issue. However, sometimes they do get the point across. Other times, people need the spoon though.
What I meant is that society is not benefited by bounty-hunters, because of all the possibilities of fraud, violence and abuse. That's why we have a police-force. They're properly trained, monitored and trusted to do their work properly. The recent debacle over rogue lawyers sending a $5,000 fee to the author of Killustrator without Adobe's knowledge, illustrates these problems in reality.
IOW: It's good for a society to separate government and corporations. Corporations should NOT enforce law, not even by legalese blackmailing.
I guess you'll see what I mean in time though.
- Steeltoe
Ban all enthropic data.
;) This idea is plainly dumb. I'll break a hell of a lot more than it fixes. It's simply unrealistic. Imagine your past months free downloads. You would be denied them unless the sites started converting to stenographic form. Like any personal struggle: idiotic resistance to the inevitable.
/. perhaps (thank God), but enough to know when they get screwed on a deal or get their "desktop real-estate" completely sold out. These times are just in the infancy of the IT-age. If we can't have patience, we deserve the emotional turmoil.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. There's no magic algorithm that allows 100% perfect censorship or even close to that. The "better" omelet it becomes, the more eggs you spoil. What if I want to send you a Word-document? Have you had a peek inside one, they're binary. UUencode can convert to 7-bit ASCII. Stenography would become an obvious choice to use against a better algorithm doing an FFT on the data or whatnot. Not to mention how much scanning every packet will hurt performance on the network. What will tech-support tell a customer when he's denied sending an Excel-spreadsheet or Matlab-file to his friend? Hell, I can't even play Quake with that kind of lag! (eek!
Ok, sounds like a good business opportunity by market segmentation... those who want more freedom will also have to pay more.
Okies, so you "pay to play". Not to mention corrupt, you just pay yourself out of criminal status. Sounds like a plan for ISPs, but the original authors will remain unpaid. Just who are we doing this for anyways? To preserve bloated conglomerations?
If the ISPs start treating them badly, the backlash will hurt bad.
Well, people will learn to complain. They will get more and more computer savvy. Not like those on
- Steeltoe
That's what we have police for. Or maybe you wouldn't mind if I followed you all day, took videos of you jaywalking and doing other minor stuff, then send you a blackmail letter demanding USD $2,000? After all, you are a criminal..
- Steeltoe
Banning encrypted traffic to and from unapproved sites is an obvious step and shouldn't get too much resistance from the majority of the home net users. How would it work? Let's say that if the IP address to which you've connected doesn't have a valid SSL certificate it's illegal to establish an encrypted link with it. That way encryption can still be used by banks and corporations whereas private, peer to peer encryption becomes illegal.
;) Banning sites will just open up a can of worms and more work for the poor providers. Banning encryption by technological means doesn't necessarily mean peer-to-peer encryption becomes illegal, and it's a good way of losing customers. People start to realize encryption is a good thing and should always be used when plugged to the internet. Just how are you going to enforce a ban on encryption anyways? Read every packet to see if you understand all their content? What about people developing stuff, making open source/free software?
Port banning is the most braindead form of security/limitation I can think of (for an ISP, not for individual computers). What about the Quake-players!?
Remember, ISPs serve lots of different customers. If the ISPs start treating them badly, the backlash will hurt bad. This is not like discussing firewalling at work, it's a completely another topic. Also remember, that all of these measures are counter-productive to the benefits of internet. File sharing is a feature, not a bug or flaw. Instead of concentrating how we can limit it, we should concentrate on how we can build upon the already existing infrastructure without artificial limitations, borders and barriers. Nobody should be allowed to own it to twart the whole network to their own ends only.
- Steeltoe
No INTERCAL beers? That one could be interesting :-)
- Steeltoe
What a coincidence! ;)
- Steeltoe
Arrows don't kill people, people kill people.
People don't kill people, videogames kill people!
- Steeltoe
Ah, I didn't think of it that way, but I guess it's basically the same argument as zero-cost copies. That's why I propose creative thinking, and also that people will learn to support what they find valueable and convenient. I would much rather live in a society without push-marketing everywhere and huge mass-marketing blitz of fancy fluff. It seems technology will disrupt the market enough to make that a reality, but of course it's a double-edged sword too. I don't see it as a disadvantage that people will be forced to consider what money really is, that it has no inherent value and that we're all in this together.
- Steeltoe
Good post. I just like to add that the issue is greater than what you seem to realize. You see, those creating information need to eat too. So basically, what "basic economic law" says is that to sustain that activity people will need to share their money, even though they can get it for free.
Sounds impossible? Maybe, that's why people need to change themselves, not technology. As long as people don't want to share fairly, they'll fight over "their right to listen" as others will fight for "their right to sell". In this process, huge companies and powerful executives will probably have to adjust their malpractice to more reasonable levels and become more human.
On other news today, Microsoft defended consumer rights against AOL!
- Steeltoe
What if there are no laws in the universe? What if what we perceieve as law is actually changeable?
- Steeltoe