There's a big difference between guidance/oversight/direction and domination. Freedom to innovate and design is part of the power and attraction of open source software. As far as polish is concerned, MS and other corporate software vendors have proved over and over that you can put a high polish on a turd (MS Bob, Clippy, Win ME, Vista, etc.) and at the end you still have nothing but a finely polished turd.
The software world, particularly MS customers, owes a debt of thanks to open source software for driving change that MS was reluctant or unwilling to do themselves. For instance, for years MS corporate governance paid nothing but lip service to ideas like security. Now they are finally starting to catch up to where open source "competition" (to use your sarcastic bendy-finger quotation marks) was years ago.
IANAL, so I'm not saying it is or isn't copyrightable. The AG asserts that it is, and I don't have the legal chops to argue otherwise. I am noting that the GGP is incorrect that this is about copyrighting/posting the laws themselves.
Or you could call it civil disobedience. He is deliberately calling out the AG so he can hopefully win without the trouble, time, and expense of a court fight.
The question here is not whether he can post the laws themselves; that has already been tried and failed. He is posting a copyrighted guide to the laws.
Er, my equally anecdotal evidence says that a) men use whatever works best for us, b) landmark-based navigation works well in chaotic environments (driving in a typical New England town/city with a mishmash of street that were in no way centrally planned), and map or vector based navigation works well in more organized grid-based environments, and c) map-based navigation beats landmark-based navigation when it comes to detours.
Not only that, but next to TFA were a series of links/summaries to articles full of similar "tests" and breakthrough explanations of why Strads sound the way they do. People have been announcing new Strad secrets like people announce bigfoot sightings. IMHO, it sounded like the article was a puff piece press release to sell new fungus-treated violins.
The whole world perfectly understands that having guns & ammo in your home (sorry, should I say "arms") in not the way a society should be run
Why posit your off-topic bias as if it were fact? You were doing so well until then. Short reply: there are good reasons why law-abiding folks have every right to own and bear arms, none of which are directly related to the original topic.
Longer reply: However, the longer I considered your post, the more parallels I saw between government restriction of internet access (freedom of speech, essentially), and government restriction of firearms. I suppose for the sake of argument and relevance , I will try to whip up a comparison.
Internet access, like a weapon, is merely a tool, and is neutral in nature. It can be used for good or evil, but is not intrinsically one or the other.* Like internet access, weapon ownership comes with certain responsibilities, such as proper use and ensuring that others do not use it improperly. Like internet access, owning a weapon is a choice; one can choose to exercise it or not. Like internet access, the government has no business abrogating the rights of responsible individuals (or society as a whole) in this fashion. Like the gun-control debate, this "internet-control" bill seeks to put the wishes of special interest groups above the welfare and interests of responsible individuals and society in general, and (for this and other reasons) is a bad law. The internet can be a tool of a criminal (stealing a mp3, stealing an identity, stealing a corporate secret), it can be a used as a weapon by citizens against a bad government by facilitating dissent (Iran) or a used as a weapon by a government against citizens by stifling it (Iran). It can be a weapon wielded in war. People speak of the 2nd amendment serving to protect the others. Whether you agree with that or not, the internet serves a similar purpose in protecting humanity's rights to free speech, freedom of religion, and free association. As long as we keep the world's governments' hands (mostly) off the internet, we preserve what leverage we have over those who govern us.
IMHO, gun ownership (and self-defense in general) is an intrinsic civil right whether your government recognizes or not, and therefore I am not generally persuaded by arguments that lower crime will result from abolishing or restricting gun ownership, or that we should do it because the rest of the world does so. If anything, the export of idiotic US laws to the rest of the world should serve as warning to everyone that adopting laws from other countries is often a very stupid idea, and often represents an infringement upon citizens' rights. However, since you appealed to the "whole world" fallacy, let me point out that in that world, the places with the tightest gun control are more violent. The hated USA with its evil and barbaric gun ownership rights has a violent crime rate far below that of the far more civilized UK and France, among others.
* As the Dalai Lama said, "If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun." (May 15, 2001, The Seattle Times) There are those who insist that a weapon's only purpose is to kill, and therefore weapons are evil. These people are wrong on a couple levels. First, sport shooting is a legitimate non-lethal pursuit. So is hunting. Collecting firearms is another. Second, lethal use of a firearm is not in itself evil or bad for society; that entirely depends on the target and the circumstances. As you say, murders make the headlines, but I've noticed that legitimate self-defense rarely does, creating an impression among many that it is rare and inconsequential compared to the danger that criminal gun use represents. This is grossly incorrect, but I'm not about to write the thesis required to prove this assertion, especially since others have literally already done so.
Just when I'm sick of our overly politically correct, taxation-nation, nanny-state, corrupt, expensive-cost-of-living, wasteful, and in nearly every way thoroughly fucking aggravating state, someone finds a way (like this) to make me forgive a little of the crass arrogance and general douchebaggery our government is known for.
