Or you can voice your controversial opinions in subtle, intelligent, and detailed ways that prevent people from just going "nuh uh!" and modding you -1 Disagree
Which, if taken over 13 years, kinda fits the latter option I had mentioned.
Are you trying to suggest that this treatment actually cures the disease?
FTS:
"Six months after treatment, 8 (of 10) of the patients were cancer free."
Note... cancer *FREE*
Which means they won't need to keep on getting treatment... or have to keep on going paying for treatment. Which seems to be the assumption that drives the notion that there is a medical conspiracy to never focus on curing diseases.
You have a 5 digid UID and *THAT* was your *FIRST* troll?
That's not hilarious... that's just sad.
It suggests to me that either you are a pathological conformist, virtually incapable of holding a controversial viewpoint for yourself, or else you have shown almost unimaginable restraint against divulging too much of your own opinions.
Any one of the many slashdotters who believe in the medical industry conspiracy wanna say how medicine never focuses on curing disease, but only on treatment, because keeping a sick patient alive is more profitable than making one healthy that won't need to keep paying for the treatment?
You've made so many entirely unsubstantiated assumptions there that I couldn't begin to enumerate them....The most basic of them being the assumption that something which was created as less than perfect must actually be some sort of mistake, when an alternative explanation is that imperfection may have been by intentional design, for a purpose that is not currently known or understood. Nonetheless, even if all of your assumptions were true, it does not remotely prove that heaven or hell are mere fiction, you only establish a credible (perfectly reasonable, in fact) case that there probably isn't a god that satisfies what seems to be nothing other than your own definition of perfect.
In actuality, all that anyone can ever hope to prove about their existence is that there is no scientifically credible evidence to support their existence. That does not mean they are fiction any more than the fact that we have not found any real evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe means that such does not exist.
My point was that there are a *LOT* of programmers out there that will give away stuff that they write... even though they need to work to make a living.
They do it because they have a passion for it... obviously. And it's hardly a surprise for anyone to do something they have a passion for in their spare time.
And since these things are done in people's spare time (typically), it's equally unsurprising that the number of polished applications under such licenses is also much less than what you'd find from places that hire full time programmers.
GPL v3 alone was used in over 2,000 different software projects in 2008
That's not counting GPL v2, LGPL, BSD, MIT, Apache, or any one of quite a number of other open source licenses. And of course, that's not counting how many other projects have become open source since that count was taken.
There's a *LOT* of programmers that give away code they write for free... and I highly doubt that even a significant percentage of them are in the category of being well enough off that they don't need to worry about earning a living. I certainly am not, and I've contributed to GPL software in the past, and I would do so again, when I found a project that I felt passionate enough about.
Count how much freely available software there is out there, with source code.
That's at least how many programmers there are who will write software and give away the source code (since many free software products have multiple contributors). While it might not be a majority of programmers, it's anything but a small number.
I didn't make any claim that they do exist... the poster to which I responded made a claim that they are fiction. Burden of proof must *ALWAYS* fall on the person making any claim... to do otherwise is, as I said, a negative proof fallacy, and is no better than when people who *DO* believe in heaven or hell challenge anybody else to "prove them wrong".
Reasonably, burden of proof should always fall to the person making a claim... asking a listener to disprove it is a specific type of appeal to ignorance, and is more commonly called a negative proof fallacy. It has no logical validity.
So... do you care to provide evidence to support that assertion?
Or shall you just admit that you don't know anywhere nearly as much as you think you do?
It is perfectly valid to say that you do not believe in them... and you could even say that there is absolutely no evidence that proves their existence to you, or to the general scientific community, but it is not valid to assert that they are mere fiction without also supplying some actual proof. That the notions of heaven and hell can be found in some fictional stories is not, by itself, compelling evidence that they do not exist, since there is no prohibition in fiction on including elements that do exist in reality (if there were, people would be unable to identify with them, in fact... and such fictional stories would be meaningless to all but their creator).
And that's that if you have to invent the notion of a parallel universe to explain your own theory, then I think that there's a pretty good chance that your theory is bupkis. It's time to start over, examine the evidence that you have, and come up with a new theory.
