I'm not sure exactly what you are referring to. The FSF didn't "crack down" on anybody. They simply offered their comments on a publicly-announced issue, the APSL. Apple hasn't violated the law or any FSF licensing agreements. Apple doesn't have any licensing agreements with the FSF that I know of. It is entirely their right to license their code and product in any manner they see fit. The free software community may believe that such a license isn't in the best interest of the community and/or Apple, but that doesn't make the APSL illegal or a licensing violation.
The FSF is trying to draw the distinction between a free (no cost) product or commodity, and free (intangible but distributable) information.
The right to freedom of speech allows you to speak your mind without fear of reprisal as long as you don't use your freedom to harm others (slander, libel, shouting "Fire!", etc.) Due to your right to freedom of speech, you can't be prohibited from passing information to others. Likewise, free software gives you the right to inspect, modify, and redistribute it as long as you don't infringe other's rights (for example, by adding code which you don't have the rights to use). Thus, free software also allows you to pass information to others without restriction.
Who said anything about anarchy? I'll be the first to admit that I don't want to live in one. I like my electrical power and health care highly available, thank you very much.
If I'm incorrect about the number or nationality of the journalists, I apologize. However, while there is propaganda afoot, it isn't what you think.
Think about it: if there is no ethnic cleansing going on, why expel any journalists at all? Certainly a nation at war expels diplomats and ambassadors from other nations it feels threatened by. But if Serbia is the victim of the evil NATO forces, why not allow all of these Western journalists to stay in the country and observe the Serb contention that there are no atrocities taking place? Surely that would be a better policy - if NATO is so clearly in the wrong, then the more journalists from different nations that point out that fact, the better.
Instead, the government of Serbia (not necessarily the Serbian people) is doing everything necessary to show the world that they really are serious about killing a lot of civilians. They have removed any oversight by international news organizations and there are thousands of people fleeing Serbia with stories of atrocities by the "police forces". If the atrocities are being perpetrated by rioters and looters, why is only one ethnic group fleeing Kosovo? If 90% of Kosovo is Albanian, 10% is Serbian, and the province is in a state of anarchy, wouldn't you think the minority Serbians would be the people fleeing over the border into Macedonia and Albania?
The international community can't be expected to ignore the best information available about the situation and merely hope for the best about the Serbian government's intentions. It is exteremely difficult to believe that Serbia is the victim under these circumstances - after all, if it walks like a genocidal totalitarian regime and talks like a genocidal totalitarian regime, it probably is a genocidal totalitarian regime.
Actually, I don't think anyone has seen footage of mass murders, because Serbia expelled all journalists a couple days ago. Reports from the refugees are pretty convincing, however. But I'm sure it's a lot easier for leaders in Russia to dismiss these reports as NATO propaganda if there is no hard evidence being shown on Russian TV.
I'm not happy either with NATO actions against a sovereign country's internal affairs. I can certainly see the point of the other posts about areas of the world that may deserve the same treatment, and I'll be the first to admit that it's hard to justify the US' erratic foreign policy in those cases. I would have been much happier to see the whole thing go through the UN, rather than NATO.
That being said, I can't agree with your view that the US is somehow causing ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. People have been killing each other for centuries in Yugoslavia for the same stupid reasons. I see no reason to believe that the same thing won't continue with or without NATO actions in the area. Blaming the NATO attack for the ongoing massacre in Kosovo makes no more sense than blaming the Allies for the Holocaust during world war II. Totalitarians like Milosevich will act this way whether or not anyone opposes them.
However, members of the international community can bring pressure to bear when dictators act like this. In most cases this pressure is limited to diplomatic action. In this case diplomacy seems to have failed, and some sort of attempt to remove the Serbian ability to attack their own citizens seems justified to me. As I said, I would have much rather seen UN action in this situation. But however unhappy I may be with the course of events leading up to the NATO air strikes, I would be much more disappointed to see the rest of mankind stand idly by during the massacre in Kosovo. Persons and nations of good conscience have a responsibility to stand up for what they think is right, and that is what we are seeing from NATO today.
I had been wondering why I can't stand any of the music on the air today. I find myself listening more to ~oldies stations that also play new tunes by bands that have been around a while, rather than bands that got their contracts through for looking pretty or having interesting hair. All the latest groups sound the same, when you step back and really compare - there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of substance to them.
