You are wrong because you conflate the meaning og "point" (why we have authority figures, and/or where they derive their, well, authority from) with your beliefs about how (all? most?) authority figures and structures actually act. It seems, solely to provoke a reaction.
Now I agree that you should be highly suspect of any authority figures and systems (having read Frank Herbert at an impressionable age), but that hardly means we should attack everyone who says that the point of having such figures is actually something better than what we have or what we should naively expect...
And since he spent his formative years in England and Denmark that could have well formed his socialist view of the 5th amendment. The Bill of Rights are for INDIVIDUALS. He probably missed that understanding.
Socialism is about the distribution of wealth and the laws under which you get to create and accumulate it. It is not about (for or against) individual rights, except that it does not value any "right to own" higher than the right to life, happiness, etc. etc. You may be confusing socialism with Stalinism or Leninism, or some other kind of totalitarian system that called itself communism...
I am so sorry. I thought this was the discussion about a private company owning (and as such companies are wont to do) selling detailed data on all teachers and students, while providing a lock-in platform for serving and tracking all teaching. If they are only recommending a book or other teacher aid, then I must have completely misunderstood the article. Sorry, won't happen again!
Since when is the idea of a teacher evaluating a student's abilities an Orwellian concept? Or does it magically become Orwellian just because a tablet is involved?
Not magically and not because of the tablet. But when one actor becomes the keeper, gatekeeper and salesperson through yet another "nice-data-you-have-there-maybe-we-should-hold-that-for.you"-based (ie. cloud) solution, then yes, we are moving closer to an Orwellian concept (with a few corporate, not one state, big brothers). It is not because the teacher is marking it on a tablet, it is because one big corp is going to be analysing, using and reselling the data from everything both student and teacher does to advertisers, government and related industries that this becomes a problem.
The endgame of extremist feminists looks very like that of extremist religions, with women chastely covered up and seperated from the lecherous menfolk for fear they will be overcome by their urges.
You should read a dictionary, because that has nothing at all to do with feminism. Nothing. Not one bit.
Feminism is the idea that women are people. Often tied to a sensibility towards the fact that they have not traditionally, and in some ways, in some cultures, still are not treated as such.
Not everything has to conform to political correctness. What's wrong with letting guys be guys, and enjoy things men like?
When the women outnumber the men, are we going to complain then that there are too many booth bros?
The problem is that it signals to all the girls that this is what they are supposed to be, and if they do not like it - this is not the place for them. This is a problem, even if you do not suffer from it, or if it is not (and maybe should not) be illegal.
And if women outnumbered men, we would have the exact same problem as we have now (women parts being used as bling) - because this is a male dominated society and a slow one to change culturally. Look at you arguing like structural,cultural and linguistic oppression is not an issue...
America suppressed the information regarding its own wrongdoing. Hence, the delivery of information to a non-American entity.
A non-retarded response to this new paradigm would be not suppressing information about your own wrongdoing - and thus gaining some control over its dissemination. An added bonus to doing the right thing, I might add.
"Post nation state entity" is some kind of made up bullshit, and it's not American.
Actually, the independence and paradigmatic shift of new media was made public in 1996, and no government has of yet responded sanely to the new reality. That the US government is not able to understand the new facts on the ground does not make said facts bullshit. Just because your logic cannot encompass something, does not mean it cannot affect you. It just makes your responses utterly dumb...
In the end, socalled IP can only be enforced in this manner: Control over the machines used by the buyers, ie. the potential buyers, ie. the rabble. Only when we no longer control our machines, can you "sell" access - you need a gateway to extract money! Since the "you need the LP/CD/DVD"-model has died, the only possible gate is access and control over the machine.
So, the Free Software movement asks again: Who should own and control the machines we all use for work, entertainment, living?
That is interesting... Funny if our laws are not cut out for a barter economy... Though I would still hold that "you are paying..." is true whether the law recognises the possibility of two mutual customers or not. We also "pay" in other senses than the legal definition.
But with the case at hand, we are already talking about a mutual contract - which has, by definition, two mutual, consenting partners, who both take up obligations and both gain something from the other.
