That reminds me. A couple of Christmas's ago I was visiting my sister in a small rural town where she lived at the time. Wanted to go draw cash at one point so walked down the main road to the town's only ATM - run by local bank ABSA (yeah - not afraid to mention it). My own bank not having an ATM in town this was the only choice available.
As I stepped up to it... the interface was obscured by a warning message: F-Secure Anti-Virus for Windows has detected a virus in file...
Floating around.
Being aware that 1) This bank's ATM's run windows 2) They use F-Secure for virus protection 3) It obviously is connected in such a way that it can still GET infections
I turned around, bummed cash of my sister and paid her bank online - there was just no way I was going to stick my card in that ATM. I am also really glad I'm not a customer of that bank - and despite the nearest ATM to my house being run by them - never use their ATM's - I would rather spend the bit of extra fuel and drive to my own bank (which may not be better - but at least I haven't seen with my own eyes that it's THAT bad). Besides the service charge saving I suspect outweighs what I spend on fuel so it's worth it either way.
>My high school physics teacher used to electrocute (With a handheld generator made from a rotary pencil sharpener) people for saying that; also for misspelling accelerate or satellite.
Yes a common reaction of overzealous highschool teachers - and wrong. Do the math. Forces per se is an oversimplification as it is, useful to model certain aspects of physics, and not for others. Gravitons attract one another, thus is created what we PERCEIVE as the force of gravity if you go down to the quantum level for example.
At the level of Newtonian physics - centrifugal force is as real a force effect as any of the others. True it's a consequence of other forces working together and against each other but it's there nonetheless and it's impact is crucial to predicting how many things will behave. When two forces work at an angle - the object moves along a (predictable) path created by both forces - it is both correct and useful to model that path as a force in it's own right. At least it OFTEN is, always remember that no scientific model is ideal for EVERY scenario - that's why we don't just HAVE one scientific model. You want to know how gas will fill a chamber - gravity has so little influence that it's not worth thinking about, quantum mechanics is your friend there. You want to know how it will fill a universe - gravity becomes very important suddenly and this is why the universe does not have it's gases distributed as quantum mechanics would predict, instead of entropy, the universe got decidedly clumpier over time.
For some problems - it's incredibly useful to model centrifugal effects as a force, for others it's much more crucial to work on the shaping forces that create it in the first place - but it's not "wrong" to talk about a centrifugal force if what you want to describe is the effect it causes.
Screw that, all the hot freaky the chicks dig the lonely rebel thing - If I go in there... I'd have to have sex with... yeurch... normal women... and probably only one at a time too !
>The documentary Macheads [imdb.com] sums this up pretty well. There was a hipster in that doc that refused to date men who owned a PC
She didn't say "date" however, she said SLEEP with. Sorry, using a PC even rules you out as a one-night-stand.
That hipster was Violet Blue - sex columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and one of the more famous of the 3rd-generation sex-positive feminists. Also the author of "The smart girls guide to porn" - her blog is tinynibbles.com (blog contains sex ed, opinion pieces and porn reviews - NSFW - you have been warned) yeah I hate apple but I'm a big fan of her work.
Actually despite her love for Apple products - her nature and job has made her quite a vocal critic of Steve Jobs's anti-porn crusade....come to think of it... I wonder how she feels about Linux users... maybe a gray area... the kind where alcohol can tip the scales... I can but dream...
Oh come now - seriously - a pornloving, sexuality expert from San Francisco... can you IMAGINE the tricks she would know ?
>And I doubt that you make all of your own clothes because you insist on pockets being a specific width and lined with a specific material.
Not quite but I buy my jeans for comfort from factory stores (it's something we have in my city, you may or may not have them too) genuinally unbranded but I remove the labels before I wear them anyway, and all my t-shirts are custom printed with my own designs. I do not wear labels and I take PRIDE in knowing that when somebody admires the quote / picture on my shirt - I have the only shirt like that in the whole world.
Some of us want our appearance to reflect OURSELVES - to express who we are, not to fit into a mould. Even if I didn't demand a free-software only life, I still would NEVER buy apple, because it isn't possible to get the kind of customization that lets it's very operation adjust to my particular tastes and personality. If I cannot express myself THROUGH it, then by definition I cannot express myself WITH it. I have absolutely NO desire of expressing Steve Jobs's values -especially as I rather adamantly disagree with most of what he believes in.
