So you're saying. ..you're making up your own definition for the word? Where in the definition does it say anything about "kindness, recognition, or other pleasantry"?
Sorry, but the word already has a commonly-accepted definition. You're a few years too late to throw your two cents in on what you think "gratuitous" should mean.
a) Normally, when someone uses a word in a manner different from its dictionary definition, we say that that person doesn't know what the word means. b) "not. ..the canonical definition" in this case seems to be a euphemism for "wrong." c) How is anyone else going to know what you mean if you have your own zany definition? d) You make so much of the meaning of the root word, but gratia has nothing to do with "not required, but for the sake of providing kindness." It is a favor, a kindness, or gratitude (and a lot of other things), but it does not intrinsically mean, or even connote, an unnecessary kindness. e) Also, and maybe most importantly, gratia can literally mean "cause"! It doesn't even necessarily have to do with a kindness! And in this phrase, maybe - just maybe? - it is being used as "cause"?!!!!
So, to close: just because an English word and Latin word look alike and are related etymologically doesn't mean you suddenly know Latin.
I'm unaware of anything simialr for the UK's RIP bill or New Zealand's current attempt to do something similar, however citizens of the US can, at the very least, speak out against carnivore by going to this page at the ACLU's website and faxing/emailing a premade letter to their congressmen.
Mozilla is an open source project that was initially based on the Netscape code which was opened up a couple of years ago. They intended to use the old Netscape code as a jumping off point, however it was supposedly so nasty and flawed, they started from scratch. Nowadays, the Netscape "web browser" is a brand "web browser" based on this new Mozilla code (I put web browser in quotes because it is not simply a web browser, but also a newsreader, email client, and god knows what else (grrr. ..)). The old Netscape browser was a descendant of the original Mosiac browser.
Well, they aren't "rewards" in a theoretical sense, but in a practical sense, they wind up being just that--a way for the inventor/writer to gather royalties for their creation. I don't know if this was the original intention of those who framed the law, but that is without a doubt the way things tend towards nowadays.
Patents, copyrights, IP, they are all interchangable
Uh, okay, no more pot for you. Stop making up your own words. You get informed.
Patents grant one the right to a monopoly over an invention or process.
Copyrights grant one the right to a monopoly over an implementation.
Now why don't you make a post that contributes something instead of making no sense. Start by telling me this, if you will--do you not think that the inventor of something as fantastically novel and useful as the printing press deserves credit and royalties in return? Do you not think Martin Luther King and his estate deserve credit and royalties for his "I Have a Dream" speech?
Yes. There are thousands of cases where there are patents or copyrights that are stupid and shouldn't exist. But they aren't all like that, as your sweeping statement against all forms of intellectual property suggests. Yes, Perhaps patents and copyrights shouldn't last for as long as they do. I know I think that they shouldn't. But if you think they are entirely unnecessary, maybe you should actually give some indication as to why instead of semi-troll like posts.
Indeed; of course you can write a story that infringes on copyright and/or trademark as long as it's in the privacy of you're own home. The true questions are
can it be published without breaking any laws? and
does putting it up on the web count as publishing it?
I would guess that most slashdot readers would say that it would indeed be against the law to create a story with trademarked characters that you haven't licensed and then publish it in a book. I would also guess that most would say that it's alright to put it up on a website.
This exemplifies an odd kind of conflict--we want the internet to be taken seriously. We want books published on the web to be given as much credence as real books. At the same time, we don't want the unpleasent, often petty constraints of the real world to come upon the internet.
Re:When will Red Hat join?
on
SuSE For PPC
·
· Score: 1
Actually, a few years ago, the flavor of linux that Apple had some of their people working on, MKLinux, was supposed to be largely a port of Redhat 5.0. It wasn't a complete port, however, as they wound up changing a few key aspects of the kernel, most notably moving it from a monolithic kernel to a mach kernel.
Apple no longer has anyone working on MKLinux, however, as in like 1997 or 1998, they pulled everyone on the MKLinux team away (as well as a portion of their code) to go contribute to OS X.