If I have not somehow entered an agreement with Google, giving them the right to use my private information anyway, then yeah - they should not be forced to answer me by mail. They should be forced to compensate me in court. But if me and Google are in some relationship exchanging 21st century goods like "search" and "private data", then they should be forced to aknowledge and respond to me if there are issues with said relationship, and especially if they are not upholding their end.
I fail to see the relevant distinction. We are exchanging goods, both "paying" and both "buying"... What makes "I am paying in info" wrong and "Google is buying info" right?
It is not free. You are paying with your privacy and helping them build one of the largest and most interesting databases in the world. If they believe they have any right to do anything with any of your data, this must stem from a claim that there is some sort of contract. If the end user has no way to contact Google (beyond getting a formulaic donotreply-email), he or she has no way to force Google to uphold their end. Without such measures, the contact cannot be binding, and without any attempt to allow the user such measures, Google could even be acting in bad faith.
Because some people think "free" can only mean that they are personally free to do whatever they want. Just like any free society has no laws against murder.
I have not heard of any currency that has ever had a fixed value, and I would be very surprised if Forbes could name one. It is pretty obvious that buying power will fluctuate over time, and shifting circumstances. The size of an economy that routinely uses a given coinage is what gives stability - modified by whatever good, bad, stabilizing or ruinous government or speculator interventions and manipulations are performed, of course.
Women live in a culture where the NORMAL response to reporting rape or sexual assault is to be asked what they did to provoke it (what were they wearing, were they drunk, did they lead him on, were they out by themselves after dark)....
The constant difficulty for women in predominately male environments is when do I speak up and say "you are making me feel uncomfortable with what you are saying/doing" without coming off as a jerk. Say it too early and you risk being called thin-skinned and are consequently ignored if you want to raise things later (crying wolf), say it later and you run the risk of everyone thinking you 'gave consent'.
This is definitely an important aspect in these cases. As you pointed out yourself, though; we do not know how relevant it was to this case. How offensive were these guys really being, how hard would it have been for her to interject directly, etc. etc.? I do get how it is infinitely easier to snap a few photos and seemingly "deal" with the situation without confronting people directly. It is never pleasant to ask others to adjust their behaviour, and not coming off as meek or, dare I say it, bitchy, is always a balancing act. Especially for women in a "boys world" setting. You are right on the money on the timing issue, too, I suspect.
But in this case, we do know one thing: She was offended, they were not out to offend her, had not been confronted by her or staff, they had not had a chance to apologize or change their behaviour. And she brought out the big guns first; public shaming.
If she did not feel like confronting them direclt (which she advocates herself in her blog post, incidentally), she should have gotten hold of the staff and had them handle it. The staff reaction to the incident more or less proved this would have worked. Noone would have been fired - in all probability, they guys would have been told that someone was offended, they would have had a hard time figuring out why (dongle/dick jokes can be part of a chauvenist culture, but are not necessarily inherently offensive), and they would probably have piped down.
She overreacted, and she hurt people and her cause.
But you are absolutely right in calling out that the cause itself is just. There are plenty of examples where women are being ridiculed, shamed or just plain not welcomed in the tech (and other) communities.
The thing that doesn't seem to be getting through is that I don't care if someone else can't take my code for free and then make money with it. Why would I?
Oh, I know how you feel, how your specific one-person use case means that you do not need a licence. And that the person using your code without a licence has been lucky so far.
But, and this is what you have still not aknowledged or understood, it seems, is that we are not talking about you. We are talking about licences in general, and how they are necessary for effective sharing of code and code fragments.
As I said at the start of this discussion:
You are not wrong for excersising that choice... But you are wrong if you believe chosing no license does not destroy the usability of your code utterly, for any serious projects.
I am not saying that you personally should use a licence. Keep sharing your code on a "here, use this until I decide to sue you - which I promise I won't do, but not in any legally binding terms". But there are good reasons to reject such terms, and for seeking out code that is covered by a licence.
But, from your initial comments, it seems you are confused about the repercussions of your choices:
Someone took one of my apps and ported it to another platform without telling me.... None of this requires licenses. And I hate licenses
And this is specifically the kind of situation where a licence is required. That person was breaking the law. He or she opened themselves to lawsuits. Because you did not bother to wrap your gift properly. That is your choice - you can keep you gift if you want - but if what you want is for others to use your code, you would actually be better off actually giving them those permission in a legal sense too.
