Perhaps I should have used the word sceptic, rather than cynic. You, however, are the one labling me a "total" cynic. I never said anything of the kind.
By the way, no, I did not just come up with all this naive crap myself.
I got most of it from the Federalist Papers, the writings of T. Jefferson and the writing of H.D Thoreau.
As one who is old enough to actually remember Watergate I can also assure you that had there been a few more cynics around at the time Watergate might very well never have happened, and it was *certainly* the cynics who brought it to light.
Afghanis cannot immediately recognize freeze dried food that's shaped like a brick wrapped in dayglo yellow mylar if they are not culturally aclimated to recogzine that such even *could* be food. Nor is it immediately recognizable as food when it is *unwrapped* unless you already know that it is.
I have actually lived in such areas where I have had to give lessons to locals that such is food, and how to convert it to such in an edible form.
Your criticism of my post is in itself confirmation of the increadable cultural divide between "us" and "them."
To YOU it is obviously food, and you obviously find it ridiculous to belive that thay wouldn't.
There's a pretty good chance that THEY know a few things are food that you would be hard pressed to believe is even edible.
A single mature cedar tree can support a man for a year. I'd hazard a guess you would starve to death sitting underneath one, totally unaware of the edible wealth available within your reach.
There is a an apparent belief among many, including moderators, that an opinion, just because it is controversial or not widely believed is a troll.
I suggest that such people look up the term in the jargon file to find out what the hell it means.
There are also those that feel that a troll is inherently malicious in intent.
Pity. J. Swift, M. Twain, and H.L. Mencken were perhaps the finest trolls in history, and Twain's biting, cynical, letters to newspaper editors are some of the finest trolls ever written.
I occasionally wish there were a way to mod a troll *UP*, but Slashdot seems to among those that believe a troll is always malicious.
The posts of which I tend to be the proudest arn't the ones that just get modded up to five, but rather the ones that seems to incite a "moderator war," with several mods up and down.
It let's me know that I might have actually written something vaguely important.
Of course I was told that, nor did I "choose" to ignore it. The statement I'm refering to was a statement that that original claim was "official misinformation."
Reports from Afghanistan indicate that despite the food drops food delivery to the needy Afghani people has been reduced dramatically due to "disruptions" in the systems already in place.
Like bombing Red Cross centers.
CNN showed an example of the food packages being dropped. The one they showed was labled clearly, * in English *, " Potato Vinegrette. *
Beyond the issues of language, ( two languages actually, since vinegrette is French), and the fact that the majority of Afghanis aren't literate in their own language, the cultural divide shown by providing them with potato vingerette is ubsurd.
Bricks of beef jerky with a picture of a cow on the package would have been more to the point.
Historically it has only rarely been proven wise to simply trust the intelligence community. I'll bet on the swift and strong, thank you.
I might also add that it is the first responsibility of every US citizen, indeed the *primary* responsibility, to trust nothing.
Only the cynic is the "true" American and patriot. It is a structure of political *equals.* Indeed, in many repects the simple citizen is politically superior to the president himself. It is the citizens who chose him and the citizens who may dismiss him.
He will be president for a maximum of 8 years. A citizen is a citizen for life. He must then protect his political interests for *life,* and the life of his decendents, not meerly a few years.
The intelligence community is the place where the greatest *ememies* of the state reside.
The US state dept.,( as reported by CNN), has now admited that they bombed the Red Cross center in Afghanistan, multiple times, * knowing that it wasn't a military target* because Taliban members and troops were *suspected* of pilfering some amount of food from it.
At the same time, of course, the US was randomly dropping food supplies all over the place, for anyone to pick up, including Taliban troops.
This bothers me a good deal more. It is not only the targeting of a known civilian humanitarian aid station, but smacks more than just a bit of hypocrisy.
The shutting down of an ISP hardly compares to killing civilian aid workers on *suspicion* that the opposition might be able to snag some Hershey bars from them.
The arrogance is the same in both cases though, although, of course, as everyone knows, the Internet "belongs" to the US, so I guess they can just do what they please with it.
