You've never studied Buddhism, have you? What you describe as Buddhism is a movement called Pure-Land Buddhism and is in no way representitive of Buddhism in general. It's popular in some places but conflicts with classical Buddhist thought. Traditional Buddhists are not concerned with heaven, gods, spirits or anything even close to those concepts. They suspend judgement on whether or not those things exist because even if they did, they are completely irrelavent to what the Buddhist is trying to accomplish (reaching Nirvana). The supernatural is simply not something worth thinking about. There is a well-known suttra on this subject called Questions Which Tend no Toward Eddification. Westerners have a difficult time understanding the concept of Nirvana. They want to associate with heaven, negation of emotion, or some other simple concept. Understanding the concept requires an understanding of the logical dialectic that Buddhist philosophy is based on. Western philosophy and thought is based on an Aristotelian dialectic which is distinctly different than dialectics used in other philosophies. No dialectic can be shown to be more or less valid or correct than another. They all lead to self-contradictions if followed strictly.
What Buddhists are interested in is ending personal suffering, or rather becoming dissociated with the causes of suffering. That is the basis of Buddhist philosophy and is the entire purpose of the religion and system of beliefs. It is internal and scientific (yes, scientific). Many of the concepts and recent findings of modern psychology were known to Buddhists thousands of years ago because they thought about the mind and behavior in a scientific way. Evidence is required for all beliefs. The Dali Lama has even stated that elements of classical Buddhism should be abandoned if science disproves them. Buddhists are not threatened by science, they embrace it. BTW, Buddhists have been teaching that you rot when you die for a very long time. Buddhist reincarnation is not what you think it is.
Please learn something about a philosophy before you disparage it.
Heaven forbid that content providers should expect people to pay for the content and not just the bandwidth!
They can expect whatever they want. The reality is that in a marketplace businesses can only charge what customers are willing to pay (at least if they want to stay in business). In the online marketplace, comercial providers have to compete with non-comercial providers. They have to compete with people who give information away and like it.
You talk like they have some moral right to payment for what they provide, that they are entitled to compensation. There is no such right. They have the right to try to collect compensation. If they can't come up with a business model to acheive that end, too bad for them. These are grownups running these sites, and they knew the rules before they got involved. If they lose money doing it, that's their problem. They can demand payment if they want and let consumers determine for themselves if the service is worth the charge.
Writers and artists like getting paid for their work
Let me rephrase this for you: Some writers and artists like getting paid for their work. There are others who don't expect that. In fact, there are a lot of people who like to give information and art away. The difference between the web and the rest of the world is that the cost of publishing online is very low. That allows people who aren't trying to make a profit to publish without going bankrupt in the process. The fact that this is bad for profit-driven businesses is irrelavent. People expect some information to be given away free of charge online because that is the reality of the situation. Information is given away. That may not have been true 20 years ago, but it is now.
I write Free software. I spend a lot of time and even some money doing it. And I'm happy to let other people benefit from my work without paying me for it. If they want to send money, that's fine with me, but I'm not going to ask for it and I'm not going to whine when no one sends me a check. Why is it that we insist that children learn to share, tell them that sharing is important and a good thing, and then treat adults who share as deviants? People act like there is something inherently wrong about sharing when you could be selling. We aren't deviant. We just believe in what we say. I tell my daughter that she should share, that she should be happy to help people, that she shouldn't try to profit from every action she takes in life. Why should I not set an example by doing those things myself? Sharing information is a good thing to do and I'm not about to stop just because it gets in the way of someone else's profit motive.
This isn't hypocracy. The difference between this and the MS filesystem proposals is that I don't have to use this one. MS was going to shove it down everyone's throat, whether they wanted it or not. There are not huge numbers of 'this is a bad idea' posts because people know that if they don't like it, they will never have to deal with it. If KDE or Gnome decided to force something like this on all of their applications and hide access to the HFS, you would hear plenty of bitching about it.
The fact that you WANT it to be a derivative work, or that if it were a derivative work you'd be better off, doesn't make it a derivative work.
First of all, that's not what I was arguing at all. I gave an example of how someone can create a derivative work without using any actual code from the original library. The Copyright Act says that a derivative work is "any . . . work [that] may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represents an original work of authorship, is a 'derivative work.'" My example of the derived Neuron class is both a transformation and an elaboration. (The fact that a class that inherits from another class is called a 'derived' class should make it obvious that it is, in fact, a derivation.) An analogy can be made with traditional literature to make this even more clear. A sequel to a novel or a movie is widely recognized as being a derivative work. This is true even though sequel may not use any text from the original at all. The fact that it is based on the original and is presented in the context of the original makes it derivative. The same holds for libraries. If a work depends on a library for core functionality (i.e. it is fundamentally incomplete and incoherent without the library) then it is derived.
Looking at it from the perspective of the source code, the code for the derived Neuron class would make no sense at all to someone reading it if they knew nothing about the original library. The source for the derived Neuron makes sense only within the context of the original work. How can that not be a derived work? The test for determining whether or not a program is derived should be based on the relationship of the secondary work's source code relative to the first. The method used to link object code together is really irrelavent. It is the source code that constitutes the primary derivative work, not the object code (object code is treated as a derivative of the source because it is derived (translated) from the source).
the GPL _can_ regulate distribution, so if you statically link your software, or you dynamically link but distribute the dynamic library with your software, the GPL is well within its rights to regulate the resulting composite package.
Following this logic along with your assertion that basing one library or program on another does not constitue a derived work, then any GPL'd program can be enhanced and released as a proprietary program without violating the GPL. Say that I have my eyes on the GPL'd Foo program and I want to put a modified GUI on it and add a few features and then sell it as a proprietary program. I take the original program and turn it into a library (libFoo). Then I put all of my enhancements into the Bar program (note that Bar cannot function without being linked to libFoo). Then I distribute two install programs. One contains libFoo with its source as required by the GPL. The second program contains the Bar executable and statically links Bar with libFoo before installing the final executable. As a final step, libFoo is uninstalled along with its source. The user will probably never know that Bar is really a modified version of Foo. Technically, I did not distribute the GPL code with my code since the two files had to be downloaded separately by the user. Nor was my executable linked with a GPL'd library at the
time of distribution. As a variation, we can imagine that libFoo is dynamic and is not uninstalled after Bar is linked to it. The end result is the same -- I have made substantial modifications to a GPL'd application and distributed my enhancements without making my source available.