What you are doing right now, to use an analogy, is like giving a stranger the keys to a new car and walking away. While refusing to tell him whether you will call the cops on him if he drives it. He would be a fool to get in, and you are a fool if you think you have given the car in the full sense of the word.
By not licencing your work, you limit its usefulness. Keep doing it, by all means. But don't try to tell other people who actually care about usefulness and being sued that you have found a better path. You have not.
Licenses are needed for sharing code for others to copy and use in their own projects.
Again, no they're not. People take my games and port it to other platforms.
If they are using your published code, without any sort of licence or agreement, they are putting themselves at a big risk legally. As well as making their projects forever contingent on your continued acceptance.
This is a fact. It overrules your theory.
Not in the slightest. I never said that someone could not possible be dumb enough to take those risks. But, OK, if you want to split hairs, then your code published without a licence is useless to anyone who vaues their own money and time, and uselees for any project or software that anyone needs to rely on for anything at all.
Perhaps the logical error you are making is believing that only things sanctioned by the law happen in this world. Whereas actually rather a lot happens by decent people just behaving reasonably.
You know, it is just great that you personally is not going to sue those people. Pat yourself on the back for me. But it is not a "logical error" when people are not willing to risk their money, business and project on assumptions that all code they have copied will be managed in the same way.
"Decent people" would not ask other people to accept such insane risks, in order to use their code. And anyone "behaving reasonably" would not assume that risk. That you personally have not sued some guy does not mean that lawsuits do not happen, or that wanting to ensure oneself against them is not a good idea.
So we are back at "sorry, your specific use case is not the only thing that matters".
Slashdot Mirror
You are wrong because you conflate the meaning og "point" (why we have authority figures, and/or where they derive their, well, authority from) with your beliefs about how (all? most?) authority figures and structures actually act. It seems, solely to provoke a reaction.
Now I agree that you should be highly suspect of any authority figures and systems (having read Frank Herbert at an impressionable age), but that hardly means we should attack everyone who says that the point of having such figures is actually something better than what we have or what we should naively expect...
And since he spent his formative years in England and Denmark that could have well formed his socialist view of the 5th amendment. The Bill of Rights are for INDIVIDUALS. He probably missed that understanding.
Socialism is about the distribution of wealth and the laws under which you get to create and accumulate it. It is not about (for or against) individual rights, except that it does not value any "right to own" higher than the right to life, happiness, etc. etc.
You may be confusing socialism with Stalinism or Leninism, or some other kind of totalitarian system that called itself communism...
I am so sorry. I thought this was the discussion about a private company owning (and as such companies are wont to do) selling detailed data on all teachers and students, while providing a lock-in platform for serving and tracking all teaching. If they are only recommending a book or other teacher aid, then I must have completely misunderstood the article. Sorry, won't happen again!
Not magically and not because of the tablet. But when one actor becomes the keeper, gatekeeper and salesperson through yet another "nice-data-you-have-there-maybe-we-should-hold-that-for.you"-based (ie. cloud) solution, then yes, we are moving closer to an Orwellian concept (with a few corporate, not one state, big brothers).
It is not because the teacher is marking it on a tablet, it is because one big corp is going to be analysing, using and reselling the data from everything both student and teacher does to advertisers, government and related industries that this becomes a problem.
I seriously don't give a shit what its first message is.
Do you care who holds its leash, controls its mouth and directs its every move and to what end?
I believe in equal rights for all. No special rights for anyone.
Who on earth gave you the idea feminism is about special rights for women?
Seriously? That is nowhere near the agenda.
Equal pay is a feminist cause. The right to vote is a feminist cause.
Please point to these feminist organisations saying women should be paid more than men, or be allowed to vote twice!
The endgame of extremist feminists looks very like that of extremist religions, with women chastely covered up and seperated from the lecherous menfolk for fear they will be overcome by their urges.
You should read a dictionary, because that has nothing at all to do with feminism. Nothing. Not one bit.
Feminism is the idea that women are people. Often tied to a sensibility towards the fact that they have not traditionally, and in some ways, in some cultures, still are not treated as such.