"Vonce ze rockets go up, who cares vere ze come down. Zat's not my department," Says Werner Von Braun. - Tom Lehrer
I hereby propose an " Anti-Nobel" prize, to be given to those who most egregiously espouse ideals contrary to those that motivated the foundation of Nobel prizes.
KFG
Re:The Cats Will Be Very Upset
on
Concept PC 2001
·
· Score: 3, Funny
My cat is already very upset. She isn't prone to chewing cables but in the old days of TV set like monitors she loved to soak up heat and stay close to me while I was working or playing games by "Garfielding" on top of it.
Then I brought in the first monitor with a tilt/swivel base. Scared the piss out of her the first time she tried to settle on top of it. Not IN the monitor, thank God.
With a flat screen she won't even be able to warm up by lying *next* to it.
By the way, the best definition of a cat that I've run across is:
"God's way of letting you know your furniture is too good."
If you add your argument to the argument of the poster previous to you you get a fuller picture of the issue.
Everyone has heard the term "power of attorney" and has some rough idea of what that means. Few know the meaning of the attorney though. It simply means representitive. One could consider one's house contractor an "attorney at plumbing." Someone with the power of attorney is someone who is legally recognized as being able to act * as if they were you.*
Your attorney at law is, in some very real legal asspects, you. YOU cannot be made to testify agaisnt yourself.
Add to that the right to fair trial, which is impossible if you cannot talk freely and confidently to your own attorney, who is just a legal extension of yourself, and you the basis for attorney-client privilege.
The important part that has been left out of this discussion so far is the process of discovery. Just because you tell your lawyer something dosn't mean he can't reveal it. He MUST reveal everything to the prosocution that the prosocution has the legal right to know. There is a system of legal checks and balances at work here and the process of discovery, which happens out of the view of the public, is perhaps the most important role of the defense attorney. You talk to your attorney, he sifts through what you have told him and protects your right not to testify against yourself by revealing to the prosocution only that which the prosocution has a right to know.
Without this balance of "power of information" constitutional rights would be absolutely unenforcable.
I actually thought of that while I was writing the post, but went with technological age as being more inclusive.
During the classic industrial age patents clearly worked a bit better than they do now, but at that time patenting mathmatical algorithms and such was explicitly not legal.
I don't. Patents are one of the most useful and benificial tools of the technological age.
I DO dearly hate the missuse and total bastardization of the patent concept that we now see applied, for instance the application of the patent concept to pure IP, like operating systems.
Sorry, but you're wrong here. See my post to the thread parent. You'll find a link to the DMCA itself. It makes an interesting read.
Please note also, that by American and international law *everything* you write is copyrighted from the moment of creation. In effect everything not specifically put into the public domain is covered by copyright protections. This is the crux of what makes the GPL work. GPL works are NOT in the public domain.
Note also the ruling of the court that distribution of the DeCSS source code is NOT illegal. . . at the moment.
This has, essentially, just happened and I guess you missed it.
Alan Cox is, essentially, making a political statement. Details of the security patch arn't actually illegal in the sense that it has been declared so. However, certain readings of the DMCA *could* be interpreted as meaning that details of a security flaw that allowed unauthorized access to propriatary files, ( and this would include your private "to do" list, which is copyrighted to you at creation), would be a violation.
Here is the the relevant section of the code:
`Sec. 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems
`(a) VIOLATIONS REGARDING CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES- (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. The prohibition contained in the preceding sentence shall take effect at the end of the 2-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this chapter.
Note the term "technological measure." What does this term mean? Well, as it turns out that's a damn good question, one that it has been left to the courts to decide.
So let's say you fire up vi and write a "to do" list. You place it in your home directory. This is now propriatary information, technically copyrighted to you. That "to do" list is now has whatever protections upon it that that you assign the file and your home directory.
So, let's say that only you have any rights to your home directory and the file itself, but someone manages to crack your machine and read the file * using the knowledge gained from reading the patch code and/or details of the hole.*
You see? By assigning restricted permissions to the file you have used "technological measures" to insure its propriatary nature, and thus the security details could be interpreted as publishing a means to defeat that measure.
