Open Letter By Eric S. Raymond To Chris Dodd 410
An anonymous reader writes "ESR, one of the finest engineers behind the open source movement and much of the software we use everyday, writes an open letter to U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd. ESR points out the concerns of 'the actual engineers who built the Internet and keep it running, who write the software you rely on every day of your life in the 21st century' about politicians attempts to lock down our Internet or our tools. A portion of the letter reads: 'I can best introduce you to our concerns by quoting another of our philosopher/elders, John Gilmore. He said: “The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
To understand that, you have to grasp that “the Internet” isn’t just a network of wires and switches, it’s also a sort of reactive social organism composed of the people who keep those wires humming and those switches clicking. John Gilmore is one of them. I’m another. And there are some things we will not stand having done to our network.'"
Politicians are only experts at getting re-elected (Score:5, Funny)
Politicians are always attempting to be experts at everything. This failure is magnified when they start talking about the Internet, because on the Internet, everyone's an expert.
Right?
Re:Politicians are only experts at getting re-elec (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Politicians are only experts at getting re-elec (Score:5, Funny)
Speak for yourself! I'm a marmoset
Re:Politicians are only experts at getting re-elec (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Politicians are only experts at getting re-elec (Score:5, Insightful)
nobody knows you're a dog.
Facebook knows you're a dog. It also knows what breed, how old you are, your preference in bitches (or other dogs as it may be), your favorite brand of dogfood, and how often you play fetch.
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That is kind of their job as they make laws that impact a wide variety of things. Or at least that is the convention on the public facing side of what they do, speaking to journalists as if they are experts and have first hand knowledge.
In reality, what they know outside of their particular field (mostly lawyering) comes mostly from subject matter experts and those come from whatever lobbying group musters them. So while politicians may be informed before they put forward a law, their information is often c
Re:Politicians are only experts at getting re-elec (Score:5, Insightful)
ESR is no different in this case as he has his own agenda he is trying to push.
You are more right than you realize. ESR considers himself one of the Open Source greats despite that his largest contribution is that he maintained the termcap db and his is the first I've heard anything from him since Linus Torvalds refused his rewrite of the kernel config system. Not to mention his self proclaimed expertise in lovemaking. [catb.org]
His main function in life is to be what bloggers were before we called them bloggers and really isn't someone we need or want as a spokesman.
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ESR, one of the finest engineers behind the open source movement and much of the software we use everyday
ESR is a shameless self publicist, who wrote a book once. If he's one of the finest engineers of the open source movement, then the movement is in serious trouble. As far as I can tell, he has never written any code that people actually use.
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and now, he's on the No Fly List and DHS Watch lists as a Potential Terrorist. Maybe the gubbermint will pick him up and send him to g'tmo for some reeducation.
Re:Politicians are only experts at getting re-elec (Score:5, Informative)
Uh he also wrote The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which as far as I know was the first article of any sort that could explain how Open Source worked, and why it worked so well. Surely that's got to count for something.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, but then he wrote one of the stupidest, most self-aggrandizing things ever to grace slashdot: http://news.slashdot.org/story/99/12/10/0821224/esr-writes-on-surprised-by-wealth [slashdot.org]
6 months later, when his stock was worth a tiny fraction of what it was at IPO time (and who knows how long/how far down he held it past the obligatory 6 months for IPO beneficiaries) we all chuckled and ESR faded into obsolescence.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, he's with those guys [geekz.co.uk].
OTOH he's entitled to his opinion as much as anyone else, and at least he bothered to write a letter to Dodd, unlike 99% of the people here on Slashdot. I'm not saying he's better than me because he got off his ass, but rather, he's better than me because he lifted a finger. You might say the bar is low, but he's over it.
Excellent tactical move. (Score:2)
Give your enemy a primer on all your motivations and explain how you are organized. What are we, gorillas pounding our chests?
Re:Excellent tactical move. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an open letter, and its main point is not to convince the opposition but to rally its own supporters. For which purpose chest pounding works very well.
