Actually, I don't think so - you're making a mistake when you think that a moral code is automatically something that we'd consider to be "good". Put another way, "care about your own family/tribe/clan/people, but feel free to maim, kill, subjugate or exploit everyone else" certainly IS a moral code, even if it's not a very nice one.
By your definition, a child or toddler who is too young to understand the concept of higher beings would not be human. Wait, you say that a child will eventually grow up and be able to understand the concept (no matter how they'll answer the question)? Then what about people who are severely retarded, to the point where they are not able to make sense of these things? Or how about a baby that dies before being able to be able to grasp these concepts?
Maybe you're only talking about the species as a whole, not every individual, but I'm still not convinced. The ability to understand and explore the concept of higher beings seems like a sufficient prerequisite for declaring someone "human" (I'm putting that into quotes since I want to make it understood that this does not refer to "human" as in "member of the homo sapiens species", but rather the more ephemeral qualities that - supposedly - set us apart from mere animals), but it's not a necessary one.
That being said, I'm not sure it's a good idea to talk about whether someone is "human" or not like this, anyway - this just seems like an invite to deny human rights and open the door to exploitation as soon as someone is found not to be "human" after all.
Oh, come on... you didn't actually take the GP's post serious, did you? (If you didn't and if your post was only intended to be a joke as well, I've got to say it was a pretty weak one.)
What makes you think you actually *can* just leave the same way you move to a different city or a different US state? In order to emigrate from the USA, you also need to *immigrate* into some other country, and that's not necessarily an easy thing. Do you think you'll be welcomed with open arms because you're a US-American and thus OMGsuperior to everyone else? Think again.
I'm not sure I get this. If copyright didn't exist at all, what would be there to stop $CORPORATION from taking my GPL'ed code, putting it into their proprietary product and marketing that without ever giving the source code to *anyone*, including me? In other words, how would the GPL still be any different from BSD-style licenses?
I suppose you could create new legislation that would require things like attribution, published source code and so on, but I don't see what the real difference would be: you'd just replace one system of copyright with a new system of "moral rights" of the author (such as the right to receive attribution, and the right to be able to see the inner workings of the products others build on your work).
What seems to be mostly missing from the debate is the insight that it's possible to be in favour of copyright while still being opposed to copyright in its *current* form. That's where my position fits in, for example, although I haven't thought about it in detail yet; so far, I think I'm in favour of copyright as long as: a) it's limited to a sensible amount of time (14 years?), b) it's not renewable or extendable, c) it does not automatically transfer to relatives etc. (i.e., it resides solely with the creator), d) it only affects commercial copying, not non-commercial copying, where "non-commercial" is defined as "no money's changing hands" and e) it is ensured that the "source" (including but not limited to the source code for computer programs) is placed in escrow and released to the public upon expiry of the copyright in question. Furthermore, I think that interference with fair use and/or access to a copyrighted work after its copyright term expires needs to be made illegal - so no DRM, for example.
This would be a copyright system I could support - but of course, it's also a system that is vastly different from the current one.
Your comment makes about as much sense as the (hypothetical) claim that judges are responsible for crime (since without judges, noone would get convicted of anything).
Has it never occurred to you that independent, courageous journalists might be a necessity for a functioning democracy? (Not that I'm sure the USA have either, of course...)
Indeed. If I told someone like my mother that HP got fined for pretexting, she's probably think it somehow relates to sending text messages from a mobile phone or so; she'd forget about it again immediately since the word's meaningless to her. If you say "fraud", on the other hand, it'd immediately be clear what was going on.
One could argue that I could just explain what "pretexting" means, of course, but such an explanation would likely involve the word "fraud", anyway, so there'd be no use in not calling it "fraud" right away, anyway.
We should put these guys in charge of airport security etc. - I bet they can identify terrorists just by looking at them, too. "Hey, he's got a turban! And a beard! It's ONE OF THEM!"
Yes, it still sounds unreasonable to me - outright ridiculous, in fact. Do you seriously want to tell me that ANY copyright infringement could ever be as bad as an "average" rape?
This prevents death sentence for anyone extradited from Germany to the USA.
