Poisoning the well fallacy! He writes fiction, so clearly you can't actually expect him to tell the truth about anything. You and the guy upthread perpetuating the "all geeks are self-important obsessed losers" generalisation should get together.
Nice to call for facts while using unsupported generalisations as your banner.
Er....just to clarify the construction of your statement "That he was half-naked suggests something of the state he was in before he precipitated the altercation." It seems to state that Peter Watts (disclosure: I see him once a year during a writing event and would call him friend) was half-naked prior to exiting the vehicle and prior to the altercation. It is my understanding that the "half-naked" came after he was bailed out and released--the border guards seemed to think they needed his coat as evidence.
'course, it's just me, but ejecting somebody from your precincts into a wintery night isn't the most humane thing to do, so I guess that may be prejudicing my view that they acted with all due restraint.
We don't know if there was instruction from law enforcement or not, since it's not specifically in Peter's account. But it's not unheard of for officers to ask people to exit the vehicle while being searched. When my boyfriend's vehicle was searched at the US border, they asked us to exit the vehicle once we were informed. (I think this was because they didn't want us grabbing any potential evidence and trying to hide it or get rid of it.
I'm not certain about the relevancy of this story or it's lame factor--but a community is usually about more than getting laid. (Ironic that you participate in a community such as Slashdot and degrade the value of the online community.)
Most communities are filling several purposes. Some are artificially nurtured and thrown together in an effort to drive traffic to a site and promote e-commerce. Some are support groups for folks of similar interests. Some are ways for people to work together on projects despite being scattered across a globe. Powazek is attempting to design a set of guiding principles in building and maintaining these different types of communities. Whether or not he succeeded, I'm not certain--but the value of a well maintained community should be obvious to most Slashdotters.
It might be interesting to note that trademarked words can only be used as adjectives and not nouns. Using it as a noun or sole name of the product is actually a way of weakening your trademark claims. In fact, that is how Bayer lost the trademark to the word Aspirin, WHICH was in fact, created by Bayer as a name for their pain reliever. Many other companies began using it as the name for their pain killers and Bayer did not defend it properly, thus the ruling against them, and why most products use their names as adjectives in advertising, ie. Kleenex brand tissue, Xerox copiers, Tylenol pain reliever....
Where this becomes a problem is that Illustrator is a noun. One who illustrates or creates illustrations. Thus if another company wants to create an illustrating program, and properly trademark it, they might very well call it Product Name Illustrator or Product Name Illustrating Program. This is legal trademark use.
The Killustrator case is, naturally, slightly different in that Killustrator is an attempt to capitalize on Adobe's usage of the name. So I don't have a problem with Adobe going after them. I just have a bitch with them for trying to copyright a descriptive word as the trademark for their program since it makes legal trademark use really annoying.
Of course, it could be that they just started referring to it as the Adobe illustrator program and then they decided that illustrator was part of the name. I don't know. But it's certainly a thought.
Aha. This is why I can't get to tiles.ice.org today. I went to see if I had any new tiles showing, and well, for nearly twenty four hours I couldn't see anything.
The point of the original poster (although worded badly) is not that quilts and collaborative art weren't available before the Net era....but that the Net era and technology make this kind of experience much quicker and easier to oversee.
And it's not really that similar to the AIDS quilts, or to normal quilts. The only reason it's called a quilt is because the tiles are patched together from artwork by different individuals. Yet to keep the artwork flowing properly across the landscape of the piece as a whole, certain rules have been laid down.
A) One person checks out a tile. They have twenty four hours to check it back in.
B) They will see anywhere from 0 to 4 of the sides surrounding their tile, depending of course, on which tiles were finished already.
C) While a tile is checked out, no tile adjacent to it can also be checked out.
D) A tile will not show on the quilt until the tiles on the four adjacent sides are also checked in. (There is one experimental quilt going on where iCE is allowing all the tiles to be shown as soon as they are done. I don't like it as much. I like things being a surprise.)
E) You will not be able to check out a tile adjacent to your tile. You may check out a tile kitty corner to your tile.
F) You must blend and integrate what you can see from the other sides into your tile. You will have people vote on your finished tile as to how well your tile blends and integrates and makes the quilt interesting. Points are knocked off for bad blends, crappy technique, and for making difficulties for your neighbours. (ie....making all your edges the same colour)
The voting is actually kinda like moderating a post. And it encourages the artist to try and be as creative as possible and maintain the quality of the quilt.
