The TASER sucks, but it sucks less than a bullet in the head. When used under the right circumstances, it prevents premature death and is a wonderful thing for that reason.
When used under the wrong circumstances, it's torture--simple as that.
Just because one person defined a term doesn't mean that all people have to use the term in that way--especially lawyers writing legal briefs. Lawyers twist meaning. That's what's going on here. IBM wants to enlist the cachet of "open source" in aid of its argument. It's as simple as that.
Think about who the IBM lawyer is writing for: The lawyer is writing for the US Supreme Court. Do you think that the Supreme Court will accept the doctrine that the Slashdot meaning of "open source" is the meaning that the Supreme Court must adopt? The definition of "open source" is flat-out fair game right now, and if you assume otherwise you're just a zealot or fanboi.
I'm suggesting that IBM is using the term in a manner different from that used by the FSF/FreeBSD people. The FSF/FreeBSD people need to take that context into account when they frame their argument against IBM's argument.
IBM's brief does not define "open source." The open source references in the brief are not supported by much in the way of reasoning or argument.
Here's what I think IBM is saying:
If we get a patent, we don't have to keep our source code secret any more--we can now disclose our code to everybody. That's open source!! The source becomes open when we put it in our patent materials! We still have a monopoly (because of the patent), and we can sell our monopoly product any way we want. But now the stuff is OPEN!! That's good for development . ...
IBM is technically correct in using the term "open source" in this manner. "Open source" means different things to different people. It obviously means one thing to IBM and its lawyers and a different thing another to Stallman and the FreeBSD crowd.
IBM wants a world where it can lock up the use of its software completely (via patent), except for when it CHOOSES to open source it.
This bugs me. It seems to me that if I buy a computer, I ought to be able to freely express myself via algorithms that I independently discover. For example, if I discover a unique algorithm that enables me to very effectively conduct political speech with my computer, IBM shouldn't be able to foreclose me from using my computer (a communication device) in that manner.
That's just silly. Of course you can count a corporation as a proxy for an individual in one case and not in another.
Corporations are treated as proxies for individuals when it comes to distributing profits. They are not treated as proxies for individuals when it comes to distributing liabilities.
Corporations are regulated quite differently than individuals are because they have the potential to do much harm as well as much good.
Corporations are a creation of the State. The State can define and redefine them as it sees fit.
Bail appeals (using "appeal" loosely) are usually reserved for the very rich, because they are usually a big waste of time. They are a waste of time because the trial judge is invested with a very large dollop of discretion in matters of bail. Here, the big bail doesn't seem to have too much to do with the charge that the defendant is being detained on. It's kind of like holding me on thirty gazillion dollars bail for a driving while license suspended charge because the judge is concerned that I am going to vandalize my neighbor's Rolls Royce.
This case sucks because the poor bastard has to rot in jail while his lawyers are preparing his defense. If he had money, his experts would be done by now and the State would have, long ago, had its back against the wall scrambling to try to put their bullshit case together.
I bet that the County Attorney depended on the City's experts (rather than his own, independent, experts) when he filed charges. That's reasonable, but you'd hope they'd have their own independent experts on board by now. Too bad nobody's Groklawing for the defendant.
I have no problem accepting that Great Britain would chemically castrate someone. But that's because I'm just finishing a book about Culloden and the aftermath . ...
The drunk's judgment is impaired when the drunk gets behind the wheel. The texter makes an intentional, volitional, free decision to put other people at risk by texting while driving.
Stupid bastards forget that their cars are killing machines unless properly handled.
"Sins" are not offenses against society. Taking the Lord's name in vain is not a sin against society, for example. A sin is an offense against a set of beliefs held by a SUBSET of society. Humanity is nowhere near homogenous enough to possess a universally consistent concept of sin. While there is pretty good overlap on some things (murder, for example), there is no overlap at all when it comes to others (software sinning, for example).
But, the use of the term sure works in this discussion. Certain software cults don't like the practices of other software cults--the offending software cult is then the "sinner." Demonize your opponent! It makes everything SO much simpler!!!
Microsoft provides me an operating system that allows me to do very powerful video editing (and spares me from the even more bullying Apple). For that, I pay them money. I give them no faith or allegiance--I only give them money because they help me do something I could not do without them.
So: Onward Software Soldiers, Marching Off to Code . . . .
If a GPL'd operating system, like Linux, came to dominate the business and consumer OS market, would that be FINANCIALLY better or worse for software developers?
If so, how? If not, why no significant action in that direction?
Now, every man now can easily be his own television station. A guy with a wireless internet connection in New Zealand can broadcast to Uzbekistan, Iceland, and Santa Barbara.