Heck even my tattoos are all unique in the world. One I designed myself, the other (due to being much more complex) was designed by a graphic designer friend of mine - but even that was done to my very clear specifications, it was bespoke work.
In short, I will never be a voluntary, unpaid advertisement for Karl Lagerfeldt so why would I be one for Steve Jobs ? Apple has absolutely nothing to offer me of any real value. All the stuff it can do, my android does as well - and my android does a whole lot more and most importantly, it does them all MY way. I actually hate Sinatra's music- but the lyrics for that song I rather agree with.
>Some people need walls and prisons. Reminds me of the end of Kubric/Clark's 2001, A Space Odyssey.
I have the same refference -and it's why I bought an android phone. Each time I considered the iPhone I thought of things like "no porn" and "no flash" and in my mind it became: "I'm sorry Dave but I can't let you do that"...
This wasn't an issue even 30 years ago. Writing was a much rarer thing - nearly everything written beyond a yellow sticky note was at least somewhat formal. Hell we even had typograpical rules we all had to learn for writing a letter to your granny to thank her for the nice whatevers.
Trouble is - we don't LIVE in that world anymore. The internet and cellphones have turned writing into a conversational medium as much so as talking used to be. Nobody every WROTE "Hi, how are you" to their girlfriend a year ago- now it's how we talk with most of our friends every day.
The result - we see the culmination of what Bernard Shaw predicted: if we do not start to write as we speak, people will start to speak as we write.
Well - we're starting to write as we speak. Written language is becoming more and more phonetic, shortened to favor speed over correctness (because conversations are faste than letters), conveying meaning becomes the ONLY priority (correctness of HOW it's conveyed lose all virtue -because it's a conversation - and as with a spoken one, it just doesn't matter so much). In most ways spelling is shortened, simplified and highly phoneticized, but the language is also expanded with emoticons and other tools intended to convey in text conversationally important things that would otherwise be lost - including facial expression and tone.
The real reason for txtspeak is that it is an utterly unavoidable consequence of writing becoming a tool for conversation - nothing will stop it and within a generation formal writing of the sort our generation learned simply won't exist. I hope they keep teaching it in schools - but not for any practical purpose (because if you are truly honest, it HAS none - it's only a matter of time before txt-speak on your resume will be seen as a sign of efficiency and later completely ignored [because the HR manager has never seen anything else and certainly never written it]) . The purpose of continuing to teach people to read the proper English that became obsolete CA 1993 - is so that the treasure of books written prior to that can remain readable.
I am not part of the txtspk generation - I still prefer to write proper English and make an effort to do it right (within reason, I won't say I never make a mistake but I think I'm pretty good considering it's not my first language) but I can also see the inevitability of the txtspk phenomenon.
I get annoyed when people call it a sign of bad education or increasing stupidity. It's not - it's an unavoidable, natural and importantly utterly unstoppable result of the world we live in now.
In spoken language we have a tone for sarcasm. In written language sarcasm needs to be quite a bit more clearly indicated for people to pick up on it, because that tone is missing. The moment writing became a tool for conversation - the sort of sarcasm that hitherto only existed in spoken language came to be written down- and needs a way to indicate to the reader that it is "said" in a sarcastic tone. A sarcasm punctuation may be the way to do this.
>Or even better, not judge people according to their own personal moral codes.
The people who do this the most have a phrase "moral relativism" which is their standard excuse to avoid that. If you even suggest that moral choices are individual - that the choices we make changes as we age and gain experience and that they are not universal to judge all people by they say "that's moral relativism and it's horrible". They never back that up, they never say WHY "moral relativism" would supposedly be such a bad thing - to them the very concept of it means they already won and thus their judgement are allowed, and if anybody judges THEM by a different system they can conveniently ignore it because recognizing the validity of any morals except their own is "relativism" which is evil.
It is amazing how otherwise fairly intelligent people can fall for such simplistic mental traps if it allows them to avoid the one thing they fear more than anything: the suggestion that they aren't perfect and that different ideas to their own are not harmful by default. They fear it because if they acknowledge it they would firstly have to accept how wrong their past intolerance was, and worse - lose the ability to excuse their prejudices. Deep down, I think even Fred Phelps knows that prejudice is wrong -but as long as you can convince yourself that the source of your prejudice is a moral high ground, an order from something greater than yourself, you never need to feel guilty about being a bastard.