Can't go wrong with NPR though, they've expanded my musical interests more in four months than a whole four years in college did!
User Friendly is actually published in Canada, so US constitutional law may not make help much. I would hope that Canada has a similar stance with regards to parody and satire being protected, however. Of course, IANAL.
First things first: I agree with you wholeheartedly that community resources like computing time in the library or in school shouldn't be wasted on browsing porn, etc. Of course, they shouldn't be wasted browsing the news, ESPN, or Slashdot either, unless that's an assignment or research project. It's a non-argument that schools and libraries exist to provide information, not entertainment, and when resources are limited, those with legitimate information needs should get preference over mere web browsers.
...but what is inarguable is that children should simply not be allowed to view certain things...
However, I will certainly argue with that. Who decides these "certain things"? I certainly wouldn't be comfortable with your choices for what my kids should see, because I have no idea what your beliefs are - your religious convictions, your morals, even your taste in art. Can't have you deciding things for my kids.
I'll go a step further and say that I may not even be a good person to decide which "certain things" we censor. Why, you ask? For all you know, I might be a militant flat-earther, a Luddite, or some other persuasion of thought that society generally sees as reactionary. Do you want me to decide that your kids shouldn't read about space travel, evolution, or medical information about the human body?
Granted, none of my examples address the examples that you mentioned. Personally, I happen to agree with you that I wouldn't be crazy about my kids learning how to treat women from pornography, or learning about the rest of the world from a Nazi viewpoint. However, I don't see censorship at school as a solution. Why?
Because reading about Nazis or pornography on the Internet doesn't automatically make you a racist or a wife-beater. If my kids are that impressionable, then I've already been making mistakes as a parent for a long time. There's a big difference between finding out that something exists, and wholeheartedly espousing it as a way of life. Most of the porn I've run into on the Internet was more laughable than anything, and certainly hasn't altered the way I treat my wife, for example.
Because by the time someone is 13, like it or not they are going to have to deal with adult issues. If your kid gets to age 13 before he hears an off-color joke that puts down women or another race, then please let me know what school system you're in! Kids are blasted with the same flood of information and impressions as any of us, and you can't really shelter them once they head off for that first day of school. The only thing you can do as a parent is try to explain to them not just how to act but why to act that way, so that they can make their own decisions about porn, etc. Children have to be taught to have an open mind but at the same time be skeptical about what they hear.
Because I as a parent could be wrong in my views. For example, my grandparents held rather, um, conservative views on race and so on. However, their daughter turned out to be the most open-minded person I know, regardless of the way she was raised. If she hadn't been able to learn that there were other viewpoints, she might be a very different person today. Give people enough information and let them draw their own conclusions - the worst thing you can do to a person is to deny them access ideas that let them make their own decisions.
Because, believe it or not, we the community could all be wrong in what we think is right. There are plenty of crazy people out in the world, and 99% of their ideas are worthless. But there are also the brilliant people who can make the mental leap to the next level, and we don't want to ignore them just because they don't fit our conventions. People that can really change things if we cultivate an open mind: Jesus Christ, Galileo Galilei, Mahatma Gandhi, and so forth. All of these people offended the views of the majority at the time, and all of them went on to really shake things up. Now, I personally don't think that skinheads have the right perspective on the world, but I'm not willing to censor 99% of the crazy people and risk not hearing about the next revolutionary idea.
Actually, if you want possible proof of life on Mars, the Viking missions in the 70s already provide some. Viking (I think it was Viking 2) included two tests for life in the Martian soil. Test A reported that there was life, and test B reported that there wasn't. Now, either test could have malfunctioned, so NASA also tested Viking in Antarctica. Antarctica is as close to Martian conditions as you can get on this planet, but there is definitely life (bacteria as well as insects, etc.) in Antarctica. The results? Test A found that there was indeed life in Antarctica, but test B concluded that there was not.
Were the tests invalid? Possibly. I know one of them involved mixing some soil into a growth medium and measuring the opacity of the solution over time, to see if any bacteria grow and cloud the water. I don't remember what the other test was. I don't anyone can really decide for sure until we have a permanent research institution, or several, on Mars.
Since we're being picky... Actually, saying "the hoi polloi" is redundant, because "hoi polloi" means something like "the common people". Therefore, "the hoi polloi" means "the the common people".
