I'm betting, however, that their legal troubles here have gotten much less coverage in Europe than here. I'm also guessing that they're betting the same thing (but with real money).
you get sent a long letter basically saying that "if you buy this stock, your throwing your money away on a what is quite possibly a scam".
If that happened, then the nasdaq would be responsible for imforming people when a company started to look shady... they'd also be on the hook for false positives.... It's pretty unlikely that something like that will happen. On the other hand, I doubt that there are many people who don't get the story now that SCO is in a pretty sketchy position.
I'm guessing that this is why they're goint to Europe... They're hoping that their name isn't completely trashed there (yet).
A maximum $30,000 a copy fine is the business equivalent to a gun to the head.
If what you want is for the code to be released, and that's what is in the license, and that's the only thing that will stop you from pursuing a lawsuit, then they can either mollify your injured pride (release the source code) or going in front of a judge and risking paying fines that could
well be high multiples of what they got paid for the infringing software.
It may not be force, but it is the next best thing.
Even with a trial, there's no way the judge can force a company to release its code. Only fine them and prevent them from using the code again.
For the most part I agree with you, but it's entirely possible that a judge could force a companay to release their code. Something like that would, however, be done on a case by case basis, and would depend on the history of that specific violation.
If, for example, a company held off prosecution by promising to release the code "real soon now", but never quite got around to doing it, and then after 4 years of stalling, claimed that they had replaced all of the GPL code, so you can now blow your complaint out your ear, I wouldn't bet my life against the judge ordering a full code release.
How are you interpreting this definition not to include commission of the act that causes terror? Even in the simple definition you provided, a terrorist causes the terror (look up "terrorize")... they do not merely take advantage of it.
Terrorizing is the creation of terror, terrorism is the using of that terror. Directly causing terror is the easiest way to start the process, but it's not the only way.
Right now the various western governments are using pretty much every connotation of the word, depending on what they want to do with it. Under those conditions, the most sane thing to do is simply go back to basics, work from the principles of the current official linguistic sources.
Governments and big business have pretty much got the process of warping the meanings of words around their intent down to an art. They will, however, generally bound that manglization by the dictionary meaning of the word, so careful reading of a few good dictionaries will usually tell you what they can do with the word. To presume anything else is to walk on river ice.
. In addition, (perhaps unfortunately in some cases) popular usage becomes proper usage...
Your attempted definition is only one of many 'popular' definitions. I've seen people called terrorist for standing on a road. I've also seen the Canadian government attempt to codify that usage as law. I also disagree with that definition, but for somewhat different reasons.
Furthermore, by your definition (as far as I can gather), it seems that even reasonable acts can be considered terrorism (see my previous posts, mentioning sales of survival equipment in the year 1999
Fear and terror are different issues, though closely related. Fear is to terror what a car is to a Mercedes. In both cases the latter is a subset of the former, but implies an order of magnitude difference in the general quality of the thing. Short answer: no.. They Y2K thing was mostly just fear, not terror (although there were a couple of attempts to attach terrorist acts to Y2K, that all failed (AFAIK).
.How are you "well within the official definition" if you are ignoring who is causing the terror?
Terror is is the use of terror, not the creation. A marksman uses a gun, but does not necessarily make them -- on the other hand, most good gunsmiths tend to also be reasonable marksmen. Same with terror.
Calling Israel "a ghetto on a national scale" seems strange and confusing to me since the word "ghetto" generally connotes forced segregation and poor living conditions.
Ghettos are often accidents of history. The segregation may be forced, but usually, it's more social in nature. You're probably thinking of the black ghettos in the US. Although there sere often areas that actively discouraged blacks from moving there, there was, often as not, no actual legal force keeping them where they were.
Jewish Ghettos of pre-WW2 Europe, however, were not necessarily poor living conditions. Part of what Hitler used against them, in fact, was that the average Jew seemed to be much better of than the average Aryan. Envy and greed can be powerful motivators to the hateful.
The terrorists themselves may view their terrorism as justified retribution, but, as I believe we have already established, that is actually unjust (again, by my definition of terrorism).
It's not that terrorists may consider their actions a justified, they will almost certainly consider their actions justified. Would you kill yourself for an unjust cause? I don't think that anybody that you call a terrorist would either.
Thinking that your cause is a just one is a prerequisite for being a terrorist. People who think that a cause is unjust won't generally volunteer to put their life and/or freedom at stake. (much less blow themselves up) for that cause.
The fact that you think you have a just cause for going out a
(( The absolutely first thing you should do is to look into registering your copyright. I'm not sure what it would cost you, but it raises the stakes for them by an order of magnitude))
Do NOT tell them they must now releaes all their source code to the public.
If that's what you want them to do, then say so. Don't pussyfoot around. You can't force them to release anything that is whole-cloth theirs, but you anything that's a clear derivative of yours, their legal choice is to release the source, or face a judge.
The first letter should be business like, and reasonably noncombative. If you'd be happy to just have them release the source code (on an ongoing basis), then let them know that, if they do so, you'll chaulk it up to a misunderstanding and let it be.
Also let them know what if they force you to spend much more time onthe issue that you'll be charging just for your time. Remember that this is consulting rates, so $100/hour isn't even starting to get unreasonable.
It's probably worth mentioning that if lawyers start logging time, the price goes much higher much faster.
Send the message to the best contact you have at the company. If you can find their legal eagles, then CC the message to them.
I'd also CC a copy to a reasonably disinterested third party who would know to log the message for posterity. The FSF might be a good bet.