The quality of that man's Internet TV station, right now, is better than very much TV reception was from the 50s through the 70s. The potential audience is vastly greater than it was then.
The ability of people to hurt other people through defamatory statements hasn't changed over the years. People certainly haven't become less vulnerable to the damage that can be caused by defamation.
The law is not likely to protect people who cause harm through defamatory statements, just because the defamer has taken great pains to make his or her defamatory statements anonymously. There has been no hint of movement in this direction.
The problem here is that an awful lot of people defame an awful lot of other people all of the time. I don't know how many times I defamed Woody Hayes while he was alive . . . (and he deserved it)! These little defamatory things usually never hurt anybody, never get related to too many people, and never cause enough damage to support a lawsuit.
But now every man is a television station! Every man can reach the world!
It's like putting termonuclear defamation power in the hands of every nobody who lives in Toronto! Until recent times, the average man never had such power to defame. Only the rich had that power--and they watched their mouths because they didn't want to get sued and lose their money!
If the law changes in a manner that gives the internet blogger anonymity, then the anonymous blogger's defamation power is increased even more! That change will not happen. Elected officials (who are among the most defamed) are not going to provide it, that's for sure. They'd be among the first targets.
So, anyway, now you have the power to communicate that once reposed only with the VERY rich! And now you've got the accompanying responsibility! Enjoy it and deal with it!
Sorry to disillusion you, but people DO just attack random strangers. It's not a frequent occurrence, but it's not uncommon, either. Ask your local misdemeanor prosecutors.
Scientists are studying drug usage by examining the contents of sewage. This would appear to be a very excellent means of measuring the volume and type of drug usage in a community.
Money wouldn't be good for this purpose because money is much more mobile than sewage, and because you couldn't derive good quantitative data from the amount of drugs detected.
Remember. In most states, "knowing" possession of drugs need not be proven to establish a unlawful possession of a controlled substance! Any amount of drugs possessed can be a crime. Please return your dollars to the U.S. Treasury immediately and receive "clean" money now!
The fact that you've never heard of accessing data after a Guttman 35 pass only proves that the people who can access the data are really good at keeping their process secret.
Every now and then an article comes along that justifies my time spent on this website! This is one of them. A good article about destruction always hits the spot!@!
"I would rather eliminate the res judicata that forces attorneys to unload a full larder of motions at trial just to make sure nothing gets locked out at appeal."
That is just plain silly. If you didn't have res judicata, the attorneys would file even more paper in multiple lawsuits instead of just one lawsuit. Furthermore, the other side would never have the relief of knowing that the case is really over.
You don't want causes of action to be ZOMBIES that are never dead! You want finality!!!
Equating virtual property to real property is insanely stupid.
(a) Whose law is going to apply? You must remember that the law of the USA is not the law of the world. I don't think that any game host would want to touch that issue with a ten foot pole (at the risk of losing Korean, Chinese, Indian, or British players). I also don't think that most hosts would want people in their enviroments bartering with thirty page contracts. Making a Himalayan game player liable to a Chilean game player under Chilean law is beyond absurd.
(b) Which nation will pay to host these stupid lawsuits? I can see them lining up now--in the opposite direction.
(c) Property law is extremely evolutionary and very culture-oriented. The property law of one nation is often very different from that of another.
(d) Law is expensive--very expensive for both the public and the participants. It takes forever, in many countries, to get a civil case resolved. I think most people in a democracy or a republic would be quite upset if their tax dollars were used to resolve a dispute over whether your avatar defamed my avatar.
Think about the complex international problems involved in creating a virtual property law legal construct--and then engrafting that onto the widely varied property laws of all the nations on Earth. The cost would be ASTOUNDING!
And for what? So litigious, angry nerds can take their stupidity to another dimension (that somebody else is paying for)?
If you really want a resolution of your virtual disputes--set up a virtual forum witin the environment where the virtual dispute arose and take the (enormous) time and effort to administer that virtual legal system. It will be boring and stupid, but you will get a hell of an education about the legal process.
Me, I want to reserve the right to resolve my virtual contract disputes with a virtual six-gun on a virtual dusty street, somewhere in the virtual Wild West. Yeah, that's the ticket!
Slashdot Mirror
If I paid for a website and I got crap like this, I'd be mighty angry. The New York Times is now officially a malware vector.
Nice straw man argument used to attack environmentalists at the expense of eulogizing a truly great man.
The TASER sucks, but it sucks less than a bullet in the head. When used under the right circumstances, it prevents premature death and is a wonderful thing for that reason.
When used under the wrong circumstances, it's torture--simple as that.
The Gutenberg brothers are coming . . . and they won't be happy.
