Unfortunately, the line which explained that they were aiming for "The Wild, Chunky, Spunky Planet of Mary Lou Retton Clones" wound up on the cutting room floor.
Why was it necessary to extend lengths of copyrights?
Becuase at the time copyright law was originally devised it was not likely that the lawmakers saw that there would be any value to work manufactured in the distant past. I oppose the government taking away someone's property, intellectual or otherwise.
The point is, why was copyright *explicitly* granted for only "a limited time." You fail to explain this.
Well, lets see, Shakespeare didn't have copyright, and he hardly died a rich man. I'd say they are legitimately asking to be rewarded for their works. If people are still willing to pay for them, the artist or copyright owner should still get their cut.
Actually, Shakespeare did have copyright, although he in fact did not die rich. Most authors of copyrighted works do not rely on them for financial support. Furthermore, people buy more copies of Shakespeare's plays than ever before. If his descendents can be located, should they be getting a piece of the action?
Well, I don't have much sympathy for the "I don't want to pay for stuff" crowd either.
And I utterly despise those who cannot distinguish between the importance of the creative act and mere money. Art is not created in a vacuum. Why are so many of the greatest works so derivative of what came before? Art is the culture of sharing and cross-fertilization. Divide it into neat segments of ownership and it will wither and die. I do not grudge a creator the exclusive rights to his work for a limited time. But in perpetuity, art belongs to humanity.
Over the years I too have found that Williams is not the most creative of composers. But you have to admit he takes from the best. His soundtracks are the best of their time.
I don't know what your opinion is on this kind of reuse, but I've come to realize that it's natural and healthy. My personal moment of realization: I'd loved Vivaldi's Gloria. It came as a great shock for me to learn that the double fugue was lifted bodily from an earlier work by Ruggieri. But back then people had very different attitudes about originality and borrowing from the masters.
Around the 19th century (what with Beethoven and all) critics seem to have got the idea that to be a work of genius, art must be original. Of course, everyone wants to be a genius, so by the early 20th century most stylish artists (such as Schoenberg and his followers) were more interested in the avant-garde than the enjoyable. But no matter what you do, there will only be a few ground-breaking geniuses per century. Most artists are only good at producing mediocre work. If everyone tries to be a genius, then all the good, enjoyable, but mediocre art is replaced by crap that almost no one likes or understands.
And don't even get me started on the so-called idea (not expressed by you, I know) that derivative works by their nature steal from original authors. "Hamlet" is not in any way diminished by "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead," nor does Joyce's "Ulysses" steal from "The Odyssey." On the contrary, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. (And the theft that is plagiarism is of course an entirely separate matter.)
I for one am glad that Williams is content to create enjoyable and fitting scores, even though some snobs may look down upon him as a mere hack. Although he is certainly not another Mozart, the scores he has made are among the best in the 20th century.
(Further listening: Prokofiev's music for "Alexander Nevsky" -- simply amazing. Also, the theme music for "Lost in Space" (aren't you glad Williams didn't reuse that for "Star Wars"!))
My state issued a modest income tax refund last year. This is thanks to a Republican-sponsored state constitution amendment. Note however that it typically goes into effect when actual tax revenue exceeds that budgeted, so the ancestor post (about incentive for divisions to spend total allotment) is still valid. But this is a problem in *any* budgetary system.
I am not a politician, but I sometimes think like one.
Liberals recognize that the sales tax is horribly regressive although they don't say it out loud. They generally would prefer to make up the difference with a progressive income tax. This is more politically expedient, and it looks good to the lower middle classes. Also, from the Puritanical point of view (which includes some conservatives) directed sales taxes are useful for discouraging the purchase of gas, beer, guns, ammo, and other luxuries. Conservatives are not generally that concerned with small businesses, and if you are rich, then from a personal point of view, sales tax is definitely not one of the things you care about.
Wow. I agree with almost all of your assessment of 18th-19th c. education. (Just to be contrary, I'd like to point out that an awareness of art history is also a relatively new phenomenon. In particular, Bach and other dead composers' works were only very rarely performed before the advent of recording, and photography has made familiarity with a large body of visual work much more practical.)