If they're distributing your code and/or documentation on the net , and they're clearly non-responsive, then you can also send a DMCA takedown notice to their ISP. (The law is there. You may hate it for other reasons, but it's a tool for you to use like any other).
Remember to stand firm on your rights. If they're using your code, you have the right to tell them to stop. If you're seriously pissed at them, you can simply tell them to stop distributing your code. If they refuse to stop, you can go to a judge and get an injunction against them (It would be in the context of suing them for copyright invringement).
If you want to get paid for the work that they've stolen, then decide how much you want per copy and ask them for it. Worst case is that they'll tell yo to drop dead and you'll be forced to go to court to get the money from them. Note: you can get more money if your copyright is filed... the sooner the better. Until the copyright is filed, the most you can get out of them is 'damages'.. which will (probably) top out at the actual price they are charging for the code. Once you filee, then the cap is the greater of actual damages and $30,000+ per copy. That $30L+ can be a pretty sturdy barganing tool.
Note: IANAL If in doubt, talk to a real lawyer. There seem to be a number of reasonably good ones at groklaw. Perhaps one of them lives in your area.
NoteL if you really don't think you are willig to drag these people thru court, then you can always assign your copyright to the FSF (or assign them the right to enforce it). At that point the FSF can start wailing on them with authority.
That's just the first step in the analysis. The fun starts with: 'does the person who invented it have the right to patent it's inventions? Does the person who owns it have the right (if different than the person who created it)?'
(btw: I'd appreciate your acknowledgement of proper usage)
I think that you're confusing popular usage with proper usage. If you've got linux, try going 'kdict terrorism'.
From The Webster's:
Terrorism \Ter"ror*ism\, n. [Cf. F. terrorisme.]
The act of terrorizing, or state of being terrorized; a mode
of government by terror or intimidation. --Jefferson.
After Sept-11, the Canadian government tried to pass a bill that effectively classified 'terrorism' as just about any act of civil disobedience that might successfully influence the government (e.g. labour strikes). Happily, that definition was rejected. Your defiinition goes somewhat in the other direction. You're trying to define 'terrorist' by the most vicious example of the work. Part of the problem is that there are people being tagged 'terrorist' by a much looser definition, but then your definition is being used to justify their treatment (this is what the Canadian bill was also trying to do).
I'm pushing just ever so slightly i the other diriction, but I'm still staying well within the official definition(s) of the word, and I'm dooing it with my eyes wide open on that point.
btw: by your definition, Osamma doesn't fit. He doesn't commit acts of terrorism himself, he simply calls on other people to do it in his name -- but he does fit well within my definition.
By the definition I have provided, 'terrorism' cannot be justified, because it requires a willful violation of the innocent (which is basically the definition of injustice);
What I would say is that terrorism should never be justified. The unfortunate truth is that people justify it to themselves on a daily basis.
Simply believing or feeling "justified" in your actions, does not make them just...
I would agree on this point. However I am also acusing you of attempting to justify the use of terror by the US. (I.E. of doing precisely what you are trying to condemn in other people).
(e.g. carpet bombing a major city is not a justified way of killing Osama).
The US took out the better part of a city block around a restaurant in a (clearly failed) attempt to kill Saddam, and you'd have to admit that Saddamn hadn't doen much against the US -- the WMD argument was pretty much a straw-man argument and his connections to Al-Quaida are tenuous (and much weaker than the ties of Saudi Arabia, where most of the 9-11 bombers came from).
Some of the violence of the US can be justified.
Of it can, than so can some of the violence against the US. If you use a different level of justification for your own side than you do for somebody else, then you are engaging in precisely the escelation that I'm trying to both expose and condemn.
-- and when you either accept or condemn violence, it's far to easy to accept if the analysis is done from the point of view of the person who is doing it, and/or in whose name it is being done.
It's easy to say "I don't like guns and bombs pointed at me", but I'm invoking Jesus's rule of "Do unto others as you would like done unto you".
Consider WW2 for broadly justified violence by the Allies.
Don't even bother to drag in to the Hoiocaust to justify Allied actions in WWII. They didn't know what was happening there. The allies were shocked when they got to the concentration camps. They mostly denied that it was going on, and looked at the stories leaking out as hyperbole. Jews who made it to North America at the height of the war were routinely denied entry -- entire boatloads in some instances. This was a time when the KKK was still stringing up Jews for even imagined slights in the USA. (( mostly, they were stringing up blacks, but "foreigners" were considered viable targets too )). Nonetheless, WW2 Germany is a relatively easy case for arguing for going to war against -- even absent the holocaust argument.
The worst we could do is force them to not use the gpl'd software and hit them up for lawyers fee's.
Oh, they can be hit up for much more than just lawyers fees. One of these days, somebody isn't going pay attention to their lawyers' warnings, and they're gonna end up in court with a nasty statutory damages bill. At that point people are likely to pay a good bit more attention to not violating the GPL.
T'is interesting. Could you find out if it's always been like that, or if it's the result of relatively recent western interference? I'd always been taught that the left->right use in the west was due to intellectual laziness on the part of the translator. If it's because that's they that it's always been done, then it really changes the sense of things.
I'd really like to verify this before I go wandering around trying to convince math historians that they have things wrong.
Oh, damn. I've been hit by the slashdot lameness filter. You can find my response (formatted as I would like it)on my website.