Hardwired?
Like we are hardwired to eat sugary foods, and hence all attempts to eat anything but glucose is silly?
Not everything has to conform to political correctness. What's wrong with letting guys be guys, and enjoy things men like?
When the women outnumber the men, are we going to complain then that there are too many booth bros?
The problem is that it signals to all the girls that this is what they are supposed to be, and if they do not like it - this is not the place for them. This is a problem, even if you do not suffer from it, or if it is not (and maybe should not) be illegal.
And if women outnumbered men, we would have the exact same problem as we have now (women parts being used as bling) - because this is a male dominated society and a slow one to change culturally. Look at you arguing like structural,cultural and linguistic oppression is not an issue...
America suppressed the information regarding its own wrongdoing. Hence, the delivery of information to a non-American entity.
A non-retarded response to this new paradigm would be not suppressing information about your own wrongdoing - and thus gaining some control over its dissemination. An added bonus to doing the right thing, I might add.
"Post nation state entity" is some kind of made up bullshit, and it's not American.
Actually, the independence and paradigmatic shift of new media was made public in 1996, and no government has of yet responded sanely to the new reality. That the US government is not able to understand the new facts on the ground does not make said facts bullshit. Just because your logic cannot encompass something, does not mean it cannot affect you. It just makes your responses utterly dumb...
In the end, socalled IP can only be enforced in this manner: Control over the machines used by the buyers, ie. the potential buyers, ie. the rabble. Only when we no longer control our machines, can you "sell" access - you need a gateway to extract money! Since the "you need the LP/CD/DVD"-model has died, the only possible gate is access and control over the machine.
So, the Free Software movement asks again: Who should own and control the machines we all use for work, entertainment, living?
So, a FEMA-approved site which coordinate help on the ground (so far, housing and personal transportation) is not helpful to relief efforts?
Why are LED billboards legal?
Capitalism
That is interesting... Funny if our laws are not cut out for a barter economy... Though I would still hold that "you are paying..." is true whether the law recognises the possibility of two mutual customers or not. We also "pay" in other senses than the legal definition.
But with the case at hand, we are already talking about a mutual contract - which has, by definition, two mutual, consenting partners, who both take up obligations and both gain something from the other.
If I have not somehow entered an agreement with Google, giving them the right to use my private information anyway, then yeah - they should not be forced to answer me by mail. They should be forced to compensate me in court. But if me and Google are in some relationship exchanging 21st century goods like "search" and "private data", then they should be forced to aknowledge and respond to me if there are issues with said relationship, and especially if they are not upholding their end.
I fail to see the relevant distinction. We are exchanging goods, both "paying" and both "buying"... What makes "I am paying in info" wrong and "Google is buying info" right?
It is not free. You are paying with your privacy and helping them build one of the largest and most interesting databases in the world. If they believe they have any right to do anything with any of your data, this must stem from a claim that there is some sort of contract. If the end user has no way to contact Google (beyond getting a formulaic donotreply-email), he or she has no way to force Google to uphold their end. Without such measures, the contact cannot be binding, and without any attempt to allow the user such measures, Google could even be acting in bad faith.
Indeed, and maybe some mathematical wizardry that would allow a small string to uniquely identify a huge string, such as code...
Because some people think "free" can only mean that they are personally free to do whatever they want. Just like any free society has no laws against murder.
Your trolling just jumped the shark...
I have not heard of any currency that has ever had a fixed value, and I would be very surprised if Forbes could name one. It is pretty obvious that buying power will fluctuate over time, and shifting circumstances. The size of an economy that routinely uses a given coinage is what gives stability - modified by whatever good, bad, stabilizing or ruinous government or speculator interventions and manipulations are performed, of course.
Women live in a culture where the NORMAL response to reporting rape or sexual assault is to be asked what they did to provoke it (what were they wearing, were they drunk, did they lead him on, were they out by themselves after dark). ...
The constant difficulty for women in predominately male environments is when do I speak up and say "you are making me feel uncomfortable with what you are saying/doing" without coming off as a jerk. Say it too early and you risk being called thin-skinned and are consequently ignored if you want to raise things later (crying wolf), say it later and you run the risk of everyone thinking you 'gave consent'.