Gyah, you're right, I forgot all about the hulk movie and tv series. Strangely, I hear that the series, which was about how Bruce Banner, the Incredible Hulk, was actually closer to the original intention of the comic than the comic itself ultimately turned out to be: it told of an alienated Bruce Banner who was forced to be a nomad from society because he was thought to be some manner of monster. Your right--the later parts of the hulk series and the hulk movies were really cool. Thor and Daredevil showed up in them. And, to my great surprise and dismay, they actually killed the Hulk in the last movie! What the hell?
I also remember the Spiderman live action series being mildly amusing, although it's been a very, very long time, so I don't know if I'm remembering correctly.
I never saw the Dr. Strange Movie from the 70's. As you said, though, I've heard from many that it was similar to the comic, albeit somewhat corny at points.
Blade was only alright. I thought it got far more praise than it deserved. I never read the comics in which Blade appeared, however, so I can't comment on how faithful it was.
I really, really hope this movie is released and does well, but, knowing marvel. ..They've been promising an X-Men movie for years upon years (although probably not quite as long as the Spiderman movie). I remember reading an article in Wizard when I was still into that kind of thing something like six years ago about how the X-Men movie was in production. I guess _that_ didn't get anywhere.
Does anybody remember the Fantastic Four movie? Or the Captain America movie? Or the Punisher movie?
I never got to see the first. I saw a trailer that looked pretty cool with Doctor Doom and everything. Rumor is that after completing it, they decided that it was so excrutiatingly bad, they didn't release it in theaters and the print is now laying around in some warehouse somewhere. Quite a pity--I was really psyched about that at the time (I even rented the tape that had the trailer on it just to watch the preview).
The Captain America movie was released, but it went straight to video, as I recall. It had some laughable plot that involved Captain America saving the president from the Red Skull. It wound up being really, really silly. Another pity.
The Punisher was probably the best of the lot, but that really isn't saying anything much at all. I recall it being slightly worse than the classical action movie with an angst ridden hero. I don't remember many particulars about it, but I do recall rather vividly how the Punisher lived in the sewers, placed knives he had heated to red upon his wounds to cauterize them, and had some homeless guy as a kind of sidekick.
Alright, I'm not even going to mention Howard the Duck.
I know that I for the most part entirely ignore advertisements that I see on the internet. It's become a defense mechanism against the already prodigious amount of information I'm exposed to. So my question is this: Do you think the information on the Al Gore website, which is essentially an advertisement to the readers to vote for Gore, actually winds up influencing the reader, or does the reader simply block out the advertisement?
I had an experience similar to yours--I had an old 6115, and I figured that I would slap some unix on it and use it for a little web server or something. PowerPPC wouldn't work on it, since the 6115 used some fucked up, proprietary, arcane thang called NuBus instead of PCI. The only option was the it's-been-two-years-since-we-developed-it-since-we -took-all-the-programmers-away-to-do-OS X MKLinux.
I downloaded it, and then bought the CD. Although I was able to get the modem working, my floppy drive wouldn't work. That really pissed me off. At any rate, it was really amusing to turn the much touted I'm-excrutiatingly-easy-to-use Mac OS into an arcane unix box.
I find myself very ambivalent about this business about forcing a Slashdot poster to relinquish copyright to his post. I know that it would stop me, for one, from posting anymore. I realize that everyone here is very into the idea of all kinds of information being free, but making it compulsory for a poster to donate his message to the public is absurd. What if I don't want someone to use my message elsewhere? What if I want the attribution if the post is ever used? I want to keep my copyright, damn it. I want it even if I for some reason write anonymously.
I think the best solution would be to make it optional--hell, put a checkbox on the message submission page. Even mark it checked as default. But I shouldn't have to discard my copyright to post to Slashdot.
I'm confused. Apple creates and then freely distributes a flavor of Linux, MKLinux (admittedly, MKLinux is now defunct). They show off the source code to parts of their latest operating system. Now they host a website that discusses and links to other Linux distributions that work under the powerpc and, for some of them, the 68k chip. What do they get in return?
A few snide comments about being able to unmount the disk by dragging it to the trash, and otherwise ridiculed and attacked.