I don't think anyone would reasonably claim that the above example is legal. The final program is very clearly a modified version of the first. It is a clear violation of the GPL. Clever coding and distribution does not change that.
1. Linking to an OO library and inheriting a class makes the distinction between simple use and derivation extremely fuzzy. For example (real world), I have a library that implements an engine to simulate spiking neural networks. There is a Neuron class with a virtual function used to model the behavior of the neuron. If company X comes along and uses my library and implements a Neuron class with a different neuron model than the default, I say that's a derivative work. Why? Because if someone found a more efficient way to do the calculations required for the default model, it would be trivial for them to produce a new library that links against mine, with enhanced performance, but no separate functionality for the end user. If proprietary wrapper libraries with enhancements of core functionality can link against GPL libraries, then virtually all OO library code distributed under the GPL is at risk.
On the other hand, if I had a hypothetical math library with an object that performs operation X, linking against that library and instantiating the object probably does not count as a derivative work.
2. If I have an application that is distributed with several libraries that were developed specifically for use with my executable, any program that links against those libraries should be considered a derivative work regardless of the importance of the function calls being made. This is because the libraries were created for technical reasons, not for distribution as general purpose libraries. It is the equivalent of linking against a function in a regular executable. The fact that the link is technically against a library that is distributed with an executable should not be viewed as an exploitable loophole in the GPL.
I think the rule of thumb people should use for deciding when linking constitutes a derivative work is whether or not the person doing the linking is trying to "get around" the GPL. If you think you've found a clever way to make use of GPL'd code without making your own code GPL, then you are probably violating the license. If the functions you are using are trivial additions to your own code (they could be easily replaced by alternatives AND are not related to the core functionality of your program) then linking should be fine. If the library implements the core functionality of your program, and your code just provides additional features, then don't link unless your code is also GPL'd.
Compared to the rest of the world, the US is a very wealthy nation. I don't know where you're getting the idea that the US is full of people living in mud huts, getting their drinking water from raw sewage like so much of the rest of the world.
Who said anything about people living in mud huts in the US? Not me. What I said is that the people of the US are not close to being the "wealthiest people on the planet." That is not the same as declaring that Americans are the poorest people on Earth. Compared to other western countries, many Americans are not doing well at all. We have people who don't get enough to eat (yes, there really are starving people in America). A significant percentage of people have no access to health care. I lived for a number of years without any health insurance at all. My wife has MS, and gues what? She received NO TREATMENT at all during that period of time. The fact that we live in a country with an embarrasment of riches, but still deny treatment to people with serious and debilitating diseases is a travesty. There is not another industrialized nation that has such a callous attitude toward the poor that they allow them to live and die in agony because their employers do not offer medical benefits. That's nothing to be proud of.
Your comment about mud huts actually brings up a good example of how bad life is for some Americans. For a lot of people living on the street, having a mud hut would be an improvement. We have laws against that. If you're homeless and the shelters don't have enough room for you, you aren't allowed to build yourself a mud hut to live. In most cities you can't even erect a tent. Here in Seattle, the city has been in legal battles for years with a group of homeless families who decided to better their lives by setting up a community of tents. They were forced off of public lands, so they set up camp in a church parking lot (with the permission of the church, of course). They still got harassed by the city and the church was fined for every day that they allowed the homeless to stay. The tents were moved to another church, which was then fined. And the cycle continues. The city has decided that it is better to force families onto the street rather than puting up with the eyesore of a tent city. Now, explain to me how a family is better off living in the rain and cold rather than living in a tent or even a mud hut. At least in third world countries the poor are allowed to do some things for themselves.
You're telling me that you couldn't feed your family on even $10/hour? Bullshit. Tha'ts bullshit and you know it.
Most families can be fed on $10 an hour, provided that it's $10 an hour for 40 or more hours a week. $10 an hour for 15 hours a week won't cut it. $6 an hour for 40 hours a week won't cut it, either. Many people are employed, but can't get enough hours to pay the rent and buy enough food to live on at the same time. It's easy to say "Just get a second job, jackass!" But if you live in a town with 20%+ unemployment, that just isn't realistic.
Last I checked, the political system has little to nothing to do with the economic system.
Check again. Politics has everything to do with economics. We live in a capitalist economy because our legal framework demands it. Corporations (the real base of our economy) don't just pop out of the vacuum. They exist because we have laws that allow them to exist. The Soviet Union did not have laws that allowed private corporations to exist. They had laws that allowed the central government to control all industry directly (we don't). Both sets of laws were the products of political institutions.
It's one of those things that seem self evident on the face of it, and requires a long and fairly complicated argument to dispel. A bit like how the earth obviously is flat - just look out the window!
There is nothing at all complicated about the argument for a round Earth. The available evidence makes it obvious (no argument required).
As for complicated arguments revolving around free trade, I once had a physics professor who told us routinely that if we were not able to explain a concept to an average person using normal language (no math, physics jargon, etc) then we did not understand that concept ourselves. He tested us based on that principle, also. Every test included an essay section requiring us to explain what one of the questions was asking and what the answer meant. Passing the essay section was required to pass the test. This is a good way to distinguish potentially good arguments from clear BS. Complicated arguments require complicated logic, and most people (including academics) are just not that good at doing complicated logic. The vast majority of complex arguments full of fancy terminology and authoritative jargon can be torn to shreds in seconds by anyone who has studied formal logic. This is not to say that everything is obvious and that nothing that is complicated can be right. It just means that if your first reaction to an argument is that it is a load of shit, it probably is. The clear, consise argument using normal language should always be preferred.
But the sum of all the effects of competition to each individual industry is very good for everyone, and and one of the main causes that the US is the wealthiest country on earth.
Good for everyone except those who are left without a job. Or left earning 25% of what they used to. The US may be the wealthiest contry on Earth, but that only applies to the country as a whole, not the idividual citizens. The people of the US are not even close to being the wealthiest on the planet. A small percentage control the vast majority of the wealth and skew the averages. Free trade, or rather the form of extremely restrictive trade that is passed off to us as being "free," only makes the situation worse.
You can moralize all you want about the virtues of free trade and you can throw out every diversionary argument you can think of. But in the end, I don't care about any of that. I want to be able to feed my family and live a good life. Any political system that rewards the few at the expense of the many and cloaks itself in the language of morality is doomed to failure. If you think that the US is immune to this, I suggest you crack open a history book.