Of course this is false. I hope you are not attributing these statements toward me. On the contrary, I am saying that justice must be determined individually and not based upon whatever arbitrary group someone may belong to.
What I mean is that people tend to have an easier time justifying the violence done in the name of their own group.
The German people were told that jews were attempting to destroy their country, It was kinda hard to justify defending people doing that.
The Israelis are convinced that the palistinians are out to destroy their country... It's kinda hard to defend people doingthat.
Palestinians are convinced that israelis are out to destroy their homeland. It's hard to defend people out to do that.
US citizens are convinced that the Muslim world is out to destroy their country... It's kinda hard to justify defending people doing that.
Some Iraqis are convinced that the US is just out to steal their oil It's hard to defend people killing Iraqis to do that.
The point about terrorism becoming it's own justification is that people use the terrorism comitted in the name of the other side to justify the terror inflicted by their side. after a while the original source of the dispute becomes almost (or actually) irrelevant.
You've effextively proven my point, trying to justify the violence committed by the US "In it's defence".
But for the Iraqi's who really hate the US, they are defending
their country against invaders, and you definitely can?t call the US soldiers on foreign soil 'innocent civilians'.
but try telling that to those soldiers' families. So the US
must be justified in blowing up the homes of those involved in the attacks.
Which now really pisses off people who've just lost a home that may have been in theifr family for centuries.
and so on,
and so on.....
So now can you see the cycle of justification and violence and terror?
The violence always seems justified when we do it.
It's never terrorism when it's doen by our side.
But who we is and who they are is always relative to the speaker.
As of 12:18 AM on Jan 11 E.S.T. there are 45 comments. On a topic this controversial, there should be hundreds, if not thousands.
It's really hard to say much on so little info. Somebody was charged with a crime... One of the questions which arises is whether what he's accused of doing would have classified as a crime without the law (i.e. was he giving people pointers on how to blow up US soldiers, and the money to buy the bombs), or is he the fall guy for some racist INS dude ("moderating" the website consisted of registering himself as the admin contact and providing the DNS server)??
There's a big grey space in between.
Something's happened, and it's based on a law that I really don't like. Not much more to be said.
It's unbelievable that Verisign which claims to be in the business of Internet security and SSL/TLS digital certificates - the dominant company with 95%+ market share - could let their Root Certificate Authority expire, then force its users to effectively patch their systems by importing the new certificate for the root CA after the fact. That's just bad engineering.
That's not such a big shock... As somebody else pointed out, root certs NEED an expirey date. What throws me is that Verisign seems to be acting like this broadsided them. How many million people using their certs, and crl.verisign.com resolves to two IP addresses??? I figure that they've got enough money coming in off of this business that they should have been able to afford to put a machine on a good number of major networks out there. I mean, aren't things like this why people are supposedly paying them $150+ a pop for certs?
The other thing to do to aleviate this problem would have been in software design. If software is designed to go automagically looking for replacement certs, it should be designed to go on a random date before the cert expires.. That way the network hit would have been distributed over the few months instead of over the last few hours.
1) committing (intentionally causing) a heinous crime to induce terror, and
2) taking advantage of people's fear after the fact (even based upon a premeditated plan to do so),
Both are a requirement for terrorism...
Exactly. Both are required for terrorism. Therefore, Bush and the US legislature are not "terrorists" because (1) does not apply to them.
OK: I retract my statement somewhat: Premeditation of the process is required, as is taking advantage of the terror.
I agree that people like BinLadin and Atta are obvious examples of terrorists, but I think we're mostly disagreeing on whether someone has to be obvious to be a terrorist. Many people work in the back paths of terror... It'ns not always that obvious.
Remember that BinLadin got much of his training from the CIA back whin Bush Sr. was running the CIA. The puppeteer strings may not be obviously or directly attached, but they're still in play.
The US knew that Saddam had equipment for WMD's becuase Rumsfeld and company helped him get that equipment (and were noticably quiet about him using them). America's enemies are very much of it's own making.
....
, but, I think more likely, race is a simple means by which to draw a line... as is religion (consider the Christian-Muslim terrorists).
Yes. Prejudice would be a better word than Racism. In Northern Ireland, for example, it's between two brands of Christianity.
Terrorism, being perpetrated against the innocent, is unjust and must be opposed.
Here I strongly disagree... Terrorism against "the innocent" must not be opposed. Terrorism must be opposed period. Terrorist always claim a just cause, no matter what side they're on.
The palistinians have real grievances against the Israelis.
The isralelis have real grieviences against the Palistinians
The Irish Catholics have real grieviences against the protestants
The protestants have a lot of grievences against the Catholics.
Many Muslims have real and just grievences against the US.
it would be stupid to claim that the US has no grievences against the likes of Bin Ladin.
But this then links in with Prejudice... It's easier to dismiss the innocent victims among the them. The death is more visceral if it occured among us. The US has probably killed well more than 10 times as many muslims in it's fight against terrorism as BinLadin has killed Americans, but our news media rarely stops to honestly honor and weep the Muslim dead. Nor do we seriously consider what those deaths do to the sentiment in those regions.
After a while, terrorism becomes it's own justification. The terror of one side justifies the terror of the other.The real issues drown in the resulting bloodshed.
If you think about it, the biggest bone of contention in Palistinian/Israeli talks isn't the core issues.. It's now who gets to stop killing who first.
I agree to the extent that there had to be a larger group to go after....