Just because one person defined a term doesn't mean that all people have to use the term in that way--especially lawyers writing legal briefs. Lawyers twist meaning. That's what's going on here. IBM wants to enlist the cachet of "open source" in aid of its argument. It's as simple as that.
Think about who the IBM lawyer is writing for: The lawyer is writing for the US Supreme Court. Do you think that the Supreme Court will accept the doctrine that the Slashdot meaning of "open source" is the meaning that the Supreme Court must adopt? The definition of "open source" is flat-out fair game right now, and if you assume otherwise you're just a zealot or fanboi.
I'm suggesting that IBM is using the term in a manner different from that used by the FSF/FreeBSD people. The FSF/FreeBSD people need to take that context into account when they frame their argument against IBM's argument.
IBM's brief does not define "open source." The open source references in the brief are not supported by much in the way of reasoning or argument.
Here's what I think IBM is saying:
If we get a patent, we don't have to keep our source code secret any more--we can now disclose our code to everybody. That's open source!! The source becomes open when we put it in our patent materials! We still have a monopoly (because of the patent), and we can sell our monopoly product any way we want. But now the stuff is OPEN!! That's good for development . . ..
IBM is technically correct in using the term "open source" in this manner. "Open source" means different things to different people. It obviously means one thing to IBM and its lawyers and a different thing another to Stallman and the FreeBSD crowd.
IBM wants a world where it can lock up the use of its software completely (via patent), except for when it CHOOSES to open source it.
This bugs me. It seems to me that if I buy a computer, I ought to be able to freely express myself via algorithms that I independently discover. For example, if I discover a unique algorithm that enables me to very effectively conduct political speech with my computer, IBM shouldn't be able to foreclose me from using my computer (a communication device) in that manner.
That's just silly. Of course you can count a corporation as a proxy for an individual in one case and not in another.
Corporations are treated as proxies for individuals when it comes to distributing profits. They are not treated as proxies for individuals when it comes to distributing liabilities.
Corporations are regulated quite differently than individuals are because they have the potential to do much harm as well as much good.
Corporations are a creation of the State. The State can define and redefine them as it sees fit.
Bail appeals (using "appeal" loosely) are usually reserved for the very rich, because they are usually a big waste of time. They are a waste of time because the trial judge is invested with a very large dollop of discretion in matters of bail. Here, the big bail doesn't seem to have too much to do with the charge that the defendant is being detained on. It's kind of like holding me on thirty gazillion dollars bail for a driving while license suspended charge because the judge is concerned that I am going to vandalize my neighbor's Rolls Royce.
This case sucks because the poor bastard has to rot in jail while his lawyers are preparing his defense. If he had money, his experts would be done by now and the State would have, long ago, had its back against the wall scrambling to try to put their bullshit case together.
I bet that the County Attorney depended on the City's experts (rather than his own, independent, experts) when he filed charges. That's reasonable, but you'd hope they'd have their own independent experts on board by now. Too bad nobody's Groklawing for the defendant.
I have no problem accepting that Great Britain would chemically castrate someone. But that's because I'm just finishing a book about Culloden and the aftermath . . ..
The drunk's judgment is impaired when the drunk gets behind the wheel. The texter makes an intentional, volitional, free decision to put other people at risk by texting while driving.
Stupid bastards forget that their cars are killing machines unless properly handled.
"Sins" are not offenses against society. Taking the Lord's name in vain is not a sin against society, for example. A sin is an offense against a set of beliefs held by a SUBSET of society. Humanity is nowhere near homogenous enough to possess a universally consistent concept of sin. While there is pretty good overlap on some things (murder, for example), there is no overlap at all when it comes to others (software sinning, for example).
But, the use of the term sure works in this discussion. Certain software cults don't like the practices of other software cults--the offending software cult is then the "sinner." Demonize your opponent! It makes everything SO much simpler!!!
Microsoft provides me an operating system that allows me to do very powerful video editing (and spares me from the even more bullying Apple). For that, I pay them money. I give them no faith or allegiance--I only give them money because they help me do something I could not do without them.
So: Onward Software Soldiers, Marching Off to Code . . . .
A trial is a device used for resolving disputes between particular people. It sucks in many ways, but it is among the best found.
It is emphatically NOT a device well suited to determining the TRUTH.
Anybody who suggests resolving a scientific dispute by a trial is either a con-man or an entertainer, or both.
What it means to me is that talking motion pictures will never go into the public domain by passage of time in my lifetime. That really sucks.
Soldier . . . Solo . . . The Dogs of War . . .
More of the same theme . . .
If a GPL'd operating system, like Linux, came to dominate the business and consumer OS market, would that be FINANCIALLY better or worse for software developers?
If so, how? If not, why no significant action in that direction?
