SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the not-what-we-expected-but-is-it-bad? dept.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/06/is-the-internet-a-failed-utopia/
LONDON—At Shoreditch Town Hall on Thursday, at an event hosted by Intelligence Squared and Vanity Fair, the longevous British broadcaster Jeremy Paxman of University Challenge fame asked the audience of few hundred: "Is the Internet a failed utopia?" He asked us to vote on the matter by raising our hands. About two-thirds of the audience disagreed with the statement, a fair few (including myself) were undecided, and only a smattering of people actually thought the Internet was a failed utopia.
It was then the turn of four panellists, in the style of an electoral hustings or stump speech, to change our minds. In the failed-utopia camp were Andrew Keen and Frank Pasquale; in the not-a-failed-utopia faction were Peter Barron and Beth Noveck. They took it in turns to deliver quite rousing speeches.
The naysayers obviously had the harder job from the outset—we were at an event that was specifically tailored for fans of the Internet, after all—but they did a good job of reminding us that the Internet, as it stands, is not the elysium that we were all promised at its inception. Keen warned us that, while we think the Internet is an idyllic plateau where everyone is on an even footing, where two guys in a garage can compete with the monolithic, infrastructure-owning giants, we're all deluding ourselves: just like the real world, the Internet is now ruled by big corporations.
The utopian speakers, Barron and Noveck, mostly focused on all of the cool things that wouldn't have been possible before the Internet and World Wide Web were created. Noveck, who was a driving force behind President Obama's Open Government Initiative, reminded us that, with a smartphone in your pocket, you have access to more information than the president of the United States did 25 years ago. Barron, who is a public affairs bod at Google, spoke about the equality of opportunity on the Internet—and of course, about all the free services that we get to enjoy.
What does SN think?
Original Submission
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Tuesday June 16 2015, @08:17AM
Good reply. You brought up some very interesting points. My main beef is with this overcomplicated software with all sorts of obfuscation and/or digital locks so one cannot verify/debug/trace it - and no idea what it is *really* doing.
If I had some mod points, I would have modded you up for that post. I will revisit this thread tomorrow for that purpose. I learn a lot from good debates.
As far as the open source goes, just by the fact its open source, shared, and intended for general public under GNU in my mind should shield its creator. The code is open, modifiable, and one should be able to look at and verify ( and others more technically astute are free to do so as well ). Its hard to look a gift horse in the mouth, so to say. I even have some of my stuff released for public domain under GNU. Its wide open, I left it as an example of code that will do a certain thing, and hopefully I left enough comments in it that if someone needs something close, they are welcome to take what I left and modify it. Like you say, I do not want to take responsibility for it, but if someone finds it useful, just take it for what its worth ( free ) and have a ball with it. I see it as my way of payback for all the "free" stuff others have left for me.
And, yes, I do have some of that "Airplane" software. Its great stuff. Micrium's uC/OS-II. [micrium.com] They have written much documentation [micrium.com] on it. It is absolutely elegant code. This is the kind of stuff we *should* be using for a kernel as far as I am concerned. Its paid software; I see nothing wrong with that. Its the way Micrium is so open about exactly how it works that makes it so elegant. If something isn't right, I have a very good stab at finding out exactly what went wrong.
I was introduced to this code when I purchased a NetBurner board for some projects I was working on. This was code I felt I could trust.
Its when I see all these BSA types, putting digital locks on everything, having Congress pass all this DMCA crap, having me agree to EULA's and the like, trying to hold ME accountable. If they are gonna be that way, then I want accountability too. From them.
If the code is released as open-source, I feel I assume the risk of running it, as it is supposedly open and I take all risks to plug it in. However, if its a potion sold to me in a sealed bottle, and I have no idea what's in it, the salesman tells me it does one thing, I take it in and it does another thing. I feel I have been really taken for a patsy by not being allowed to know what's in it. I have been very frustrated at not even being able to open Microsoft DOC files without danger of infections. ( much to the delight of internet email phishers who try every trick in the book to get one to open their infected DOC's ). I thought we learned not to mix executables and data back in the old BBS days when we discovered we could place "ANSI bombs" in a text file. It was soon discovered that an ANSI-art "nudie" just might wipe your C: drive. I learned the lesson that it is quite obvious Microsoft professional programmers did not.
We may never get absolutely perfect code, but I would sure like to remove incentives to produce sloppy code by removing ways for producers of bad code to sweep it under the federally legislated rug (DMCA) to hide it from the customer. If they are gonna sweep crap under the rug, then THEY take responsibility for it. If its out in the open ( like the source code to the BIOS was printed in the early IBM-AT technical service manuals ), then its publicly viewable - not hidden, and therefore I would have a hard time holding anyone accountable for a programming error. This is not about paid software, copyright, or licensing issues... rather its about openness. I feel copyright is like a book - one does not encrypt a book so no-one can read it to protect copyright.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 16 2015, @04:34PM
Don't get sucked into that tar pit. Only the lawyers will win in the long run. Much better to have legal protection revoked from products that are faulty or something else that makes it a less of a lawyer source of profit and more of a user benefit.