To Which the Reaction Will Be (Score:4, Insightful)
How dare these self-righteous, misanthropic geeks dare tell us it's their network? Who bought and paid for this network? Why does this network exist in the first place? Because WE built it with our holy dollars. Someone get a muzzle on this dissident! A prime example of why we need control of our network!
Re:To Which the Reaction Will Be (Score:5, Insightful)
And how do you suppose you're going to do so? You don't own the backbone, you don't own any of the fiber connecting you to your ISP, you don't own any of the switches and routers, you don't own any of the software (since most of what runs the internet is BSD and is easily forked). So exactly how are you going to "take it back" when all the infrastructure is owned by others?
Re:To Which the Reaction Will Be (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, good luck with that.
Not only is the IT world full of contrarians, who likely won't strike just because other people are, but people like being paid and will continue to accept money to ruin the internet.
No fascist regime is ever short of henchmen, and no government lockdown will ever be short of people to perform it, especially if others have just walked out and they are now seen as valuable and dependable by those with power/money.
Re:To Which the Reaction Will Be (Score:4, Interesting)
It really only takes a double hand-full of networking engineers to deny access to the entire Internet. We're not where we were some moons ago when Saint Postel moved the DNS root servers to his home computers for a while, but we're not too terribly far.
If some engineers got together and decided to take down DNS, well, for most people that would be the end of internet access.
A far more disastrous scenario would have some of the larger nodes advertise bad BGP around 2am on a Friday night, and the engineers responsible being "too ill" to come in to fix it.
You are correct about the contrarian factor though. I've known IT people who will take the opposite stance simply because an certain number of people are already on the other side. I've known IT people who will enjoy a movie until it gets popular, then suddenly it is the worst movie ever. I've known IT people who believe in certain things politically, but consistently vote the opposite to 'piss off "those" people.'
Re:To Which the Reaction Will Be (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh sure, a small group could they could disrupt things for a few days, but they'd quickly be replaced afterwards.
A protest could be effected. Permanent change, not so much.
Pfff, the arab spring showed the way (Score:3)
If people dare to take connections back under fire, then running a service in peace time is a cakewalk. And ISP's like XS4ALL have shown that some dare to put their money where their mouth is. Any ISP offering USENET binary access is probably done by a geek admin as the top bosses at the bigger ISP's wouldn't even know what it is.
The blackout already showed just how far reaching support is. Oh the commercial net wasn't that affected but just how did Poland decide to not support ACTA after all? And why aren'
Re:To Which the Reaction Will Be (Score:5, Funny)
.. the IT world full of contrarians...
No it's not.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:To Which the Reaction Will Be (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a fundamental assumption difference between the two. Atlas Shrugged is based on the assumption that it's, to use common parlance "the 1%" who make the world go round.
Fight club assumes that it's the "99%".
Fight club is right on that point (obviously -- CEOs and lawyer and finance wizz-kids do not contribute to the economy commensurately to their salaries). However, there is no such organisation as "the 99%", and therefore, hoping that you can suddenly bring down civilisation because everyone will suddenly push in the same direction is a fantasy.
Progress still happens because ideas get diffused, take hold, and eventually become so dominant that the moral zeitgeist is altered. Within 25 years, only fringe loonies will be against gay marriage (we are close to that, maybe 15 years), and pot legalisation will have become self-evident. In Europe, the last religious generation will have died out, and in the US, atheists will be the majority. The current US debates on _contraception_ will be looked upon as the abhorrent obsession of the few.
But there still will be liberals and conservatives, and the debate will be as lively as now. The point is that you do no effect change by revolutions, if the social structures allow change that is. Change occurs because old people die out, young people grow up and facts remain. Doing whatever fits reality always wins in the long run.
But the ride is smoother is you keep talking about reality.
Re: (Score:3)
While it's true the focus of the book is on a few people who have a significant impact on the world, the real assumption is that it those acting in their own honest self interest that make the world go around. The role point is that this is the natural state of affairs and that the ideal world would be where EVERYONE does so instead of allowing themselves to be corrupted by the worship of the collective. If this were the case, tremendous creative energy would be unleashed and the world would be a far better
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Other people will pop up and take over their paychecks to keep things running. I know we like to think we're not replaceable but the sad fact is that we are. Things might stutter a bit but realistically speaking they'll keep right on keeping on.
