For a parallel, see check kiting [wikipedia.org]. Banks don't particularly like it when you make promises in hopes of being able to keep them.
I admit, it's kind of a grey area. Practically speaking, banks don't particularly like it when you don't keep your promise. These days a lot of merchants and banks and whatnot investigate your financial situation before accepting your check, to make sure you're in the clear.
I'm not sure whether or not IBM exercised this kind of oversight when making their agreement with Gates, but in the event, they got what they were promised.
I am, however, willing to stipulate that Gates convinced them to agree to the deal on false pretenses, and that technically this is fraud.
I just don't see it as a significant instance of evilness. Clever? Yes. Ballsy? Yes. Unethical? Probably. Fraudulent? Probably. True Evil? Not so much.
Don't look at me. You're the one ridiculing positions that nobody's taking. Three times in a row, now. Do you ever attack things that actually need attacking, or are you just some kind of bizarre postmodern anarchist?
I'm pretty sure that your right to distribute your material as you see fit doesn't constitute an entitlement to use other people's distribution channels if they don't want you to. The University has the right to control access to resources on networks it owns. You might have better luck suing them for implying in their terms of service or enrollment contract or whatever, such an entitlement, and that they are now reneging on their agreement. By all means, give it a shot. Let me know how it works out for you.
Normally I wouldn't argue semantics, but in this case it's a valid point because of the extreme social stigma attached to theft.
What about the extreme social stigma attached to depriving somebody of their rights? And I'm not sure that the stigma is, in fact, so great that a pedantic insistence on proper use of technical legal terminology outside of a technical legal setting actually improves a non-technical discussion in any practical way.
Flat-out fraud ("sure, IBM, I have an OS I can sell you")
I've never really understood this claim. To me, "fraud" is taking people's money and then not giving them what you had agreed to give them. As far as I know, IBM has never complained that they didn't get the operating system they were promised.
When you exercise a privilege to which you are not entitled, you negate the value of the privilege for those who are entitled to it.
Law, and custom, dicate that the creator of an artistic work is entitled to the privilege of sole distribution rights to that work, and sole rights to profit from the distribution of that work. When you appropriate that work without their permission, they no longer have the privilege granted to them by law. You are, in fact, taking something away from them.
... In other news, the Air Force is putting together a multi-milliion dollar effort to deliver nuclear weapons to every continent. Of special interest are any and all techniques to enable ICBM and/or strategic bomber access... to any and all air defense and missile defense systems. How long before they nuke your backyard?
There are several problems with your line of reasoning:
First, I never claimed to be religious, nor did I claim to believe in "spiritual imperfection".
Second, the Vatican astronomer never claimed that alien life must be subject to "his particular brand of crazy religion". All he actually said was that his religious beliefs were not incompatible with the idea of alien life. This the same thing I said, by the way: his religious beliefs are not incompatible with the idea of alien life.
Third, the fact that you have replaced what that astronomer actually said with something else that was much easier for you to ridicule, is what makes your "metaphor" a strawman.
Fourth, your rebuttal to something I did not say, in place of rebutting what I did say, is yet another resort to the strawman tactic.
Finally, your discussion of metaphors is the logical fallacy of ignoratio elenchi: technically true, but totally irrelevant to the point.
Yes Catholic church, that is precisely how idiotic you sound right now.
Except, of course, that the Catholic Church isn't saying anything like that. Even if everything the Bible says is true, and even if the Catholic church's interpretation is substantially correct, there's nothing there that implies that alien species would be spiritually imperfect or in need of saving, and there's nothing there that should cause the Catholic church to think otherwise. Which thus makes it totally unsurprising that they're not actually saying anything like what you're laughing at. Good luck with your strawman.
Excellent! If it's too late to do anything about the problem, then there's no need to impose additional costs on commerce, to implement pointless ballast-microwaving solutions. I take it you agree we should leave cargo ship ballast systems as they are, and invest our resources elsewhere?
NASA's primary role is to stimulate aerospace R&D by setting challenging goals and offering to underwrite the costs of risky R&D programs outlined the most competitive bids from private contractors.
The contractors benefit by getting outside sources of funding for research projects that may not swiftly transform into mature, commercial aerospace opportunities.
The public benefits from the scientific gains, and the long-term economic benefits resulting from the original R&D stimulation.
But once an aerospace technology begins to mature, and profitable business models become apparent, the need for government-subsizied R&D passes away, and private industry willingly takes the next steps themselves, with their own funding. Witness, for example, Boeing's booming aerospace engineering and service business, founded on Apollo-era technology acquired from companies whose R&D was originally funded by NASA.