What do you want them to do? Part the seas? Spontaneously abandon closed source software, GPL the code for the Mac OS, and then jettison it all in favor of developing for Linux?
It seems like whenever a company takes a couple of steps to open source their software or work with linux, people attack them for "cashing in," rather than praising them for beginning what could become a long walk down the road of Open Source. I mean, what were you hoping for? A sudden, blind leap? That isn't going to happen. These things occur slow, halting steps; be patient, and be understanding.
I agree entirely. Censorship of racist material is just as horrible as censorship of any belief or idea. People have the right to be bitches, and they have the right to vocalize their arguments, no matter how misguided.
Laws against censorship are mostly not there for the protection of the common belief; the ideas of the majority don't _need_ protecting. It is beliefs of the minority, the unpopular, often hated, often horrible and stupid beliefs, that need to be protected the most.
Oh, and, Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do is a really, really great book. Peter McWilliams is so incredibly cool. You can read the book's text online at Peter McWilliam's website, which is contained in the above sig.
I, for one, find people's attitudes toward this almost as troubling as the event itself. *Yes*, you shouldn't trust everything you see and read. *Yes*, the news has been faked for an incredibly long while. As someone pointed out, similar things have been happening for over a hundred years--remember when William Randolf Hearst said to his photographer in Cuba, Remmington, "You supply the photos, I'll supply the war." But even though the news has lacked its integrity for a long, long while now, does that mean we should simply begin to look the other way when they dupe us again? I don't know about you, but I think that people have a right to expect "news" to mean that the footage is authentic--if it isn't as such, it isn't news. ..it's just entertainment (and by right, I certainly don't necessarily mean a legal right). Because such a malfaction has become so incredibly common place, should we begin to simply ignore it from hence forth? Of course not--we should cry out against CBS for doing something so incredibly petty as slighting both NBC and the viewer by manufacturing portions of their footage. If not, the networks will get the silly idea that such activities are entirely acceptable--and if or when they do, it will be entirely our fault for not crying out loud enough.
Slashdot Mirror
So you're saying. . .you're making up your own definition for the word? Where in the definition does it say anything about "kindness, recognition, or other pleasantry"?
.the canonical definition" in this case seems to be a euphemism for "wrong."
Sorry, but the word already has a commonly-accepted definition. You're a few years too late to throw your two cents in on what you think "gratuitous" should mean.
a) Normally, when someone uses a word in a manner different from its dictionary definition, we say that that person doesn't know what the word means.
b) "not. .
c) How is anyone else going to know what you mean if you have your own zany definition?
d) You make so much of the meaning of the root word, but gratia has nothing to do with "not required, but for the sake of providing kindness." It is a favor, a kindness, or gratitude (and a lot of other things), but it does not intrinsically mean, or even connote, an unnecessary kindness.
e) Also, and maybe most importantly, gratia can literally mean "cause"! It doesn't even necessarily have to do with a kindness! And in this phrase, maybe - just maybe? - it is being used as "cause"?!!!!
So, to close: just because an English word and Latin word look alike and are related etymologically doesn't mean you suddenly know Latin.
I'm unaware of anything simialr for the UK's RIP bill or New Zealand's current attempt to do something similar, however citizens of the US can, at the very least, speak out against carnivore by going to this page at the ACLU's website and faxing/emailing a premade letter to their congressmen.
Mozilla is an open source project that was initially based on the Netscape code which was opened up a couple of years ago. They intended to use the old Netscape code as a jumping off point, however it was supposedly so nasty and flawed, they started from scratch. Nowadays, the Netscape "web browser" is a brand "web browser" based on this new Mozilla code (I put web browser in quotes because it is not simply a web browser, but also a newsreader, email client, and god knows what else (grrr. . .)). The old Netscape browser was a descendant of the original Mosiac browser.
Jeff K. has a positively hysterical comparison between Ghouls and Ghosts and Daikatana.
Nope. It uses the old Quake II engine.