Cortical neurons, which do most of the complex processing, only fire at about 1-5 Hz on average. Some neurons can fire in the kHz range, but not for very long.
The total processing speed of ASCII Purple sounds about right for number of neurons in brain times the maximum number of pulses per second per neuron.
It's a lot harder than that, which is what makes these kinds of estimations so silly. For one thing, 1 pulse does not equal 1 bit in a brain as it does in a transistor. A single firing of a neuron can transmit up to 3.5 bits. This is because the firing time is important to the information content and the activity of neighboring neurons is also important. A group of neurons firing all at once transmits much more information than those same neurons firing individually at random times (in most cases -- there are exceptions to this).
Given there are 10E14 synapses, each one with at least a byte of synpatic weight associated with it, it would need memory of at least around a petabyte of memory
You also need to keep track of the state of the neuron (membrane potential, neurotransmitter concentrations, etc). The state of the neuron and the recent activity of a synapse and its neighboring synapses influence how much the "weight" matters. Certain patterns of input count for more than others.
Most of the calculations of brain processing power that you read about are made by people who either don't understand the problem or haven't thought about it enough. Our knowledge of how the brain processes and stores information is extremely primitive at this point, so any estimation of the processing power is not much more than a wild guess. As with other sciences, every answer we find raises more questions. The more we study the problem, the harder it becomes. One of the most difficult things to deal with is that the software is the hardware. To make matters worse, the hardware can (and does) change. It's a lot like a computer that builds and programs itself.
The other movie that he produced, which was not mentioned in the article, was the critically acclaimed "Adventures of Young Chicken Little."
Literally, our very lives are at stake now. George and I are just praying that we can finish 'Episode III' in time, before it's all over.
Their lives are at stake?!? Who the hell does this guy think he's fooling? GL has enough money to never work again for several lifetimes. I, for one, would not be a bit sorry to see the whole lot of them lying in a gutter with cardboard "will produce movies for food" signs hanging from their necks. I wonder if they're all smoking crack, or if they've spent so much time creating fiction that they can no longer distinguish the real world from their work? Bah!
Re:One of my favourite quotes...
on
Want Freedom?
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· Score: 2
You can't 'formally declare war' against Al Qaeda. I'm not sure why this is so hard for you people to get through your heads, but try;
Al Qaeda is not a country. OK?
Of course you can. There is historical precedent. The Congress, during the Jefferson administration, declared a formal war against the Barbary (sp?) pirates. The issue then was that the pirates were repeatedly targeting and sinking American ships in the Mediterranian, abducting US citizens and killing them, etc. I believe some diplomatic measures had already been taken but the pirates broke all of the agreements and resumed pirating. (Would a 19th century DMCA have stopped them? We'll never know.) In any case, a war was declared against a group that was neither a country nor sponsored by a country. The US won.
Not a situatuion all that unlike toaday's.
Hear-hear! No world that involves 70+ page monologues can possibly be considered as a utopia. Can you imagine? That would make one of Clinton's State of the Union addresses look like a brief exchange at the water-cooler. Maybe it would be Utopia for narcissistic gassbags, but it would be hell for everyone else. We have a word for the idealized Randian hero in the real world: sociopath.
Irrelevant, irrelevant, and irrelevant. Here's the first
problem:
"Yes, Darling, I respect your opinion not to buy diamonds. Thank you for crushing my teenage Prince Charming dreams and the engagement fantasies I've fallen asleep to for the last two months.
That has 'manipulative gold-digger' written all
over it. This conversation could never take place
in real life because I would never consider marrying
a woman like that. Neither of us would make it through
the first date -- we would repel each other immediately.
"I appreciate that you're doing it to stop exploitation of little children in the third world.
I don't know where you get this. I never mentioned
the reasons that I will not personally buy diamonds.
More importantly, this does not even address the
point of discussion. Here is the point of my argument
since you don't appear to have grasped it: A
person who believes that buying diamonds is morally
wrong should not buy diamonds even if there is a
social expectation that he should. You can substitute
any activity for buying diamonds and the conclusion
of the argument remains the same. The reasons for
opposing activity X are simply not important.
That doesn't bother you when you buy jeans, or brand name clothes, or shoes, or when you play football/soccer/basketball. I've seen you eat at McDonalds. I've even seen you drink Coca-Cola (or whatever the current corporate hate fad is).
I drink coke (and other soft drinks)
but I don't do any of the other stuff. The reasons are
not even remotely related to my reasons for not buying
diamonds. A blatant red herring.
I guess if you didn't wear what you do then you wouldn't be quite so cool and easy-going but I'm troubled by your hypocrisy over diamonds, and I've got this niggling doubt that it's because you'd be spending money on me.
There is no danger of anyone mistaking
me as being "cool." I may or may not be easy going,
but I fail to see what that has to do with my clothes.
And if you want to insult someone, you should at least
be able to use the correct words. No hypocrisy has
taken place -- I have stated that I beleive it is
wrong to buy diamonds, and I don't buy them. Hypocrisy
requires a difference between public declarations
and private behavior. If I say that I'm opposed to
buying diamonds and then I buy shoes made buy chinese
slave laborers, I'm still not a hypocrite: I never
stated my reasons for opposing diamond-buying. Even
if slave labor does have something to do with opposing
diamonds, failing to oppose slave labor shoes only
makes me inconsistent with my reasoning. Hypocrisy
is not a synonym for inconsistent reasoning. If I
said that I'm opposed to buying products from
any company that exploits people in any way and then
went on to buy chinese shoes while making a big
deal about not buying diamonds, then I would be
a hypocrite. But I never said anything close to
that. Your big
problem here is that you do not know how to use
language. You committed two major logical fallicies
and one linguistic error all in one sentence.
Impressive. But you do seem to have the gold-digging
attitude down pat.
"After all, 4% of diamonds fund terrorism! That means that you've got a twenty-four out of twenty-five chance of not buying a bad diamond! I know you're not exactly Mr. Life-On-The-Edge, but can you really not take those odds to make me happy? What are the odds we've been funding some small part of the Mafia every time when we eat Italian?
More red herrings. And stinky ones at that. Are
you ever going to provide a counter argument, or
are you just going to pose rhetorical questions
and cite pointless statistics? Why should I do
something that I believe is fundamentally unethical?
That's the question you should be answering, but
you're not even close.
"And I admire you taking a stand, but it worries me that you have some ridiculous sense of self-importance: that you're single handedly going to change the world!