Noone law enforcment agency has yet stepped forward to claim this interpretation, but there is absolutely no reason * why they couldn't.*
Interestingly enough the Calfornia appellate court has just ruled in the DeCSS case that the injunction against distributing the source code of DeCSS was, indeed, an unconstitutional violation of freedom of speach. Note that the court made a clear and explicit distinction between machine readable compiled binary code and human readable source code. It acknowledged that compiled binaries would have had protection under the DMCA, but that *source code did not.*
This ruling has ramifications throughout the software industry, particularly with regards to OSS. At the moment there is no legal restriction, per se, of *any kind* on distributing source code.
Please make note though that this applies only to issues of *prior restraint.*
This does not mean that all source code can be legally distributed, it means that until an actual *adjudication* is made that said distribution was illegal it cannot be restrained.
A fine distinction of law that could get you out of, or *into*, trouble if you don't understand it properly.
Ah, what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to make the contents of people's *minds* illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps I should have used the word sceptic, rather than cynic. You, however, are the one labling me a "total" cynic. I never said anything of the kind.
By the way, no, I did not just come up with all this naive crap myself.
I got most of it from the Federalist Papers, the writings of T. Jefferson and the writing of H.D Thoreau.
As one who is old enough to actually remember Watergate I can also assure you that had there been a few more cynics around at the time Watergate might very well never have happened, and it was *certainly* the cynics who brought it to light.
Thank God for them.
KFG
Afghanis cannot immediately recognize freeze dried food that's shaped like a brick wrapped in dayglo yellow mylar if they are not culturally aclimated to recogzine that such even *could* be food. Nor is it immediately recognizable as food when it is *unwrapped* unless you already know that it is.
I have actually lived in such areas where I have had to give lessons to locals that such is food, and how to convert it to such in an edible form.
Your criticism of my post is in itself confirmation of the increadable cultural divide between "us" and "them."
To YOU it is obviously food, and you obviously find it ridiculous to belive that thay wouldn't.
There's a pretty good chance that THEY know a few things are food that you would be hard pressed to believe is even edible.
A single mature cedar tree can support a man for a year. I'd hazard a guess you would starve to death sitting underneath one, totally unaware of the edible wealth available within your reach.
How on earth could you not recognize *food*!
Food, sir, is cultural.
KFG
That is not the article I was refering to. As I stated in a reply above I saw it reported live on CNN as it was handed to the reporter off the wire.
It was reported as an admission that the article you link to was not true.
I have no way of proving I ever actually saw what I claim short of a brain scan.
KFG
There is a an apparent belief among many, including moderators, that an opinion, just because it is controversial or not widely believed is a troll.
I suggest that such people look up the term in the jargon file to find out what the hell it means.
There are also those that feel that a troll is inherently malicious in intent.
Pity. J. Swift, M. Twain, and H.L. Mencken were perhaps the finest trolls in history, and Twain's biting, cynical, letters to newspaper editors are some of the finest trolls ever written.
I occasionally wish there were a way to mod a troll *UP*, but Slashdot seems to among those that believe a troll is always malicious.
The posts of which I tend to be the proudest arn't the ones that just get modded up to five, but rather the ones that seems to incite a "moderator war," with several mods up and down.
It let's me know that I might have actually written something vaguely important.
KFG
I'm afraid I don't. I saw it reported on CNN television live, as it came " hot off the wire."
That's why I put my source, and put it in parenthsis, in my original post. I cannot refer to it, and seems not to exist on the CNN web site.
In a time when the federal governemt is trying to get libraries to destroy existing public documents that dosn't exactly surprise me.
If I were to go looking for it I'd start with the BBC or The Federalist.
As often happens in times of war we likely won't have clue what's actually going on right now for several years, at least.
KFG
Of course I was told that, nor did I "choose" to ignore it. The statement I'm refering to was a statement that that original claim was "official misinformation."
KFG
Reports from Afghanistan indicate that despite the food drops food delivery to the needy Afghani people has been reduced dramatically due to "disruptions" in the systems already in place.