Yes, that is my grammar pet peeve. Yes, the . should be within the "", but I find it more readable otherwise. Yes, this whole thread is fairly ridiculous.
i would say that by maintaining a valid telephone number, people have implicitly agreed that it is acceptable for them to receive collect calls from anyone. besides, where is something called "theft of services" illegal, and how is calling someone collect such a thing? it's certainly not _my_ responsibility that you have insufficient resources to pay for the collect calls I made to you. It's the ACLU's job to protect the right to free speech, but I think that they're drawing the wrong metaphor for spam. It isn't the same as preaching your viewpoint on a street corner or buying a billboard, spam is more analogous to the junk fax problem which, not surprisingly, went away after Congress made it more expensive to spam using junk faxes. In short, getting your message out is protected under the Constitution, but you don't have a right to force people to listen or to use their resources to make them listen to you.
No kidding. The Computer City I used to go to had some fairly intelligent folks to talk to. The only good part of their assimilation was that they had a great clearance sale for a week or so.
"This is really important in the industry because Merced will be a powerful enough chip that it starts allowing Intel-based systems to deliver a lot more power than was available before," Croll said.
I guess this beats a powerful chip that doesn't deliver a lot more power than before...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure exactly what you are referring to. The FSF didn't "crack down" on anybody. They simply offered their comments on a publicly-announced issue, the APSL. Apple hasn't violated the law or any FSF licensing agreements. Apple doesn't have any licensing agreements with the FSF that I know of. It is entirely their right to license their code and product in any manner they see fit. The free software community may believe that such a license isn't in the best interest of the community and/or Apple, but that doesn't make the APSL illegal or a licensing violation.
The FSF is trying to draw the distinction between a free (no cost) product or commodity, and free (intangible but distributable) information.
The right to freedom of speech allows you to speak your mind without fear of reprisal as long as you don't use your freedom to harm others (slander, libel, shouting "Fire!", etc.) Due to your right to freedom of speech, you can't be prohibited from passing information to others. Likewise, free software gives you the right to inspect, modify, and redistribute it as long as you don't infringe other's rights (for example, by adding code which you don't have the rights to use). Thus, free software also allows you to pass information to others without restriction.
Who said anything about anarchy? I'll be the first to admit that I don't want to live in one. I like my electrical power and health care highly available, thank you very much.
If I'm incorrect about the number or nationality of the journalists, I apologize. However, while there is propaganda afoot, it isn't what you think.
Think about it: if there is no ethnic cleansing going on, why expel any journalists at all? Certainly a nation at war expels diplomats and ambassadors from other nations it feels threatened by. But if Serbia is the victim of the evil NATO forces, why not allow all of these Western journalists to stay in the country and observe the Serb contention that there are no atrocities taking place? Surely that would be a better policy - if NATO is so clearly in the wrong, then the more journalists from different nations that point out that fact, the better.
Instead, the government of Serbia (not necessarily the Serbian people) is doing everything necessary to show the world that they really are serious about killing a lot of civilians. They have removed any oversight by international news organizations and there are thousands of people fleeing Serbia with stories of atrocities by the "police forces". If the atrocities are being perpetrated by rioters and looters, why is only one ethnic group fleeing Kosovo? If 90% of Kosovo is Albanian, 10% is Serbian, and the province is in a state of anarchy, wouldn't you think the minority Serbians would be the people fleeing over the border into Macedonia and Albania?
The international community can't be expected to ignore the best information available about the situation and merely hope for the best about the Serbian government's intentions. It is exteremely difficult to believe that Serbia is the victim under these circumstances - after all, if it walks like a genocidal totalitarian regime and talks like a genocidal totalitarian regime, it probably is a genocidal totalitarian regime.
Actually, I don't think anyone has seen footage of mass murders, because Serbia expelled all journalists a couple days ago. Reports from the refugees are pretty convincing, however. But I'm sure it's a lot easier for leaders in Russia to dismiss these reports as NATO propaganda if there is no hard evidence being shown on Russian TV.
Now hang on there a minute, pardner...
I'm not happy either with NATO actions against a sovereign country's internal affairs. I can certainly see the point of the other posts about areas of the world that may deserve the same treatment, and I'll be the first to admit that it's hard to justify the US' erratic foreign policy in those cases. I would have been much happier to see the whole thing go through the UN, rather than NATO.