Whoah! Back up the truck! Who said anything about
changing the world? Not me! The discussion is about
ethics and personal behavior, not political activism.
Very few theories of ethics have anything at all to
do with changing the world at large. Ethics is
about personal behavior and reasoning about morality.
Whether or not ethical behavior has a noticable effect
on the outside world is not important. Right is right
regardless of what anyone else chooses to do. The
most interesting (and disturbing) thing that this and other
comments reveals is your own approach to ethics.
You give yourself two responses to an ethical dilema:
absolute perfection or inaction when perfection is impossible.
This leads to alternating periods of apathy and
wrong-headed attempts to force the world to
conform to your oppinions. If you can't stop evil,
then you don't even bother with trying to do the
right thing yourself. If everyone else is misbehaving,
why not just join in the party? Anything else is futile.
Is this marriage to be completely one-sided? We're not identical - to make this relationship work, we'll each have to compromise from time to time... can't you see that?
I don't need marital advise -- I'm doing just fine
already. The most important factor in a good marriage
is mutual respect. A large part of that is respecting
your partner's right of conscience: the principle
that no one should be forced or coerced into taking
actions that they believe are fundamentally wrong.
Pacifists should not be forced to kill, anti-abortionists
should not be forced to perform abortions, priests
should not be forced to reveal confessions, jews should
not be forced to eat pork. The list goes on and on.
Respecting that right should trump all else in
a good marriage. A marriage that begins with the conversation
you posted will be over within a year. One partner
trivializes the beliefs of the other, questions motives,
and places juvinile, materialistic fantasies above
the the other's desire to follow his principles.
And it still does not respond to my argument.
No, it's forcing *your* opinion on her.
If she felt as strongly as you do, she might not want to wear a diamond. But that's her decision.
How is refusing to buy a particular product for someone else as a gift forcing my opinion on them? If her opinion is different and she still wants a diamond, she can buy one herself and wear it as often as she wishes. If you abandon your moral principles because a woman disagrees with you and really wants that rock, then you are a weak willed coward. Some people are willing to die rather than break with their principles (that phenomenon is the basis for more than one major religion). Risking the offense of a potential mate is trivial compared to that. Avoiding death is understandable, avoiding the discomfort of breaking with tradition is not.
Approach the subject in a subtle, sensitive way: you might find she agrees with you! But do be willing to back down.
Why be subtle? Don't beat around the bush, state your opinion and stick to it. Women are not delicate flowers who need to be protected from the thoughts of others. Any reasonably intelligent woman understands that you have opionions that may differ from her own. She will respect you for stating them plainly and not treating her like a fragile moron. And back down because she disagrees? How can you have any self respect with an attitude like that? How can you expect anyone else to respect you? I will no more back down on a moral principle than I will ask permission from my wife to use the toilet. Any woman who expects to be in control of my mind and my actions is no woman for me.
It is simply impossible to live in the modern world without somehow contributing to unethical behavior, whether intentional or not. But that is no excuse for giving up and not making an effort. Ethical decisions should be made based on principle and reason, not on previous failures. Doing the right thing now is still doing the right thing, regardless of what you did yesterday or will do tomorrow.
That being said, there is nothing "cheap" about refusing to spend thousands of dollars on a piece of decorative carbon. Spending that kind of money just to follow social norms is foolish. Keep the money and buy yourself some self-respect instead. In the long run, that will do more good for your marriage than anything you could find in a store.
Traditions don't have to make sense, but any self-respecting human being with a brain should. Your actions should be governed by reason, not the whims of a mindless herd. Sometimes following a tradition is reasonable because it's harmless and not following the tradition puts you in danger (the tradition of wearing clothes in public falls into this category). But if you believe that a tradition is immoral, there is simply no excuse for giving in and doing it yourself.
I can't think of a single historical figure who is respected for being really good at following traditions. In most cases, the people we respect the most are the ones who were the worst at following tradition, and they usually suffered because of it. How can we respect people like that and then turn around and refuse to think for ourselves?
I broke the tradition. I told my wife, before we were engaged, that I would never spend money on diamonds under any circumstances (and I haven't in over 7 years). Any woman worth marrying will respect you for holding to your ethical principles rather than blindly following social convention. If she throws a fit and pressures you to buy a diamond despite your ethical concerns, she neither loves nor respects you and should be dumped on the spot. If anyone gives her a hard time about it, they can simply be told that no chunk of polished carbon is worth an African child's arms. No one will ever bring the subject up again (I'm speaking out of personal experience).
Abandoning your morals to follow pointless traditions is not an act of love, but an act of sheer cowardice.
I shouldn't reply to such obvious flaimbait, but I just can't resist today.
The Africa Faith and Justice Network probably doesn't know jack shit about biotech. That and they are not from the USA side. Maybe branched in Washington, but it's a.. *gasp* African group.
Take note of the words Washington based in the quote from the article. That means that the organization's headquarters (the main base of operations) are in Washington. The media generally refers to branches as either "a branch" or "an extension" or some other phrase that should make it obvious that they are not talking about the headquarters. In this case, Washington based means exactly what it says. And besides that, what kind of a name is Carole Collins for a native of Africa? Maybe Carole is descended from European colonists, but I'm guessing she (or he) is a US citizen. It may shock you, but there are many US citizens and organizations that advocate for all sorts of foreign peoples (including African people). It's our right to do so and we remain Americans and "on the USA side" whether you like it or not.
As for biotechs denying collusion with the US government and plans to take over the world, I have no idea what they are planning or who they are planning with. What I do know is that promises not to sue made now, via the media, will not mean a goddamn thing for anyone on the receiving end of court papers a year from now. Unless they are making those statements under oath, they carry no legal weight. And verifying that patented genes are in somebody else's corn is an easy matter. Genetic fingerprinting is relatively cheap. Sending an investigor to collect some samples and then testing them for offending genes would cost a small fraction of the amount of money required to launch an IP lawsuit. Whether or not all of the corn contains the gene is irrelevant. Even if a small fraction does, that is still enough to constitute a patent violation.
The AFJN does not need to know anything about biotech to come to the same conclusions. What they do need to know about is IP law, treaties, and international trade agreements. I can guarantee you that they employ lawyers who are experts in those subjects. BTW: Planting patented corn is a no-no if you don't have a license to do so. Subsistance farmers in Africa will not.
The fact that everyone involved on the USA side says the IP concerns are stupid doesn't stop Slashdot's journalism.