Because when you add parallel universes into the mix, literally anything becomes instantaneously possible, and inherently not falsifiable.
For example... I can postulate that there are many multicolored dinosaurs living in my apartment... just in another universe. An utterly unfalsifiable claim, and ridiculous to even begin to argue that it is possible to objectively and scientifically study
Practically all the disciplines that lean heavily on mathematical aptitude are affected by the gender gap: Engineering, physical science, computer science, and of course mathematics itself.
I can't say I understand exactly why this is so, but it seems that women simply do not demonstrate the same level of interest and aptitude in mathematics as men do. Certainly I have never noticed any actual gender discrimination that goes on in these fields, or at least not by anybody who has any credibility. That said, the only person I know who is my own age with a doctorate in mathematics is a woman... so this gender difference is anything but universal.
Nonetheless, there remains an indisputable gap between the fields that men and women desire to pursue, even though there is no definable physiological or biological reason for such a gap to exist.
I think that trying to figure out why this is so, or assigning blame, or even expending effort trying to change this instead of simply accepting it as fact and moving on is only going to result in a lot of wasted energy that could be better spent on actually improving the education that *IS* offered.
Perhaps, even, if we stop trying to focus on the issue so much, things might start to change on their own anyways. Just don't discriminate in the interim.
And to be able to get an even moderately accurate count (within an order of magnitude), I expect they would have to revisit much of the material that they have collected, not all of which may have led them to approach or convict a person who was actually guilty of anything. Revisiting all that material would be a violation of those people's privacy. Granted, these people's privacy was already violated, but that doesn't justify doing it over again just to answer a question about how many people they've done this to.
I would, to that end, assume that it numbers in the millions, perhaps even tens of millions.
Most people simply either do not perceive who is affected by piracy, or else they simply do not care. There is no ethical quandry because they are indifferent enough about the consequences that it is a non-issue.
What piracy affects is the overall usefulness of copyright as a means to secure some of a creator's interest, while at the same time allowing the general public to appreciate that creator's work. Piracy reduces the confidence that creators place in copyright to protect their works, and they resort to other means, such as trying to restrict the circumstances under which their content can be used, or possibly even resorting to self-censorship, and not widely publishing at all.
In the end, I perceive that continued piracy takes something away from future generations that is a fundamental freedom that we have all been enjoying for centuries... which is freedom we all have to read and listen to what we want, and under the conditions that we all want. Some believe that abolition of copyright entirely would accomplish the same thing, but in the end, such an approach is little more than an anarchists approach, and in the long run, I believe would be more destructive to the intent of quality content availability than it would be ensuring that the public still had such access to it.
Well... I never suggested that there wasn't *ANY* difference... my assertion was about significant differences in the first place.
As for ordinary citizens telling the government what they see... remember the Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver last year? Seems to me that quite a few perfectly ordinary people were more than willing to cough up whatever info they had.
My stance is that if one does something in public, then that person can only reasonably expect it to not be publicly known about to the same extent that other people who have a legal right to be in the vicinity are simply not interested in what that person is doing.
Actually, format shifting any digitally locked work without consent of the copyright holder will be illegal under C-11. It doesn't matter whether or not the fair dealing provision should apply, because the fair dealing provisions explicitly exclude any case where the work was subject to a "technological protection measure".
This is why the so-called expanded fair dealing provisions in the bill are laughable... they are entirely revocable at the discretion of the content provider who can choose to use a digital lock.
The conservatives have stated that they don't expect to hold individuals accountable for "privately" breaking any digital locks, but that's only because trying to enforce it at that level would be virtually impossible without an enormous change in the privacy laws in Canada.
On the other hand, this bill effectively makes the Canadian blank media levy a completely illegal tax... since it exists to compensate artists for private use copying, but under C-11, with its digital lock provisions prohibiting decryption of any work without permission, any otherwise existing provision that might allow somebody to private copy a digital work is rendered all but completely moot. For what it's worth, it's the Conservative's intent to scrap this levy.
I do not perceive imperfect memory as a significant difference between a person knowing something and it being stored on digitally stored media. digitally stored meda fails sometimes too, the error rate is just lower.