I, for one, wholeheartedly approve of NASA turning to the private sector for robust, proven, mature aerospace solutions. Once the technology has reached that stsge, NASA's work is done, and it should move on to other, more advanced goals.
The joke is that not only it takes four lines of unintellegible gibberish to do with JCL what we would today write as 'rm my/file/name',
Actually, the real joke is you mistaking a command-line invocation of an application for the application itself. "rm" runs to over 20KB of compiled code on most modern UNIX distros--and the source is probably similarly unintelligble gibberish.
Neither of your examples make sense. Both of them involve cops physically present on the scene.
Show me cops who oppress groups of people chatting peacefully on a streetcorner, and I'll accept the possibility that cops might arrest people chatting peacefully on surveillance video footage.
A more interesting thing to note is the mention of illegal aliens in the same vein as terrorists and spies, not once but twice( these scum of the earth.....how dare they.....)
Strictly speaking, all three of these groups belong to the same category: False citizens pretending to be true citizens, in order to benefit from the privileges enjoyed by true citizens, to the detriment of true citizens.
"Scum of the earth", of course, is your own term. Only you know exactly what you mean by it, and whether or not it applies equally to all three groups. Personally, I'd categorize all terrorists as scum, spies in general as honorable warriors but deserving of the death penalty if caught, and run-of-the-mill "illegal aliens" as common criminals who should be rounded up and deported in proportion as their presence harm true citizens and the enforcement effort does not detract from other more important criminal concerns.
Let's be reasonable here: CCTV was NEVER EVER meant to solve crime. It was meant to keep tabs on people and was sold by companies to government on the premise they could solve crimes.
So let me get this straight: The reasonable position is that the same system that can't effectively keep tabs on something as obvious as a mugger can instead effectively keep tabs on something as vague as a "subversive"?
Enlighten me, please. How, exactly, does "can't solve crimes, can keep tabs on people" actually work?
Which is a very different proposition altogether, and requires careful consideration of what "essential liberty" and "temporary security" mean. These are debatable subjects, about which people of good will might well disagree, in their joint efforts to craft a more perfect society.
Personally, I reject the idea we should never exchange any liberty for any security, either individually or as a community, and apparently the author of the quote you've mangled agrees with me.
I assume that if you did, you would be complaining about the specific technical details of your real-life setbacks and challenges in fixing the problems with the voting system in your district, rather than presenting generic "this sucks and somebody should fix it and I shouldn't have to work at it myself" complaints.
Indeed, I assume that people who actually avail themselves of the various facilities at their disposal, for involving themselves in their own governance, don't say things like
I expect my elected officials to do their damned jobs without my nagging
because they don't actually expect that at all, but rather believe quite firmly that their "nagging" is, in fact, a right and necessary part of democracy.
So. What's your local election commissioner's budget for voting machines? Where does that funding come from? What steps have you taken in the past six months to improve that funding situation, or to ascertain for yourself that the funding is adequate?
Like I've been saying all along, if you have a problem with this, go and fix it. Plenty of your fellow citizens seem to care a lot more than you do about these things. While you're here on Slashdot gaining wisdom from sigfiles, they're out there putting in the time and effort (and money) to arrange your society the way they like it.
How much time have you spent this month at HOA meetings? City council meetings? Petitioning your election commissioner? Drafting ballot measures and collecting signatures? Doing anything at all to promote your idea of a better tomorrow? Other people do these kinds of things all the time. What about you?
With what money? The taxes you already pay are already allocated to all the other government services you can't do without. Obviously it's never occurred to you that the state budget only goes so far and that your elected officials can only do so much to discharge their responsibilities with the money you give them. It's obvioulsy also never crossed your mind that democracy is an intereactive exercise. Your diligent oversight is a critical part of good governance.
Bah. Banks get what they pay for. They care about their ATM machines, and so they pay good money to get good ATM machines.
You care about voting machines? So front the cash to your local election commission, so they can afford to get good voting machines. It's not like Diebold is going to make world-class voting machines for free.
You don't have the cash? So front the time and energy necessary to convince your local community members to pitch in. Collect signatures and get a tax measure put on the ballot to finance the development and purchase of high-quality voting machines. Campaign in favor of that tax measure. MAKE IT HAPPEN.
Don't have the cash, and don't want to spend any time and effort on it? Then stop fucking whining. It's obviously not something you actually care about.