Actually, this can't happen, anyway - as another commenter pointed out further above, the German constitution apparently stipulates that "[n]o German may be extradited to a foreign country. A different regulation to cover extradition to a Member State of the European Union or to an international court of law may be laid down by law, provided that constitutional principles are observed" (Article 16). Since the USA are neither part of the European Union nor an international court of law, no extradition to the USA is possible - at least as long as you're a German citizen.
Note that insulting foreign heads of state might get you into trouble in Germany.
Just out of curiosity, do you have a reference for that?
The official position - that which is being claimed - is the first. What's actually being followed, of course, is the second. It's a classic example of someone's words not matching their deeds.
F***ing Blair. We elected a leader, and he became a Bush follower and sold us out. I'll piss on his grave when he dies for the damage he's done to the UK sovereignty.
Hear, hear. Hopefully some day we'll be able to say this (paraphrasing Lord Byron):
Posterity will ne'er survey A nobler grave than this: Here lie the bones of Tony Blair: Stop, traveller, and piss.
You actually want it this way. Wouldn't be much fun if criminals could commit crimes with impunity just because they weren't physically in a country.
I don't know about you, but actually, yes, I'd want it that way.
Think about it for a moment. Did he break any Australian laws? If the answer is "yes", then I don't see what the problem is with putting him on trial in Australia; certainly, if an Australian citizen breaks Australian law while on Australian soil, putting him on trial before an Australian court (and possibly sending him to an Australian prison) is a natural thing to do. If the answer is "no", on the other hand, then what legal basis is there for arresting and extraditing him? If he didn't break any Australian laws, then he didn't break any Australian laws, and there is no justification for an extradition: otherwise, the USA could just as well extradite US citizens to Turkey because they talk about the Armenian genocide, for example. I think it's obvious that this is not a good idea.
So what *is* the justification for extraditing your own citizens to a foreign country they've never been to? I could understand extradition if a US citizen who committed a crime in the USA fled to Australia; I *might* accept it if an Australian citizen committed a crime in the USA and then returned home (although I'm not really sure about that); but extraditing an Australian citizen who committed a crime in Australia and never visited the USA *at all*... that's simply unacceptable.
Or "one world American"? Might be just me, but I have the distinct feeling that the USA are responsible for far more deaths in foreign nations than Muslims (as if they are even a homogenous group, much less one that generally supports terrorism!) are.
And communists? Come on, this isn't the 50s anymore, McCarthy.
Which ReiserFS are you actually referring to now? Reiser3 is in mainline, and while it's not under active development (not that it's supposed to be), bugs still do get fixed; it certainly is being taken care of. Reiser4 is not and never has been in mainline, and it *is* under active development despite the fact that Hans Reiser himself is preoccupied with other matters right now. There's just been some discussion about whether it's ready for merging again recently - I'm too lazy to look it up, but you'll be able to find more on LWN.net or KernelTrap or so. Check it out; it's all there.
Oh, come on, this is Slashdot - the tech tabloid. Headlines that are misleading if you only casually glance at them but not incorrect if you actually READ them pull in readers, so they're not going to get fixed.
Sturgeon was allegedly molested as a child which directly motivated the killing of the other eight people AND the development of extreme sado-masochistic sexual tendencies... Which is a purported reason that Hans's woman both began and ended her affair with him.
Urgh. I really hate people like that - I don't know what he did, of course, but this whole thing sure seems to be giving SSC BDSM (which is healthy, fun, and totally normal) a bad name (yet) again. The press doesn't seem to have latched on it yet as far as I can tell (which admittedly isn't very far), but putting "extreme sado-masochistic sexual tendencies" (what does "extreme" mean, anyway?) on the same level as "the killing of the other eight people" is really rather ignominious.
(Seriously, just replace the above with "extreme homosexual tendencies", and you'll see what I mean. Hopefully...)
Great idea - I'll confess eight murders just to stick it to my ex's new husband. That'll show him!
(Seriously, I can see where you're coming from, and you do have a good point, but whatever the reason he confessed those murders in the first place, I'm pretty sure it's not just to stick it to Hans.)
Yeah, we see the FSF lobbying for copyright extension all the time. Face it, in the eyes of the FSF, copyright is an evil which they have decided to pervert for good.