But in terms of familiarity with literature and clarity of writing the intelligentsia of today are pretty pathetic. I have no doubt that the average 19th century American with an 8th grade education could write much more clearly than the average American college graduate of today. I know that my writing is better than most, and it still sucks real bad.
Furthermore, although our technical knowledge is much more advanced, thinking and writing clearly are still by far the most important skills for any information worker. The best scientists are not only expert in their field -- they are also communicate effectively and think precisely.
That's right! What's more, is CNN and MSNBC have yet to say word *one* regarding the nefarious deeds of the Trilateral Commission!! (to say nothing of the Rosicrucians!) Astounding, isn't it?
If I have a rotating electric dipole, it obviously radiates electromagnetically. I guess two masses would not emit gravitational dipole waves, but couldn't they lose energy through higher multipoles? Also, could the system put angular momentum into the field this way? Of course this is not important for earth-moon, I am just curious...
Its quite obvious that some of our scientific advances could be quite dangerous, and if misused could end life on earth
I seriously doubt that we could end life on earth. We have succeeded in causing many extinctions, but some forms of life are very stubborn. (Consider the recently discovered iron-dwelling microbes.)
I reckon the most damage we could easily cause would be simultaneous groundburst of all warheads. The planet has been prone to glaciation over the last Myr or so, so this may be able to trigger an ice age. However, even if it lasted longer than usual, the large scale glaciation cycle should be over in a few more Myr. (depending on what is causing it -- polar continental distribution, Himalyan uplift, or what have you) This kind of event is not unprecedented.
If howveer we could nudge an asteroid to collide with the Earth, then we could probably kill any animal bigger than a rat. But using present technologies it would take a lot of coordination and at least a century. And if there were an untimely nuclear war before we were done, then we'd have to start all over again.
I'm not quite so optimistic, but the way I figure it, we've been barrelling headlong down this path since the last ice age. (if not longer) And even if we all went back to the trees, I bet we'd be down again in a few hundred years at the most. Might as well enjoy the ride while it lasts...
In one corner we have people like RMS, who wants to take credit for anything and everything; and in the other corner we have the "armchair hackers" who seem to run around all day and threaten our friends like Corel with lawsuits because they went to the bathroom and didn't release the toilet paper under the GPL.
Then there are the mean people who are always being mean to everyone and everything they don't like, calling them names, and categorizing them. Why can't we all just get along?
Please tell me this of one of those "marketing guy" trolls. Either way, this is a good opportunity for a small exercise using the binomial distribution.
It doesn't matter that 50 is much smaller than the total list. What they are trying to show is that an unacceptable fraction of the blocked.edu sites are incorrectly blocked. The point is not that precisely 75% of the list is incorrect, but that a large fraction is.
What is an acceptable error rate? That is open to discussion, but if the point of the product is its blocking features, we would hope that its blocking worked right at least half the time. Suppose then that 50% of the.edu sites blocked by the censorware were blocked incorrectly, and that we pick a sample of n=50 from the list to look at.
The probability that x sites from our sample were erroneously blocked is: p(x) = 2^(-n)*(n \choose x) p(x) = 2^(-n)*n!/(x!(n-x)!)
(If you are doing this by hand you can use Stirling's approximation to evaluate the expression.) The cumulative distribution P(x) = the sum of p(i) over i=0..x is the probability that x or fewer sites were erroneously blocked. So the probability that in our sampling we will find 75% or more sites blocked is about 1 - P(.75n).
My calculations show this to be less than 10^-3, i.e. a 0.1% chance. So even if the list was quite bad (50% error rate), it would still be incredibly unlikely that we pick 50 urls at random and find as many as 75% to be erroneous. Anyway, it is pretty clear that the error rate on.edu pages is worse than 50%.
How meaningful this result is of course depends on what you care about. There is the problem that they look only at the.edu sites on the list. Also, since they sampled the list in order, they could be looking at a correlated group of sites. (I am inclined to doubt that, given the content they describe.) But your claim about a sample of 50 being too small is just ignorant.
I'm not a big fan of Bowdlerisation, but this notion of the purity of art is incredibly naive.