This is frigging brilliant (yeah, I know it's obvious but I can't help myself), and about damn time. What is not apparent is who decided to finally push this forward, and whether or not this will be a) done right, and b) have the momentum needed to overcome the lobbyists that will flood into Boston to stop this (funded by taxpayer money thanks to the Cash for Clunkers corporate welfare plan).
Yes. Done at the server. By an admin who answers to a manager who answers to someone who answers to someone who answers to the Mayor. Are you telling me that Menino doesn't know what's going on? "Hmm, those hundreds of emails from yesterday are gone... I wonder what could have happened."
Yeah, I was feeling a little nostalgic for csh, which is ironic, considering I hardly ever used it and couldn't remember much syntax. I and wasn't about to refresh my memory for the sake of making a funny, so I fudged it.
Massachusetts has a remarkably good record of producing top-notch crooks in our political ecosystem. It is not surprising that they evolved far enough to realize that email is not their friend in court.
No. The later generations of Niagara procs from the last 2 years or so have 1 FPU per core and perform well under floating point loads. There are still some original T2000 systems out there, but they are specifically for business-oriented apps with mostly integer operations.
If he were making a personal apology, I would agree. However, it is clear that he is acting on behalf of the government, and although the people in power may change, the institution remains the same. As a representative of that institution, his statement is not a personal one, but part of his duty as a public servant.
You are completely right. Well, almost completely right. The only worse thing would be letting history roll on without even so much as an empty, belated, politically opportune token such as this apology. When an injury is done to someone that is beyond repair or restitution like this, even moving mountains won't fix things. But silence becomes an accomplice to the original act, and at least speaking out serves to break it.
In my experience, a significant number of good tech people tend to seem arrogant because when you are right on a black/white subject, competence demands that you stick to your guns. That doesn't mean that these people aren't nice, but rather, their refusal to negotiate on non-negotiable issues offends those who live in a more ambiguous world, like management.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a big difference between guidance/oversight/direction and domination. Freedom to innovate and design is part of the power and attraction of open source software. As far as polish is concerned, MS and other corporate software vendors have proved over and over that you can put a high polish on a turd (MS Bob, Clippy, Win ME, Vista, etc.) and at the end you still have nothing but a finely polished turd.
The software world, particularly MS customers, owes a debt of thanks to open source software for driving change that MS was reluctant or unwilling to do themselves. For instance, for years MS corporate governance paid nothing but lip service to ideas like security. Now they are finally starting to catch up to where open source "competition" (to use your sarcastic bendy-finger quotation marks) was years ago.
I'm tempted to reply something to the effect of "What incentive? To please their corporate overlords, of course".
IANAL, so I'm not saying it is or isn't copyrightable. The AG asserts that it is, and I don't have the legal chops to argue otherwise. I am noting that the GGP is incorrect that this is about copyrighting/posting the laws themselves.
passive-aggressive
Or you could call it civil disobedience. He is deliberately calling out the AG so he can hopefully win without the trouble, time, and expense of a court fight.
I know, don't reply to yourself, but I screwed up. I meant to say that copyrighting the laws has been tried and failed.
The question here is not whether he can post the laws themselves; that has already been tried and failed. He is posting a copyrighted guide to the laws.
Er, my equally anecdotal evidence says that a) men use whatever works best for us, b) landmark-based navigation works well in chaotic environments (driving in a typical New England town/city with a mishmash of street that were in no way centrally planned), and map or vector based navigation works well in more organized grid-based environments, and c) map-based navigation beats landmark-based navigation when it comes to detours.
Not only that, but next to TFA were a series of links/summaries to articles full of similar "tests" and breakthrough explanations of why Strads sound the way they do. People have been announcing new Strad secrets like people announce bigfoot sightings. IMHO, it sounded like the article was a puff piece press release to sell new fungus-treated violins.
The whole world perfectly understands that having guns & ammo in your home (sorry, should I say "arms") in not the way a society should be run
Why posit your off-topic bias as if it were fact? You were doing so well until then. Short reply: there are good reasons why law-abiding folks have every right to own and bear arms, none of which are directly related to the original topic.
Longer reply: However, the longer I considered your post, the more parallels I saw between government restriction of internet access (freedom of speech, essentially), and government restriction of firearms. I suppose for the sake of argument and relevance , I will try to whip up a comparison.