>Under those circumstances, I'd say you haven't been forgiven at all then. When you forgive someone you stop blaming them. They may still be responsible and you may still remember but you no longer harbor any ill will towards them.
But that only speaks on an individual basis. You're forgiven by the people in your life now - but the same picture haunting you twenty years down the line at a job interview is being assessed by people who saw it the first time five minutes ago. Because the incident is unforgotten - it needs to be forgiven over and over and over by everybody who becomes aware of it... for as long you live.
>How about people like me, who haven't one anything, let alone getting caught?
There is NOBODY like that, no - not even you. EVERYTHING that exists, everything anybody has EVER done is offensive to somebody somewhere. You HAVE done something that somebody out there believes is wrong. It may not be on the internet but it's there. It's simply mathematically impossible to have never done anything that wouldn't offend somebody.
If you'd spent your life in a cellar in the fetal position some people will say you are one lazy guy ! If you have a religion - thirty other religions would prefer to have nothing to do with you (at best), if you have no religion ALL the others will feel that way. If you drink - some people will be offended, if you do NOT drink - others will assume you're a self-righteous moralist and your promotion will be stumped as they'll assume you inable to take the CEO of your next big customer-corp to a stripjoint for the signing if that's what he's into (or for that matter, to figure OUT that this is what he is into).
If you're a virgin, some people will think you're betraying your godly duty to reproduce. If you aren't - some will think you're a whore. If you're married to one woman and treat her well - some will call you a traitor to manhood. If you abuse her, others will hate you (rightfully so).
If you're a racist - other races will hate you for it, if you're not - racists will hate you.
Nobody, can possibly, go through life without doing anything that won't offend the morality of SOMEBODY. So just get over that illusion. The best you can hope for is that none of the people who would be offended by your choices are ever in a position of authority over you - or that if they are, you can avoid them knowing about it.
Alternatively and this would be far better- we can try to lead the way toward the world the grandparent points out- to recognize this, and say: as long as somebody isn't breaking the law, what they choose to do on their own time has fuck-all to do with me - EVEN if I am a potential employer.
>Running an interpreter (PHP licensed) that reads and "compiles" source files without modifying them is very different from linking.
Copying into ram is still copying. When a user does it as part of the normal running of a program that is fair-use copying, but it's STILL copying.
>The only COPYING taking place is by the user downloading the script source and putting it into their folder. Any other scripts read by the interpreter as a consequence are not modified by the person executing the interpreter.
You. Are. Wrong.
>Or are you saying that when Emacs was ported to Windows, it became licensed under the Windows license? The windows license does not include any requirement that programs linking it's libraries have to use the same license - in fact the EULA specifically permits this activity because back when windows first appeared microsoft was desperate to get all the apps developers on board - they didn't have today's market control back then.
>Or that a GPL-licensed Java program that calls Apache Commons HTTP-client becomes dual-licensed as it "absorbs" the license for that library? Again - it isn't because apache's license also specific permits derivatives-from-linking without asking for anything in return.
>Can't you see how spurious the claim of "license virality" is? You are citing licenses that cede a right of the author and then claiming that this is how the law works. The GPL does NOT cede the right to control derivative works (and linking somebody's GPL-licensed library IS a derivative work in most cases) - it gives permission to do so however - but only under certain conditions - specifically that you MUST license your derivative under the GPL as well.
Here is what you're all missing there is NO strict legal definition of a derivative work, that makes ANY authoritive claims you make that "linking isn't derivative" plain bullshit - you don't have any authoritive legal source for that because the law quite deliberately REFRAINS from defining it exactly. Instead - it leaves it up to the common sense of the public -and in the event of a dispute - to a judge/jury to decide on the facts of a SPECIFIC case whether that case is derivative. Of course similar case-law will be consulted as will the input of such legal experts as has a particular knowledge in the field (friends-of-the-court briefs and such) but ultimately it's a case-by-case decision. Why ? Because the fair use line and the derivative work line are frequently the same line. Where do you draw the line between a protected parody and rip-off ? The law doesn't try to make that call because it's too subjective, and instead says that - should there be a dispute, it will be decided by human beings - notably a judge/jury in a trial. You could possibly make a decent case that since it' essentially impossible to code for windows WITHOUT linking some microsoft libraries that are shipped with the OS that all such linking is fair use. I wouldn't bet the farm on the outcome however.