Where this is going: the only way we will know is by keeping up on laws and law procedure regarding the internet, technology, censorship and other pertinent issues. In fact, even keeping on less pertinent issues is sometimes a good thing, considering the tendancy of politicians to pork barrel laws into bills they know the public doesn't really care about. Maybe the hacker had idealistic notions about getting the word out, but in the society we live in, his/her actions were more counterproductive than useful. Much as we might not like our governments and laws, they are the established method for societal change and the protection of society. If we don't like the laws, it is our social obligation to use the laws to get them changed. In other words, stay informed and get involved in a way that promotes the technology community as intelligent and capable of ruling ourselves with logic and an eye towards the good of all. That's the one way we can control where these issues head.
Another PS from me: I refer to the censorship laws that caused the hacker to protest in the first place. I do however think that what the hacker did was counterproductive.
Earlier, when Slashdot posted an article about the Australian government being able to survey and tamper with files to prevent detection of the surveilance, I asked, "How much do you trust the government?" What I meant to say was that sometimes the government needs to take measures to protect its citizenry and how much does the citizenry trust its government to do exactly that? Well, I may eat my words yet. If this is another example of Australia government and regulations at work, I think the Aussie's may have reason to distrust their government.
Not everything that portrays violence glorifies it. In the other much blamed media (ie. Hollywood) there are several really good movies that portray violence and its effects. Movies such as Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, and Three Kings show death, violence, war, and the effects of these and yet, I hardly think that most people would claim that these movies glorify violence. They instead show the effects and the harmful consequences. Furthermore, most video game violence, even in first person shooters, is hardly realistic. I've seen more violent Warner Bros cartoons....I would contend that most peoples idea of handling weapons and killing people is a great deal more visceral and probably comes from either movies or in some very sad cases, real life gang situations or other similar situations. A video game has never taught me how to load a rifle and as far as I know, most first person shooters use made-up fantasy weapons. The day I can pick up a rail gun at my local pawn shop after a seven day waiting period is the day I will start blaming video games for increasing violence....
While this does seem like a case of "buyer beware" and because of existing laws, NSI can not be held liable for the snafu, it just shows that registration process could use some overhauling. As far as I could tell, Mr.McLanahan had paid a certain ammount to free up the domain name, which to me, seems like he had bought it from the previous owner and was now paying to have the registration info changed. To use a metaphor, it's as if he bought a used car and went to have it registered to him, (which he can't do himself) and while it was sitting in the parking lot, somebody else came along and registered a car belonging to someone else. Now that's just a metaphor, but it seems like an apt one to me. When the registration process is this flawed, I think it's time for a change.
When kids have violent tendancies, I believe some of these situations can be traced to the parenting and some can be traced to chemical imbalances which can be regulated through medication. But even kids with wonderful parents and no physical disorders have been known to go over the edge. Especially in case involving teens (rather that very young offenders) it boils down to the will and the mind of the offender themselves. Society can blame parents, video games, media, movies, etc. all they want, but well, I and the majority of society have had all those influences and we didn't run around killing innocent people. (And yes, I play Quake.) I think society doesn't want to accept the fact that while they can control the content of video games to a degree, they will never be able to control the human spirit and will. And so they blame the things they can control or think they can control.
BTW, I do agree with the statement that it is just common sense not to expose very young children to a situation --be it video games or movies or what-have-you-- where it is hard to seperate the reality from fiction. Studies indicate that most children don't develop the ability to discern and analyze more abstract concepts such as the difference between reality and a very visual fiction until they are ten or so. They will realize that it is not "real" but the concept of reality is still very amorphous to them.
I'll agree with the system of checks and balances being out of whack. But I still think there should be some providence for the government legally accessing information if they think there is a security breach or a gross breach of conduct or a crime being committed....strong evidence that it has occured, I mean. I don't think that governements should spuriously hack into a system without justification. Thus, the question: How much do we trust our government? Perhaps the law could stand if it was better regulated? What would be a good way to regulate such a law?
Orwellian might describe the way the article was written. A fine and shining example of newspeak, implying that the Australian government was going to hack into everyones computers and that any day now Aussies everywhere might find that important files had been altered. But let's read a little more carefully, shall we? The limitations imposed on these powers state that the use of the government hackers in altering data is only to conceal surveillance. Furthermore, there must reasonable cause to assume that it is a matter of security. Think of it like an electronic warrant. Warrants and sub-poenas are served with due cause, when it is believed that issuing such will produce evidence. We trust (i know i am speaking optimistically) that judges and those who issue warrants and sub-poenas do so with due cause, because they believe that information will be brought to light that will aid a case or provide evidence. Generally we assume that most government agencies would act on a similar principle. i.e. they aren't breaking into just anyones files for the hell of it. So I gues it all boils down to "Do you trust your government?" or "Do we have reason to believe that these measures would be abused?"