Also, the human brain is a type of computer anyways... it's just biological in nature.
No.... copyright infringement is definitely *NOT* just a civil violation. At least not in Canada. And yes... it can include a jail term, if the judge determines the circumstances are appropriate (afaik, only ever applied in cases of commercial infringement).
Actually, the bill does contain explicit exemptions to its digital locks provisions for the specific purposes of both law enforcement and computer/network security. If you can make a valid case that your decrypting somebody else's lock falls in one of those categories, you're fine.
I fail to see any significant difference at all between something that is technologically recorded, and something that somebody else simply happens to see or hear because they are in the vicinity, and simply remembers. Either way, somebody else knows... and could potentially reveal it to other people.
First of all... practically everybody who lives in our society has something to hide from other people. Anyone who says they don't is either a liar or else a public nudist.
And it's quite reasonable, IMO, to have some expectation of rights of privacy on the things that you have reason to hide.
But... I think that privacy is only a right to the extent that you can take measures to legally keep it, and to the extent that you do not have to expect somebody to break the law in order to have potentially violated it. So... privacy in your own home? Sure... since nobody else can legally be in your own home without permission. Assumption that somebody won't be outside of your home and off of your property using surveillance gear to record what goes on inside it? If there are no laws prohibiting somebody from otherwise being in such an area that is off your property, but the area is still near enough to effectively utilize such gear, then I would maintain that you are only entitled to as much privacy as you could legally take measures to defeat such techniques.
What difference should technology make? Should a formerly deaf person who has been fitted with a high-tech hearing aid that actually gives him more sophisticated hearing than most be prohibited from eavesdropping on a conversation? If not, why should somebody else be prohibited from using technology?
I believe that it's less about expecting you to assume that you *WON'T* have any privacy in public than it is about expecting you to *NOT* make the assumption that you would have any privacy in public in the first place.
Nor should you assume that those two notions are equivalent. There is actually a huge difference, and understanding that difference can give you the tools to be confident about the privacy that you do have.
Slashdot Mirror
Which, if taken over 13 years, kinda fits the latter option I had mentioned.
FTS:
Note... cancer *FREE*
Which means they won't need to keep on getting treatment... or have to keep on going paying for treatment. Which seems to be the assumption that drives the notion that there is a medical conspiracy to never focus on curing diseases.
So... yes.
I'm not claiming anything... I merely suggest that your own "proof" overlooks the possibility.
I'm also not afraid to say I don't know... which apparently, you are.
How sad for you.
You have a 5 digid UID and *THAT* was your *FIRST* troll?
That's not hilarious... that's just sad.
It suggests to me that either you are a pathological conformist, virtually incapable of holding a controversial viewpoint for yourself, or else you have shown almost unimaginable restraint against divulging too much of your own opinions.
Any one of the many slashdotters who believe in the medical industry conspiracy wanna say how medicine never focuses on curing disease, but only on treatment, because keeping a sick patient alive is more profitable than making one healthy that won't need to keep paying for the treatment?
You've made so many entirely unsubstantiated assumptions there that I couldn't begin to enumerate them....The most basic of them being the assumption that something which was created as less than perfect must actually be some sort of mistake, when an alternative explanation is that imperfection may have been by intentional design, for a purpose that is not currently known or understood. Nonetheless, even if all of your assumptions were true, it does not remotely prove that heaven or hell are mere fiction, you only establish a credible (perfectly reasonable, in fact) case that there probably isn't a god that satisfies what seems to be nothing other than your own definition of perfect.
In actuality, all that anyone can ever hope to prove about their existence is that there is no scientifically credible evidence to support their existence. That does not mean they are fiction any more than the fact that we have not found any real evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe means that such does not exist.
My point was that there are a *LOT* of programmers out there that will give away stuff that they write... even though they need to work to make a living.
They do it because they have a passion for it... obviously. And it's hardly a surprise for anyone to do something they have a passion for in their spare time.
And since these things are done in people's spare time (typically), it's equally unsurprising that the number of polished applications under such licenses is also much less than what you'd find from places that hire full time programmers.