In the last half century or so the idea that art can be rated as absolutely 'better' or 'worse' has taken a real beating, and with good reason. But at the same time people get more and more uptight about the original form of art, and presenting it as the author intended. A couple examples:
You see people freaking out about recreating an original performance of Handel's Messiah and almost universally shunning the later modifications due to Mozart et al., even though Handel himself revised it many times in between performances to suit the tastes of his audiences. It is fun to see Baroque instruments and techniques, but what's wrong with looking at some of the work's later stages of evolution?
A few years ago some guy found half a Twain manuscript in a box, and now the "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: The Only Comprehensive Edition" is released. The claim is that Twain was forced to delete a few episodes from the original work because he lived back in the 19th century, and that the new edition is unexpurgated. I really do like the new book, but the editor and publisher fall all over themselves to say it is better, more accurate, and more complete than what Twain actually approved and published. That is just stupid.
These people have screwed up because they ignore the importance of the audience. Real art is not just intellectual masturbation. It comes from the artist, but it must go to an audience who interprets it. At some point the art must stand on its own. Art which lasts and is appreciated through the ages (Homer, Shakespeare, Corelli, Michelangelo) is bold and vigorous.
Shakespeare's work has been cut, augmented, rewritten, and second-guessed for centuries. The first productions were all-male. You can still see all-male performances, but you can also find all-transvesitite performances, (which makes Twelfth Night even more interesting) there are traditional texts, hip, updated texts, and thematic adaptations that are new works in their own right. Shakespeare's work is great not in spite of these changes, but through them.
Great art lives because of new viewers and new interpretations. Not all changes to art are for the better, and it will suffer if only censored versions are available. But if the work is truly great, alterate versions and interpretations can only add to its richness.
I sure don't mind if Matt and Trey make a milder version for the tightass Academy. After all, it will only encourage more people to get the movie and enjoy it for themselves.
Gots to agree there. If the song were good only because its daring enough to say 'fart' it would be pretty pathetic to say this is the best song of the year. Fortunately, it is a damn fine song, and changing a few words won't screw it up too much.
Also, what's with all these people saying what abc should or shouldn't do? Seems like every other day you got scads of people saying all righteous-like, "Freedom of the press is for those who have one." Guess they didn't log in today or something.
You see, to me the real excitement of slashdot is the epic battle between order and chaos. The moderators are of course on the front lines. I think the reason I am so enthralled is that it is all so tragic -- surely it clear to everyone by now that the moderators are utterly doomed. Their cause is lost, but each day they sally forth once more to defend a shrinking scrap of land where 'meaning' and 'civility' still reign. I am filled with a dread fascination, and cannot turn away. But today, this fool stumbled out and disgraced the noble field where so many have perished in vain. Thus did I become wonderly wroth, and sought to deliver unto him a royal dis, although I knew my skill would not be equal to the task. My fingers flew over the keyboard, and my post was shot forth, alone. The rage cleared from my brain, and I was free from slashdot, for a time. For these reasons, I do not know what was intended, but if I had to guess, I'd probably choose #2.
Wonder if the moderator will have the guts to tell me why he did it - I guess not.
I am not that moderator, but I doubt he or she will mind my explaining this to you. There is not much point in your responding to a post that everyone can see is a piece of trash. But if you do respond to that post, complaining that it is so abusive and offensive, why on earth would you give a response which is just as abusive and offensive?! I quote:
I suppose I shouldn't reply to such a dickweed troll but take your finger out of your ass and think...
CmdrTaco has given you the privilege of expressing this opinion. But he has alloyed this privilege with moderation, to scourge the kind of pointless abuse of which you and 'TRoLL.' are such shining examples. Perhaps you are complaining that the moderator should have marked down the parent post first. That is utterly moot. By adding to the total volume of stupid, worthless flamebait, you are making the moderators' job much harder. To complain about their noble work, just after you have thwarted it, makes you nothing less than a hypocrite.
The libertarian party is advocating the "right" to provide an inferior product or service, and the right to purchase an inferior product or service, but not the right to advertise said inferior product or service as more than what it is. Hence you merely now have the choice to endanger yourself if you wish to. How can that be a bad thing?