No, actually. I'd say a smaller group (within the US). McVeigh was apparently a right wing militia member. A generation or two ago he would have been a klansman (and he may have been one anyways). Right wing militias still seem to wield a good bit of power, especially in the south. That type of attitude is still strong within the Republican party. There were many people who complained that there seemed to have been precious little investigation of McVeighs ties to militia groups and their involvement in his bombing plot ("You say you planned it all yourself?? OK, good. Investigation done!"). The likes of Loft might have risen to the defence of such groups (also remember that GW Bush's grandfather worked as a NAZI fundraizer during WWII -- until congress confiscated the company). Klan types may be underground, but some of them still walk in circles of power.
Your qualification thus seems to imply that you define 'terrorism' as 'fear-mongering' involving premeditation. Is this the case?
Premeditation is definitely part of what distinguishes the two. As an example, if someone had simply accidently flown their plane into the WTC, we'd be calling it a tragedy, but not terrorism -- even if it was a hijacker trying to get to cuba. (The hijacking might still be terrorism, depending on other issues, but the crash would have been stupidity).
Similarly, if people had simply used the WTC bombing as an excuse to start writing what is now called the patriot act, I would have said that they were taking advantage of the situation (even though the situation included an aspect of terror). and would have probably classified it as fear-mongering.
1) committing (intentionally causing) a heinous crime to induce terror, and
2) taking advantage of people's fear after the fact (even based upon a premeditated plan to do so),
Both are a requirement for terrorism... Son of Sam, Ted Bundy, and the Green River Killer, for example, killed a good number of people, and caused terror while they were doing their killing, but it was not considered terrorism by most people. The two DC snipers were, at most, borderline terrorists -- but if you accept that, then you would also have to accept that terrorism doesn't take many deaths -- just appropriate targeting.
Although they got much publicity (mostly due to the post 9/11 fear-mongering), their aims were (AFIK) mostly monetary. The fact that they were also Muslim didn't do the US Muslim community much good. (I'm sure that there are a number of Muslims who would be happy to kill those two).
On the other hand, If they had been picking off legislators (or their family members) to induce (or prevent) passage of a piece of legislation, it would have been more properly classifiable as terrorism.
I find it hard to believe that it had to be a Muslim-caused disaster (as you seem to imply)... most likely, it simply had to be a disaster of sufficient magnitude.
In that, I'm starting to confuse terrorism with racism. The two are related, but distinct. Terrorism depends to a small extent on Racism.. The reason why is that the group using terrorism has to know that they are immune from it's action -- whether it's race, religion, or whatever, there needs to be a (reasonably) clear dividing line that says 'you won't be next'.
This dividing line doesn't so much get the support of a community as their acquiescence.. If you support the terrorists, you're safe. If you oppose the terrorists, then you become an honorary member of them, and subject to similar treatment -- thus most people will just go quiet and hope to avoid attention. "Silence is assent" is a statement that became famous in the days of Cromwell.
The Oklahoma bombing would have easily been a big enough event to trigger the Patriot act, except that it was comitted by "they boy next door". McVeigh was a
Blond
Christian
white
middle-classed
Right-wing
Ex-Military
He even fought in Desert Storm!
Can you imagine the uproar if we were using racial profiling against blondes???? Christians???? Ex-Military with explosives training????? REPUBLICANS?????
No. The patriot act needed an identifiable them to be ostensibly targeted against, even though it doesn't name 'them' -- the 'them' seems obvious from the media blitzes. The KKK isn't usually named as a terrorist group because there's no way to distinguish them from my housemates (except for the chinese girl downstairs).
Replace Bin-Ladin with Senator Trent Lott and Mohammad Atta with Timothy McVeigh, and you would never have passed the Patriot Act.
I had to edit mine to fit in slashdot's 120 character limit and keep the meaning. I think the original was "Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
The lower case I on It is probably a side effect of the editing process.
(yes. This is me too, I've got more than one account. One started as a work account the other home. Since then they've become much mixed.)
I'm guessing that much of the initial SCO stock price rise was due to VC-type investments... People who saw a 10%chance at a 100-1 return on invenstment. The probability of a return has now dropped precipitiously, but I'm betting that many of the people who bought in at
SInce then, groklaw has had a few threads about the clear appearance of 'painting' the stock -- taking advantage of it's relatively low volume, and buying up the stock at the start and end of many days...
Yep.. I agree. woulda been nice to sell low and buy high... I was thinking that around March 2000, too, but then........
I understand. From your name, I'm guessing that you're one of the people who has been on the recieiving end of the seriously racist shit that's been coming down the pipe in the last couple of years.
Racism is based on the fact that it's 'safe' to allow structural opression of a group that couldn't possibly be 'me'. At that point, the only unsafe action would be to get into a 'guilt by association' situation (i.e. by defending them). People tend to be more interested in not being the next target than attacking the base injustice of the system.
Thus, black slavery, followed by black opression.
The Indian Genocide (officially, the "Indian Wars").
Jewish persecution up until WWII, when the attrocities of the Nazi - driven holocaust were so horrifying that 'guilt by association' made any sort of defence of anti-semitism untenable. (( it also helped that we were able to fobb of anti-semitism on Nazi Germany rather than accepting that it was a much wider cultural phenomena -> once again fobbing it off on a safely identifiable "them')).
This latest anti-semitism (most Arabs are just as much semites as Jews) is just the latest incarnation of this old trick.
....merely taking advantage of people's fear is not commonly considered "terrorism".....
