If they were blocking it for employees, that would be one thing. They were blocking the site on the guest network for the capitol, which is intended for public use.
Absolutely. And I think that because of that, they have stepped in some deep legal liability.
... with Shuttleworth is that they didn't like a bossy n00b with no qualifications, who bought his way into the scene instead of earning their respect by contributing any work to the community as everybody else from Torvalds forward has had to do, to have any say in any projects in GNU/Linux and other F/OSS projects.
That is so weird.
However, the real turning point in Ubuntu/ Canonical policy appears to have been Shuttleworth's failure to convince other FOSS projects to coordinate their release cycles.
Shuttleworth first made the case in December 2006 that "it would be nice at the beginning of an Ubuntu release cycle to have a really confident picture of which projects will produce stable releases during those few months when we can incorporate new upstream versions. It would be even better if, during the release cycle, we knew immediately if there was a *change* in what was going to be released."
Dude, sure "it would be nice," for you, but that just isn't the way it works. Deal with it. Now, if you want to provide tools that facilitate greater coordination, that's kewl, but you just don't barge into an existing community which has its own norms and customs, and tell them how they must change. You can't expect people to change our ways for your convenience until you provide something in exchange of greater value than the inconvenience you with to impose.
Brutal trauma can have cumulative effects. I appreciate that you're being humorous and not really making sweeping generalizations, but still...
In my completely objective all encompassing experience:) I've had more computers just stop working one day for no apparent reason than because of the brutal trauma I tend to give them.
... I have to say, just because it didn't break immediately doesn't mean the abuse isn't what broke it.
Anyway, my point is computers are much sturdier than people think... I once had a computer with a hard drive that had a cracked case. It was a tower and stopped booting up. I found that if I laid it on it's side, turned it on, and then stood it upright after it started booting it worked fine. My assumption was that upright, everything in the HDD didn't line up right. On it's side it did. I imagine that the gyroscopic nature of the platters in the hard drives kept them in place while I stood it upright again.
I would consider that more a tribute to your ingenuity and knowledge of the Newtonian mechanics involved, than evidence that the hardware itself is "much sturdier than people think." An expert auto mechanic can squeeze a couple 10,000 more miles out of a rickety old jalopy. That doesn't mean the vehicle is now sturdier than previously believed. It just means some mechanics are better than others.
Yeah, you can get more usage out of the same hardware than most people think is possible, but it's because of your skill, not because of the high quality of the hardware. That really is carelessly mass-produced by Chinese slave labor. The tip of the hat rightfully goes to you, not to WD, Seagate, Maxtor or whatever.
Y'know, in case anybody here is interested in the Science and not just bitching that the science isn't already delivered to you. No, no, don't Google it, I can just fetch it for you, lazy bastards.
Knowable, documented facts include:
1. the isotope ratio of BP's methane is distinguishable - "the Macondo methane isotopically unique compared to methane from other nearby reservoirs and for the Gulf in general: it has a 12C to 13C ratio of about -60. The oil is -27. So we can track methane into the microorganisms that consume -- and then into the organisms that consume those microbes -- by monitoring the carbon isotope composition. These measurements take some time but we are doing this to track the path of methane through the system."
2. the disputes of Joye's findings, including those being parroted here, are wholly unscientific, corporatist propaganda - "BP and NOAA are collaborating on the sediment sampling and BP sampled some of the same sites we sampled and confirmed our results (these data are in the OSAT report). We have sampled at different places and different times and have used different techniques. For example, the flocculent oil-containing layer we discovered would never be sampled with a box cover, it would literally be blown away by the pressure wave of the instrument. If the multiple corer is not lowered slow enough, the layer could be disrupted or destroyed. I only know how we sampled and we were using a multiple corer and approaching the bottom at a very slow speed so as not to disturb the sediment."
[Comment From Steve ]
Methane has been the "hidden" impact of the spill. Rarely, if ever has it been mentioned in media reports. Is there any way to measure the long term impact of the methane released into the Gulf?