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The other people have to learn their craft first, and in the process to be educated about what they actually have to do they also take over the attitudes necessary to perform their job -- and suddenly the next generation of computer science wizkid is so faszinated with the way the Internet works that this generation will fight teeth and nails to keep it from harm.
Maybe -- just maybe -- you have to be an Internet freedom defending, long haired, beardy guy to successfully manage large networks :)
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Bah, it's simple. "Occupy your router" movement!
Joking aside, I predict raising of darknet and freenet.
Obviously (Score:5, Funny)
” To understand that, you have to grasp that “the Internet” isn’t just a network of wires and switches"
Well of course not, as every (ex-) politician knows, it's a series of tubes.
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Funny)
” To understand that, you have to grasp that “the Internet” isn’t just a network of wires and switches"
Well of course not, as every (ex-) politician knows, it's a series of tubes, full of cats.
TFTFY
Oppression, not "lockdown" (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm getting sick of hearing the propaganda terms "lockdown" and "crackdown" used in place of the correct term, oppression. Are we too afraid to say it? Not politically correct enough? Can't admit our own reality to ourselves? Fuck that.
Let's call a spade a spade here. The terms "crackdown" and "lockdown" imply that the victim was doing something wrong or immoral in the first place. THAT is exactly why government and the media use these terms. They are "self-justified". They are deliberately false depictions of reality. It's pure propaganda, but the amazing part is that some victims will actually repeat the terms themselves.
The correct term, oppression, implies that the victim is innocent, not guilty -- and that the oppressors are guilty, not merely "getting around to that crackdown". For christ's sake, use the correct term.
Re:IP rights and copying (Score:4, Interesting)
While I respect your point of view, you're starting from a flawed perception of the true state of affairs.
First off, "legitimately" and "legally" are not synonyms. Copyright law has been extended unjustly (IMNSHO) on at least three separate occasions in the past 60 years. Therefore, while copyright holders have a LEGAL right to limit what citizens may do with their material, they do not necessarily have a LEGITIMATE right to enforce them.
Personally, my opinion is that we should roll back copyright terms to the original constitutional limits and patents for software should be non-existent. Software is already more than adequately covered under copyright law as it is.
Second, you're using the misleading term, "IP rights", which conflates three completely separate legal domains; trademark law, patent law, and copyright law. Since each domain is treated very differently in virtually all jurisdictions, they should each be treated separately in any discussion.
Third, you're also conflating copyright infringement, generally a civil matter, with stealing, a criminal offense. While in my view they are both illegal and unethical, they are by no means the same from a legal standpoint and should not be treated as such.
To sum up, your conclusion is wrong because it's based on a faulty understanding of the law.
Sigh. Where's NYCL when you need him? He can explain this much more cogently than I can.
Re: (Score:3)
Frist off, I didn't say they were, lol. However, in the case of copyright and patent law, as applied to the issues I was talking about, they do in fact coincide -- because the laws in place are entirely allowable and within the limits and conditions set upon the legislature by the constitution. Therefore, legitimacy on the part of any entity under US law in this regard requires compliance with the relevant laws. No matter what you think of them.
Finest engineer? (Score:2, Interesting)
What open source projects does ESR actively contribute to?
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Finest engineer? (Score:5, Informative)
To quote the fetchmail man page:
Most of the code is from Eric S. Raymond .
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Why would anyone actually take credit for having written fetchmail? It's a steaming pile...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.catb.org/~esr/software.html
The one that appear that he is most involved in with is gpsd a service daemon that allows Linux to connect to GPS devices.
Recently he created reposurgeon that allows deep level and safe editing of the data in source control packages like git and mercurial.