Well, they aren't "rewards" in a theoretical sense, but in a practical sense, they wind up being just that--a way for the inventor/writer to gather royalties for their creation. I don't know if this was the original intention of those who framed the law, but that is without a doubt the way things tend towards nowadays.
Patents, copyrights, IP, they are all interchangable
Uh, okay, no more pot for you. Stop making up your own words. You get informed.
Patents grant one the right to a monopoly over an invention or process.
Copyrights grant one the right to a monopoly over an implementation.
Now why don't you make a post that contributes something instead of making no sense. Start by telling me this, if you will--do you not think that the inventor of something as fantastically novel and useful as the printing press deserves credit and royalties in return? Do you not think Martin Luther King and his estate deserve credit and royalties for his "I Have a Dream" speech?
Yes. There are thousands of cases where there are patents or copyrights that are stupid and shouldn't exist. But they aren't all like that, as your sweeping statement against all forms of intellectual property suggests. Yes, Perhaps patents and copyrights shouldn't last for as long as they do. I know I think that they shouldn't. But if you think they are entirely unnecessary, maybe you should actually give some indication as to why instead of semi-troll like posts.
can it be published without breaking any laws?
and
does putting it up on the web count as publishing it?
I would guess that most slashdot readers would say that it would indeed be against the law to create a story with trademarked characters that you haven't licensed and then publish it in a book. I would also guess that most would say that it's alright to put it up on a website.
This exemplifies an odd kind of conflict--we want the internet to be taken seriously. We want books published on the web to be given as much credence as real books. At the same time, we don't want the unpleasent, often petty constraints of the real world to come upon the internet.
Actually, a few years ago, the flavor of linux that Apple had some of their people working on, MKLinux, was supposed to be largely a port of Redhat 5.0. It wasn't a complete port, however, as they wound up changing a few key aspects of the kernel, most notably moving it from a monolithic kernel to a mach kernel.
Apple no longer has anyone working on MKLinux, however, as in like 1997 or 1998, they pulled everyone on the MKLinux team away (as well as a portion of their code) to go contribute to OS X.
Gyah, you're right, I forgot all about the hulk movie and tv series. Strangely, I hear that the series, which was about how Bruce Banner, the Incredible Hulk, was actually closer to the original intention of the comic than the comic itself ultimately turned out to be: it told of an alienated Bruce Banner who was forced to be a nomad from society because he was thought to be some manner of monster. Your right--the later parts of the hulk series and the hulk movies were really cool. Thor and Daredevil showed up in them. And, to my great surprise and dismay, they actually killed the Hulk in the last movie! What the hell?
I also remember the Spiderman live action series being mildly amusing, although it's been a very, very long time, so I don't know if I'm remembering correctly.
I never saw the Dr. Strange Movie from the 70's. As you said, though, I've heard from many that it was similar to the comic, albeit somewhat corny at points.
Blade was only alright. I thought it got far more praise than it deserved. I never read the comics in which Blade appeared, however, so I can't comment on how faithful it was.
I really, really hope this movie is released and does well, but, knowing marvel. . .They've been promising an X-Men movie for years upon years (although probably not quite as long as the Spiderman movie). I remember reading an article in Wizard when I was still into that kind of thing something like six years ago about how the X-Men movie was in production. I guess _that_ didn't get anywhere.
Does anybody remember the Fantastic Four movie? Or the Captain America movie? Or the Punisher movie?
I never got to see the first. I saw a trailer that looked pretty cool with Doctor Doom and everything. Rumor is that after completing it, they decided that it was so excrutiatingly bad, they didn't release it in theaters and the print is now laying around in some warehouse somewhere. Quite a pity--I was really psyched about that at the time (I even rented the tape that had the trailer on it just to watch the preview).
The Captain America movie was released, but it went straight to video, as I recall. It had some laughable plot that involved Captain America saving the president from the Red Skull. It wound up being really, really silly. Another pity.
The Punisher was probably the best of the lot, but that really isn't saying anything much at all. I recall it being slightly worse than the classical action movie with an angst ridden hero. I don't remember many particulars about it, but I do recall rather vividly how the Punisher lived in the sewers, placed knives he had heated to red upon his wounds to cauterize them, and had some homeless guy as a kind of sidekick.