Can you provide a reference for that? I hear people saying that occasionally, but I've never actually seen any FSF statement that would indicate that this is true. (Yeah, I could just check the FSF's website myself, but if people make claims like this, the burden's on them, not me.:))
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Actually, I don't think so - you're making a mistake when you think that a moral code is automatically something that we'd consider to be "good". Put another way, "care about your own family/tribe/clan/people, but feel free to maim, kill, subjugate or exploit everyone else" certainly IS a moral code, even if it's not a very nice one.
By your definition, a child or toddler who is too young to understand the concept of higher beings would not be human. Wait, you say that a child will eventually grow up and be able to understand the concept (no matter how they'll answer the question)? Then what about people who are severely retarded, to the point where they are not able to make sense of these things? Or how about a baby that dies before being able to be able to grasp these concepts?
Maybe you're only talking about the species as a whole, not every individual, but I'm still not convinced. The ability to understand and explore the concept of higher beings seems like a sufficient prerequisite for declaring someone "human" (I'm putting that into quotes since I want to make it understood that this does not refer to "human" as in "member of the homo sapiens species", but rather the more ephemeral qualities that - supposedly - set us apart from mere animals), but it's not a necessary one.
That being said, I'm not sure it's a good idea to talk about whether someone is "human" or not like this, anyway - this just seems like an invite to deny human rights and open the door to exploitation as soon as someone is found not to be "human" after all.
Oh, come on... you didn't actually take the GP's post serious, did you? (If you didn't and if your post was only intended to be a joke as well, I've got to say it was a pretty weak one.)
As the signs go: "you don't have to be crazy to work here... but it sure helps a lot!"
And don't forget that he's probably reading Slashdot through gopher while listening to WAV files, instead of using the Web and MP3s. :P
What makes you think you actually *can* just leave the same way you move to a different city or a different US state? In order to emigrate from the USA, you also need to *immigrate* into some other country, and that's not necessarily an easy thing. Do you think you'll be welcomed with open arms because you're a US-American and thus OMGsuperior to everyone else? Think again.
Unintentional irony?
I think I'll settle for "land of opportunity to litigate and spout bullshit"...
I'm not sure I get this. If copyright didn't exist at all, what would be there to stop $CORPORATION from taking my GPL'ed code, putting it into their proprietary product and marketing that without ever giving the source code to *anyone*, including me? In other words, how would the GPL still be any different from BSD-style licenses?
I suppose you could create new legislation that would require things like attribution, published source code and so on, but I don't see what the real difference would be: you'd just replace one system of copyright with a new system of "moral rights" of the author (such as the right to receive attribution, and the right to be able to see the inner workings of the products others build on your work).
What seems to be mostly missing from the debate is the insight that it's possible to be in favour of copyright while still being opposed to copyright in its *current* form. That's where my position fits in, for example, although I haven't thought about it in detail yet; so far, I think I'm in favour of copyright as long as: a) it's limited to a sensible amount of time (14 years?), b) it's not renewable or extendable, c) it does not automatically transfer to relatives etc. (i.e., it resides solely with the creator), d) it only affects commercial copying, not non-commercial copying, where "non-commercial" is defined as "no money's changing hands" and e) it is ensured that the "source" (including but not limited to the source code for computer programs) is placed in escrow and released to the public upon expiry of the copyright in question. Furthermore, I think that interference with fair use and/or access to a copyrighted work after its copyright term expires needs to be made illegal - so no DRM, for example.
This would be a copyright system I could support - but of course, it's also a system that is vastly different from the current one.
Your comment makes about as much sense as the (hypothetical) claim that judges are responsible for crime (since without judges, noone would get convicted of anything).
Has it never occurred to you that independent, courageous journalists might be a necessity for a functioning democracy? (Not that I'm sure the USA have either, of course...)
Indeed. If I told someone like my mother that HP got fined for pretexting, she's probably think it somehow relates to sending text messages from a mobile phone or so; she'd forget about it again immediately since the word's meaningless to her. If you say "fraud", on the other hand, it'd immediately be clear what was going on.