Re:Finest engineer? -- "software you use everyday" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Finest engineer? -- "software you use everyday" (Score:5, Informative)
Well one of his more valuable contributions is GPSD which the maritime industry not only uses every day, but hourly. Every time we put to sea the GPS talks to GPSD which in turn drives the chart software that displays our position at the helm. For that code alone I would nominate Raymond for a MacArthur Fellowship.
Re: (Score:3)
Besides having contributed to many project, you are talking about a guy that branded "open source", went out and sold it succesfully.
Now what the fuck have you done lately?
Finest marketing guy of open source ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides having contributed to many project, you are talking about a guy that branded "open source", went out and sold it succesfully.
Then using your argument perhaps he should be referred to as the finest marketing and sales guy of the open source movement. The "Steve Jobs" of open source, not the "Steve Wozniak" of open source. Jobs did some engineering work in the early days too, however that is not where he stood out. Perhaps you are onto something with this marketing and sales argument.
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Re: (Score:3)
The poster is ESR, that is pretty easy to tell.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure those are all useful, but if they're considered fantastic feats of open source engineering then the open source community is really in trouble.
Now, please tell us all about the amazing stuff you've contributed to the community.
I don't think one needs to have any specific qualification to question the accuracy of "one of the finest engineers behind the open source movement", any more than someone needs to be tall to questio
Or (Score:4, Funny)
Hi. You're going to call off your rigorous investigation. You're going to publicly state that there is no underground group. Or... these guys are going to take your balls. They're going to send one to the New York Times, one to the LA Times press-release style. Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not... fuck with us.
ESR - overhyped... (Score:5, Insightful)
That guy hypes himself way too much.
Ghost in the Shell - The prequel 1 (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
What a hell of a support ticket.
"Users are noticing high latency during certain times of the day. Tier 1 support has narrowed the time to between 11am and 3pm. Further investigation shows an unusually high amount of traffic with a source of 0:0:0123:9AB6:0:0:FDEB:F90A which is in the block used by the base station for the satellite TV feeds. The destination address is the loopback for the Emergent core. After decryption and packet sniffing, the traffic was identified as an MPEG4 stream. When this stream was
Dear Congress... (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Congress,
You are damage. We will route around you.
-- the Internet
The Janitor has the keys to every office (Score:2)
The mason and the carpenter know which walls hold up the building because they built them.
And the IT guy has all the passwords and keys to every router closet.
And management doesn't give a shit what the workerbees think.
This might help him understand what's going on, but he'd never read it either. [theregister.co.uk]
My Open Letter to Chris Todd (Score:4, Funny)
The internet doesn't "route around it" (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is that there is a serious choke point for the vast majority of users (in the U.S. at least). A handful of big name companies control almost all the broadband ISP's and trunk lines in the U.S. You can't very easily "route around it" if the few providers in your area are censored. In my area, you can choose from 1 cable ISP, 1 DSL ISP, and 3 major cell providers. All five of these are major companies who would bow to the government in an instant if asked. If they were all effectively censored, there would be nowhere to turn save a satellite provider.
There are always ways around censorship for the hardcore techies, of course. But it really wouldn't be that hard to censor the internet for 99% of the population if the government really wanted to.
Re:The internet doesn't "route around it" (Score:4, Informative)
There are always ways around censorship for the hardcore techies, of course. But it really wouldn't be that hard to censor the internet for 99% of the population if the government really wanted to.
Don't forget that the hardcore techies export their tech, eventually packaged so the 99% can use it. I remember a short lifetime ago how this argument was used against SSL - no end user would ever use it, because it was too complicated for them. Then a few years later about encrypted hard drives. And now we have a non-tech lady who refuses to decrypt her truecrypt drive.
Yes, the engineers will route around the damage. Yes, it will take time to get it propagated to the masses. But it's inevitable, because the masses don't like being restricted more than their peers, and the engineers have the means to help them.
The problem is criminalisation (Score:3)
The phases that the "censorship" problem used to go through can be summarised thus:
Something is created ...