No. that's called 'fear-mongering' similar idea, but different order of magnitude. When I talk of Terrorism in the legislature, I mean that there were people who were all set up to take advantage of Sept. 11 Before it happened. They didn't know precisely what form it would take, but they knew that it would happen sooner or later. They were waiting for a big explosion, and/or lots of dead bodies -- burt perpetrated by a Muslim. (You're not Muslim, are you?)
The Oklahoma bombing was a false start.. If you go back to the news reports of that time, you can see the FBI warning people off -- that whomever it waw that did that, it did not appear to be Muslims.
You can't go passing anti-terrorism laws against blonde-haired blue-eyed ex-marines, because people will realize that "I could be the target of these laws".
It may seem comforting to know that law enforcement is focusing on Muslims today, but it's no less legal to cart your sister off to guantanimo-type incommunicado incarceration than it is to 'dissapear' the guy running Abdul's Falafal House.
But don't worry. It'll still be another year, or two, before they start doing that.
Re:I'm not Toto, and this isn't Kansas.
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 1
Last I heard, Sir Unicorn had stopped doing DreamQuests (never made money at it). They went into Dinner Theatre (easier to produce, and much better income). I was told that the only reason why they kept up with DreamQuest as long as they did was that it was a great carrot for their actors doing dinner theatre... (do this job, and I'll have this great dreamquest character for you!)..
LRPS is the inheritor of the DreamQuest universe (though much changed). It was also the birthplace (AFIK) of some of the gothic/vampire roleplaying stuff.
I don't live in Edmonton anymore, and never quite got a LRPS universe running in Vancouver.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm betting, however, that their legal troubles here have gotten much less coverage in Europe than here. I'm also guessing that they're betting the same thing (but with real money).
If that happened, then the nasdaq would be responsible for imforming people when a company started to look shady... they'd also be on the hook for false positives.... It's pretty unlikely that something like that will happen. On the other hand, I doubt that there are many people who don't get the story now that SCO is in a pretty sketchy position.
I'm guessing that this is why they're goint to Europe... They're hoping that their name isn't completely trashed there (yet).
If what you want is for the code to be released, and that's what is in the license, and that's the only thing that will stop you from pursuing a lawsuit, then they can either mollify your injured pride (release the source code) or going in front of a judge and risking paying fines that could well be high multiples of what they got paid for the infringing software.
It may not be force, but it is the next best thing.
For the most part I agree with you, but it's entirely possible that a judge could force a companay to release their code. Something like that would, however, be done on a case by case basis, and would depend on the history of that specific violation.
If, for example, a company held off prosecution by promising to release the code "real soon now", but never quite got around to doing it, and then after 4 years of stalling, claimed that they had replaced all of the GPL code, so you can now blow your complaint out your ear, I wouldn't bet my life against the judge ordering a full code release.
Terrorizing is the creation of terror, terrorism is the using of that terror. Directly causing terror is the easiest way to start the process, but it's not the only way.
Right now the various western governments are using pretty much every connotation of the word, depending on what they want to do with it. Under those conditions, the most sane thing to do is simply go back to basics, work from the principles of the current official linguistic sources.
Governments and big business have pretty much got the process of warping the meanings of words around their intent down to an art. They will, however, generally bound that manglization by the dictionary meaning of the word, so careful reading of a few good dictionaries will usually tell you what they can do with the word. To presume anything else is to walk on river ice.
. In addition, (perhaps unfortunately in some cases) popular usage becomes proper usage...
Your attempted definition is only one of many 'popular' definitions. I've seen people called terrorist for standing on a road. I've also seen the Canadian government attempt to codify that usage as law. I also disagree with that definition, but for somewhat different reasons.
Furthermore, by your definition (as far as I can gather), it seems that even reasonable acts can be considered terrorism (see my previous posts, mentioning sales of survival equipment in the year 1999
Fear and terror are different issues, though closely related. Fear is to terror what a car is to a Mercedes. In both cases the latter is a subset of the former, but implies an order of magnitude difference in the general quality of the thing. Short answer: no.. They Y2K thing was mostly just fear, not terror (although there were a couple of attempts to attach terrorist acts to Y2K, that all failed (AFAIK).
Terror is is the use of terror, not the creation. A marksman uses a gun, but does not necessarily make them -- on the other hand, most good gunsmiths tend to also be reasonable marksmen. Same with terror.
Calling Israel "a ghetto on a national scale" seems strange and confusing to me since the word "ghetto" generally connotes forced segregation and poor living conditions.
Ghettos are often accidents of history. The segregation may be forced, but usually, it's more social in nature. You're probably thinking of the black ghettos in the US. Although there sere often areas that actively discouraged blacks from moving there, there was, often as not, no actual legal force keeping them where they were.
Jewish Ghettos of pre-WW2 Europe, however, were not necessarily poor living conditions. Part of what Hitler used against them, in fact, was that the average Jew seemed to be much better of than the average Aryan. Envy and greed can be powerful motivators to the hateful.
The terrorists themselves may view their terrorism as justified retribution, but, as I believe we have already established, that is actually unjust (again, by my definition of terrorism).
It's not that terrorists may consider their actions a justified, they will almost certainly consider their actions justified. Would you kill yourself for an unjust cause? I don't think that anybody that you call a terrorist would either.
Thinking that your cause is a just one is a prerequisite for being a terrorist. People who think that a cause is unjust won't generally volunteer to put their life and/or freedom at stake. (much less blow themselves up) for that cause.
The fact that you think you have a just cause for going out a
Do NOT tell them they must now releaes all their source code to the public.