Like bombing Red Cross centers.
CNN showed an example of the food packages being dropped. The one they showed was labled clearly, * in English *, " Potato Vinegrette. *
Beyond the issues of language, ( two languages actually, since vinegrette is French), and the fact that the majority of Afghanis aren't literate in their own language, the cultural divide shown by providing them with potato vingerette is ubsurd.
Bricks of beef jerky with a picture of a cow on the package would have been more to the point.
KFG
Historically it has only rarely been proven wise to simply trust the intelligence community. I'll bet on the swift and strong, thank you.
I might also add that it is the first responsibility of every US citizen, indeed the *primary* responsibility, to trust nothing.
Only the cynic is the "true" American and patriot. It is a structure of political *equals.* Indeed, in many repects the simple citizen is politically superior to the president himself. It is the citizens who chose him and the citizens who may dismiss him.
He will be president for a maximum of 8 years. A citizen is a citizen for life. He must then protect his political interests for *life,* and the life of his decendents, not meerly a few years.
The intelligence community is the place where the greatest *ememies* of the state reside.
KFG
KFG
The US state dept.,( as reported by CNN), has now admited that they bombed the Red Cross center in Afghanistan, multiple times, * knowing that it wasn't a military target* because Taliban members and troops were *suspected* of pilfering some amount of food from it.
At the same time, of course, the US was randomly dropping food supplies all over the place, for anyone to pick up, including Taliban troops.
This bothers me a good deal more. It is not only the targeting of a known civilian humanitarian aid station, but smacks more than just a bit of hypocrisy.
The shutting down of an ISP hardly compares to killing civilian aid workers on *suspicion* that the opposition might be able to snag some Hershey bars from them.
The arrogance is the same in both cases though, although, of course, as everyone knows, the Internet "belongs" to the US, so I guess they can just do what they please with it.
KFG
You would know that the "links" refered to are not www hyperlinks, but "links" in the sense of associated with.
i.e. they are suspected of actually being actively involved in terrorist networks, including supplying them with funding.
Linking to information is irrelevant to the action.
And how a relevant got into my pajamas I'll never know.
KFG
True, the last thing on your mind would be the front bumper of the bus.
Or vice versa.
KFG
About twenty bucks.
.iso's "valued" at fourty bucks a pop?
Ain't the software business grand?
Can I pay MY legal fines by donating Red Hat
KFG
Or, as it has been expressed by another:
"Vonce ze rockets go up, who cares vere ze come down. Zat's not my department," Says Werner Von Braun. - Tom Lehrer
I hereby propose an " Anti-Nobel" prize, to be given to those who most egregiously espouse ideals contrary to those that motivated the foundation of Nobel prizes.
KFG
My cat is already very upset. She isn't prone to chewing cables but in the old days of TV set like monitors she loved to soak up heat and stay close to me while I was working or playing games by "Garfielding" on top of it.
Then I brought in the first monitor with a tilt/swivel base. Scared the piss out of her the first time she tried to settle on top of it. Not IN the monitor, thank God.
With a flat screen she won't even be able to warm up by lying *next* to it.
By the way, the best definition of a cat that I've run across is:
"God's way of letting you know your furniture is too good."
KFG
Probably sitting in a bar somewhere, drowning their sorrows and commiserating with Cassandra and Diogenes.
KFG
If you add your argument to the argument of the poster previous to you you get a fuller picture of the issue.
Everyone has heard the term "power of attorney" and has some rough idea of what that means. Few know the meaning of the attorney though. It simply means representitive. One could consider one's house contractor an "attorney at plumbing." Someone with the power of attorney is someone who is legally recognized as being able to act * as if they were you.*
Your attorney at law is, in some very real legal asspects, you. YOU cannot be made to testify agaisnt yourself.
Add to that the right to fair trial, which is impossible if you cannot talk freely and confidently to your own attorney, who is just a legal extension of yourself, and you the basis for attorney-client privilege.