To the extent that this story might be true, your dad is an asshole who enjoys wasting my tax dollars and fucking around with irrelevant red tape than actually doing useful work.
Obviously whoever was using the duct tape, being finished with it, took care of it when they were done with their work.
How much of my tax dollars did your dad convert into useful work for my benefit while some other guy was cleaning up after himself?
Slashdot Mirror
I admit, it's kind of a grey area. Practically speaking, banks don't particularly like it when you don't keep your promise. These days a lot of merchants and banks and whatnot investigate your financial situation before accepting your check, to make sure you're in the clear.
I'm not sure whether or not IBM exercised this kind of oversight when making their agreement with Gates, but in the event, they got what they were promised.
I am, however, willing to stipulate that Gates convinced them to agree to the deal on false pretenses, and that technically this is fraud.
I just don't see it as a significant instance of evilness. Clever? Yes. Ballsy? Yes. Unethical? Probably. Fraudulent? Probably. True Evil? Not so much.
Don't look at me. You're the one ridiculing positions that nobody's taking. Three times in a row, now. Do you ever attack things that actually need attacking, or are you just some kind of bizarre postmodern anarchist?
I'm pretty sure that your right to distribute your material as you see fit doesn't constitute an entitlement to use other people's distribution channels if they don't want you to. The University has the right to control access to resources on networks it owns. You might have better luck suing them for implying in their terms of service or enrollment contract or whatever, such an entitlement, and that they are now reneging on their agreement. By all means, give it a shot. Let me know how it works out for you.
You're begging the question that law and custom require you to do so. You might want to look into that first.
What about the extreme social stigma attached to depriving somebody of their rights? And I'm not sure that the stigma is, in fact, so great that a pedantic insistence on proper use of technical legal terminology outside of a technical legal setting actually improves a non-technical discussion in any practical way.
I've never really understood this claim. To me, "fraud" is taking people's money and then not giving them what you had agreed to give them. As far as I know, IBM has never complained that they didn't get the operating system they were promised.
When you exercise a privilege to which you are not entitled, you negate the value of the privilege for those who are entitled to it.
Law, and custom, dicate that the creator of an artistic work is entitled to the privilege of sole distribution rights to that work, and sole rights to profit from the distribution of that work. When you appropriate that work without their permission, they no longer have the privilege granted to them by law. You are, in fact, taking something away from them.
... In other news, the Air Force is putting together a multi-milliion dollar effort to deliver nuclear weapons to every continent. Of special interest are any and all techniques to enable ICBM and/or strategic bomber access... to any and all air defense and missile defense systems. How long before they nuke your backyard?
There are several problems with your line of reasoning:
First, I never claimed to be religious, nor did I claim to believe in "spiritual imperfection".
Second, the Vatican astronomer never claimed that alien life must be subject to "his particular brand of crazy religion". All he actually said was that his religious beliefs were not incompatible with the idea of alien life. This the same thing I said, by the way: his religious beliefs are not incompatible with the idea of alien life.
Third, the fact that you have replaced what that astronomer actually said with something else that was much easier for you to ridicule, is what makes your "metaphor" a strawman.
Fourth, your rebuttal to something I did not say, in place of rebutting what I did say, is yet another resort to the strawman tactic.
Finally, your discussion of metaphors is the logical fallacy of ignoratio elenchi: technically true, but totally irrelevant to the point.
HTH. HAND.
Except, of course, that the Catholic Church isn't saying anything like that. Even if everything the Bible says is true, and even if the Catholic church's interpretation is substantially correct, there's nothing there that implies that alien species would be spiritually imperfect or in need of saving, and there's nothing there that should cause the Catholic church to think otherwise. Which thus makes it totally unsurprising that they're not actually saying anything like what you're laughing at. Good luck with your strawman.
Too little, too late?
Excellent! If it's too late to do anything about the problem, then there's no need to impose additional costs on commerce, to implement pointless ballast-microwaving solutions. I take it you agree we should leave cargo ship ballast systems as they are, and invest our resources elsewhere?
Actually, "reveal everything to NASA" is a condition of the funding. Nobody delivers a black box system to NASA.
NASA's primary role is to stimulate aerospace R&D by setting challenging goals and offering to underwrite the costs of risky R&D programs outlined the most competitive bids from private contractors.
The contractors benefit by getting outside sources of funding for research projects that may not swiftly transform into mature, commercial aerospace opportunities.
The public benefits from the scientific gains, and the long-term economic benefits resulting from the original R&D stimulation.