And from the article:
Pending changes in international trade rules, backed by the United States, could preclude farmers from saving the patented seeds from biotech harvests for replanting in following years, a practice vital to many subsistence farmers who cannot afford to buy new seed every year.
"If these crops get in, then farmers basically lose their rights to their own agricultural resources," said Carole Collins, senior policy analyst for the Washington-based Africa Faith and Justice Network.
Doesn't sound to me like everyone from the USA side says IP concerns are stupid. There were a number of people (Americans) quoted in the article who said that the Zimbabweans are rightfully concerned about future lawsuits brought by US corporations if cross-pollination occurs. Now, who is it who needs to RTFA?
And what in world do other people's opinions have to do with Slashdot's right to point out interesting stories? I don't care if everyone in the world disagrees, if the slashdot editors (or anyone else) feels they have something to say, they should say it.
Re:hmm. not sure about this...
on
Rare Earth
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· Score: 2
That's exactly right. And furthermore, the "scientist" who came up with that estimate is apparently unaware of all of the planetary research that has been done in our solar system over the past 30 years. Mars is much farther from the Sun than Earth (more than 15%) and there is overwhelming evidence that it once had liquid water on the surface. Why isn't it there now? Because Mars does not have enough mass to retain a thick atmosphere. It once had a thick atmosphere and most of it evaporated into space and the planet cooled. The density and composition of the atmosphere is far more important to the temperature of a planet than its distance from a star. Just look at Venus -- it's the hottest planet by far even though it is not closest to the Sun. The dense CO2 atmosphere makes it hot and keeps it hot (the night-time temperature only falls by 3 degrees and night there lasts for over a hundred days).
The choice between working in a sweat shop and starving to death is not a real choice. In this case, there is no functional difference between threatening a person's life with a gun and threatening with starvation -- the end result is the same. Furthermore, the threat of being shot or beaten by military security for breaking the rules (one of which is not leaving before the shift ends) is a very direct form of coercion. This isn't a matter of getting fired and finding a new job. It's a matter of being severely beaten, then fired, then starving. Boy do I wish I had that much choice.
I don't know how many times I've had this conversation with management. We officially
have this kind of policy, but exceptions are inevitably made for developers (often after
another meeting to determine exactly why developers need to do things like
installing dll's and modifying the registry). There's just a real problem when a developer
can compile a dll for an application, but can't actually debug it because the security
policies won't allow it to be registered (which means windows won't load it at run time).
tell me 1) are there viable alternatives to this that will stop the terrorist threat (um, beyond 'threat', really...), and 2) what, in combination with reduced surveillance, would reduce terrorism?
First of all, ID cards would do little to stop terrorism. They might help with things like hijacking, but there are alternatives. They would do nothing to keep non-suspect US citizens off planes, and I see no reason why US citizens could not be recruited to carry out these kinds of attacks. It's happened before. Besides that, the airplane trick won't be used again for quite a while. Security is already too tight and passengers will almost certainly fight back now that they know death is likely rather than just being held hostage. ID cards also wouldn't keep people from building bombs, smuggling in chemical weapons, or planting nukes on container ships set to detonate in port.
What would really help with planes is truly secure bullet proof doors and cameras in the cabin that allow the pilots to see what's going on. Facial recognition systems could be used in customs to help keep known terrorists out of the country. Unlike putting these things on city streets, there should not be any civil rights objections because 1)You don't have regular civil rights in customs anyway and 2)Cameras in customs would have a much lower potential for abuse and could be monitored for abuses more easily.
Most real security will come from breaking up the groups that do this. Terrorists will always be able to work around security. It's hard to make perfect security, and perfect security is oppressive by nature -- we don't need or want that. Working around limited security takes coordination and money. Breaking up the groups and removing their money supplies will do far more to protect us than any ID card and is a far better long term solution.
Perhaps you missed the line in the article about having to carry said ID cards at all times and present them to police on demand? In other words, leaving the house without your card could very well be grounds for imprisonment. It isn't the number that disturbs people, it's the presenting on demand and tracking in a database part. This brings to mind images of SS officers demanding "Let me see your papers." Preventing facsism isn't whining, it's being a good citizen.
At least in this case, backdoors to PGP wouldn't have done any good at all (even if encryption was being used). Backdoors don't alert investigators to the activity of people they aren't investigating -- something else has to be suspicious first. Based on what I have read, only two of the terrorists were on the FBI's list and the FBI was only making a token attempt to track them down. Even if an investigation was being foiled by encryption, there should always be other investigative methods available to figure out what's going on. Any good conspirator will use a variety of communication methods, anyway. And use code words inside encrypted messages.
War in the US has always led to a curtailment of freedoms, as it must.
Must Japanese-Americans have been imprisoned during WWII for the crime of having Japanese ancestors? What about pacifists who were imprisoned for saying that killing is wrong during WWI (even before the US was involved)? The preservation of freedoms is the must, not the curtailment. People become concerned because the US government has such an abysmal record of upholding the rights that they are legaly required to enforce.
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What Buddhists are interested in is ending personal suffering, or rather becoming dissociated with the causes of suffering. That is the basis of Buddhist philosophy and is the entire purpose of the religion and system of beliefs. It is internal and scientific (yes, scientific). Many of the concepts and recent findings of modern psychology were known to Buddhists thousands of years ago because they thought about the mind and behavior in a scientific way. Evidence is required for all beliefs. The Dali Lama has even stated that elements of classical Buddhism should be abandoned if science disproves them. Buddhists are not threatened by science, they embrace it. BTW, Buddhists have been teaching that you rot when you die for a very long time. Buddhist reincarnation is not what you think it is.
Please learn something about a philosophy before you disparage it.
You talk like they have some moral right to payment for what they provide, that they are entitled to compensation. There is no such right. They have the right to try to collect compensation. If they can't come up with a business model to acheive that end, too bad for them. These are grownups running these sites, and they knew the rules before they got involved. If they lose money doing it, that's their problem. They can demand payment if they want and let consumers determine for themselves if the service is worth the charge.