Someone tries to suppress its (free) distribution
Someone else finds a way to nullify that suppression
Other people start using the nullifying technique
The technique is "productionised" and rolled out to the masses
A new suppression scheme is developed
Now, the problem is that instead of the above being simply a technical "game" any more, the rules have changed. More and more frequently a legal solu
Re:The internet doesn't "route around it" (Score:4, Interesting)
I am aware of a few efforts like the above in the mountains around where I live; it is a bit of work, but really not as much as you might expect. The biggest obstacles are forests, which attenuate the signal, and animals, which occasionally knock down antennas. It is harder to do this in crowded urban areas, but there are many millions of people who do not live in cities.
What defines the Internet is its protocol -- one common protocol that allows people to communicate across various networks and networking technologies. That is why the Internet can always route around censorship: anyone can establish a net network and attach it to the Internet (though in practice, by the time things got bad enough to motivate people to do such a thing, it would be far too difficult to create a network free from censorship; see: China).
Re:The internet doesn't "route around it" (Score:5, Insightful)
Jesus, what has happened to /.?
Doesn't anyone read anymore? See "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by ... wait for it ... Eric Raymond. Available online. Basic routing protocols DO route around damage - how about READING about RIP and BGP?
Anyone who CAN read can find ways to avoid getting coralled by their ISP, government or corporate overloards. The fun of the Internet is that the only thing obstructing your path to freedom is your own ignorance. Fight your own ignorance and you can be free. How do you think political dissidents bypass censorship?
Why do you think content overloards are still fighting their losing battle instead of thinking ways around the problem? If they had half a brain, they would embed the commericial message they are paid to present inside the content, and they would willingly release their product for cheaper (free as in beer?), wider and more long lived distribution. Charge way more to "advertisers" doing product placements to compensate for revenue lost in theatrical release. The advertisers will pony up the cash because they know their message will live forever and not have recurring payments for broadcast. Product placement advertising costs are far cheaper than traditional commercials - but they won't stay that way once Hollywood wakes up.
No one wants to pay to sit in large dark public rooms, smelling other people's offgassing while eating horrid overpriced "snacks" when they can watch great quality content at home in their media rooms. The Hollywood business model failed a long time ago.
People have already figured out the content delivery system championed by the US entertainment industry is broken. And they are routing around it. Since that horse left the barn long ago, the people relying on the revenue from it should get ahead of the problem and fix their business model. Why can't people even see and understand the events happening around them.
Re: (Score:3)
Routing around the censorship (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes when I read
“The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
which appears as a nice and cutesy rainbows and unicorns saying, I get the impression that it actually means
"Fuck off. You don't belong here and we'll subvert anything you try to do that impacts what we want to do"
In an angry, anti-establishment, "we know better than you" superior way.
Note that I do believe in a free Internet.
Epic Quote is Epic (Score:5, Insightful)
"...there are some things we will not stand having done to our network." (emphasis mine)
That is exactly how I feel. As a Network Engineer myself I share their frustration with old, grumpy, white men who sit on capital hill raining down laws that would effect my job and customers without understanding the technology itself, nor the gravity their actions would have on the Internet community at large. I've watched the hours long C-SPAN videos of the hearings with the SINGLE Google representative they invited as an "expert" only to see her get cut-off and publicly flogged and discredited, while old men who had to read basic networking terms such as "internet", "Internet" (they are not interchangeable), "IP Address" and "DNS" off a prepared piece of paper, listed the "merits" of SOPA/PIPA/ACTA. Especially from a security standpoint, the amount of negative repercussions to censoring the internet along the same lines as China could be catastrophic, and that is before even considering its' effect on free speech.
Unity is a sad pun (Score:5, Interesting)
This one I remember: ESR's goodbye note [lwn.net]
This one I felt certain I would find: Ubuntu and GNOME jump the shark [ibiblio.org]
(Failure to properly support Unicode in 2012? You're soaking in it.) ESR longs for the era when when the Unix ethos bound us together. It ends in another bail-out, this time with a less dramatic letter.
Maybe the Unix brotherhood has finally jumped the shark. I'm not sure I believe in the political force ESR claims to represent. It feels more like he's writing the letter to convince himself.