Internet access, like a weapon, is merely a tool, and is neutral in nature. It can be used for good or evil, but is not intrinsically one or the other.* Like internet access, weapon ownership comes with certain responsibilities, such as proper use and ensuring that others do not use it improperly. Like internet access, owning a weapon is a choice; one can choose to exercise it or not. Like internet access, the government has no business abrogating the rights of responsible individuals (or society as a whole) in this fashion. Like the gun-control debate, this "internet-control" bill seeks to put the wishes of special interest groups above the welfare and interests of responsible individuals and society in general, and (for this and other reasons) is a bad law. The internet can be a tool of a criminal (stealing a mp3, stealing an identity, stealing a corporate secret), it can be a used as a weapon by citizens against a bad government by facilitating dissent (Iran) or a used as a weapon by a government against citizens by stifling it (Iran). It can be a weapon wielded in war. People speak of the 2nd amendment serving to protect the others. Whether you agree with that or not, the internet serves a similar purpose in protecting humanity's rights to free speech, freedom of religion, and free association. As long as we keep the world's governments' hands (mostly) off the internet, we preserve what leverage we have over those who govern us.
IMHO, gun ownership (and self-defense in general) is an intrinsic civil right whether your government recognizes or not, and therefore I am not generally persuaded by arguments that lower crime will result from abolishing or restricting gun ownership, or that we should do it because the rest of the world does so. If anything, the export of idiotic US laws to the rest of the world should serve as warning to everyone that adopting laws from other countries is often a very stupid idea, and often represents an infringement upon citizens' rights. However, since you appealed to the "whole world" fallacy, let me point out that in that world, the places with the tightest gun control are more violent. The hated USA with its evil and barbaric gun ownership rights has a violent crime rate far below that of the far more civilized UK and France, among others.
* As the Dalai Lama said, "If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun." (May 15, 2001, The Seattle Times) There are those who insist that a weapon's only purpose is to kill, and therefore weapons are evil. These people are wrong on a couple levels. First, sport shooting is a legitimate non-lethal pursuit. So is hunting. Collecting firearms is another. Second, lethal use of a firearm is not in itself evil or bad for society; that entirely depends on the target and the circumstances. As you say, murders make the headlines, but I've noticed that legitimate self-defense rarely does, creating an impression among many that it is rare and inconsequential compared to the danger that criminal gun use represents. This is grossly incorrect, but I'm not about to write the thesis required to prove this assertion, especially since others have literally already done so.
Don't worry. If you live in MA, the government is trying to take your guns, not Ford.
Just when I'm sick of our overly politically correct, taxation-nation, nanny-state, corrupt, expensive-cost-of-living, wasteful, and in nearly every way thoroughly fucking aggravating state, someone finds a way (like this) to make me forgive a little of the crass arrogance and general douchebaggery our government is known for.
This is frigging brilliant (yeah, I know it's obvious but I can't help myself), and about damn time. What is not apparent is who decided to finally push this forward, and whether or not this will be a) done right, and b) have the momentum needed to overcome the lobbyists that will flood into Boston to stop this (funded by taxpayer money thanks to the Cash for Clunkers corporate welfare plan).
Setup Ubuntu on a laptop, then show someone how to open Firefox and thats it; their sorted.
And how much more difficult is it to open FF in Solaris?
I'm intrigued by this 42000 rpm disk of yours. How does it not burn up / fly apart?
Yes. Done at the server. By an admin who answers to a manager who answers to someone who answers to someone who answers to the Mayor. Are you telling me that Menino doesn't know what's going on? "Hmm, those hundreds of emails from yesterday are gone ... I wonder what could have happened."
It has nothing to do with not having enough money, and everything to do with arrogance, greed, and corruption.
FTFY
Oh, so that's what my scripts won't run.
Yeah, I was feeling a little nostalgic for csh, which is ironic, considering I hardly ever used it and couldn't remember much syntax. I and wasn't about to refresh my memory for the sake of making a funny, so I fudged it.
Massachusetts has a remarkably good record of producing top-notch crooks in our political ecosystem. It is not surprising that they evolved far enough to realize that email is not their friend in court.
/dev/null; export $EMAIL_STORAGE
setenv $EMAIL_STORAGE =
No. The later generations of Niagara procs from the last 2 years or so have 1 FPU per core and perform well under floating point loads. There are still some original T2000 systems out there, but they are specifically for business-oriented apps with mostly integer operations.
If he were making a personal apology, I would agree. However, it is clear that he is acting on behalf of the government, and although the people in power may change, the institution remains the same. As a representative of that institution, his statement is not a personal one, but part of his duty as a public servant.
You are completely right. Well, almost completely right. The only worse thing would be letting history roll on without even so much as an empty, belated, politically opportune token such as this apology. When an injury is done to someone that is beyond repair or restitution like this, even moving mountains won't fix things. But silence becomes an accomplice to the original act, and at least speaking out serves to break it.
Don't we need our radioactive carbon while we're alive?
No.
It makes archeology easier, because C14 makes it easier to date old things we pull out of the ground, but our metabolisms don't run on radiation.
Would that be a European pigeon or an African pigeon?
Which would be different how?
At the time, I believe they were.
In my experience, a significant number of good tech people tend to seem arrogant because when you are right on a black/white subject, competence demands that you stick to your guns. That doesn't mean that these people aren't nice, but rather, their refusal to negotiate on non-negotiable issues offends those who live in a more ambiguous world, like management.