Actually, I am now going to have to take a closer look at the libertarian party.
May I suggest that you also look at the 1906 (US) Food and Drugs Act and The Meat Inspection Act and the historical context? I'm glad that someone is looking over the shoulder of the meat packing industry, although the Libertarian Party doesn't seem too happy about it...
I hope my esteemed colleague the Honorable Coward did not intend to insinuate that the Libertarian Party itself necessarily opposes the use of the GPL. However, it is only fair to note that certain Opportunistic Persons will choose a party based upon a selfish desire for personal Gain, rather than on a true Agreement with the party's Principles and a deep Belief in what is right.
For this reason many welfare recipients may be Democrat, big businessmen tend to be Republican, and many who wish to disregard the Law as it stands claim to be Libertarian. These people, Self Centered as they are, also tend to be 'single issue' voters, and have no Loyalty to true party Philosophy. Thus little Sue Perkins next Door would eagerly support even Bush, if he promised to score her some Good Weed. Vinny down the street would be Gore's friend for life, if he but thought that would aid his Business of Unsolicited Knee Surgery. This of course does not mean that there are no good Libertarians, Republicans, or Democrats, but only that there are a few bad ones, and that the Correlation of their Particular Defects is well known.
I myself have a few Questions and Concerns regarding the Libertarian Platform. In Section 6, Article the Second, it is argued that grants of legal privilege make government "the source of monopoly." Copyright is a monopoly granted by the United States Congress, but of this the Article gives no specific mention. By that Silence, ought I to construe consent thereto? If this matter is elsewhere addressed, please be good enough to let me know, as the question bears Grave Import upon the Libertarian Opinion of Copyleft.
(And, for my own personal curiosity, I must wonder if the Libertarian Party in general favors a government overview of the Purity of Food and Drugs, or is it to be a private contractual matter between Producer and Consumer, whose ultimate arbiter is the Court?)
In any case, I am enboldened by Carmack's Proclaimation, and feel that those who have put their Trust in the Strength of the GPL will not soon be disappointed.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, the line which explained that they were aiming for "The Wild, Chunky, Spunky Planet of Mary Lou Retton Clones" wound up on the cutting room floor.
Becuase at the time copyright law was originally devised it was not likely that the lawmakers saw that there would be any value to work manufactured in the distant past. I oppose the government taking away someone's property, intellectual or otherwise.
The point is, why was copyright *explicitly* granted for only "a limited time." You fail to explain this.
Well, lets see, Shakespeare didn't have copyright, and he hardly died a rich man. I'd say they are legitimately asking to be rewarded for their works. If people are still willing to pay for them, the artist or copyright owner should still get their cut.
Actually, Shakespeare did have copyright, although he in fact did not die rich. Most authors of copyrighted works do not rely on them for financial support. Furthermore, people buy more copies of Shakespeare's plays than ever before. If his descendents can be located, should they be getting a piece of the action?
Well, I don't have much sympathy for the "I don't want to pay for stuff" crowd either.
And I utterly despise those who cannot distinguish between the importance of the creative act and mere money. Art is not created in a vacuum. Why are so many of the greatest works so derivative of what came before? Art is the culture of sharing and cross-fertilization. Divide it into neat segments of ownership and it will wither and die. I do not grudge a creator the exclusive rights to his work for a limited time. But in perpetuity, art belongs to humanity.
Over the years I too have found that Williams is not the most creative of composers. But you have to admit he takes from the best. His soundtracks are the best of their time.
I don't know what your opinion is on this kind of reuse, but I've come to realize that it's natural and healthy. My personal moment of realization: I'd loved Vivaldi's Gloria. It came as a great shock for me to learn that the double fugue was lifted bodily from an earlier work by Ruggieri. But back then people had very different attitudes about originality and borrowing from the masters.