One could argue that I could just explain what "pretexting" means, of course, but such an explanation would likely involve the word "fraud", anyway, so there'd be no use in not calling it "fraud" right away, anyway.
We should put these guys in charge of airport security etc. - I bet they can identify terrorists just by looking at them, too. "Hey, he's got a turban! And a beard! It's ONE OF THEM!"
Yes, it still sounds unreasonable to me - outright ridiculous, in fact. Do you seriously want to tell me that ANY copyright infringement could ever be as bad as an "average" rape?
Get real. And see a shrink.
Actually, this can't happen, anyway - as another commenter pointed out further above, the German constitution apparently stipulates that "[n]o German may be extradited to a foreign country. A different regulation to cover extradition to a Member State of the European Union or to an international court of law may be laid down by law, provided that constitutional principles are observed" (Article 16). Since the USA are neither part of the European Union nor an international court of law, no extradition to the USA is possible - at least as long as you're a German citizen.
Just out of curiosity, do you have a reference for that?
The official position - that which is being claimed - is the first. What's actually being followed, of course, is the second. It's a classic example of someone's words not matching their deeds.
Hear, hear. Hopefully some day we'll be able to say this (paraphrasing Lord Byron):
I don't know about you, but actually, yes, I'd want it that way.
Think about it for a moment. Did he break any Australian laws? If the answer is "yes", then I don't see what the problem is with putting him on trial in Australia; certainly, if an Australian citizen breaks Australian law while on Australian soil, putting him on trial before an Australian court (and possibly sending him to an Australian prison) is a natural thing to do. If the answer is "no", on the other hand, then what legal basis is there for arresting and extraditing him? If he didn't break any Australian laws, then he didn't break any Australian laws, and there is no justification for an extradition: otherwise, the USA could just as well extradite US citizens to Turkey because they talk about the Armenian genocide, for example. I think it's obvious that this is not a good idea.
So what *is* the justification for extraditing your own citizens to a foreign country they've never been to? I could understand extradition if a US citizen who committed a crime in the USA fled to Australia; I *might* accept it if an Australian citizen committed a crime in the USA and then returned home (although I'm not really sure about that); but extraditing an Australian citizen who committed a crime in Australia and never visited the USA *at all*... that's simply unacceptable.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Good point!
Or "one world American"? Might be just me, but I have the distinct feeling that the USA are responsible for far more deaths in foreign nations than Muslims (as if they are even a homogenous group, much less one that generally supports terrorism!) are.
And communists? Come on, this isn't the 50s anymore, McCarthy.
Which ReiserFS are you actually referring to now? Reiser3 is in mainline, and while it's not under active development (not that it's supposed to be), bugs still do get fixed; it certainly is being taken care of. Reiser4 is not and never has been in mainline, and it *is* under active development despite the fact that Hans Reiser himself is preoccupied with other matters right now. There's just been some discussion about whether it's ready for merging again recently - I'm too lazy to look it up, but you'll be able to find more on LWN.net or KernelTrap or so. Check it out; it's all there.
Oh, come on, this is Slashdot - the tech tabloid. Headlines that are misleading if you only casually glance at them but not incorrect if you actually READ them pull in readers, so they're not going to get fixed.
Urgh. I really hate people like that - I don't know what he did, of course, but this whole thing sure seems to be giving SSC BDSM (which is healthy, fun, and totally normal) a bad name (yet) again. The press doesn't seem to have latched on it yet as far as I can tell (which admittedly isn't very far), but putting "extreme sado-masochistic sexual tendencies" (what does "extreme" mean, anyway?) on the same level as "the killing of the other eight people" is really rather ignominious.
(Seriously, just replace the above with "extreme homosexual tendencies", and you'll see what I mean. Hopefully...)
Great idea - I'll confess eight murders just to stick it to my ex's new husband. That'll show him!
(Seriously, I can see where you're coming from, and you do have a good point, but whatever the reason he confessed those murders in the first place, I'm pretty sure it's not just to stick it to Hans.)
Can you provide a reference for that? I hear people saying that occasionally, but I've never actually seen any FSF statement that would indicate that this is true. (Yeah, I could just check the FSF's website myself, but if people make claims like this, the burden's on them, not me. :))