I personally will go with the opinion of the number of legal experts with particular expertise in this field however who feel there is no doubt that linking a GPL'd library WOULD be deemed a derivative work by ANY jury.
>So let me get this straight, you're claiming that anyone who creates a file copy tool, any tool which reads your code into memory, anything which causes anything which you own copyright on to be read/written that it infringes?
No, I say when you create a tool SPECIFICALLY designed to copy a SPECIFIC piece of copyrighted data, that does nothing ELSE - then THAT is a matter of copyright. Reducto et Absurdium is a fallacy, don't do it.
>By the instruction of the user who has freely chosen to use a tool to create a composite work on their machine which they do not distribute.
There is no instruction - in fact the vast majority of the "includes" happen long before the program accepts input - the user in fact has no means to PREVENT doing so without editing the code itself or forfeiting the program as a whole. You've made that instruction fundamental to it's operation - while being completely irrelevent from the user's point of view to it's purpose.
>linking a library != copying code != purview of copyright law != derivative work.
So by YOUR twisted logic a static link is copyright infringement but a dynamic link is not ? Yeah, I'd love to see you argue THAT one in court, Judges aren't known for their sense of humor but you'll make him laugh till tears run down his cheeks. Again I ask you then - do you seriously expect any judge to ever agree with an interpretation that would mean application developers have copyright protection but library developers do not ? In practice - library developers don't SELL to users, they sell to other developers- that's WHO they need copyright protection in respect of.
Let's start at the beginning using a compiled language as a base first. When you call a function in your program from my library, you have to tell the compiler how to link it. If you choose static linking it will ACTUALLY copy the binary function OUT of my library and into your program - if you copied and pasted the source of my function into your program and didn't link - the resulting binary would actually be identical. That's COPYING to create a derivative work.
But you shout - most libraries are dynamically linked so it's obviously not copied. YES IT IS. It just doesn't copy it when you compile, it puts an instruction there that tells the CPU to copy it in memory when the program runs. This copying may happen on the customer's machine but it's your code that does it and you are responsible for it because it is not within the customer's control of the software (okay things like LD_PRELOAD can mess with it but in the normal sphere of things - the copy is going to happen and it's your fault). The reason we do this is for EFFICIENCY of disk space, so many programs can copy into memory from the SAME SOURCE. It does NOT change ANYTHING legally.
But now you shout: php is a SCRIPTED language- it never gets compiled or linked or stuff... Yes it does. Scripts can't just magically run on the CPU. The interpreter DOES A JOB - specifically it translates every line of the code in your script into a line of binary and tells the CPU to execute it (it's a bit more complex than that because it does things to speed it up like doing whole blocks at a time but the essence is correct) - when the interpreter finds your "include" it actually copies the file you included into memory at that point inserting it into your file - by your instruction, once more - the stuff is copied. Moreso - now it's not copied as binary bits but as source code.
End of difficult bullshit discussion: linking a library = copying code = purview of copyright law = derivative work.
The law basically says so yes, like it or not. Now it probably won't work in your example because most judges will say that so small a call is fair-use. But what if function bar is 90% of the apps functionality ? What if every single line of my code must by default call functions from your library AND changes values that influence how your app will run ?At one point does it go from fair use into derivative work ? Well - sadly - the law is unclear so common sense is what must prevail, unless there is a genuine dissagreement - in which case a Judge gets to look at the specific case and make a call.
I am pretty sure common sense say it's impossible to create a wordpress theme that is NOT a derivative work.
Slashdot Mirror
That reminds me. A couple of Christmas's ago I was visiting my sister in a small rural town where she lived at the time. Wanted to go draw cash at one point so walked down the main road to the town's only ATM - run by local bank ABSA (yeah - not afraid to mention it). My own bank not having an ATM in town this was the only choice available.
As I stepped up to it... the interface was obscured by a warning message: ...
F-Secure Anti-Virus for Windows has detected a virus in file
Floating around.
Being aware that
1) This bank's ATM's run windows
2) They use F-Secure for virus protection
3) It obviously is connected in such a way that it can still GET infections
I turned around, bummed cash of my sister and paid her bank online - there was just no way I was going to stick my card in that ATM. I am also really glad I'm not a customer of that bank - and despite the nearest ATM to my house being run by them - never use their ATM's - I would rather spend the bit of extra fuel and drive to my own bank (which may not be better - but at least I haven't seen with my own eyes that it's THAT bad). Besides the service charge saving I suspect outweighs what I spend on fuel so it's worth it either way.