Let me rephrase this for you: Some writers and artists like getting paid for their work. There are others who don't expect that. In fact, there are a lot of people who like to give information and art away. The difference between the web and the rest of the world is that the cost of publishing online is very low. That allows people who aren't trying to make a profit to publish without going bankrupt in the process. The fact that this is bad for profit-driven businesses is irrelavent. People expect some information to be given away free of charge online because that is the reality of the situation. Information is given away. That may not have been true 20 years ago, but it is now.I write Free software. I spend a lot of time and even some money doing it. And I'm happy to let other people benefit from my work without paying me for it. If they want to send money, that's fine with me, but I'm not going to ask for it and I'm not going to whine when no one sends me a check. Why is it that we insist that children learn to share, tell them that sharing is important and a good thing, and then treat adults who share as deviants? People act like there is something inherently wrong about sharing when you could be selling. We aren't deviant. We just believe in what we say. I tell my daughter that she should share, that she should be happy to help people, that she shouldn't try to profit from every action she takes in life. Why should I not set an example by doing those things myself? Sharing information is a good thing to do and I'm not about to stop just because it gets in the way of someone else's profit motive.
This isn't hypocracy. The difference between this and the MS filesystem proposals is that I don't have to use this one. MS was going to shove it down everyone's throat, whether they wanted it or not. There are not huge numbers of 'this is a bad idea' posts because people know that if they don't like it, they will never have to deal with it. If KDE or Gnome decided to force something like this on all of their applications and hide access to the HFS, you would hear plenty of bitching about it.
Looking at it from the perspective of the source code, the code for the derived Neuron class would make no sense at all to someone reading it if they knew nothing about the original library. The source for the derived Neuron makes sense only within the context of the original work. How can that not be a derived work? The test for determining whether or not a program is derived should be based on the relationship of the secondary work's source code relative to the first. The method used to link object code together is really irrelavent. It is the source code that constitutes the primary derivative work, not the object code (object code is treated as a derivative of the source because it is derived (translated) from the source).
Following this logic along with your assertion that basing one library or program on another does not constitue a derived work, then any GPL'd program can be enhanced and released as a proprietary program without violating the GPL. Say that I have my eyes on the GPL'd Foo program and I want to put a modified GUI on it and add a few features and then sell it as a proprietary program. I take the original program and turn it into a library (libFoo). Then I put all of my enhancements into the Bar program (note that Bar cannot function without being linked to libFoo). Then I distribute two install programs. One contains libFoo with its source as required by the GPL. The second program contains the Bar executable and statically links Bar with libFoo before installing the final executable. As a final step, libFoo is uninstalled along with its source. The user will probably never know that Bar is really a modified version of Foo. Technically, I did not distribute the GPL code with my code since the two files had to be downloaded separately by the user. Nor was my executable linked with a GPL'd library at the time of distribution. As a variation, we can imagine that libFoo is dynamic and is not uninstalled after Bar is linked to it. The end result is the same -- I have made substantial modifications to a GPL'd application and distributed my enhancements without making my source available.I don't think anyone would reasonably claim that the above example is legal. The final program is very clearly a modified version of the first. It is a clear violation of the GPL. Clever coding and distribution does not change that.
1. Linking to an OO library and inheriting a class makes the distinction between simple use and derivation extremely fuzzy. For example (real world), I have a library that implements an engine to simulate spiking neural networks. There is a Neuron class with a virtual function used to model the behavior of the neuron. If company X comes along and uses my library and implements a Neuron class with a different neuron model than the default, I say that's a derivative work. Why? Because if someone found a more efficient way to do the calculations required for the default model, it would be trivial for them to produce a new library that links against mine, with enhanced performance, but no separate functionality for the end user. If proprietary wrapper libraries with enhancements of core functionality can link against GPL libraries, then virtually all OO library code distributed under the GPL is at risk. On the other hand, if I had a hypothetical math library with an object that performs operation X, linking against that library and instantiating the object probably does not count as a derivative work.
2. If I have an application that is distributed with several libraries that were developed specifically for use with my executable, any program that links against those libraries should be considered a derivative work regardless of the importance of the function calls being made. This is because the libraries were created for technical reasons, not for distribution as general purpose libraries. It is the equivalent of linking against a function in a regular executable. The fact that the link is technically against a library that is distributed with an executable should not be viewed as an exploitable loophole in the GPL.
I think the rule of thumb people should use for deciding when linking constitutes a derivative work is whether or not the person doing the linking is trying to "get around" the GPL. If you think you've found a clever way to make use of GPL'd code without making your own code GPL, then you are probably violating the license. If the functions you are using are trivial additions to your own code (they could be easily replaced by alternatives AND are not related to the core functionality of your program) then linking should be fine. If the library implements the core functionality of your program, and your code just provides additional features, then don't link unless your code is also GPL'd.
Your comment about mud huts actually brings up a good example of how bad life is for some Americans. For a lot of people living on the street, having a mud hut would be an improvement. We have laws against that. If you're homeless and the shelters don't have enough room for you, you aren't allowed to build yourself a mud hut to live. In most cities you can't even erect a tent. Here in Seattle, the city has been in legal battles for years with a group of homeless families who decided to better their lives by setting up a community of tents. They were forced off of public lands, so they set up camp in a church parking lot (with the permission of the church, of course). They still got harassed by the city and the church was fined for every day that they allowed the homeless to stay. The tents were moved to another church, which was then fined. And the cycle continues. The city has decided that it is better to force families onto the street rather than puting up with the eyesore of a tent city. Now, explain to me how a family is better off living in the rain and cold rather than living in a tent or even a mud hut. At least in third world countries the poor are allowed to do some things for themselves.
Most families can be fed on $10 an hour, provided that it's $10 an hour for 40 or more hours a week. $10 an hour for 15 hours a week won't cut it. $6 an hour for 40 hours a week won't cut it, either. Many people are employed, but can't get enough hours to pay the rent and buy enough food to live on at the same time. It's easy to say "Just get a second job, jackass!" But if you live in a town with 20%+ unemployment, that just isn't realistic. Check again. Politics has everything to do with economics. We live in a capitalist economy because our legal framework demands it. Corporations (the real base of our economy) don't just pop out of the vacuum. They exist because we have laws that allow them to exist. The Soviet Union did not have laws that allowed private corporations to exist. They had laws that allowed the central government to control all industry directly (we don't). Both sets of laws were the products of political institutions.As for complicated arguments revolving around free trade, I once had a physics professor who told us routinely that if we were not able to explain a concept to an average person using normal language (no math, physics jargon, etc) then we did not understand that concept ourselves. He tested us based on that principle, also. Every test included an essay section requiring us to explain what one of the questions was asking and what the answer meant. Passing the essay section was required to pass the test. This is a good way to distinguish potentially good arguments from clear BS. Complicated arguments require complicated logic, and most people (including academics) are just not that good at doing complicated logic. The vast majority of complex arguments full of fancy terminology and authoritative jargon can be torn to shreds in seconds by anyone who has studied formal logic. This is not to say that everything is obvious and that nothing that is complicated can be right. It just means that if your first reaction to an argument is that it is a load of shit, it probably is. The clear, consise argument using normal language should always be preferred.