11:21
Mandy Joye: Steve-I agree that methane has received nearly enough attention. We can measure it's long term impact because it has a unique signature--the Macondo methane isotopically unique compared to methane from other nearby reservoirs and for the Gulf in general: it has a 12C to 13C ratio of about -60. The oil is -27. So we can track methane into the microorganisms that consume -- and then into the organisms that consume those microbes -- by monitoring the carbon isotope composition. These measurements take some time but we are doing this to track the path of methane through the system.
You chose to buy that Chevy Tahoe, asshole, in spite of the freely available and well-documented facts of global warming and peak oil. Your willful ignorance is not my responsibility. Fuck off.
Hank Paulson made his "sky is falling" extortion demands on 15 September 2008.
President Obama wasn't even elected until November 4 2008, and inaugurated 20 January 2009.
And in case you want to blame that crash on the "Democratic" Congress, it was caused by CDOs & CDSs, bogus commodities made possible by deregulations penned by Republicans, specifically the Gramm-Leech-Bliley Act and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Phil Gramm, whose wife Wendy made millions off the corrupt, dishonest speculative schemes he legalized, was primary author of both.
Not only are there perfectly good substitutes, there are superior competitors which just haven't acquired the favor of Republican politicians and the accompanying tens of billions of dollars of annual subsidies that come.
There is a little bit of truth in the view from both sides no doubt but either way, for BP to say, "no mas" or for her/they to suggest the Gulf will become a giant dead zone is just over the top.
Don't be an idiot! Who has $BILLIONS to lose? BP. Whose life will be harder because of what she's saying? Samantha Joye. Her only corrupt motivation would be to shut up and pretend BP is not lying. That would be more convenient for her.
I'll grant you that MightyMartian referenced some common stereotypes of conservatives that aren't optimally conducive to bridging cultural and political barriers. But on the relevant facts, the corruption is all corporate. Al Gore has pediatric oral Bidenitis, sure, but what matters is influence on government policy and no environmentalist has the power and financial resources to bribe the tens of billions of dollars out of Congress, which the oil industry receives every year.
The only way environmentalists ever get any policy outcomes to go our way is by being absolutely right, having all the science on our side. And we have.
You seem to have missed the truth that 2 judges have ruled that the federal health care reform law in unconstitutional while 2 have ruled that it is constitutional
It would still be up to the Tolkien estate to agree that it's tasteful and let it happen; I don't agree that you "have every right to write that story." I'm just guessing you'd be more likely to obtain permission to publish that story because it seems not to be defamatory. Based on what you've told me so far.
Say I write a story about a young JRR Tolkien meeting Mark Twain and HG Wells. They spend a day playing poker, discussing philosophy, writing and language.
Now, that would fall under what?
I would classify that as a positive portrayal. It evokes memories of Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character Moriarty on Star Trek the Next Generation, ways that I would like for somebody important to me to be portrayed.
Of course, I have no creative writing skills...
Ha! So, we have that in common even though we don't agree 100% on what rights we have to write about things we both do not even want to write about anyway.
Considering the simultaneous growth of the stock market, increasing concentration of wealth and increasing poverty and unemployment, particularly the long-term unemployed since Day One of the Bush, Jr. administration, I'd be shocked if a front or two hadn't opened against small IT outfits, in this ongoing class war initiated by the over-privileged directors of global corporations.
The intent is clearly to make stuff up about Tolkien and give the impression that at least some of it is "historical."
I don't see where you get that from. Obviously, some of what the book includes will be historical; there'd be no point including Tolkien as a character if the character didn't have some things in common with the real Tolkien.
Exactly!
But I don't see anything about the book that depends on the reader believing any of the specific events narrated in the book are real. In most historical fiction, the general setting is real, but the specific events (with the occasional exception of particularly famous historical events) in the work are not, so I think most readers of this novel would assume the same is true in this case.
From the article, a primary stated purpose of Hilliard's pseudo-biography of Tolkien is "literary criticism." So please explain, how do you believe one could critique something as personal as another's life work -- and that is exactly what Tolkien's novels were -- not in the proper format for literary critique, which is an essay, but in a "fictional" work in which "the general setting is real, but the specific events (with the occasional exception of particularly famous historical events) in the work are not"?