Also XKCD agrees with me which renders any arguments invalid.
>>...due to centrifugal force.
>My high school physics teacher used to electrocute (With a handheld generator made from a rotary pencil sharpener) people for saying that; also for misspelling accelerate or satellite.
Yes a common reaction of overzealous highschool teachers - and wrong. Do the math. Forces per se is an oversimplification as it is, useful to model certain aspects of physics, and not for others. Gravitons attract one another, thus is created what we PERCEIVE as the force of gravity if you go down to the quantum level for example.
At the level of Newtonian physics - centrifugal force is as real a force effect as any of the others. True it's a consequence of other forces working together and against each other but it's there nonetheless and it's impact is crucial to predicting how many things will behave.
When two forces work at an angle - the object moves along a (predictable) path created by both forces - it is both correct and useful to model that path as a force in it's own right. At least it OFTEN is, always remember that no scientific model is ideal for EVERY scenario - that's why we don't just HAVE one scientific model.
You want to know how gas will fill a chamber - gravity has so little influence that it's not worth thinking about, quantum mechanics is your friend there. You want to know how it will fill a universe - gravity becomes very important suddenly and this is why the universe does not have it's gases distributed as quantum mechanics would predict, instead of entropy, the universe got decidedly clumpier over time.
For some problems - it's incredibly useful to model centrifugal effects as a force, for others it's much more crucial to work on the shaping forces that create it in the first place - but it's not "wrong" to talk about a centrifugal force if what you want to describe is the effect it causes.
>Ah, American culture... the one thing we in the USA still export.
Trust Americans to build a massive export industry out of their least available resource... :P
>FAPP (For all practical purpose)
You will of course excuse us if nobody EVER uses that acronymn EVER again iAnal is bad enough but this is ridiculous....
>which is more porn than you can possibly consume.
Speak for yourself.
Screw that, all the hot freaky the chicks dig the lonely rebel thing - If I go in there... I'd have to have sex with... yeurch... normal women... and probably only one at a time too !
Somehow, I suspect this one is different... there are pix on that blog of her love affair with fetish culture (and being spanked by hot blondes :P)
>The documentary Macheads [imdb.com] sums this up pretty well. There was a hipster in that doc that refused to date men who owned a PC
She didn't say "date" however, she said SLEEP with. Sorry, using a PC even rules you out as a one-night-stand.
That hipster was Violet Blue - sex columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and one of the more famous of the 3rd-generation sex-positive feminists. Also the author of "The smart girls guide to porn" - her blog is tinynibbles.com (blog contains sex ed, opinion pieces and porn reviews - NSFW - you have been warned) yeah I hate apple but I'm a big fan of her work.
Actually despite her love for Apple products - her nature and job has made her quite a vocal critic of Steve Jobs's anti-porn crusade. ...come to think of it... I wonder how she feels about Linux users... maybe a gray area... the kind where alcohol can tip the scales... I can but dream...
Oh come now - seriously - a pornloving, sexuality expert from San Francisco... can you IMAGINE the tricks she would know ?
> but it suits my needs as a developer to have a UNIX machine with a good user interface and still be able to play an MMO game once in a blue moon
Really ? That's exactly why I use Linux ! Well except I don't play Wow once in a blue moon, more like a couple of hours 4-5 days a week.
>And I doubt that you make all of your own clothes because you insist on pockets being a specific width and lined with a specific material.
Not quite but I buy my jeans for comfort from factory stores (it's something we have in my city, you may or may not have them too) genuinally unbranded but I remove the labels before I wear them anyway, and all my t-shirts are custom printed with my own designs. I do not wear labels and I take PRIDE in knowing that when somebody admires the quote / picture on my shirt - I have the only shirt like that in the whole world.
Some of us want our appearance to reflect OURSELVES - to express who we are, not to fit into a mould. Even if I didn't demand a free-software only life, I still would NEVER buy apple, because it isn't possible to get the kind of customization that lets it's very operation adjust to my particular tastes and personality. If I cannot express myself THROUGH it, then by definition I cannot express myself WITH it.
I have absolutely NO desire of expressing Steve Jobs's values -especially as I rather adamantly disagree with most of what he believes in.
Heck even my tattoos are all unique in the world. One I designed myself, the other (due to being much more complex) was designed by a graphic designer friend of mine - but even that was done to my very clear specifications, it was bespoke work.