If that's what you want them to do, then say so. Don't pussyfoot around. You can't force them to release anything that is whole-cloth theirs, but you anything that's a clear derivative of yours, their legal choice is to release the source, or face a judge.
The first letter should be business like, and reasonably noncombative. If you'd be happy to just have them release the source code (on an ongoing basis), then let them know that, if they do so, you'll chaulk it up to a misunderstanding and let it be.Also let them know what if they force you to spend much more time onthe issue that you'll be charging just for your time. Remember that this is consulting rates, so $100/hour isn't even starting to get unreasonable.
It's probably worth mentioning that if lawyers start logging time, the price goes much higher much faster.
Send the message to the best contact you have at the company. If you can find their legal eagles, then CC the message to them.
I'd also CC a copy to a reasonably disinterested third party who would know to log the message for posterity. The FSF might be a good bet.
If they're distributing your code and/or documentation on the net , and they're clearly non-responsive, then you can also send a DMCA takedown notice to their ISP. (The law is there. You may hate it for other reasons, but it's a tool for you to use like any other).
Remember to stand firm on your rights. If they're using your code, you have the right to tell them to stop. If you're seriously pissed at them, you can simply tell them to stop distributing your code. If they refuse to stop, you can go to a judge and get an injunction against them (It would be in the context of suing them for copyright invringement).
If you want to get paid for the work that they've stolen, then decide how much you want per copy and ask them for it. Worst case is that they'll tell yo to drop dead and you'll be forced to go to court to get the money from them. Note: you can get more money if your copyright is filed... the sooner the better. Until the copyright is filed, the most you can get out of them is 'damages'.. which will (probably) top out at the actual price they are charging for the code. Once you filee, then the cap is the greater of actual damages and $30,000+ per copy. That $30L+ can be a pretty sturdy barganing tool.
Note: IANAL If in doubt, talk to a real lawyer. There seem to be a number of reasonably good ones at groklaw. Perhaps one of them lives in your area.
NoteL if you really don't think you are willig to drag these people thru court, then you can always assign your copyright to the FSF (or assign them the right to enforce it). At that point the FSF can start wailing on them with authority.
That's just the first step in the analysis. The fun starts with: 'does the person who invented it have the right to patent it's inventions? Does the person who owns it have the right (if different than the person who created it)?'
My question is: If it invents something otherwise patentable, who files the patent -- and would such a patent be enforcable?
I think that you're confusing popular usage with proper usage. If you've got linux, try going 'kdict terrorism'.
From The Webster's:
After Sept-11, the Canadian government tried to pass a bill that effectively classified 'terrorism' as just about any act of civil disobedience that might successfully influence the government (e.g. labour strikes). Happily, that definition was rejected. Your defiinition goes somewhat in the other direction. You're trying to define 'terrorist' by the most vicious example of the work. Part of the problem is that there are people being tagged 'terrorist' by a much looser definition, but then your definition is being used to justify their treatment (this is what the Canadian bill was also trying to do).
I'm pushing just ever so slightly i the other diriction, but I'm still staying well within the official definition(s) of the word, and I'm dooing it with my eyes wide open on that point.
btw: by your definition, Osamma doesn't fit. He doesn't commit acts of terrorism himself, he simply calls on other people to do it in his name -- but he does fit well within my definition.
By the definition I have provided, 'terrorism' cannot be justified, because it requires a willful violation of the innocent (which is basically the definition of injustice);
What I would say is that terrorism should never be justified. The unfortunate truth is that people justify it to themselves on a daily basis.
Simply believing or feeling "justified" in your actions, does not make them just...
I would agree on this point. However I am also acusing you of attempting to justify the use of terror by the US. (I.E. of doing precisely what you are trying to condemn in other people).
(e.g. carpet bombing a major city is not a justified way of killing Osama).
The US took out the better part of a city block around a restaurant in a (clearly failed) attempt to kill Saddam, and you'd have to admit that Saddamn hadn't doen much against the US -- the WMD argument was pretty much a straw-man argument and his connections to Al-Quaida are tenuous (and much weaker than the ties of Saudi Arabia, where most of the 9-11 bombers came from).
Some of the violence of the US can be justified.
Of it can, than so can some of the violence against the US. If you use a different level of justification for your own side than you do for somebody else, then you are engaging in precisely the escelation that I'm trying to both expose and condemn. -- and when you either accept or condemn violence, it's far to easy to accept if the analysis is done from the point of view of the person who is doing it, and/or in whose name it is being done.
It's easy to say "I don't like guns and bombs pointed at me", but I'm invoking Jesus's rule of "Do unto others as you would like done unto you".
Consider WW2 for broadly justified violence by the Allies.
Don't even bother to drag in to the Hoiocaust to justify Allied actions in WWII. They didn't know what was happening there. The allies were shocked when they got to the concentration camps. They mostly denied that it was going on, and looked at the stories leaking out as hyperbole. Jews who made it to North America at the height of the war were routinely denied entry -- entire boatloads in some instances. This was a time when the KKK was still stringing up Jews for even imagined slights in the USA. (( mostly, they were stringing up blacks, but "foreigners" were considered viable targets too )). Nonetheless, WW2 Germany is a relatively easy case for arguing for going to war against -- even absent the holocaust argument.
The truth
Now, doesn't that phrase strike you as something of an oxymoron?
You forgot to ask for money.