Even supposing for the sake of discussion that all "the specific events (with the occasional exception of particularly famous historical events) in the work are not" real, "only" allegorical, for those fictional, "only" allegorical events to add up to "literary criticism" -- which is Hilliard's own claim, verbatim from the article! -- they would have to be quite personal allegories, wouldn't you say?
Anyway, free speech applies to exploitative assholes as well as nice people.
Of course, you don't lose your freedom of speech just for being an exploitative asshole!
But although Constitutional rights are broad, they are not absolute and the right to free speech is broadest when it applies to political speech about the government. Skating on the edge of one's free speech rights for commercial gain is not only less ethical than making political statements that the powers that be would prefer not to hear, it's more tenuous legally. If the Founders were so incompetent at ethics and law that they gave the same legal protections to Courtney Love as to Julian Assange, we'd be wrong to respect them. But they didn't do that.
None of Tolkien's fictional characters existed in real life. They were, in fact, all fictional. Hilliard's "fictional" Tolkien is not in fact fictional and that is the root of the whole problem. Because Hilliard's "fictional" Tolkien is not in fact fictional, what he writes about "fictional" (but not truly entirely fictional) Tolkien will not be just allegory, as every fictional character and event in Tolkien's works were allegorical. Hilliard's "historical fiction" is inevitably, to some significant degree, an assertion of fact. And in my opinion, the ambiguity about what is "historical" and what is "fiction" makes it worse, not better for Hilliard's case, and for so-called "historical fiction" generally.
Why? Why isn't fiction a legitimate way to explore real issues and put forward a critique?
Actual, bona fide fiction is legitimate for that purpose and I never said it isn't. What I said is that fictions about the person of the author is not a legitimate means of critiquing specific literary works which is exactly the stated purpose of "Mirkwood."
From the article: "'Mirkwood' is portrayed as both a piece of fiction as well as an exercise in 'literary criticism.'" I say, pick one. Write a piece of fiction, or write lit crit, not both. And of course, I just mean not both at the same time, not in the same publication.
Why do you need a straw man to disagree with me? Because I'm right and you're wrong.
Should Tolkein have written an essay critiquing historical developments since the middle ages, rather than writing the Lord of the Rings?
None of Tolkien's fictional characters existed in real life. Unless you know of somebody who bears a striking resemblance to, say, Gollum or another unfavorably portrayed character from Tolkien's novels, the equivalence you're trying to claim is just nonsense.
It's portrayed as nothing but hookers and junkies and murderers, and no decent people in the whole city but a few cops. Was Las Vegas slandered? Pfffft. (Don't ask the mayor of LV. I recall him whining not terribly long ago about the way his town is portrayed in Hollywood. It was pathetic, and beside the point except that it was his ridiculous complaint that gave me the idea for this analogy.)
Most fiction involves real places, and almost all involves a real species, i.e., human beings.
Neither places nor the abstract concept "species" have any feelings to hurt. Las Vegas per se doesn't care how CSI portrays it, even if the mayor and the Tourism Board do care.
It's only lying if you say things that are untrue with the intent that someone reading them believes them to be true...
I'm with you to there.
... and that will not be true of anything which specifically calls itself "fiction."
Stephen Hilliard is going to court in an attempt to release "Mirkwood, A Novel About J.R.R. Tolkien," to be published by Cruel Rune. The 450-page book is described as taking place from 1970 through near-present day in the United States and features six characters -- five fictional and Tolkien himself.
Obviously, the part that's "historical" is not the five characters who are totally made up. The intent is clearly to make stuff up about Tolkien and give the impression that at least some of it is "historical."
... or didn't want to notice in context. You nailed it, in five or six words (depending how we count contractions). Rambo was neither conceived nor produced in a way that it could ever be taken as an account of real events by any sane person. A "historical fiction" on the contrary, especially one focused on one person, invites the reader to assume that the events say something relevant and true about that person's real character. Otherwise, the author would have told his story using all fictional characters, not use one real one but make up all the rest.
