It helps Mommies and Daddies be Mommies and Daddies. And I don't just mean by having kids, it helps them grow closer to each other. It gives both sides encouragement and energy. It is a lot of fun.
As long as your kids get this part of the message along with the warnings, I'll have no cause for complaint.:-)
I know of broken homes, and lives from people who had Sex expressed on them in very wrong ways.
Rape and child abuse are not sex. They are horrible crimes.
I could go on to say stuff like "if sex weren't considered so shameful then these abuse victims would be able to seek the counseling they need..." but I suspect that you don't need to hear it.
By restricting traffic, for instance, to one side of the road or the other depending on the direction it is traveling you are actualy more free to arive at the destination you desire.
You trivialize freedom. We're not talking about societal conventions, and we're not even talking about public safety. Your traffic example doesn't even come close to the issues of free speech and censorship we were talking about.
But your traffic example makes me wonder... do you actually subscribe to the notion that sexual information is dangerous? Do you think that you are so weak and gullible that you need the law to protect you from your own sexuality?
Why do so many adults in this country distrust themselves? I can only surmise that they have been brainwashed, by a lifetime of propaganda, to believe that they cannot defend themselves, and that they need to be protected. And if this message that I'm writing serves no other purpose, I can at least hope that it will make someone ponder this.
It is an interesting irony that *restricting* some things actualy enhances freedom.
Life's full of ironies. Believe it or not, I'm not quite so mindless that I can't appreciate them.
The point of the GPL is to ensure that software remains free for all users, forever. Therefore the GPL prohibits you from taking away the freedom of others (by making a proprietary derivative work).
But this has very little to do with free speech. And nothing to do with sex.
Are you planning on just being able to give it to them on the spot?
I've thought about several lines of reasoning, but the short answer to your question is "yes".
It will depend on which child asks, how old he is at the time, and on exactly what he asks. I'm counting on "Where do babies come from?" (or a variant) being the first question, not "What is sex?".
The reason I took such offense at your answer was because you made sex sound like it's something wrong. It's not. It's the ultimate expression of caring and trust between people who love each other. And it's so much more than that, but I don't quite have the words for it yet.
But the propaganda which permeates American culture today would have you believe that sex is dirty, or shameful, or sinful (whatever that means). There are people out there who wish, consciously or otherwise, to suppress free exchange of information about sexuality, for reasons which I'm not quite able to fathom (though my brainwashing theory seems like a safe guess at the moment).
I was one of the people who contributed to alt.sex and alt.sex.wizards back in their glory days, before spam destroyed Usenet as we knew it. I learned so much there, and I wish that other people could have the same opportunity. (sexuality.org has some of the old alt.sex material on it, and a lot of wonderful references, for those of you in the Web generation who missed the boat the first time around.)
But if you and others like you persist in your blind faith that sex is something to be hidden away and suppressed, then I fear for the next generation.
why is Katz so confused about thinking Free Speech means someone is allowed to distribute Sex material to anyone?
Uh... because it means exactly that. Speech about sex must be just as protected as any other kind of speech.
it is very difficult to explain to people who don't have kids (that would be a cool slashdot poll, btw)
... I have two sons....
Unfortunately without a great understanding of the world at their age it will have to come across as "Don't let anyone show, touch, or talk about anything like that."
Every child is different. I don't even know how old yours are, so I can't judge your statement at face value. But when my children ask me about sex, I hope -- nay, I know -- that I can give them a better answer than that.
But what does any of this parenting stuff have to do with Katz's article or with free speech? Of course the rules are different when children are involved -- but that does not mean that censorship is tolerable.
Sexual activity is different in nature than everything else, and therefore there is a different prescribed way of handling it.
What?!?
I could as easily say "Mathematical activity is different in nature than everything else, and therefore there is a different prescribed way of handling it." Then we could have anti-public-math laws, and "save-the-children-from-math laws"...
(... and laws governing the export of mathematical functions to other countries (oops, we already have those in the USA!)....)
But to get back on topic... what makes you think that sex is so special that it defines its own category in every realm of human endeavor?
All catagories have differences.
I realize I'm taking this sentence slightly out of context, but I believe you're making a grievous error. You seem to believe, like Aristotle, that the whole universe can be divided into neat little categories, labeled and stacked neatly on the shelf.
It just doesn't work that way.
Humans have sex. It's how we reproduce. It's a part of us, and you can't separate that part from the rest. Human sexuality is not a simple thing; it is vastly complex.
Sexuality is also not harmful to anyone, and nobody's sexuality infringes on anyone else's rights. So why would we need any laws concerning sexuality?
We already have laws against rape, sexual assault, and so forth. These laws cover specific acts, and they are good and necessary laws.
The are also sufficient. We have no need of more of them.
Sometimes I think the best way to get rid of porn w/o infringing on free speech rights would be to make it illegal to charge for or otherwise profit from it.