Good for everyone except those who are left without a job. Or left earning 25% of what they used to. The US may be the wealthiest contry on Earth, but that only applies to the country as a whole, not the idividual citizens. The people of the US are not even close to being the wealthiest on the planet. A small percentage control the vast majority of the wealth and skew the averages. Free trade, or rather the form of extremely restrictive trade that is passed off to us as being "free," only makes the situation worse.You can moralize all you want about the virtues of free trade and you can throw out every diversionary argument you can think of. But in the end, I don't care about any of that. I want to be able to feed my family and live a good life. Any political system that rewards the few at the expense of the many and cloaks itself in the language of morality is doomed to failure. If you think that the US is immune to this, I suggest you crack open a history book.
Most of the calculations of brain processing power that you read about are made by people who either don't understand the problem or haven't thought about it enough. Our knowledge of how the brain processes and stores information is extremely primitive at this point, so any estimation of the processing power is not much more than a wild guess. As with other sciences, every answer we find raises more questions. The more we study the problem, the harder it becomes. One of the most difficult things to deal with is that the software is the hardware. To make matters worse, the hardware can (and does) change. It's a lot like a computer that builds and programs itself.
Of course you can. There is historical precedent. The Congress, during the Jefferson administration, declared a formal war against the Barbary (sp?) pirates. The issue then was that the pirates were repeatedly targeting and sinking American ships in the Mediterranian, abducting US citizens and killing them, etc. I believe some diplomatic measures had already been taken but the pirates broke all of the agreements and resumed pirating. (Would a 19th century DMCA have stopped them? We'll never know.) In any case, a war was declared against a group that was neither a country nor sponsored by a country. The US won. Not a situatuion all that unlike toaday's.
Hear-hear! No world that involves 70+ page monologues can possibly be considered as a utopia. Can you imagine? That would make one of Clinton's State of the Union addresses look like a brief exchange at the water-cooler. Maybe it would be Utopia for narcissistic gassbags, but it would be hell for everyone else. We have a word for the idealized Randian hero in the real world: sociopath.
That has 'manipulative gold-digger' written all over it. This conversation could never take place in real life because I would never consider marrying a woman like that. Neither of us would make it through the first date -- we would repel each other immediately.
I don't know where you get this. I never mentioned the reasons that I will not personally buy diamonds. More importantly, this does not even address the point of discussion. Here is the point of my argument since you don't appear to have grasped it: A person who believes that buying diamonds is morally wrong should not buy diamonds even if there is a social expectation that he should. You can substitute any activity for buying diamonds and the conclusion of the argument remains the same. The reasons for opposing activity X are simply not important.
I drink coke (and other soft drinks) but I don't do any of the other stuff. The reasons are not even remotely related to my reasons for not buying diamonds. A blatant red herring.
There is no danger of anyone mistaking me as being "cool." I may or may not be easy going, but I fail to see what that has to do with my clothes. And if you want to insult someone, you should at least be able to use the correct words. No hypocrisy has taken place -- I have stated that I beleive it is wrong to buy diamonds, and I don't buy them. Hypocrisy requires a difference between public declarations and private behavior. If I say that I'm opposed to buying diamonds and then I buy shoes made buy chinese slave laborers, I'm still not a hypocrite: I never stated my reasons for opposing diamond-buying. Even if slave labor does have something to do with opposing diamonds, failing to oppose slave labor shoes only makes me inconsistent with my reasoning. Hypocrisy is not a synonym for inconsistent reasoning. If I said that I'm opposed to buying products from any company that exploits people in any way and then went on to buy chinese shoes while making a big deal about not buying diamonds, then I would be a hypocrite. But I never said anything close to that. Your big problem here is that you do not know how to use language. You committed two major logical fallicies and one linguistic error all in one sentence. Impressive. But you do seem to have the gold-digging attitude down pat.
More red herrings. And stinky ones at that. Are you ever going to provide a counter argument, or are you just going to pose rhetorical questions and cite pointless statistics? Why should I do something that I believe is fundamentally unethical? That's the question you should be answering, but you're not even close.
Whoah! Back up the truck! Who said anything about changing the world? Not me! The discussion is about ethics and personal behavior, not political activism. Very few theories of ethics have anything at all to do with changing the world at large. Ethics is about personal behavior and reasoning about morality. Whether or not ethical behavior has a noticable effect on the outside world is not important. Right is right regardless of what anyone else chooses to do. The most interesting (and disturbing) thing that this and other comments reveals is your own approach to ethics. You give yourself two responses to an ethical dilema: absolute perfection or inaction when perfection is impossible. This leads to alternating periods of apathy and wrong-headed attempts to force the world to conform to your oppinions. If you can't stop evil, then you don't even bother with trying to do the right thing yourself. If everyone else is misbehaving, why not just join in the party? Anything else is futile.
I don't need marital advise -- I'm doing just fine already. The most important factor in a good marriage is mutual respect. A large part of that is respecting your partner's right of conscience: the principle that no one should be forced or coerced into taking actions that they believe are fundamentally wrong. Pacifists should not be forced to kill, anti-abortionists should not be forced to perform abortions, priests should not be forced to reveal confessions, jews should not be forced to eat pork. The list goes on and on. Respecting that right should trump all else in a good marriage. A marriage that begins with the conversation you posted will be over within a year. One partner trivializes the beliefs of the other, questions motives, and places juvinile, materialistic fantasies above the the other's desire to follow his principles. And it still does not respond to my argument.
It is simply impossible to live in the modern world without somehow contributing to unethical behavior, whether intentional or not. But that is no excuse for giving up and not making an effort. Ethical decisions should be made based on principle and reason, not on previous failures. Doing the right thing now is still doing the right thing, regardless of what you did yesterday or will do tomorrow.
That being said, there is nothing "cheap" about refusing to spend thousands of dollars on a piece of decorative carbon. Spending that kind of money just to follow social norms is foolish. Keep the money and buy yourself some self-respect instead. In the long run, that will do more good for your marriage than anything you could find in a store.