Around the 19th century (what with Beethoven and all) critics seem to have got the idea that to be a work of genius, art must be original. Of course, everyone wants to be a genius, so by the early 20th century most stylish artists (such as Schoenberg and his followers) were more interested in the avant-garde than the enjoyable. But no matter what you do, there will only be a few ground-breaking geniuses per century. Most artists are only good at producing mediocre work. If everyone tries to be a genius, then all the good, enjoyable, but mediocre art is replaced by crap that almost no one likes or understands.
And don't even get me started on the so-called idea (not expressed by you, I know) that derivative works by their nature steal from original authors. "Hamlet" is not in any way diminished by "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead," nor does Joyce's "Ulysses" steal from "The Odyssey." On the contrary, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. (And the theft that is plagiarism is of course an entirely separate matter.)
I for one am glad that Williams is content to create enjoyable and fitting scores, even though some snobs may look down upon him as a mere hack. Although he is certainly not another Mozart, the scores he has made are among the best in the 20th century.
(Further listening: Prokofiev's music for "Alexander Nevsky" -- simply amazing. Also, the theme music for "Lost in Space" (aren't you glad Williams didn't reuse that for "Star Wars"!))
You probably don't want to hear this, but you were right the first time.
"Brevity is the soul of wit," --Polonius (Hamlet Act II, sc. ii)
hey, i think the new economy is great... to poop on!
you're wrong! i'm not in denial!!
Couldn't agree more. I can't wait for those e-businesses to get out of town, and I hope they take that stinkin' "cluetrain" with them.
My state issued a modest income tax refund last year. This is thanks to a Republican-sponsored state constitution amendment. Note however that it typically goes into effect when actual tax revenue exceeds that budgeted, so the ancestor post (about incentive for divisions to spend total allotment) is still valid. But this is a problem in *any* budgetary system.
I am not a politician, but I sometimes think like one.
Liberals recognize that the sales tax is horribly regressive although they don't say it out loud. They generally would prefer to make up the difference with a progressive income tax. This is more politically expedient, and it looks good to the lower middle classes. Also, from the Puritanical point of view (which includes some conservatives) directed sales taxes are useful for discouraging the purchase of gas, beer, guns, ammo, and other luxuries. Conservatives are not generally that concerned with small businesses, and if you are rich, then from a personal point of view, sales tax is definitely not one of the things you care about.
Wow. I agree with almost all of your assessment of 18th-19th c. education. (Just to be contrary, I'd like to point out that an awareness of art history is also a relatively new phenomenon. In particular, Bach and other dead composers' works were only very rarely performed before the advent of recording, and photography has made familiarity with a large body of visual work much more practical.)
But in terms of familiarity with literature and clarity of writing the intelligentsia of today are pretty pathetic. I have no doubt that the average 19th century American with an 8th grade education could write much more clearly than the average American college graduate of today. I know that my writing is better than most, and it still sucks real bad.
Furthermore, although our technical knowledge is much more advanced, thinking and writing clearly are still by far the most important skills for any information worker. The best scientists are not only expert in their field -- they are also communicate effectively and think precisely.
That's right! What's more, is CNN and MSNBC have yet to say word *one* regarding the nefarious deeds of the Trilateral Commission!! (to say nothing of the Rosicrucians!) Astounding, isn't it?
If I have a rotating electric dipole, it obviously radiates electromagnetically. I guess two masses would not emit gravitational dipole waves, but couldn't they lose energy through higher multipoles? Also, could the system put angular momentum into the field this way? Of course this is not important for earth-moon, I am just curious...
Wow! That's the best Verhoeven imitation I've seen all year!
Its quite obvious that some of our scientific advances could be quite dangerous, and if misused could end life on earth
I seriously doubt that we could end life on earth. We have succeeded in causing many extinctions, but some forms of life are very stubborn. (Consider the recently discovered iron-dwelling microbes.)
I reckon the most damage we could easily cause would be simultaneous groundburst of all warheads. The planet has been prone to glaciation over the last Myr or so, so this may be able to trigger an ice age. However, even if it lasted longer than usual, the large scale glaciation cycle should be over in a few more Myr. (depending on what is causing it -- polar continental distribution, Himalyan uplift, or what have you) This kind of event is not unprecedented.