This is not compatible with freedom of speech. Not only does it require an objective "measuring stick" to determine what is or is not pornography (which I believe is impossible -- see my previous post in this thread), but it also requires labeling of all content. This labeling imposes a burden on the speaker, and many speakers will choose not to speak. This is self-censorship, and any law which promotes self-censorship is unconstitutional.
(Sorry, I can't remember the actual legal terminology. It was mentioned in the Bernstein case though, for those of you who feel like digging through/. archives or legal documents.)
There. No speech infringment -- people could talk about whatever they wanted, and still even produce the stuff
But you've created (in your hypothesis) a situation in which the state imposes its morality upon the public. While this may or may not directly qualify as an abridgement of the freedom of speech/press, it most certainly qualifies as an infringement of rights.
All speech is protected, unless that speech constitutes a clear and present danger (i.e., shouting "Fire! in a crowded theater). The burden of proof lies with you, to demonstrate that pornography is a clear and present danger to human life.
Of course, those of you that wanted to be exploited (yes, I'm talking about viewers of porn as well as those featured in it) would still lose out
This is a pretty tacit admission that you're willing to violate some people's rights just because you don't like what they choose to do with their freedom.
Are we, or are we not, adults? If we are adults, then we bear the responsibilities as well as the privileges of that status. One of those responsibilities is making up our own minds about issues (like pornography). If we choose to watch pornography, or to help produce it, or distribute it -- then that is our choice. If you think we're allowing ourselves to be "exploited", that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. But you have no right to choose for us, or to ask the government to choose for us.
Freedom means you get hurt sometimes, by making bad choices. That's how you learn. If someone makes all your choices for you, you don't learn, and you don't grow -- you become a slave.
I guess part of the problem is how you define porn. I have a pretty restrictive definition; I don't by any means want to eliminate any and all "erotic" or "explicit" content online or anywhere else.
You are inventing your own terminology. Unfortunately, you're using words that already have other, accepted meanings, and pretending that they have the meanings you want them to have.
This is a recipe for confusion at best, and for bait-and-switch rabble-rousing at worst.
I defined "pornography" as any artistic piece designed to stimulate a sexual response. I think the vast majority of people on both sides of this issue have a similar definition. Changing the definition of pornography to further your own beliefs is dishonest.
Back to the porn/free-speech issues.... If I understand you correctly, you believe it would be appropriate to censor certain types of works -- namely, those which depect rape, assault or derogatory treatment of certain people. Here, I must also disagree.
You can't categorize sexuality, and you can't categorize art. Art which stimulates you sexually may not do a damned thing for me, and vice versa. Moreover, art which some people believe promotes "degradation" may not invoke a similar response from others -- the latter group may think it's satire.
This is the reason why freedom of speech and freedom of the press are essential. It's impossible to create any objective "measuring stick" for art to divide the "pornography" from the "non-pornographic" art, or to divide the "degrading" art from the "non-degrading" art. By its very nature, art challenges us to discard these artificial boundaries within our minds, and to treat each piece on its own merits (or lack thereof).
While I respect the goodness of your intentions, I'm sure you know what they say about the road to Hell.
I can't enter my proxy settings, because pressing the OK button has no effect.
There's no easy way to type a URL into the browser. Typing "http://www.yahoo.com/" into the File|Open dialog and clicking randomly eventually put the URL "file:/home/greg/opera-19991224/www.yahoo.com" into the browser panel, and after that I was able to highlight, delete and retype the URL into the now-present URL-entry textfield....
It crashed within 60 seconds.
Keep trying, Opera developers. Once this actually works it will be ready for beta testing.
According to one of my high school teachers, the sales tax (at least here in Ohio) was intended to be a tax on the merchant, not the consumer. Hence the term "sales tax" instead of "purchase tax". Of course the merchant immediately passes the burden on to the consumer. So in reality the consumer is the one paying the tax -- the merchant merely handles the administrative overhead (these days, by buying a computerized point-of-sale system; but when I was a kid I remember seeing "sales tax cheat sheets" -- laminated/plastic documents at the check-out with the amount of sales tax for ranges of total purchase amount, which the cashier would consult when adding up the bill).
How many of you have downloaded mp3s from actual sites like mp3.com that are not copyright protected?
The songs on mp3.comare copyrighted. You are not permitted to distribute them, unless the artist overrides this restriction (and I haven't seen any that do). Of course, it's in mp3.com's interests to see their artists' songs distributed far and wide, so I doubt they'll crack down on anyone who distributes the files.
To answer your question, though: I think you'd be surprised. I've downloaded a few dozen songs from mp3.com, at least. I've also bought 5 D.A.M. CDs from them, and will probably buy more in the future. A lot of the artists on mp3.com are good -- as good as anything on the radio (which isn't saying much these days).
The vast majority of my MP3 files were ripped directly from CDs that I own. I've got several hundred CDs, and a couple thousand fully-legal MP3 files.