Jamie Zawinski was feeling the irritation back in 2003: Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers [jwz.org]. Personally I blame SMS [wikipedia.org].
Well, I have a leather jacket and a USB fob with Mint 12 to get on with the exorcism before the April EOL on 10.10. I didn't know the open source movement would degenerate into a lifetime occupation of oasis hopping. That was not my original dream.
Nit-pick on the issue of secure OSes (Score:5, Insightful)
From the letter,
His description of "approved" operating systems is too broad. Signing code itself is not a problem, in fact it's a blessing when used properly. The key to proper use is deciding who holds the signing keys. The consumer who owns the device needs to be in charge of that device; he or she must be able to decide whether or not unsigned code is allowed to run. If the user chooses to run only signed code, I think it perfectly fine to let manufacturers implement this as they wish. This could be extended to several layers: the hardware, the boot OS, the user OS, etc. Each of these could be secured, with the user's permission, by the corresponding manufacturer/distributor.
This certainly wouldn't prevent developers from "cutting" any shape they wanted with their code. But they would have to participate in some share system of security. That doesn't seem to be too much of a stretch to me, and fundamentally a good idea, to boot.
"Dimwits" unlikely to win support (Score:5, Insightful)
I was with you, Eric, right up until you called the media industry execs "stupid" and "dimwits". Your arguments were clear and well stated right up to that point. However, when you call your audience dimwits, they stop listening and discount anything you've said up to that point. This is a great shame, because your letter was incredibly persuasive and non-ranty up to that moment.
Just as freedom of the press resides... (Score:4, Insightful)
...with those who one one. Ultimately, control of the internet resides with those who operate it.
Like the internet? Fond of electricity? And phone? And petroleum products? And a functioning natural gas pipelines? High frequency stock trading? Best not to fuck with those who run these things. This extends to any critical, high-tech, specialized activity. Up to this point, politicians have left the operators of these things alone. Should they become sufficiently annoying, it wouldn't surprise me if the technically competent started flexing some muscle.
ESR? What nostaglia! (Score:3)
You kids and your love of stuff we did in the 90s -- it's ADORABLE!
Listening to ESR is like logging into myspace, friendster or orkut for new messages.
I may agree with quite a few of his basic arguments, but he flipped the bozo bit a long, long time ago.
You'll excuse me. I have an Old School Roleplaying game to DM...
self-righteous twaddle (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, I think the US government - particularly Congress - are a bunch of supercilious idiots, prone to trying to make comprehensive rules about things they totally don't understand and (importantly) don't care that they don't.
Nevertheless, probably the worst possible way to get these people to react in the way you want them to* is not to try to look like an even more supercilious tool than they are. "(John Gilmore)...one of our philosophers/elders..." OK, you're really not going to impress anyone with trying to clothe network design/maintenance with some quasi-religious overtones. Philosophers? Elders? Really? As intelligent as ESR may be, I wouldn't necessarily credit him or John Gilmore with the intellectual chops to debate angels and pins with, say, Voltaire or Kant. They're no more Philosophers than anyone whose long service at a task gives them insight into how it works. Sorry Eric, that doesn't rate you the title "Philosopher". "Elder" might carry a touch more credence as "an elder person with some special dignity or authority in a tribe or community" but still, it still sounds as silly as calling him a rabbi or 'network buddha' which might even be more accurate.
*of course, this assumes you're actually trying to solve the problem, not grandstand to the crowd or stroke your epeen.
"...(the internet is)...also a sort of reactive social organism..." Now we're into some sort of sophomoric psychosocial commentary. If you want to be specific, the internet really is just a bunch of wires and protocols, within which reside a number of different creatures - your 'reactive social organism' (which, sadly, isn't the sort of higher consciousness that you imply; the huge majority is about a sort of hedonistic narcissism that would have made Caligula blush) being one, the Greater Internet Dickwad being another example. I'm part of this network, and I'll tell you that while I agree with most of your logical premises (minus the ego), and I find Chris Dodd a repellent archetype of Congresspeople as a subspecies, I find your note itself so off-putting that it's impossible to support you.