Alright, I'm not even going to mention Howard the Duck.
I know that I for the most part entirely ignore advertisements that I see on the internet. It's become a defense mechanism against the already prodigious amount of information I'm exposed to. So my question is this: Do you think the information on the Al Gore website, which is essentially an advertisement to the readers to vote for Gore, actually winds up influencing the reader, or does the reader simply block out the advertisement?
I had an experience similar to yours--I had an old 6115, and I figured that I would slap some unix on it and use it for a little web server or something. PowerPPC wouldn't work on it, since the 6115 used some fucked up, proprietary, arcane thang called NuBus instead of PCI. The only option was the it's-been-two-years-since-we-developed-it-since-we -took-all-the-programmers-away-to-do-OS X MKLinux.
I downloaded it, and then bought the CD. Although I was able to get the modem working, my floppy drive wouldn't work. That really pissed me off. At any rate, it was really amusing to turn the much touted I'm-excrutiatingly-easy-to-use Mac OS into an arcane unix box.
I find myself very ambivalent about this business about forcing a Slashdot poster to relinquish copyright to his post. I know that it would stop me, for one, from posting anymore. I realize that everyone here is very into the idea of all kinds of information being free, but making it compulsory for a poster to donate his message to the public is absurd. What if I don't want someone to use my message elsewhere? What if I want the attribution if the post is ever used? I want to keep my copyright, damn it. I want it even if I for some reason write anonymously.
I think the best solution would be to make it optional--hell, put a checkbox on the message submission page. Even mark it checked as default. But I shouldn't have to discard my copyright to post to Slashdot.
I'm confused. Apple creates and then freely distributes a flavor of Linux, MKLinux (admittedly, MKLinux is now defunct). They show off the source code to parts of their latest operating system. Now they host a website that discusses and links to other Linux distributions that work under the powerpc and, for some of them, the 68k chip. What do they get in return?
A few snide comments about being able to unmount the disk by dragging it to the trash, and otherwise ridiculed and attacked.
What do you want them to do? Part the seas? Spontaneously abandon closed source software, GPL the code for the Mac OS, and then jettison it all in favor of developing for Linux?
It seems like whenever a company takes a couple of steps to open source their software or work with linux, people attack them for "cashing in," rather than praising them for beginning what could become a long walk down the road of Open Source. I mean, what were you hoping for? A sudden, blind leap? That isn't going to happen. These things occur slow, halting steps; be patient, and be understanding.
I agree entirely. Censorship of racist material is just as horrible as censorship of any belief or idea. People have the right to be bitches, and they have the right to vocalize their arguments, no matter how misguided.
Laws against censorship are mostly not there for the protection of the common belief; the ideas of the majority don't _need_ protecting. It is beliefs of the minority, the unpopular, often hated, often horrible and stupid beliefs, that need to be protected the most.
Oh, and, Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do is a really, really great book. Peter McWilliams is so incredibly cool. You can read the book's text online at Peter McWilliam's website, which is contained in the above sig.
I, for one, find people's attitudes toward this almost as troubling as the event itself. *Yes*, you shouldn't trust everything you see and read. *Yes*, the news has been faked for an incredibly long while. As someone pointed out, similar things have been happening for over a hundred years--remember when William Randolf Hearst said to his photographer in Cuba, Remmington, "You supply the photos, I'll supply the war." But even though the news has lacked its integrity for a long, long while now, does that mean we should simply begin to look the other way when they dupe us again? I don't know about you, but I think that people have a right to expect "news" to mean that the footage is authentic--if it isn't as such, it isn't news. . .it's just entertainment (and by right, I certainly don't necessarily mean a legal right). Because such a malfaction has become so incredibly common place, should we begin to simply ignore it from hence forth? Of course not--we should cry out against CBS for doing something so incredibly petty as slighting both NBC and the viewer by manufacturing portions of their footage. If not, the networks will get the silly idea that such activities are entirely acceptable--and if or when they do, it will be entirely our fault for not crying out loud enough.