If, as Hilliard claims, his work of fiction is "an exercise in 'literary criticism'" then the fictional events must be intended to say something about Tolkien the man, specifically about his character -- something which Hilliard believes is real and true and significant about Tolkien's character or saying it wouldn't amount to critiquing Tolkien's works, it would just be telling a yarn. And if any of what Hilliard is saying is insulting then that is getting awfully close to the definition of slander: untrue, insulting claims about a person in print.
"Hilliard hints that the book will take issue with the lack of female characters in Tolkien's works, including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings series."
The right way to do that is in an essay, actually critiquing "the (perceived) lack of female characters in Tolkien's works" not by making things up about the person.
Slashdot Mirror
Man I tried to rational but I ended up divided.
Wait until you deal with complex issues, see what happens then.
Yeah, for reals, right?
If they were blocking it for employees, that would be one thing. They were blocking the site on the guest network for the capitol, which is intended for public use.
Absolutely. And I think that because of that, they have stepped in some deep legal liability.
That is so weird.
However, the real turning point in Ubuntu/ Canonical policy appears to have been Shuttleworth's failure to convince other FOSS projects to coordinate their release cycles.
Shuttleworth first made the case in December 2006 that "it would be nice at the beginning of an Ubuntu release cycle to have a really confident picture of which projects will produce stable releases during those few months when we can incorporate new upstream versions. It would be even better if, during the release cycle, we knew immediately if there was a *change* in what was going to be released."
Dude, sure "it would be nice," for you, but that just isn't the way it works. Deal with it. Now, if you want to provide tools that facilitate greater coordination, that's kewl, but you just don't barge into an existing community which has its own norms and customs, and tell them how they must change. You can't expect people to change our ways for your convenience until you provide something in exchange of greater value than the inconvenience you with to impose.
In my completely objective all encompassing experience :) I've had more computers just stop working one day for no apparent reason than because of the brutal trauma I tend to give them.
... I have to say, just because it didn't break immediately doesn't mean the abuse isn't what broke it.
Anyway, my point is computers are much sturdier than people think... I once had a computer with a hard drive that had a cracked case. It was a tower and stopped booting up. I found that if I laid it on it's side, turned it on, and then stood it upright after it started booting it worked fine. My assumption was that upright, everything in the HDD didn't line up right. On it's side it did. I imagine that the gyroscopic nature of the platters in the hard drives kept them in place while I stood it upright again.
I would consider that more a tribute to your ingenuity and knowledge of the Newtonian mechanics involved, than evidence that the hardware itself is "much sturdier than people think." An expert auto mechanic can squeeze a couple 10,000 more miles out of a rickety old jalopy. That doesn't mean the vehicle is now sturdier than previously believed. It just means some mechanics are better than others.
Yeah, you can get more usage out of the same hardware than most people think is possible, but it's because of your skill, not because of the high quality of the hardware. That really is carelessly mass-produced by Chinese slave labor. The tip of the hat rightfully goes to you, not to WD, Seagate, Maxtor or whatever.
Y'know, in case anybody here is interested in the Science and not just bitching that the science isn't already delivered to you. No, no, don't Google it, I can just fetch it for you, lazy bastards.
Knowable, documented facts include:
[Comment From Steve ] Methane has been the "hidden" impact of the spill. Rarely, if ever has it been mentioned in media reports. Is there any way to measure the long term impact of the methane released into the Gulf?
11:21
Mandy Joye: Steve-I agree that methane has received nearly enough attention. We can measure it's long term impact because it has a unique signature--the Macondo methane isotopically unique compared to methane from other nearby reservoirs and for the Gulf in general: it has a 12C to 13C ratio of about -60. The oil is -27. So we can track methane into the microorganisms that consume -- and then into the organisms that consume those microbes -- by monitoring the carbon isotope composition. These measurements take some time but we are doing this to track the path of methane through the system.
SCIENCE: It works, bitches!
You chose to buy that Chevy Tahoe, asshole, in spite of the freely available and well-documented facts of global warming and peak oil. Your willful ignorance is not my responsibility. Fuck off.
Hank Paulson made his "sky is falling" extortion demands on 15 September 2008. President Obama wasn't even elected until November 4 2008, and inaugurated 20 January 2009. And in case you want to blame that crash on the "Democratic" Congress, it was caused by CDOs & CDSs, bogus commodities made possible by deregulations penned by Republicans, specifically the Gramm-Leech-Bliley Act and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Phil Gramm, whose wife Wendy made millions off the corrupt, dishonest speculative schemes he legalized, was primary author of both.