In short, I will never be a voluntary, unpaid advertisement for Karl Lagerfeldt so why would I be one for Steve Jobs ? Apple has absolutely nothing to offer me of any real value. All the stuff it can do, my android does as well - and my android does a whole lot more and most importantly, it does them all MY way. I actually hate Sinatra's music- but the lyrics for that song I rather agree with.
>Some people need walls and prisons. Reminds me of the end of Kubric/Clark's 2001, A Space Odyssey.
I have the same refference -and it's why I bought an android phone. Each time I considered the iPhone I thought of things like "no porn" and "no flash" and in my mind it became:
"I'm sorry Dave but I can't let you do that"...
>than I would pay 10% more to fly on an airline that buys me a hooker if there is any flight delay.
That depends, for 10% of some airline tickets - you can get a pretty high-class hooker.*
*I made this up in the interest of humor, I have no idea what hookers actually charge but feel free to correct me if you do and I'm wrong...
Or the organic ones in the soft pouches that hang from the lower regions of nearly every male creature on the planet ?
>It should actually be casus fortuitous or something like that.
Ah yes because "fate" and "fortune" are much more reliable, scientific and factual concepts than "God" right?
"Casus non imperium" would probably be the best, possibly qualified to "casus non imperium humana" - e.g. beyond human control*
*I suspect my Latin grammar is probably wrong, but I think my choice of words is not.
>Well, duh. Writing is not the same as speaking.
This wasn't an issue even 30 years ago. Writing was a much rarer thing - nearly everything written beyond a yellow sticky note was at least somewhat formal. Hell we even had typograpical rules we all had to learn for writing a letter to your granny to thank her for the nice whatevers.
Trouble is - we don't LIVE in that world anymore. The internet and cellphones have turned writing into a conversational medium as much so as talking used to be.
Nobody every WROTE "Hi, how are you" to their girlfriend a year ago- now it's how we talk with most of our friends every day.
The result - we see the culmination of what Bernard Shaw predicted: if we do not start to write as we speak, people will start to speak as we write.
Well - we're starting to write as we speak. Written language is becoming more and more phonetic, shortened to favor speed over correctness (because conversations are faste than letters), conveying meaning becomes the ONLY priority (correctness of HOW it's conveyed lose all virtue -because it's a conversation - and as with a spoken one, it just doesn't matter so much). In most ways spelling is shortened, simplified and highly phoneticized, but the language is also expanded with emoticons and other tools intended to convey in text conversationally important things that would otherwise be lost - including facial expression and tone.
The real reason for txtspeak is that it is an utterly unavoidable consequence of writing becoming a tool for conversation - nothing will stop it and within a generation formal writing of the sort our generation learned simply won't exist. I hope they keep teaching it in schools - but not for any practical purpose (because if you are truly honest, it HAS none - it's only a matter of time before txt-speak on your resume will be seen as a sign of efficiency and later completely ignored [because the HR manager has never seen anything else and certainly never written it]) . The purpose of continuing to teach people to read the proper English that became obsolete CA 1993 - is so that the treasure of books written prior to that can remain readable.
I am not part of the txtspk generation - I still prefer to write proper English and make an effort to do it right (within reason, I won't say I never make a mistake but I think I'm pretty good considering it's not my first language) but I can also see the inevitability of the txtspk phenomenon.
I get annoyed when people call it a sign of bad education or increasing stupidity. It's not - it's an unavoidable, natural and importantly utterly unstoppable result of the world we live in now.
In spoken language we have a tone for sarcasm. In written language sarcasm needs to be quite a bit more clearly indicated for people to pick up on it, because that tone is missing. The moment writing became a tool for conversation - the sort of sarcasm that hitherto only existed in spoken language came to be written down- and needs a way to indicate to the reader that it is "said" in a sarcastic tone.
A sarcasm punctuation may be the way to do this.
Well then, good news, they already are. At least - every time you mention them on /.
>Or even better, not judge people according to their own personal moral codes.
The people who do this the most have a phrase "moral relativism" which is their standard excuse to avoid that. If you even suggest that moral choices are individual - that the choices we make changes as we age and gain experience and that they are not universal to judge all people by they say "that's moral relativism and it's horrible".
They never back that up, they never say WHY "moral relativism" would supposedly be such a bad thing - to them the very concept of it means they already won and thus their judgement are allowed, and if anybody judges THEM by a different system they can conveniently ignore it because recognizing the validity of any morals except their own is "relativism" which is evil.