It IS fair to say that the protocols are designed to see any interruption in information flow - ie censorship - as damage. But then to say "...And there are some things we will not stand having done to our network...." - I can PROMISE you that the last way you're going to get cooperative, constructive help from a US government official is to THREATEN them.
In fact "ESR", they're about the only people on this planet who have as inflated a sense of self importance as, well, you seem to.
Re:uhhh. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure Mr. Raymond is quite aware that Senator Dodd no longer holds public office. It is still appropriate to refer to public officials by the title of the last office they held; this is common among those who have served in the Senate, as state governors, etc.
Furthermore, Senator Dodd is now the CEO of the MPAA [wikipedia.org], an organization whose positions on electronic rights is quite well known, and cause for substantial concern.
Lastly, I think it's a good idea to continue to refer to Mr. Dodd as Senator Dodd, since he took an oath to represent the people and the constitution of this nation, and should be reminded of that at every opportunity.
Re:uhhh. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:uhhh. (Score:4, Informative)
Wasn't James Madison against this, and insisted that senators and presidents should be entitled "Mister", like everybody else, not to create a new nobility that would be against the constitution?
Re:uhhh. (Score:4, Funny)
Who cares? Madison's dead and he's just one of the founders.
Re:uhhh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wasn't James Madison against this, and insisted that senators and presidents should be entitled "Mister", like everybody else, not to create a new nobility that would be against the constitution?
Who cares? Madison's dead and he's just one of the founders.
That's just the way he would have liked to have been referred to posthumously.
Re: (Score:3)
Mr Madison to you...
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Referencing the Founding Fathers' individual beliefs and opinions is illogical. We have a democracy. We have voting and majority rule. Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, and others had many beliefs, and often ended up disagreeing with each other. That's why the Constitutional Convention took months to write a relatively short document. That's why the US Constitution is full of compromises.
The three brances of government create the current state of law and custom. Until they intervene, the differing opinion
Re:uhhh. (Score:4, Insightful)
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If you think it's me vs. Madison, you've missed the point. Saying "Wasn't James Madison against this" conveniently leaves out that there were a number of his peers who were all for it. Ben Franklin was one such. Madison succeeded to the extent that the President isn't "His Royal Highness", but he lost to the extent that the President, Senators, and others do have titles that clearly differentiate them from regular citizens -- as Ben Franklin wanted. Madison's side lost to Franklin's side. If you want t
Re:uhhh. (Score:5, Informative)
We have a republic. We have voting for representatives and representative, judicial and executive rule. We have a constitution [usconstitution.net] that specifies these things, and instructs the government that each state government must also conform to this structure.
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Nope. It's a constitutionally authorized republic with democratically elected representatives. Which is not at all what you said. It starts with the constitution, which defines a republic form of government (federally explicit, step-by-step, and state-wise by power-backed guarantee), and then further provides for democratic selection of the representatives themselves by the citizens -- but not of the laws.
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Seriously? How about basic civics class? What do YOU think authorizes the government to exist?
It depends on the government in question, but the most broad answer would be consent of its citizens, aka "public contract".
dude, go find a high school and sit in on a civics class, seriously.
If they teach that US is "republic not a democracy" in civics classes in US, that's really sad. In civics I did in my school, we actually learned what all those things mean, and we've learned them from examples of many different countries, not just our own; nor did we get stuck on archaic 250-year-old definitions.
The United States is a Constitutional Republic. Period.
References:
CIA World Fact Book [cia.gov]
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
And of course the Constitution itself.
Words mean something. If your school taught you that the US is a "democracy" then I'm sorry but your school taught you wrong.
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Referencing the Founding Fathers' individual beliefs and opinions is illogical.
Wrong. It's quite logical as they were the ones who created the document that (in theory) governs us to this day. Therefore it is logical that we understand their beliefs and opinions in order to understand the constitution they wrote.
We have a democracy...
Wrong again. We have a representative republic...at least in theory. In practice we are nearing an elected dictatorship.