But once an aerospace technology begins to mature, and profitable business models become apparent, the need for government-subsizied R&D passes away, and private industry willingly takes the next steps themselves, with their own funding. Witness, for example, Boeing's booming aerospace engineering and service business, founded on Apollo-era technology acquired from companies whose R&D was originally funded by NASA.
I, for one, wholeheartedly approve of NASA turning to the private sector for robust, proven, mature aerospace solutions. Once the technology has reached that stsge, NASA's work is done, and it should move on to other, more advanced goals.
Actually, the real joke is you mistaking a command-line invocation of an application for the application itself. "rm" runs to over 20KB of compiled code on most modern UNIX distros--and the source is probably similarly unintelligble gibberish.
You lost me.
Neither of your examples make sense. Both of them involve cops physically present on the scene.
Show me cops who oppress groups of people chatting peacefully on a streetcorner, and I'll accept the possibility that cops might arrest people chatting peacefully on surveillance video footage.
Does it hurt to miss the point that much?
Strictly speaking, all three of these groups belong to the same category: False citizens pretending to be true citizens, in order to benefit from the privileges enjoyed by true citizens, to the detriment of true citizens.
"Scum of the earth", of course, is your own term. Only you know exactly what you mean by it, and whether or not it applies equally to all three groups. Personally, I'd categorize all terrorists as scum, spies in general as honorable warriors but deserving of the death penalty if caught, and run-of-the-mill "illegal aliens" as common criminals who should be rounded up and deported in proportion as their presence harm true citizens and the enforcement effort does not detract from other more important criminal concerns.
Not important enough, obviously: I don't see you volunteering for the job.
So let me get this straight: The reasonable position is that the same system that can't effectively keep tabs on something as obvious as a mugger can instead effectively keep tabs on something as vague as a "subversive"?
Enlighten me, please. How, exactly, does "can't solve crimes, can keep tabs on people" actually work?
This is incorrect. The correct proverb would result in
s/temporary security/essential liberty/g
Which is a very different proposition altogether, and requires careful consideration of what "essential liberty" and "temporary security" mean. These are debatable subjects, about which people of good will might well disagree, in their joint efforts to craft a more perfect society.
Personally, I reject the idea we should never exchange any liberty for any security, either individually or as a community, and apparently the author of the quote you've mangled agrees with me.
Indeed, I assume that people who actually avail themselves of the various facilities at their disposal, for involving themselves in their own governance, don't say things like
because they don't actually expect that at all, but rather believe quite firmly that their "nagging" is, in fact, a right and necessary part of democracy.
So. What's your local election commissioner's budget for voting machines? Where does that funding come from? What steps have you taken in the past six months to improve that funding situation, or to ascertain for yourself that the funding is adequate?
Like I've been saying all along, if you have a problem with this, go and fix it. Plenty of your fellow citizens seem to care a lot more than you do about these things. While you're here on Slashdot gaining wisdom from sigfiles, they're out there putting in the time and effort (and money) to arrange your society the way they like it.
How much time have you spent this month at HOA meetings? City council meetings? Petitioning your election commissioner? Drafting ballot measures and collecting signatures? Doing anything at all to promote your idea of a better tomorrow? Other people do these kinds of things all the time. What about you?
With what money? The taxes you already pay are already allocated to all the other government services you can't do without. Obviously it's never occurred to you that the state budget only goes so far and that your elected officials can only do so much to discharge their responsibilities with the money you give them. It's obvioulsy also never crossed your mind that democracy is an intereactive exercise. Your diligent oversight is a critical part of good governance.
Bah. Banks get what they pay for. They care about their ATM machines, and so they pay good money to get good ATM machines.
You care about voting machines? So front the cash to your local election commission, so they can afford to get good voting machines. It's not like Diebold is going to make world-class voting machines for free.
You don't have the cash? So front the time and energy necessary to convince your local community members to pitch in. Collect signatures and get a tax measure put on the ballot to finance the development and purchase of high-quality voting machines. Campaign in favor of that tax measure. MAKE IT HAPPEN.
Don't have the cash, and don't want to spend any time and effort on it? Then stop fucking whining. It's obviously not something you actually care about.
To the extent that this story might be true, your dad is an asshole who enjoys wasting my tax dollars and fucking around with irrelevant red tape than actually doing useful work.
Obviously whoever was using the duct tape, being finished with it, took care of it when they were done with their work.
How much of my tax dollars did your dad convert into useful work for my benefit while some other guy was cleaning up after himself?