GPL v3 alone was used in over 2,000 different software projects in 2008
That's not counting GPL v2, LGPL, BSD, MIT, Apache, or any one of quite a number of other open source licenses. And of course, that's not counting how many other projects have become open source since that count was taken.
There's a *LOT* of programmers that give away code they write for free... and I highly doubt that even a significant percentage of them are in the category of being well enough off that they don't need to worry about earning a living. I certainly am not, and I've contributed to GPL software in the past, and I would do so again, when I found a project that I felt passionate enough about.
Count how much freely available software there is out there, with source code.
That's at least how many programmers there are who will write software and give away the source code (since many free software products have multiple contributors). While it might not be a majority of programmers, it's anything but a small number.
I didn't make any claim that they do exist... the poster to which I responded made a claim that they are fiction. Burden of proof must *ALWAYS* fall on the person making any claim... to do otherwise is, as I said, a negative proof fallacy, and is no better than when people who *DO* believe in heaven or hell challenge anybody else to "prove them wrong".
You have made a rather bold assertion.
Reasonably, burden of proof should always fall to the person making a claim... asking a listener to disprove it is a specific type of appeal to ignorance, and is more commonly called a negative proof fallacy. It has no logical validity.
So... do you care to provide evidence to support that assertion?
Or shall you just admit that you don't know anywhere nearly as much as you think you do?
It is perfectly valid to say that you do not believe in them... and you could even say that there is absolutely no evidence that proves their existence to you, or to the general scientific community, but it is not valid to assert that they are mere fiction without also supplying some actual proof. That the notions of heaven and hell can be found in some fictional stories is not, by itself, compelling evidence that they do not exist, since there is no prohibition in fiction on including elements that do exist in reality (if there were, people would be unable to identify with them, in fact... and such fictional stories would be meaningless to all but their creator).
I have a theory on parallel universes.
And that's that if you have to invent the notion of a parallel universe to explain your own theory, then I think that there's a pretty good chance that your theory is bupkis. It's time to start over, examine the evidence that you have, and come up with a new theory.
Because when you add parallel universes into the mix, literally anything becomes instantaneously possible, and inherently not falsifiable.
For example... I can postulate that there are many multicolored dinosaurs living in my apartment... just in another universe. An utterly unfalsifiable claim, and ridiculous to even begin to argue that it is possible to objectively and scientifically study
Practically all the disciplines that lean heavily on mathematical aptitude are affected by the gender gap: Engineering, physical science, computer science, and of course mathematics itself.
I can't say I understand exactly why this is so, but it seems that women simply do not demonstrate the same level of interest and aptitude in mathematics as men do. Certainly I have never noticed any actual gender discrimination that goes on in these fields, or at least not by anybody who has any credibility. That said, the only person I know who is my own age with a doctorate in mathematics is a woman... so this gender difference is anything but universal.
Nonetheless, there remains an indisputable gap between the fields that men and women desire to pursue, even though there is no definable physiological or biological reason for such a gap to exist.
I think that trying to figure out why this is so, or assigning blame, or even expending effort trying to change this instead of simply accepting it as fact and moving on is only going to result in a lot of wasted energy that could be better spent on actually improving the education that *IS* offered.
Perhaps, even, if we stop trying to focus on the issue so much, things might start to change on their own anyways. Just don't discriminate in the interim.
And to be able to get an even moderately accurate count (within an order of magnitude), I expect they would have to revisit much of the material that they have collected, not all of which may have led them to approach or convict a person who was actually guilty of anything. Revisiting all that material would be a violation of those people's privacy. Granted, these people's privacy was already violated, but that doesn't justify doing it over again just to answer a question about how many people they've done this to.
I would, to that end, assume that it numbers in the millions, perhaps even tens of millions.
Most people simply either do not perceive who is affected by piracy, or else they simply do not care. There is no ethical quandry because they are indifferent enough about the consequences that it is a non-issue.
What piracy affects is the overall usefulness of copyright as a means to secure some of a creator's interest, while at the same time allowing the general public to appreciate that creator's work. Piracy reduces the confidence that creators place in copyright to protect their works, and they resort to other means, such as trying to restrict the circumstances under which their content can be used, or possibly even resorting to self-censorship, and not widely publishing at all.