It is amazing how otherwise fairly intelligent people can fall for such simplistic mental traps if it allows them to avoid the one thing they fear more than anything: the suggestion that they aren't perfect and that different ideas to their own are not harmful by default. They fear it because if they acknowledge it they would firstly have to accept how wrong their past intolerance was, and worse - lose the ability to excuse their prejudices. Deep down, I think even Fred Phelps knows that prejudice is wrong -but as long as you can convince yourself that the source of your prejudice is a moral high ground, an order from something greater than yourself, you never need to feel guilty about being a bastard.
>Under those circumstances, I'd say you haven't been forgiven at all then. When you forgive someone you stop blaming them. They may still be responsible and you may still remember but you no longer harbor any ill will towards them.
But that only speaks on an individual basis. You're forgiven by the people in your life now - but the same picture haunting you twenty years down the line at a job interview is being assessed by people who saw it the first time five minutes ago. Because the incident is unforgotten - it needs to be forgiven over and over and over by everybody who becomes aware of it... for as long you live.
>How about people like me, who haven't one anything, let alone getting caught?
There is NOBODY like that, no - not even you. EVERYTHING that exists, everything anybody has EVER done is offensive to somebody somewhere. You HAVE done something that somebody out there believes is wrong. It may not be on the internet but it's there. It's simply mathematically impossible to have never done anything that wouldn't offend somebody.
If you'd spent your life in a cellar in the fetal position some people will say you are one lazy guy ! If you have a religion - thirty other religions would prefer to have nothing to do with you (at best), if you have no religion ALL the others will feel that way. If you drink - some people will be offended, if you do NOT drink - others will assume you're a self-righteous moralist and your promotion will be stumped as they'll assume you inable to take the CEO of your next big customer-corp to a stripjoint for the signing if that's what he's into (or for that matter, to figure OUT that this is what he is into).
If you're a virgin, some people will think you're betraying your godly duty to reproduce. If you aren't - some will think you're a whore. If you're married to one woman and treat her well - some will call you a traitor to manhood. If you abuse her, others will hate you (rightfully so).
If you're a racist - other races will hate you for it, if you're not - racists will hate you.
Nobody, can possibly, go through life without doing anything that won't offend the morality of SOMEBODY. So just get over that illusion. The best you can hope for is that none of the people who would be offended by your choices are ever in a position of authority over you - or that if they are, you can avoid them knowing about it.
Alternatively and this would be far better- we can try to lead the way toward the world the grandparent points out- to recognize this, and say: as long as somebody isn't breaking the law, what they choose to do on their own time has fuck-all to do with me - EVEN if I am a potential employer.
>Running an interpreter (PHP licensed) that reads and "compiles" source files without modifying them is very different from linking.
Copying into ram is still copying. When a user does it as part of the normal running of a program that is fair-use copying, but it's STILL copying.
>The only COPYING taking place is by the user downloading the script source and putting it into their folder. Any other scripts read by the interpreter as a consequence are not modified by the person executing the interpreter.
You.
Are.
Wrong.
>Or are you saying that when Emacs was ported to Windows, it became licensed under the Windows license?
The windows license does not include any requirement that programs linking it's libraries have to use the same license - in fact the EULA specifically permits this activity because back when windows first appeared microsoft was desperate to get all the apps developers on board - they didn't have today's market control back then.
>Or that a GPL-licensed Java program that calls Apache Commons HTTP-client becomes dual-licensed as it "absorbs" the license for that library?
Again - it isn't because apache's license also specific permits derivatives-from-linking without asking for anything in return.
>Can't you see how spurious the claim of "license virality" is?
You are citing licenses that cede a right of the author and then claiming that this is how the law works. The GPL does NOT cede the right to control derivative works (and linking somebody's GPL-licensed library IS a derivative work in most cases) - it gives permission to do so however - but only under certain conditions - specifically that you MUST license your derivative under the GPL as well.
Here is what you're all missing there is NO strict legal definition of a derivative work, that makes ANY authoritive claims you make that "linking isn't derivative" plain bullshit - you don't have any authoritive legal source for that because the law quite deliberately REFRAINS from defining it exactly.