Oh, they can be hit up for much more than just lawyers fees. One of these days, somebody isn't going pay attention to their lawyers' warnings, and they're gonna end up in court with a nasty statutory damages bill. At that point people are likely to pay a good bit more attention to not violating the GPL.
Perhaps KISS will be the sacrificial lamb??
I'd really like to verify this before I go wandering around trying to convince math historians that they have things wrong.
Oh, damn. I've been hit by the slashdot lameness filter. You can find my response (formatted as I would like it)on my website.
Of course this is false. I hope you are not attributing these statements toward me. On the contrary, I am saying that justice must be determined individually and not based upon whatever arbitrary group someone may belong to.
What I mean is that people tend to have an easier time justifying the violence done in the name of their own group.
The German people were told that jews were attempting to destroy their country, It was kinda hard to justify defending people doing that.
The Israelis are convinced that the palistinians are out to destroy their country... It's kinda hard to defend people doingthat.
Palestinians are convinced that israelis are out to destroy their homeland. It's hard to defend people out to do that.
US citizens are convinced that the Muslim world is out to destroy their country... It's kinda hard to justify defending people doing that.
Some Iraqis are convinced that the US is just out to steal their oil It's hard to defend people killing Iraqis to do that.
The point about terrorism becoming it's own justification is that people use the terrorism comitted in the name of the other side to justify the terror inflicted by their side. after a while the original source of the dispute becomes almost (or actually) irrelevant.
You've effextively proven my point, trying to justify the violence committed by the US "In it's defence".
and so on,
and so on.....
So now can you see the cycle of justification and violence and terror?
The violence always seems justified when we do it.
It's never terrorism when it's doen by our side.
But who we is and who they are is always relative to the speaker.
It's really hard to say much on so little info. Somebody was charged with a crime... One of the questions which arises is whether what he's accused of doing would have classified as a crime without the law (i.e. was he giving people pointers on how to blow up US soldiers, and the money to buy the bombs), or is he the fall guy for some racist INS dude ("moderating" the website consisted of registering himself as the admin contact and providing the DNS server)??
There's a big grey space in between.
Something's happened, and it's based on a law that I really don't like. Not much more to be said.
That's not such a big shock... As somebody else pointed out, root certs NEED an expirey date. What throws me is that Verisign seems to be acting like this broadsided them. How many million people using their certs, and crl.verisign.com resolves to two IP addresses??? I figure that they've got enough money coming in off of this business that they should have been able to afford to put a machine on a good number of major networks out there. I mean, aren't things like this why people are supposedly paying them $150+ a pop for certs?
The other thing to do to aleviate this problem would have been in software design. If software is designed to go automagically looking for replacement certs, it should be designed to go on a random date before the cert expires.. That way the network hit would have been distributed over the few months instead of over the last few hours.
Exactly. Both are required for terrorism. Therefore, Bush and the US legislature are not "terrorists" because (1) does not apply to them.
OK: I retract my statement somewhat: Premeditation of the process is required, as is taking advantage of the terror.
I agree that people like BinLadin and Atta are obvious examples of terrorists, but I think we're mostly disagreeing on whether someone has to be obvious to be a terrorist. Many people work in the back paths of terror... It'ns not always that obvious.
Remember that BinLadin got much of his training from the CIA back whin Bush Sr. was running the CIA. The puppeteer strings may not be obviously or directly attached, but they're still in play.
The US knew that Saddam had equipment for WMD's becuase Rumsfeld and company helped him get that equipment (and were noticably quiet about him using them). America's enemies are very much of it's own making.
.... , but, I think more likely, race is a simple means by which to draw a line... as is religion (consider the Christian-Muslim terrorists). Yes. Prejudice would be a better word than Racism. In Northern Ireland, for example, it's between two brands of Christianity.
Terrorism, being perpetrated against the innocent, is unjust and must be opposed.
Here I strongly disagree... Terrorism against "the innocent" must not be opposed. Terrorism must be opposed period. Terrorist always claim a just cause, no matter what side they're on.
But this then links in with Prejudice... It's easier to dismiss the innocent victims among the them. The death is more visceral if it occured among us. The US has probably killed well more than 10 times as many muslims in it's fight against terrorism as BinLadin has killed Americans, but our news media rarely stops to honestly honor and weep the Muslim dead. Nor do we seriously consider what those deaths do to the sentiment in those regions.
After a while, terrorism becomes it's own justification. The terror of one side justifies the terror of the other.The real issues drown in the resulting bloodshed. If you think about it, the biggest bone of contention in Palistinian/Israeli talks isn't the core issues.. It's now who gets to stop killing who first.
I agree to the extent that there had to be a larger group to go after....
No, actually. I'd say a smaller group (within the US). McVeigh was apparently a right wing militia member. A generation or two ago he would have been a klansman (and he may have been one anyways). Right wing militias still seem to wield a good bit of power, especially in the south. That type of attitude is still strong within the Republican party. There were many people who complained that there seemed to have been precious little investigation of McVeighs ties to militia groups and their involvement in his bombing plot ("You say you planned it all yourself?? OK, good. Investigation done!"). The likes of Loft might have risen to the defence of such groups (also remember that GW Bush's grandfather worked as a NAZI fundraizer during WWII -- until congress confiscated the company). Klan types may be underground, but some of them still walk in circles of power.
When you're looking for a political whi
Premeditation is definitely part of what distinguishes the two. As an example, if someone had simply accidently flown their plane into the WTC, we'd be calling it a tragedy, but not terrorism -- even if it was a hijacker trying to get to cuba. (The hijacking might still be terrorism, depending on other issues, but the crash would have been stupidity).