This is definitely an important aspect in these cases. As you pointed out yourself, though; we do not know how relevant it was to this case. How offensive were these guys really being, how hard would it have been for her to interject directly, etc. etc.?
I do get how it is infinitely easier to snap a few photos and seemingly "deal" with the situation without confronting people directly. It is never pleasant to ask others to adjust their behaviour, and not coming off as meek or, dare I say it, bitchy, is always a balancing act. Especially for women in a "boys world" setting. You are right on the money on the timing issue, too, I suspect.
But in this case, we do know one thing: She was offended, they were not out to offend her, had not been confronted by her or staff, they had not had a chance to apologize or change their behaviour. And she brought out the big guns first; public shaming.
If she did not feel like confronting them direclt (which she advocates herself in her blog post, incidentally), she should have gotten hold of the staff and had them handle it. The staff reaction to the incident more or less proved this would have worked. Noone would have been fired - in all probability, they guys would have been told that someone was offended, they would have had a hard time figuring out why (dongle/dick jokes can be part of a chauvenist culture, but are not necessarily inherently offensive), and they would probably have piped down.
She overreacted, and she hurt people and her cause.
But you are absolutely right in calling out that the cause itself is just. There are plenty of examples where women are being ridiculed, shamed or just plain not welcomed in the tech (and other) communities.
The thing that doesn't seem to be getting through is that I don't care if someone else can't take my code for free and then make money with it. Why would I?
Oh, I know how you feel, how your specific one-person use case means that you do not need a licence. And that the person using your code without a licence has been lucky so far.
But, and this is what you have still not aknowledged or understood, it seems, is that we are not talking about you. We are talking about licences in general, and how they are necessary for effective sharing of code and code fragments.
As I said at the start of this discussion:
You are not wrong for excersising that choice... But you are wrong if you believe chosing no license does not destroy the usability of your code utterly, for any serious projects.
I am not saying that you personally should use a licence. Keep sharing your code on a "here, use this until I decide to sue you - which I promise I won't do, but not in any legally binding terms". But there are good reasons to reject such terms, and for seeking out code that is covered by a licence.
But, from your initial comments, it seems you are confused about the repercussions of your choices:
Someone took one of my apps and ported it to another platform without telling me. ... None of this requires licenses. And I hate licenses
And this is specifically the kind of situation where a licence is required. That person was breaking the law. He or she opened themselves to lawsuits. Because you did not bother to wrap your gift properly. That is your choice - you can keep you gift if you want - but if what you want is for others to use your code, you would actually be better off actually giving them those permission in a legal sense too.
What you are doing right now, to use an analogy, is like giving a stranger the keys to a new car and walking away. While refusing to tell him whether you will call the cops on him if he drives it. He would be a fool to get in, and you are a fool if you think you have given the car in the full sense of the word.
By not licencing your work, you limit its usefulness. Keep doing it, by all means. But don't try to tell other people who actually care about usefulness and being sued that you have found a better path. You have not.
Licenses are needed for sharing code for others to copy and use in their own projects.
Again, no they're not. People take my games and port it to other platforms.
If they are using your published code, without any sort of licence or agreement, they are putting themselves at a big risk legally. As well as making their projects forever contingent on your continued acceptance.
This is a fact. It overrules your theory.
Not in the slightest. I never said that someone could not possible be dumb enough to take those risks. But, OK, if you want to split hairs, then your code published without a licence is useless to anyone who vaues their own money and time, and uselees for any project or software that anyone needs to rely on for anything at all.
Perhaps the logical error you are making is believing that only things sanctioned by the law happen in this world. Whereas actually rather a lot happens by decent people just behaving reasonably.
You know, it is just great that you personally is not going to sue those people. Pat yourself on the back for me. But it is not a "logical error" when people are not willing to risk their money, business and project on assumptions that all code they have copied will be managed in the same way.
"Decent people" would not ask other people to accept such insane risks, in order to use their code. And anyone "behaving reasonably" would not assume that risk. That you personally have not sued some guy does not mean that lawsuits do not happen, or that wanting to ensure oneself against them is not a good idea.
So we are back at "sorry, your specific use case is not the only thing that matters".