If howveer we could nudge an asteroid to collide with the Earth, then we could probably kill any animal bigger than a rat. But using present technologies it would take a lot of coordination and at least a century. And if there were an untimely nuclear war before we were done, then we'd have to start all over again.
A little food for thought.
I'm not quite so optimistic, but the way I figure it, we've been barrelling headlong down this path since the last ice age. (if not longer) And even if we all went back to the trees, I bet we'd be down again in a few hundred years at the most. Might as well enjoy the ride while it lasts...
There is a great article in the latest issue of Wired covering Bill and this interesting topic.
Actually, that article is what the article that this article is about is about! :-)
In one corner we have people like RMS, who wants to take credit for anything and everything; and in the other corner we have the "armchair hackers" who seem to run around all day and threaten our friends like Corel with lawsuits because they went to the bathroom and didn't release the toilet paper under the GPL.
Then there are the mean people who are always being mean to everyone and everything they don't like, calling them names, and categorizing them. Why can't we all just get along?
Please tell me this of one of those "marketing guy" trolls. Either way, this is a good opportunity for a small exercise using the binomial distribution.
It doesn't matter that 50 is much smaller than the total list. What they are trying to show is that an unacceptable fraction of the blocked .edu sites are incorrectly blocked. The point is not that precisely 75% of the list is incorrect, but that a large fraction is.
What is an acceptable error rate? That is open to discussion, but if the point of the product is its blocking features, we would hope that its blocking worked right at least half the time. Suppose then that 50% of the .edu sites blocked by the censorware were blocked incorrectly, and that we pick a sample of n=50 from the list to look at.
The probability that x sites from our sample were erroneously blocked is:
p(x) = 2^(-n)*(n \choose x)
p(x) = 2^(-n)*n!/(x!(n-x)!)
(If you are doing this by hand you can use Stirling's approximation to evaluate the expression.) The cumulative distribution P(x) = the sum of p(i) over i=0..x is the probability that x or fewer sites were erroneously blocked. So the probability that in our sampling we will find 75% or more sites blocked is about 1 - P(.75n).
My calculations show this to be less than 10^-3, i.e. a 0.1% chance. So even if the list was quite bad (50% error rate), it would still be incredibly unlikely that we pick 50 urls at random and find as many as 75% to be erroneous. Anyway, it is pretty clear that the error rate on .edu pages is worse than 50%.
How meaningful this result is of course depends on what you care about. There is the problem that they look only at the .edu sites on the list. Also, since they sampled the list in order, they could be looking at a correlated group of sites. (I am inclined to doubt that, given the content they describe.) But your claim about a sample of 50 being too small is just ignorant.
I'm not a big fan of Bowdlerisation, but this notion of the purity of art is incredibly naive.
In the last half century or so the idea that art can be rated as absolutely 'better' or 'worse' has taken a real beating, and with good reason. But at the same time people get more and more uptight about the original form of art, and presenting it as the author intended. A couple examples:
These people have screwed up because they ignore the importance of the audience. Real art is not just intellectual masturbation. It comes from the artist, but it must go to an audience who interprets it. At some point the art must stand on its own. Art which lasts and is appreciated through the ages (Homer, Shakespeare, Corelli, Michelangelo) is bold and vigorous.
Shakespeare's work has been cut, augmented, rewritten, and second-guessed for centuries. The first productions were all-male. You can still see all-male performances, but you can also find all-transvesitite performances, (which makes Twelfth Night even more interesting) there are traditional texts, hip, updated texts, and thematic adaptations that are new works in their own right. Shakespeare's work is great not in spite of these changes, but through them.
Great art lives because of new viewers and new interpretations. Not all changes to art are for the better, and it will suffer if only censored versions are available. But if the work is truly great, alterate versions and interpretations can only add to its richness.
I sure don't mind if Matt and Trey make a milder version for the tightass Academy. After all, it will only encourage more people to get the movie and enjoy it for themselves.
Gots to agree there. If the song were good only because its daring enough to say 'fart' it would be pretty pathetic to say this is the best song of the year. Fortunately, it is a damn fine song, and changing a few words won't screw it up too much.