In the end, I perceive that continued piracy takes something away from future generations that is a fundamental freedom that we have all been enjoying for centuries... which is freedom we all have to read and listen to what we want, and under the conditions that we all want. Some believe that abolition of copyright entirely would accomplish the same thing, but in the end, such an approach is little more than an anarchists approach, and in the long run, I believe would be more destructive to the intent of quality content availability than it would be ensuring that the public still had such access to it.
Well... I never suggested that there wasn't *ANY* difference... my assertion was about significant differences in the first place.
As for ordinary citizens telling the government what they see... remember the Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver last year? Seems to me that quite a few perfectly ordinary people were more than willing to cough up whatever info they had.
My stance is that if one does something in public, then that person can only reasonably expect it to not be publicly known about to the same extent that other people who have a legal right to be in the vicinity are simply not interested in what that person is doing.
Actually, format shifting any digitally locked work without consent of the copyright holder will be illegal under C-11. It doesn't matter whether or not the fair dealing provision should apply, because the fair dealing provisions explicitly exclude any case where the work was subject to a "technological protection measure".
This is why the so-called expanded fair dealing provisions in the bill are laughable... they are entirely revocable at the discretion of the content provider who can choose to use a digital lock.
The conservatives have stated that they don't expect to hold individuals accountable for "privately" breaking any digital locks, but that's only because trying to enforce it at that level would be virtually impossible without an enormous change in the privacy laws in Canada.
On the other hand, this bill effectively makes the Canadian blank media levy a completely illegal tax... since it exists to compensate artists for private use copying, but under C-11, with its digital lock provisions prohibiting decryption of any work without permission, any otherwise existing provision that might allow somebody to private copy a digital work is rendered all but completely moot. For what it's worth, it's the Conservative's intent to scrap this levy.
I do not perceive imperfect memory as a significant difference between a person knowing something and it being stored on digitally stored media. digitally stored meda fails sometimes too, the error rate is just lower.
Also, the human brain is a type of computer anyways... it's just biological in nature.
No.... copyright infringement is definitely *NOT* just a civil violation. At least not in Canada. And yes... it can include a jail term, if the judge determines the circumstances are appropriate (afaik, only ever applied in cases of commercial infringement).
Actually, the bill does contain explicit exemptions to its digital locks provisions for the specific purposes of both law enforcement and computer/network security. If you can make a valid case that your decrypting somebody else's lock falls in one of those categories, you're fine.
It doesn't.
I fail to see any significant difference at all between something that is technologically recorded, and something that somebody else simply happens to see or hear because they are in the vicinity, and simply remembers. Either way, somebody else knows... and could potentially reveal it to other people.
First of all... practically everybody who lives in our society has something to hide from other people. Anyone who says they don't is either a liar or else a public nudist.
And it's quite reasonable, IMO, to have some expectation of rights of privacy on the things that you have reason to hide.
But... I think that privacy is only a right to the extent that you can take measures to legally keep it, and to the extent that you do not have to expect somebody to break the law in order to have potentially violated it. So... privacy in your own home? Sure... since nobody else can legally be in your own home without permission. Assumption that somebody won't be outside of your home and off of your property using surveillance gear to record what goes on inside it? If there are no laws prohibiting somebody from otherwise being in such an area that is off your property, but the area is still near enough to effectively utilize such gear, then I would maintain that you are only entitled to as much privacy as you could legally take measures to defeat such techniques.
What difference should technology make? Should a formerly deaf person who has been fitted with a high-tech hearing aid that actually gives him more sophisticated hearing than most be prohibited from eavesdropping on a conversation? If not, why should somebody else be prohibited from using technology?
I believe that it's less about expecting you to assume that you *WON'T* have any privacy in public than it is about expecting you to *NOT* make the assumption that you would have any privacy in public in the first place.
Nor should you assume that those two notions are equivalent. There is actually a huge difference, and understanding that difference can give you the tools to be confident about the privacy that you do have.