Similarly, if people had simply used the WTC bombing as an excuse to start writing what is now called the patriot act, I would have said that they were taking advantage of the situation (even though the situation included an aspect of terror). and would have probably classified it as fear-mongering.
1) committing (intentionally causing) a heinous crime to induce terror, and
2) taking advantage of people's fear after the fact (even based upon a premeditated plan to do so),
Both are a requirement for terrorism... Son of Sam, Ted Bundy, and the Green River Killer, for example, killed a good number of people, and caused terror while they were doing their killing, but it was not considered terrorism by most people. The two DC snipers were, at most, borderline terrorists -- but if you accept that, then you would also have to accept that terrorism doesn't take many deaths -- just appropriate targeting.
Although they got much publicity (mostly due to the post 9/11 fear-mongering), their aims were (AFIK) mostly monetary. The fact that they were also Muslim didn't do the US Muslim community much good. (I'm sure that there are a number of Muslims who would be happy to kill those two).
On the other hand, If they had been picking off legislators (or their family members) to induce (or prevent) passage of a piece of legislation, it would have been more properly classifiable as terrorism.
I find it hard to believe that it had to be a Muslim-caused disaster (as you seem to imply)... most likely, it simply had to be a disaster of sufficient magnitude.
In that, I'm starting to confuse terrorism with racism. The two are related, but distinct. Terrorism depends to a small extent on Racism.. The reason why is that the group using terrorism has to know that they are immune from it's action -- whether it's race, religion, or whatever, there needs to be a (reasonably) clear dividing line that says 'you won't be next'.
This dividing line doesn't so much get the support of a community as their acquiescence .. If you support the terrorists, you're safe. If you oppose the terrorists, then you become an honorary member of them , and subject to similar treatment -- thus most people will just go quiet and hope to avoid attention. "Silence is assent" is a statement that became famous in the days of Cromwell.
The Oklahoma bombing would have easily been a big enough event to trigger the Patriot act, except that it was comitted by "they boy next door". McVeigh was a
-
Blond
- Christian
- white
- middle-classed
- Right-wing
- Ex-Military
- He even fought in Desert Storm!
Can you imagine the uproar if we were using racial profiling against blondes???? Christians???? Ex-Military with explosives training????? REPUBLICANS ?????No. The patriot act needed an identifiable them to be ostensibly targeted against, even though it doesn't name 'them' -- the 'them' seems obvious from the media blitzes. The KKK isn't usually named as a terrorist group because there's no way to distinguish them from my housemates (except for the chinese girl downstairs).
Replace Bin-Ladin with Senator Trent Lott and Mohammad Atta with Timothy McVeigh, and you would never have passed the Patriot Act.
The lower case I on It is probably a side effect of the editing process.
(yes. This is me too, I've got more than one account. One started as a work account the other home. Since then they've become much mixed.)
Yep.. I agree. woulda been nice to sell low and buy high... I was thinking that around March 2000, too, but then........
From your name, I'm guessing that you're one of the people who has been on the recieiving end of the seriously racist shit that's been coming down the pipe in the last couple of years.
Racism is based on the fact that it's 'safe' to allow structural opression of a group that couldn't possibly be 'me'. At that point, the only unsafe action would be to get into a 'guilt by association' situation (i.e. by defending them). People tend to be more interested in not being the next target than attacking the base injustice of the system.
Thus, black slavery, followed by black opression.
The Indian Genocide (officially, the "Indian Wars").
Jewish persecution up until WWII, when the attrocities of the Nazi - driven holocaust were so horrifying that 'guilt by association' made any sort of defence of anti-semitism untenable. (( it also helped that we were able to fobb of anti-semitism on Nazi Germany rather than accepting that it was a much wider cultural phenomena -> once again fobbing it off on a safely identifiable "them')).
This latest anti-semitism (most Arabs are just as much semites as Jews) is just the latest incarnation of this old trick.
I don't know if you saw my other comment on this stream. Similar bent, but a truckload less sarcasm.
No. that's called 'fear-mongering' similar idea, but different order of magnitude. When I talk of Terrorism in the legislature, I mean that there were people who were all set up to take advantage of Sept. 11 Before it happened. They didn't know precisely what form it would take, but they knew that it would happen sooner or later. They were waiting for a big explosion, and/or lots of dead bodies -- burt perpetrated by a Muslim. (You're not Muslim, are you?)
The Oklahoma bombing was a false start.. If you go back to the news reports of that time, you can see the FBI warning people off -- that whomever it waw that did that, it did not appear to be Muslims.
You can't go passing anti-terrorism laws against blonde-haired blue-eyed ex-marines, because people will realize that "I could be the target of these laws".
It may seem comforting to know that law enforcement is focusing on Muslims today, but it's no less legal to cart your sister off to guantanimo-type incommunicado incarceration than it is to 'dissapear' the guy running Abdul's Falafal House.
But don't worry. It'll still be another year, or two, before they start doing that.
If you follow the LRPS link in my article, and then go a couple further, you'll ultimately end up at www.lrps.ca The Live RolePlaying Society.
LRPS is the inheritor of the DreamQuest universe (though much changed). It was also the birthplace (AFIK) of some of the gothic/vampire roleplaying stuff.
I don't live in Edmonton anymore, and never quite got a LRPS universe running in Vancouver.
They're transforming it into a statistical exercise.