Instead - it leaves it up to the common sense of the public -and in the event of a dispute - to a judge/jury to decide on the facts of a SPECIFIC case whether that case is derivative. Of course similar case-law will be consulted as will the input of such legal experts as has a particular knowledge in the field (friends-of-the-court briefs and such) but ultimately it's a case-by-case decision. Why ? Because the fair use line and the derivative work line are frequently the same line. Where do you draw the line between a protected parody and rip-off ? The law doesn't try to make that call because it's too subjective, and instead says that - should there be a dispute, it will be decided by human beings - notably a judge/jury in a trial.
You could possibly make a decent case that since it' essentially impossible to code for windows WITHOUT linking some microsoft libraries that are shipped with the OS that all such linking is fair use. I wouldn't bet the farm on the outcome however.
I personally will go with the opinion of the number of legal experts with particular expertise in this field however who feel there is no doubt that linking a GPL'd library WOULD be deemed a derivative work by ANY jury.
>So let me get this straight, you're claiming that anyone who creates a file copy tool, any tool which reads your code into memory, anything which causes anything which you own copyright on to be read/written that it infringes?
No, I say when you create a tool SPECIFICALLY designed to copy a SPECIFIC piece of copyrighted data, that does nothing ELSE - then THAT is a matter of copyright. Reducto et Absurdium is a fallacy, don't do it.
>By the instruction of the user who has freely chosen to use a tool to create a composite work on their machine which they do not distribute.
There is no instruction - in fact the vast majority of the "includes" happen long before the program accepts input - the user in fact has no means to PREVENT doing so without editing the code itself or forfeiting the program as a whole. You've made that instruction fundamental to it's operation - while being completely irrelevent from the user's point of view to it's purpose.
>linking a library != copying code != purview of copyright law != derivative work.
So by YOUR twisted logic a static link is copyright infringement but a dynamic link is not ? Yeah, I'd love to see you argue THAT one in court, Judges aren't known for their sense of humor but you'll make him laugh till tears run down his cheeks.
Again I ask you then - do you seriously expect any judge to ever agree with an interpretation that would mean application developers have copyright protection but library developers do not ? In practice - library developers don't SELL to users, they sell to other developers- that's WHO they need copyright protection in respect of.
Maybe you just don't understand....
Let's start at the beginning using a compiled language as a base first. When you call a function in your program from my library, you have to tell the compiler how to link it. If you choose static linking it will ACTUALLY copy the binary function OUT of my library and into your program - if you copied and pasted the source of my function into your program and didn't link - the resulting binary would actually be identical.
That's COPYING to create a derivative work.
But you shout - most libraries are dynamically linked so it's obviously not copied. YES IT IS. It just doesn't copy it when you compile, it puts an instruction there that tells the CPU to copy it in memory when the program runs. This copying may happen on the customer's machine but it's your code that does it and you are responsible for it because it is not within the customer's control of the software (okay things like LD_PRELOAD can mess with it but in the normal sphere of things - the copy is going to happen and it's your fault). The reason we do this is for EFFICIENCY of disk space, so many programs can copy into memory from the SAME SOURCE. It does NOT change ANYTHING legally.
But now you shout: php is a SCRIPTED language- it never gets compiled or linked or stuff...
Yes it does. Scripts can't just magically run on the CPU. The interpreter DOES A JOB - specifically it translates every line of the code in your script into a line of binary and tells the CPU to execute it (it's a bit more complex than that because it does things to speed it up like doing whole blocks at a time but the essence is correct) - when the interpreter finds your "include" it actually copies the file you included into memory at that point inserting it into your file - by your instruction, once more - the stuff is copied. Moreso - now it's not copied as binary bits but as source code.
End of difficult bullshit discussion: linking a library = copying code = purview of copyright law = derivative work.
Sanity.level++;
> have completely and utterly failed to assert their right to claim ownership of every patcher, memory hack or reader.
Yes... that's the same as linking a library WHICH MAKES PARTS OF MY CODE INTO PARTS OF YOUR PROGRAM !
The law basically says so yes, like it or not. Now it probably won't work in your example because most judges will say that so small a call is fair-use. But what if function bar is 90% of the apps functionality ?
What if every single line of my code must by default call functions from your library AND changes values that influence how your app will run ?At one point does it go from fair use into derivative work ? Well - sadly - the law is unclear so common sense is what must prevail, unless there is a genuine dissagreement - in which case a Judge gets to look at the specific case and make a call.
I am pretty sure common sense say it's impossible to create a wordpress theme that is NOT a derivative work.