Traditions don't have to make sense, but any self-respecting human being with a brain should. Your actions should be governed by reason, not the whims of a mindless herd. Sometimes following a tradition is reasonable because it's harmless and not following the tradition puts you in danger (the tradition of wearing clothes in public falls into this category). But if you believe that a tradition is immoral, there is simply no excuse for giving in and doing it yourself.
I can't think of a single historical figure who is respected for being really good at following traditions. In most cases, the people we respect the most are the ones who were the worst at following tradition, and they usually suffered because of it. How can we respect people like that and then turn around and refuse to think for ourselves?
I broke the tradition. I told my wife, before we were engaged, that I would never spend money on diamonds under any circumstances (and I haven't in over 7 years). Any woman worth marrying will respect you for holding to your ethical principles rather than blindly following social convention. If she throws a fit and pressures you to buy a diamond despite your ethical concerns, she neither loves nor respects you and should be dumped on the spot. If anyone gives her a hard time about it, they can simply be told that no chunk of polished carbon is worth an African child's arms. No one will ever bring the subject up again (I'm speaking out of personal experience).
Abandoning your morals to follow pointless traditions is not an act of love, but an act of sheer cowardice.
As for biotechs denying collusion with the US government and plans to take over the world, I have no idea what they are planning or who they are planning with. What I do know is that promises not to sue made now, via the media, will not mean a goddamn thing for anyone on the receiving end of court papers a year from now. Unless they are making those statements under oath, they carry no legal weight. And verifying that patented genes are in somebody else's corn is an easy matter. Genetic fingerprinting is relatively cheap. Sending an investigor to collect some samples and then testing them for offending genes would cost a small fraction of the amount of money required to launch an IP lawsuit. Whether or not all of the corn contains the gene is irrelevant. Even if a small fraction does, that is still enough to constitute a patent violation.
The AFJN does not need to know anything about biotech to come to the same conclusions. What they do need to know about is IP law, treaties, and international trade agreements. I can guarantee you that they employ lawyers who are experts in those subjects. BTW: Planting patented corn is a no-no if you don't have a license to do so. Subsistance farmers in Africa will not.
And from the article:
Doesn't sound to me like everyone from the USA side says IP concerns are stupid. There were a number of people (Americans) quoted in the article who said that the Zimbabweans are rightfully concerned about future lawsuits brought by US corporations if cross-pollination occurs. Now, who is it who needs to RTFA?
And what in world do other people's opinions have to do with Slashdot's right to point out interesting stories? I don't care if everyone in the world disagrees, if the slashdot editors (or anyone else) feels they have something to say, they should say it.
That's exactly right. And furthermore, the "scientist" who came up with that estimate is apparently unaware of all of the planetary research that has been done in our solar system over the past 30 years. Mars is much farther from the Sun than Earth (more than 15%) and there is overwhelming evidence that it once had liquid water on the surface. Why isn't it there now? Because Mars does not have enough mass to retain a thick atmosphere. It once had a thick atmosphere and most of it evaporated into space and the planet cooled. The density and composition of the atmosphere is far more important to the temperature of a planet than its distance from a star. Just look at Venus -- it's the hottest planet by far even though it is not closest to the Sun. The dense CO2 atmosphere makes it hot and keeps it hot (the night-time temperature only falls by 3 degrees and night there lasts for over a hundred days).
The choice between working in a sweat shop and starving to death is not a real choice. In this case, there is no functional difference between threatening a person's life with a gun and threatening with starvation -- the end result is the same. Furthermore, the threat of being shot or beaten by military security for breaking the rules (one of which is not leaving before the shift ends) is a very direct form of coercion. This isn't a matter of getting fired and finding a new job. It's a matter of being severely beaten, then fired, then starving. Boy do I wish I had that much choice.
I don't know how many times I've had this conversation with management. We officially have this kind of policy, but exceptions are inevitably made for developers (often after another meeting to determine exactly why developers need to do things like installing dll's and modifying the registry). There's just a real problem when a developer can compile a dll for an application, but can't actually debug it because the security policies won't allow it to be registered (which means windows won't load it at run time).
First of all, ID cards would do little to stop terrorism. They might help with things like hijacking, but there are alternatives. They would do nothing to keep non-suspect US citizens off planes, and I see no reason why US citizens could not be recruited to carry out these kinds of attacks. It's happened before. Besides that, the airplane trick won't be used again for quite a while. Security is already too tight and passengers will almost certainly fight back now that they know death is likely rather than just being held hostage. ID cards also wouldn't keep people from building bombs, smuggling in chemical weapons, or planting nukes on container ships set to detonate in port.
What would really help with planes is truly secure bullet proof doors and cameras in the cabin that allow the pilots to see what's going on. Facial recognition systems could be used in customs to help keep known terrorists out of the country. Unlike putting these things on city streets, there should not be any civil rights objections because 1)You don't have regular civil rights in customs anyway and 2)Cameras in customs would have a much lower potential for abuse and could be monitored for abuses more easily.
Most real security will come from breaking up the groups that do this. Terrorists will always be able to work around security. It's hard to make perfect security, and perfect security is oppressive by nature -- we don't need or want that. Working around limited security takes coordination and money. Breaking up the groups and removing their money supplies will do far more to protect us than any ID card and is a far better long term solution.
Perhaps you missed the line in the article about having to carry said ID cards at all times and present them to police on demand? In other words, leaving the house without your card could very well be grounds for imprisonment. It isn't the number that disturbs people, it's the presenting on demand and tracking in a database part. This brings to mind images of SS officers demanding "Let me see your papers." Preventing facsism isn't whining, it's being a good citizen.
At least in this case, backdoors to PGP wouldn't have done any good at all (even if encryption was being used). Backdoors don't alert investigators to the activity of people they aren't investigating -- something else has to be suspicious first. Based on what I have read, only two of the terrorists were on the FBI's list and the FBI was only making a token attempt to track them down. Even if an investigation was being foiled by encryption, there should always be other investigative methods available to figure out what's going on. Any good conspirator will use a variety of communication methods, anyway. And use code words inside encrypted messages.
Must Japanese-Americans have been imprisoned during WWII for the crime of having Japanese ancestors? What about pacifists who were imprisoned for saying that killing is wrong during WWI (even before the US was involved)? The preservation of freedoms is the must, not the curtailment. People become concerned because the US government has such an abysmal record of upholding the rights that they are legaly required to enforce.