I think that's a good point. I believe that only a few months back Madeline announced that she was battling this disease to help raise awareness for ovarian cancer. As for the appropriateness of the article in Slashdot, I can't really say, being a new reader, but I do appreciate an awareness of the world outside a cubicle. I enjoyed several of her roles---my favorites were Mrs. White from Clue ("Men should be like Kleenex, soft, strong, and disposable.") and Eunice from What's Up, Doc?
Re:Some of these aren't so dumb!
on
Dumb Laws
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· Score: 1
Nothing wrong with wanting to preserve cultural identity (and it's not as if all the songs had to be Canadian content, just one in five) but it is true that some of the Canadian language laws seem to go a bit overboard. One such law made it possible for a French-Canadian to sue a pet shop owner because the parrot he bought didn't speak French. Speaking of weird laws, here's a weird law that was on the books in Orem, Utah until just a few years back. The city passed a law prohibiting having custody of a primate. (We assume they meant monkeys, but were just having too much fun with more scientific sounding words.) This however meant that technically it was illegal to have custody of any human as well. Good thing they didn't try enforcing it.
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Poisoning the well fallacy! He writes fiction, so clearly you can't actually expect him to tell the truth about anything. You and the guy upthread perpetuating the "all geeks are self-important obsessed losers" generalisation should get together.
Nice to call for facts while using unsupported generalisations as your banner.
Er....just to clarify the construction of your statement "That he was half-naked suggests something of the state he was in before he precipitated the altercation." It seems to state that Peter Watts (disclosure: I see him once a year during a writing event and would call him friend) was half-naked prior to exiting the vehicle and prior to the altercation. It is my understanding that the "half-naked" came after he was bailed out and released--the border guards seemed to think they needed his coat as evidence.
'course, it's just me, but ejecting somebody from your precincts into a wintery night isn't the most humane thing to do, so I guess that may be prejudicing my view that they acted with all due restraint.
We don't know if there was instruction from law enforcement or not, since it's not specifically in Peter's account. But it's not unheard of for officers to ask people to exit the vehicle while being searched. When my boyfriend's vehicle was searched at the US border, they asked us to exit the vehicle once we were informed. (I think this was because they didn't want us grabbing any potential evidence and trying to hide it or get rid of it.
I'm not certain about the relevancy of this story or it's lame factor--but a community is usually about more than getting laid. (Ironic that you participate in a community such as Slashdot and degrade the value of the online community.)
Most communities are filling several purposes. Some are artificially nurtured and thrown together in an effort to drive traffic to a site and promote e-commerce. Some are support groups for folks of similar interests. Some are ways for people to work together on projects despite being scattered across a globe. Powazek is attempting to design a set of guiding principles in building and maintaining these different types of communities. Whether or not he succeeded, I'm not certain--but the value of a well maintained community should be obvious to most Slashdotters.
Where this becomes a problem is that Illustrator is a noun. One who illustrates or creates illustrations. Thus if another company wants to create an illustrating program, and properly trademark it, they might very well call it Product Name Illustrator or Product Name Illustrating Program. This is legal trademark use.
The Killustrator case is, naturally, slightly different in that Killustrator is an attempt to capitalize on Adobe's usage of the name. So I don't have a problem with Adobe going after them. I just have a bitch with them for trying to copyright a descriptive word as the trademark for their program since it makes legal trademark use really annoying.
Of course, it could be that they just started referring to it as the Adobe illustrator program and then they decided that illustrator was part of the name. I don't know. But it's certainly a thought.