That being said, I can't agree with your view that the US is somehow causing ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. People have been killing each other for centuries in Yugoslavia for the same stupid reasons. I see no reason to believe that the same thing won't continue with or without NATO actions in the area. Blaming the NATO attack for the ongoing massacre in Kosovo makes no more sense than blaming the Allies for the Holocaust during world war II. Totalitarians like Milosevich will act this way whether or not anyone opposes them.
However, members of the international community can bring pressure to bear when dictators act like this. In most cases this pressure is limited to diplomatic action. In this case diplomacy seems to have failed, and some sort of attempt to remove the Serbian ability to attack their own citizens seems justified to me. As I said, I would have much rather seen UN action in this situation. But however unhappy I may be with the course of events leading up to the NATO air strikes, I would be much more disappointed to see the rest of mankind stand idly by during the massacre in Kosovo. Persons and nations of good conscience have a responsibility to stand up for what they think is right, and that is what we are seeing from NATO today.
Ditto on that...
I had been wondering why I can't stand any of the music on the air today. I find myself listening more to ~oldies stations that also play new tunes by bands that have been around a while, rather than bands that got their contracts through for looking pretty or having interesting hair. All the latest groups sound the same, when you step back and really compare - there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of substance to them.
Can't go wrong with NPR though, they've expanded my musical interests more in four months than a whole four years in college did!
User Friendly is actually published in Canada, so US constitutional law may not make help much. I would hope that Canada has a similar stance with regards to parody and satire being protected, however. Of course, IANAL.
First things first: I agree with you wholeheartedly that community resources like computing time in the library or in school shouldn't be wasted on browsing porn, etc. Of course, they shouldn't be wasted browsing the news, ESPN, or Slashdot either, unless that's an assignment or research project. It's a non-argument that schools and libraries exist to provide information, not entertainment, and when resources are limited, those with legitimate information needs should get preference over mere web browsers.
However, I will certainly argue with that. Who decides these "certain things"? I certainly wouldn't be comfortable with your choices for what my kids should see, because I have no idea what your beliefs are - your religious convictions, your morals, even your taste in art. Can't have you deciding things for my kids.
I'll go a step further and say that I may not even be a good person to decide which "certain things" we censor. Why, you ask? For all you know, I might be a militant flat-earther, a Luddite, or some other persuasion of thought that society generally sees as reactionary. Do you want me to decide that your kids shouldn't read about space travel, evolution, or medical information about the human body?
Granted, none of my examples address the examples that you mentioned. Personally, I happen to agree with you that I wouldn't be crazy about my kids learning how to treat women from pornography, or learning about the rest of the world from a Nazi viewpoint. However, I don't see censorship at school as a solution. Why?
Actually, if you want possible proof of life on Mars, the Viking missions in the 70s already provide some. Viking (I think it was Viking 2) included two tests for life in the Martian soil. Test A reported that there was life, and test B reported that there wasn't. Now, either test could have malfunctioned, so NASA also tested Viking in Antarctica. Antarctica is as close to Martian conditions as you can get on this planet, but there is definitely life (bacteria as well as insects, etc.) in Antarctica. The results? Test A found that there was indeed life in Antarctica, but test B concluded that there was not.
Were the tests invalid? Possibly. I know one of them involved mixing some soil into a growth medium and measuring the opacity of the solution over time, to see if any bacteria grow and cloud the water. I don't remember what the other test was. I don't anyone can really decide for sure until we have a permanent research institution, or several, on Mars.
Since we're being picky...
Actually, saying "the hoi polloi" is redundant, because "hoi polloi" means something like "the common people". Therefore, "the hoi polloi" means "the the common people".
Yes, that is my grammar pet peeve.
Yes, the . should be within the "", but I find it more readable otherwise.
Yes, this whole thread is fairly ridiculous.
See: MAPS Realtime Blackhole List
No kidding. The Computer City I used to go to had some fairly intelligent folks to talk to. The only good part of their assimilation was that they had a great clearance sale for a week or so.
"This is really important in the industry because Merced will be a powerful enough chip that it starts allowing Intel-based systems to deliver a lot more power than was available before," Croll said.
I guess this beats a powerful chip that doesn't
deliver a lot more power than before...