Correct. Why modded down?
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-22-fossil-fuel-subsidies-dwarf-clean-energy-subsidies-obama-wants
Not only are there perfectly good substitutes, there are superior competitors which just haven't acquired the favor of Republican politicians and the accompanying tens of billions of dollars of annual subsidies that come.
There is a little bit of truth in the view from both sides no doubt but either way, for BP to say, "no mas" or for her/they to suggest the Gulf will become a giant dead zone is just over the top.
Don't be an idiot! Who has $BILLIONS to lose? BP. Whose life will be harder because of what she's saying? Samantha Joye. Her only corrupt motivation would be to shut up and pretend BP is not lying. That would be more convenient for her.
I'll grant you that MightyMartian referenced some common stereotypes of conservatives that aren't optimally conducive to bridging cultural and political barriers. But on the relevant facts, the corruption is all corporate. Al Gore has pediatric oral Bidenitis, sure, but what matters is influence on government policy and no environmentalist has the power and financial resources to bribe the tens of billions of dollars out of Congress, which the oil industry receives every year.
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-22-fossil-fuel-subsidies-dwarf-clean-energy-subsidies-obama-wants
The only way environmentalists ever get any policy outcomes to go our way is by being absolutely right, having all the science on our side. And we have.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract
About that 2% or 3%, they're really tenured professors who can't be fired, former scientists turned corporate shills.
http://www.desmogblog.com/lindzen-wipes-hands-clean-of-oil-and-gas
Lindzen has not done respectable work for some years; since he started taking oil and gas money, not coincidentally.
You seem to have missed the truth that 2 judges have ruled that the federal health care reform law in unconstitutional while 2 have ruled that it is constitutional
I know the gp said that shit, not you. I don't bother trying to teach facts to teabaggers. You seem capable of learning and appreciating relevant information though, so here you go. http://www.truth-out.org/bush-appointed-federal-judge-tosses-out-challenge-to-health-reform67476
So, that's totally different.
Say I write a story about a young JRR Tolkien meeting Mark Twain and HG Wells. They spend a day playing poker, discussing philosophy, writing and language.
Now, that would fall under what?
I would classify that as a positive portrayal. It evokes memories of Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character Moriarty on Star Trek the Next Generation, ways that I would like for somebody important to me to be portrayed.
Of course, I have no creative writing skills...
Ha! So, we have that in common even though we don't agree 100% on what rights we have to write about things we both do not even want to write about anyway.
Considering the simultaneous growth of the stock market, increasing concentration of wealth and increasing poverty and unemployment, particularly the long-term unemployed since Day One of the Bush, Jr. administration, I'd be shocked if a front or two hadn't opened against small IT outfits, in this ongoing class war initiated by the over-privileged directors of global corporations.
I didn't mean to be anonymous the first time.
The intent is clearly to make stuff up about Tolkien and give the impression that at least some of it is "historical."
I don't see where you get that from. Obviously, some of what the book includes will be historical; there'd be no point including Tolkien as a character if the character didn't have some things in common with the real Tolkien.
Exactly!
But I don't see anything about the book that depends on the reader believing any of the specific events narrated in the book are real. In most historical fiction, the general setting is real, but the specific events (with the occasional exception of particularly famous historical events) in the work are not, so I think most readers of this novel would assume the same is true in this case.
From the article, a primary stated purpose of Hilliard's pseudo-biography of Tolkien is "literary criticism." So please explain, how do you believe one could critique something as personal as another's life work -- and that is exactly what Tolkien's novels were -- not in the proper format for literary critique, which is an essay, but in a "fictional" work in which "the general setting is real, but the specific events (with the occasional exception of particularly famous historical events) in the work are not"?
Even supposing for the sake of discussion that all "the specific events (with the occasional exception of particularly famous historical events) in the work are not" real, "only" allegorical, for those fictional, "only" allegorical events to add up to "literary criticism" -- which is Hilliard's own claim, verbatim from the article! -- they would have to be quite personal allegories, wouldn't you say?