We have voting and majority rule...
Wrong a third time. We do have voting...but majority rule rarely decides anything in congress where anyone can "filibuster" or stop a bill from a vote simply
Re:uhhh. (Score:5, Interesting)
George Washington in particular was against this - the reason he went by "Mr President" was that he wanted to have some sort of title that indicated that the President of the United States was on par with his counterparts in other countries (which were likely to be Kings, Dukes, or Princes), but he wanted to emphasize that the President is also just a regular citizen, so he started it with "Mister". One of the key reasons he was instrumental in creating American democracy is that after he won the American Revolutionary War he didn't take the army he'd just won with and try to take over the country, and then as President stepped down after 2 terms and peacefully transferred power to John Adams.
Re:uhhh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is stupid. Senator, Representative, President, are all job titles. No longer have the job? You don't get the honorific.
Re:uhhh. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:uhhh. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not a fan of the Senator, however I think that in deference to the position there should be some semblance of decorum when referring to individual members of Congress or the President. There's far too little civility shown to the holders of the latter office for the current and previous occupants. The fault of that rests squarely on the two main political parties, their congressional attack dogs, and various political organizations masquerading as news outlets, charitable groups or think tanks. Not much thinking or charity as far as I can see.
Hence, I will have to disagree with you. Regardless of my feelings for the Senator, that's still his title.
Re:uhhh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:uhhh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Writing the head of the MPAA to try and sway him about the internet (to misquote former MPAA head Jack Valenti speaking of VCRs in the eighties) -- "The internet is to movies what Jack the Ripper was to women."
ESR ir right, but I think he sent his letter to the wrong Senator. It should have gone to the 100 corrupt Senators who actually legislate, rather than former corrupt Senators.
Re:uhhh. (Score:4, Insightful)
ESR ir right, but I think he sent his letter to the wrong Senator. It should have gone to the 100 corrupt Senators who actually legislate, rather than former corrupt Senators.
Don't you you mean corrupt format Senators?
Re:uhhh. (Score:5, Insightful)
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An "open letter" isn't really written to it's recipient, but rather is a way of explaining a position to an audience - the intent is to convince the audience, not the recipient.
Re:uhhh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:uhhh. (Score:5, Insightful)
You may be a user, but that doesn't make you part of the culture that ESR is referring to . He's talking about the culture of the people who actually work on and in the Internet. The people who would of course care about how it is used, as opposed to the people who use it and have no idea of how it works, or how it could be damaged and what the damage may do to the Internet as a whole.
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No matter who is making "a statement" most of the general public "read this kind of stuff and just roll their eyes."
That's because the general public neither knows nor cares about the "political battles" of life, much less the technological challenges. They don't care if Apple is a walled garden, they don't care if the MPAA "censors" the internet", they don't care if the US is hated for interfering in foreign nations, ...
Are you beginning to catch the key pattern of "most people" yet?
They don't care
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I'm making popcorn here, waiting for bperens to come waltzing in and we'll get to see another OSI vs FSF mudwresting match where people jump into the fray to fly their colors
Net result: I get entertained, the world still moves, and vi is still more used than emacs.
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OSI vs FSF mudwresting match
Evoking images of sweaty, scantily clad nerds grappling with each other in the mud is a terrible thing to do to a man. Please pass the mental bleach.
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An anonymous reader writes "ESR, one of the finest engineers behind the open source movement...
ESR, is that you? /runs for cover (literally, he's a gun nut don't you know)
And also, according to his letter, 'a well-known philosopher/elder of the tribe'. I always wondered who the Elders of the Internet were:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7vf8c_it-crowd-the-internet_fun [dailymotion.com]
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You actually wondered? Who else would have written that lime. I suppose it could be his mother, but really. It is either him or someone very close to him.
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ESR is about to learn a likely painful lesson about how senators don't like to be talked down to. Senators are like judges on meth.
Get with the times. Cris Dodd isn't a senator anymore, he's been the chairman and CEO of the MPAA for almost a year now.
Re:Dumb (Score:5, Funny)