Also, what's with all these people saying what abc should or shouldn't do? Seems like every other day you got scads of people saying all righteous-like, "Freedom of the press is for those who have one." Guess they didn't log in today or something.
Hmm... not sure.
You see, to me the real excitement of slashdot is the epic battle between order and chaos. The moderators are of course on the front lines. I think the reason I am so enthralled is that it is all so tragic -- surely it clear to everyone by now that the moderators are utterly doomed. Their cause is lost, but each day they sally forth once more to defend a shrinking scrap of land where 'meaning' and 'civility' still reign. I am filled with a dread fascination, and cannot turn away. But today, this fool stumbled out and disgraced the noble field where so many have perished in vain. Thus did I become wonderly wroth, and sought to deliver unto him a royal dis, although I knew my skill would not be equal to the task. My fingers flew over the keyboard, and my post was shot forth, alone. The rage cleared from my brain, and I was free from slashdot, for a time. For these reasons, I do not know what was intended, but if I had to guess, I'd probably choose #2.
Wonder if the moderator will have the guts to tell me why he did it - I guess not.
I am not that moderator, but I doubt he or she will mind my explaining this to you. There is not much point in your responding to a post that everyone can see is a piece of trash. But if you do respond to that post, complaining that it is so abusive and offensive, why on earth would you give a response which is just as abusive and offensive?! I quote:
CmdrTaco has given you the privilege of expressing this opinion. But he has alloyed this privilege with moderation, to scourge the kind of pointless abuse of which you and 'TRoLL.' are such shining examples. Perhaps you are complaining that the moderator should have marked down the parent post first. That is utterly moot. By adding to the total volume of stupid, worthless flamebait, you are making the moderators' job much harder. To complain about their noble work, just after you have thwarted it, makes you nothing less than a hypocrite.
Best regards,
Tuxedo Mask
The libertarian party is advocating the "right" to provide an inferior product or service, and the right to purchase an inferior product or service, but not the right to advertise said inferior product or service as more than what it is. Hence you merely now have the choice to endanger yourself if you wish to. How can that be a bad thing?
Actually, I am now going to have to take a closer look at the libertarian party.
May I suggest that you also look at the 1906 (US) Food and Drugs Act and The Meat Inspection Act and the historical context? I'm glad that someone is looking over the shoulder of the meat packing industry, although the Libertarian Party doesn't seem too happy about it...
right on! hope you enjoyed my small contribution.
I hope my esteemed colleague the Honorable Coward did not intend to insinuate that the Libertarian Party itself necessarily opposes the use of the GPL. However, it is only fair to note that certain Opportunistic Persons will choose a party based upon a selfish desire for personal Gain, rather than on a true Agreement with the party's Principles and a deep Belief in what is right.
For this reason many welfare recipients may be Democrat, big businessmen tend to be Republican, and many who wish to disregard the Law as it stands claim to be Libertarian. These people, Self Centered as they are, also tend to be 'single issue' voters, and have no Loyalty to true party Philosophy. Thus little Sue Perkins next Door would eagerly support even Bush, if he promised to score her some Good Weed. Vinny down the street would be Gore's friend for life, if he but thought that would aid his Business of Unsolicited Knee Surgery. This of course does not mean that there are no good Libertarians, Republicans, or Democrats, but only that there are a few bad ones, and that the Correlation of their Particular Defects is well known.
I myself have a few Questions and Concerns regarding the Libertarian Platform. In Section 6, Article the Second, it is argued that grants of legal privilege make government "the source of monopoly." Copyright is a monopoly granted by the United States Congress, but of this the Article gives no specific mention. By that Silence, ought I to construe consent thereto? If this matter is elsewhere addressed, please be good enough to let me know, as the question bears Grave Import upon the Libertarian Opinion of Copyleft.
(And, for my own personal curiosity, I must wonder if the Libertarian Party in general favors a government overview of the Purity of Food and Drugs, or is it to be a private contractual matter between Producer and Consumer, whose ultimate arbiter is the Court?)
In any case, I am enboldened by Carmack's Proclaimation, and feel that those who have put their Trust in the Strength of the GPL will not soon be disappointed.