The important part that has been left out of this discussion so far is the process of discovery. Just because you tell your lawyer something dosn't mean he can't reveal it. He MUST reveal everything to the prosocution that the prosocution has the legal right to know. There is a system of legal checks and balances at work here and the process of discovery, which happens out of the view of the public, is perhaps the most important role of the defense attorney. You talk to your attorney, he sifts through what you have told him and protects your right not to testify against yourself by revealing to the prosocution only that which the prosocution has a right to know.
Without this balance of "power of information" constitutional rights would be absolutely unenforcable.
KFG
I actually thought of that while I was writing the post, but went with technological age as being more inclusive.
During the classic industrial age patents clearly worked a bit better than they do now, but at that time patenting mathmatical algorithms and such was explicitly not legal.
Times change, and not always for the better.
KFG
"And lastly, where is it going?"
Where would you like to go today?
KFG
Not "everyone of us" hates patents.
I don't. Patents are one of the most useful and benificial tools of the technological age.
I DO dearly hate the missuse and total bastardization of the patent concept that we now see applied, for instance the application of the patent concept to pure IP, like operating systems.
KFG
Yodafied is.
KFG
the "rocket scientists" are out in force tonight.
KFG
Make sure everyone is using the SAME friggin' system of units.
KFG
Sorry, but you're wrong here. See my post to the thread parent. You'll find a link to the DMCA itself. It makes an interesting read.
Please note also, that by American and international law *everything* you write is copyrighted from the moment of creation. In effect everything not specifically put into the public domain is covered by copyright protections. This is the crux of what makes the GPL work. GPL works are NOT in the public domain.
Note also the ruling of the court that distribution of the DeCSS source code is NOT illegal. . . at the moment.
This has, essentially, just happened and I guess you missed it.
KFG
"What if the DMCA folks wanted to really stretch things. They could say that a compiler is a method for encrypting the source code. . . "
See my post to the thread parent. This is, essentially, what the California Appellate court just ruled in the DeCSS case.
KFG
Alan Cox is, essentially, making a political statement. Details of the security patch arn't actually illegal in the sense that it has been declared so. However, certain readings of the DMCA *could* be interpreted as meaning that details of a security flaw that allowed unauthorized access to propriatary files, ( and this would include your private "to do" list, which is copyrighted to you at creation), would be a violation.
2 28 1.ENR:
Here is the the relevant section of the code:
`Sec. 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems
`(a) VIOLATIONS REGARDING CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES- (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. The prohibition contained in the preceding sentence shall take effect at the end of the 2-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this chapter.
The entire text of the DMCA can be found here:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c105:H.R.
Note the term "technological measure." What does this term mean? Well, as it turns out that's a damn good question, one that it has been left to the courts to decide.
So let's say you fire up vi and write a "to do" list. You place it in your home directory. This is now propriatary information, technically copyrighted to you. That "to do" list is now has whatever protections upon it that that you assign the file and your home directory.
So, let's say that only you have any rights to your home directory and the file itself, but someone manages to crack your machine and read the file * using the knowledge gained from reading the patch code and/or details of the hole.*
You see? By assigning restricted permissions to the file you have used "technological measures" to insure its propriatary nature, and thus the security details could be interpreted as publishing a means to defeat that measure.
Noone law enforcment agency has yet stepped forward to claim this interpretation, but there is absolutely no reason * why they couldn't.*
Interestingly enough the Calfornia appellate court has just ruled in the DeCSS case that the injunction against distributing the source code of DeCSS was, indeed, an unconstitutional violation of freedom of speach. Note that the court made a clear and explicit distinction between machine readable compiled binary code and human readable source code. It acknowledged that compiled binaries would have had protection under the DMCA, but that *source code did not.*
This ruling has ramifications throughout the software industry, particularly with regards to OSS. At the moment there is no legal restriction, per se, of *any kind* on distributing source code.
Please make note though that this applies only to issues of *prior restraint.*
This does not mean that all source code can be legally distributed, it means that until an actual *adjudication* is made that said distribution was illegal it cannot be restrained.
A fine distinction of law that could get you out of, or *into*, trouble if you don't understand it properly.
Ah, what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to make the contents of people's *minds* illegal.
KFG