Aha. This is why I can't get to tiles.ice.org today. I went to see if I had any new tiles showing, and well, for nearly twenty four hours I couldn't see anything. The point of the original poster (although worded badly) is not that quilts and collaborative art weren't available before the Net era....but that the Net era and technology make this kind of experience much quicker and easier to oversee. And it's not really that similar to the AIDS quilts, or to normal quilts. The only reason it's called a quilt is because the tiles are patched together from artwork by different individuals. Yet to keep the artwork flowing properly across the landscape of the piece as a whole, certain rules have been laid down. A) One person checks out a tile. They have twenty four hours to check it back in. B) They will see anywhere from 0 to 4 of the sides surrounding their tile, depending of course, on which tiles were finished already. C) While a tile is checked out, no tile adjacent to it can also be checked out. D) A tile will not show on the quilt until the tiles on the four adjacent sides are also checked in. (There is one experimental quilt going on where iCE is allowing all the tiles to be shown as soon as they are done. I don't like it as much. I like things being a surprise.) E) You will not be able to check out a tile adjacent to your tile. You may check out a tile kitty corner to your tile. F) You must blend and integrate what you can see from the other sides into your tile. You will have people vote on your finished tile as to how well your tile blends and integrates and makes the quilt interesting. Points are knocked off for bad blends, crappy technique, and for making difficulties for your neighbours. (ie....making all your edges the same colour) The voting is actually kinda like moderating a post. And it encourages the artist to try and be as creative as possible and maintain the quality of the quilt.
That's what I meant...but I think I messed up on the pronouns so it sounded different. Oh well...
Another PS from me: I refer to the censorship laws that caused the hacker to protest in the first place. I do however think that what the hacker did was counterproductive.
Not everything that portrays violence glorifies it. In the other much blamed media (ie. Hollywood) there are several really good movies that portray violence and its effects. Movies such as Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, and Three Kings show death, violence, war, and the effects of these and yet, I hardly think that most people would claim that these movies glorify violence. They instead show the effects and the harmful consequences. Furthermore, most video game violence, even in first person shooters, is hardly realistic. I've seen more violent Warner Bros cartoons....I would contend that most peoples idea of handling weapons and killing people is a great deal more visceral and probably comes from either movies or in some very sad cases, real life gang situations or other similar situations. A video game has never taught me how to load a rifle and as far as I know, most first person shooters use made-up fantasy weapons. The day I can pick up a rail gun at my local pawn shop after a seven day waiting period is the day I will start blaming video games for increasing violence....
BTW, I do agree with the statement that it is just common sense not to expose very young children to a situation --be it video games or movies or what-have-you-- where it is hard to seperate the reality from fiction. Studies indicate that most children don't develop the ability to discern and analyze more abstract concepts such as the difference between reality and a very visual fiction until they are ten or so. They will realize that it is not "real" but the concept of reality is still very amorphous to them.
I'll agree with the system of checks and balances being out of whack. But I still think there should be some providence for the government legally accessing information if they think there is a security breach or a gross breach of conduct or a crime being committed....strong evidence that it has occured, I mean. I don't think that governements should spuriously hack into a system without justification. Thus, the question: How much do we trust our government? Perhaps the law could stand if it was better regulated? What would be a good way to regulate such a law?
Orwellian might describe the way the article was written. A fine and shining example of newspeak, implying that the Australian government was going to hack into everyones computers and that any day now Aussies everywhere might find that important files had been altered. But let's read a little more carefully, shall we? The limitations imposed on these powers state that the use of the government hackers in altering data is only to conceal surveillance. Furthermore, there must reasonable cause to assume that it is a matter of security. Think of it like an electronic warrant. Warrants and sub-poenas are served with due cause, when it is believed that issuing such will produce evidence. We trust (i know i am speaking optimistically) that judges and those who issue warrants and sub-poenas do so with due cause, because they believe that information will be brought to light that will aid a case or provide evidence. Generally we assume that most government agencies would act on a similar principle. i.e. they aren't breaking into just anyones files for the hell of it. So I gues it all boils down to "Do you trust your government?" or "Do we have reason to believe that these measures would be abused?"
I think that's a good point. I believe that only a few months back Madeline announced that she was battling this disease to help raise awareness for ovarian cancer. As for the appropriateness of the article in Slashdot, I can't really say, being a new reader, but I do appreciate an awareness of the world outside a cubicle. I enjoyed several of her roles---my favorites were Mrs. White from Clue ("Men should be like Kleenex, soft, strong, and disposable.") and Eunice from What's Up, Doc?
Nothing wrong with wanting to preserve cultural identity (and it's not as if all the songs had to be Canadian content, just one in five) but it is true that some of the Canadian language laws seem to go a bit overboard. One such law made it possible for a French-Canadian to sue a pet shop owner because the parrot he bought didn't speak French. Speaking of weird laws, here's a weird law that was on the books in Orem, Utah until just a few years back. The city passed a law prohibiting having custody of a primate. (We assume they meant monkeys, but were just having too much fun with more scientific sounding words.) This however meant that technically it was illegal to have custody of any human as well. Good thing they didn't try enforcing it.