Now, every man now can easily be his own television station. A guy with a wireless internet connection in New Zealand can broadcast to Uzbekistan, Iceland, and Santa Barbara.
The quality of that man's Internet TV station, right now, is better than very much TV reception was from the 50s through the 70s. The potential audience is vastly greater than it was then.
The ability of people to hurt other people through defamatory statements hasn't changed over the years. People certainly haven't become less vulnerable to the damage that can be caused by defamation.
The law is not likely to protect people who cause harm through defamatory statements, just because the defamer has taken great pains to make his or her defamatory statements anonymously. There has been no hint of movement in this direction.
The problem here is that an awful lot of people defame an awful lot of other people all of the time. I don't know how many times I defamed Woody Hayes while he was alive . . . (and he deserved it)! These little defamatory things usually never hurt anybody, never get related to too many people, and never cause enough damage to support a lawsuit.
But now every man is a television station! Every man can reach the world!
It's like putting termonuclear defamation power in the hands of every nobody who lives in Toronto! Until recent times, the average man never had such power to defame. Only the rich had that power--and they watched their mouths because they didn't want to get sued and lose their money!
If the law changes in a manner that gives the internet blogger anonymity, then the anonymous blogger's defamation power is increased even more! That change will not happen. Elected officials (who are among the most defamed) are not going to provide it, that's for sure. They'd be among the first targets.
So, anyway, now you have the power to communicate that once reposed only with the VERY rich! And now you've got the accompanying responsibility! Enjoy it and deal with it!
Onward, bravely into the future!
Sorry to disillusion you, but people DO just attack random strangers. It's not a frequent occurrence, but it's not uncommon, either. Ask your local misdemeanor prosecutors.
Students are a mere adornment at these football institutions. Football for the students? What a quaint idea . . .
Don't lose faith. The banks never lose. Both the Democrats and the Republicans see to that!
The losses always get pushed away from the stockholder and onto the consumer! That's what capitalism is! Capital dominates government!
Scientists are studying drug usage by examining the contents of sewage. This would appear to be a very excellent means of measuring the volume and type of drug usage in a community.
Money wouldn't be good for this purpose because money is much more mobile than sewage, and because you couldn't derive good quantitative data from the amount of drugs detected.
Remember. In most states, "knowing" possession of drugs need not be proven to establish a unlawful possession of a controlled substance! Any amount of drugs possessed can be a crime. Please return your dollars to the U.S. Treasury immediately and receive "clean" money now!
The fact that you've never heard of accessing data after a Guttman 35 pass only proves that the people who can access the data are really good at keeping their process secret.
Every now and then an article comes along that justifies my time spent on this website! This is one of them. A good article about destruction always hits the spot!@!
This is a supremely excellent idea.
Only problem is that it will provide a supremely excellent manual for OPFOR.
"I would rather eliminate the res judicata that forces attorneys to unload a full larder of motions at trial just to make sure nothing gets locked out at appeal."
That is just plain silly. If you didn't have res judicata, the attorneys would file even more paper in multiple lawsuits instead of just one lawsuit. Furthermore, the other side would never have the relief of knowing that the case is really over.
You don't want causes of action to be ZOMBIES that are never dead! You want finality!!!
Equating virtual property to real property is insanely stupid.
(a) Whose law is going to apply? You must remember that the law of the USA is not the law of the world. I don't think that any game host would want to touch that issue with a ten foot pole (at the risk of losing Korean, Chinese, Indian, or British players). I also don't think that most hosts would want people in their enviroments bartering with thirty page contracts. Making a Himalayan game player liable to a Chilean game player under Chilean law is beyond absurd.
(b) Which nation will pay to host these stupid lawsuits? I can see them lining up now--in the opposite direction.
(c) Property law is extremely evolutionary and very culture-oriented. The property law of one nation is often very different from that of another.
(d) Law is expensive--very expensive for both the public and the participants. It takes forever, in many countries, to get a civil case resolved. I think most people in a democracy or a republic would be quite upset if their tax dollars were used to resolve a dispute over whether your avatar defamed my avatar.
Think about the complex international problems involved in creating a virtual property law legal construct--and then engrafting that onto the widely varied property laws of all the nations on Earth. The cost would be ASTOUNDING!
And for what? So litigious, angry nerds can take their stupidity to another dimension (that somebody else is paying for)?
If you really want a resolution of your virtual disputes--set up a virtual forum witin the environment where the virtual dispute arose and take the (enormous) time and effort to administer that virtual legal system. It will be boring and stupid, but you will get a hell of an education about the legal process.
Me, I want to reserve the right to resolve my virtual contract disputes with a virtual six-gun on a virtual dusty street, somewhere in the virtual Wild West. Yeah, that's the ticket!