Anyway, free speech applies to exploitative assholes as well as nice people.
Of course, you don't lose your freedom of speech just for being an exploitative asshole! But although Constitutional rights are broad, they are not absolute and the right to free speech is broadest when it applies to political speech about the government. Skating on the edge of one's free speech rights for commercial gain is not only less ethical than making political statements that the powers that be would prefer not to hear, it's more tenuous legally. If the Founders were so incompetent at ethics and law that they gave the same legal protections to Courtney Love as to Julian Assange, we'd be wrong to respect them. But they didn't do that.
Why? Why isn't fiction a legitimate way to explore real issues and put forward a critique?
Actual, bona fide fiction is legitimate for that purpose and I never said it isn't. What I said is that fictions about the person of the author is not a legitimate means of critiquing specific literary works which is exactly the stated purpose of "Mirkwood."
From the article: "'Mirkwood' is portrayed as both a piece of fiction as well as an exercise in 'literary criticism.'" I say, pick one. Write a piece of fiction, or write lit crit, not both. And of course, I just mean not both at the same time, not in the same publication.
Why do you need a straw man to disagree with me? Because I'm right and you're wrong.
Should Tolkein have written an essay critiquing historical developments since the middle ages, rather than writing the Lord of the Rings?
None of Tolkien's fictional characters existed in real life. Unless you know of somebody who bears a striking resemblance to, say, Gollum or another unfavorably portrayed character from Tolkien's novels, the equivalence you're trying to claim is just nonsense.
I always get them switched. Thanks for the info, even though I'm sure to forget and make the same mistake again, probably soon.
Very true... Mod parent up, please.... ?
Have you noticed how the Mods with all the positive numbers seem to be around only for the first few dozen comments in any thread? ;)
It doesn't bother me. If my karma was all shiny and immaculate, it would just attract karma thieves anyway.
Most fiction involves real places, and almost all involves a real species, i.e., human beings.
Neither places nor the abstract concept "species" have any feelings to hurt. Las Vegas per se doesn't care how CSI portrays it, even if the mayor and the Tourism Board do care.
It's only lying if you say things that are untrue with the intent that someone reading them believes them to be true ...
I'm with you to there.
... and that will not be true of anything which specifically calls itself "fiction."
But it's not being called simply "fiction" pure and simple like you suggest it is. The author is calling it "historical fiction" and including one character who was a real person and five others who are fictional. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/blogs/thr-esq/jrr-tolkien-estate-threatens-lawsuit-101528
Stephen Hilliard is going to court in an attempt to release "Mirkwood, A Novel About J.R.R. Tolkien," to be published by Cruel Rune. The 450-page book is described as taking place from 1970 through near-present day in the United States and features six characters -- five fictional and Tolkien himself.
Obviously, the part that's "historical" is not the five characters who are totally made up. The intent is clearly to make stuff up about Tolkien and give the impression that at least some of it is "historical."
... that a Moderator didn't want to notice.
... or didn't want to notice in context. You nailed it, in five or six words (depending how we count contractions). Rambo was neither conceived nor produced in a way that it could ever be taken as an account of real events by any sane person. A "historical fiction" on the contrary, especially one focused on one person, invites the reader to assume that the events say something relevant and true about that person's real character. Otherwise, the author would have told his story using all fictional characters, not use one real one but make up all the rest.
"Rambo wasn't a documentary film...."
Not one is pretending it is factual.
If, as Hilliard claims, his work of fiction is "an exercise in 'literary criticism'" then the fictional events must be intended to say something about Tolkien the man, specifically about his character -- something which Hilliard believes is real and true and significant about Tolkien's character or saying it wouldn't amount to critiquing Tolkien's works, it would just be telling a yarn. And if any of what Hilliard is saying is insulting then that is getting awfully close to the definition of slander: untrue, insulting claims about a person in print.
"Hilliard hints that the book will take issue with the lack of female characters in Tolkien's works, including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings series."
The right way to do that is in an essay, actually critiquing "the (perceived) lack of female characters in Tolkien's works" not by making things up about the person.