Most of the "illegal" MP3 files I have fall into two categories: rare/live/B-side songs from artists I adore, or one-shot singles from artists from whom I only like one song and don't want to buy a whole album just to get that song.
E.g., I have bought every Tori Amos studio album, and every single I could get my hands on. But most of the singles are out of print -- so the B-sides on those singles can only be had by either buying the single from someone, or copying it. In either case, neither Tori nor Atlantic Records gets any money at all. So why not just copy the B-side tracks?
If I could pay, say, $0.50 USD directly to Tori Amos for every B-side, live track, etc. that I've downloaded, I'd do it. And I think a lot of other people would, too (though the price they'd be willing to pay might be different, and of course the artist might not be Tori).
The same goes for the one-shot songs. There are a lot of one-hit wonder artists out there, or artists who only have 1-3 songs I like. Would you pay $0.25 for a copy of Tommy Tutone's "867-5309 (Jenny)"? Or The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star"? A lot of people would, especially if it were easy and had no overhead. Even more would, if they knew the money was going to go straight into the artist's pocket, and not to some record company exec. But would you buy a whole album at $12-$18 USD just to get one of those songs? No, probably not, unless it's a Rhino Records compilation or something.
The next great innovation for the human race is going to be secure, anonymous, untraceable electronic currency. And it's going to turn the whole world upside-down.
Technically, Napster is providing servers that do nothing other than show who else using the client is connected. The clients talk to each other for all other information (or so I'm led to believe).
When you "log in" to Napster, the client sends your list of available files to the server. Searches use the database on the server, for speed. (Could you imagine trying to search for a file by opening a socket to thousands of modem-connected Widows systems, and then asking these systems whether they have anything matching your search criteria?)
going after the people running a Napster server [...] What charge can you possibly bust this guy on? Facilitating the transfer of pirates audio?
Argh! Don't give them any ideas!
The scary part is that your flippant comment is much too close to reality. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (which is now a US law -- no need to wait for the next millennium!) it's now illegal to circumvent copy protection (no matter how lame), or to create a program which enables other people to circumvent copy protection.
Now, that's not quite what Napster does -- there's no copy protection on a CD, so an MP3 ripped from CD didn't defeat any copy protection, and so the trading of ripped MP3 files via Napster doesn't have anything to do with copy protection. However, given the recent stupidity of Congress (like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act), and given the obvious influence that corporations have over the government, it's not just conceivable that Congress will pass a law as you describe, but likely.
If we measured the ammount of reliability of various services we would see that networks are far less reliable than say water or even electricity.
And this has what to do with Red Hat? Do you think RHAT should be investing in sewers? What's your point?
Storing information remotely requires a large ammount of money.
Depends on what you're storing.
[...] all your personal games/music/term papers/books/etc and put all of it on the web?
Why would you want to do this? Sheer geek factor? OK, let's assume you have some motive....
It would be the height of lunacy to store all this information on the existing "web hosting" sites. They're not scaled for it. Either you'd want to do it yourself, or you'd want a full data storage site -- not a "web hosting" site, that's for small amounts of data.
If you were going to do it yourself, you'd need a whole bunch of disk drives (RAID 4 or RAID 5 preferably), and enough computers (or equivalent devices, like NetApp NFS toasters) to control them. You'd probably want some serious UPSes, or maybe a generator. (Or both.) And most importantly, you'd need a network capable of getting the data from the storage farm to the computers that want to use it. If you want to use it from multiple sites, then you'll need a WAN, or you could use the Internet (if you have a permanent connection). If you want to use it from anywhere then you'll need to connect it to the Internet. At that point, you have just become a data warehouse. So why not throw in a few more TB of storage and offer service to others to help recoup your costs?
And what does this have to do with RHAT?
I have had personal experience with slashdot not being avaible or timely or even speedy for quite a while.
... and therefore Red Hat should not invest in Mozilla or Sendmail? Are you just whining to hear yourself whine?
In short networking is for the aristocrats.
No, it's accessible to even lower middle-class people in the USA. Even some of the poor can get online if they're clever enough to use the local public libraries.
Do you think RHAT should invest in something that will improve the lives of the poor? Well, that's really noble, but it's a lousy business model. The poor don't have much disposable discretionary income to throw at RHAT.
For example what happens if I want to connect to the internet at 300bps or lower?
I don't think I could find a 300 baud modem if I tried. I've got an old 1200 baud at home, but it's broken. I've got a working 2400 baud....
Why can't the modem at the ISP simply take the connection and allow me to give up some of the possible 53kps to allow me to connect?
I don't know of any reason why this wouldn't work, but I must admit I haven't actually tried it (see above), and my theoretical background in analog/digital conversion is a bit lacking. Have you actually tried this? What problems did you encounter?
Seriously, if you can afford $120 - $240 USD a year (depending on where you live) for a dialup connection, you can afford at least a 14.4kbps modem. And I know a 14.4kbps modem will work with my ISP, because I've done it. (I still have the 14.4kbps modem, too. I'd estimate its resale value at about $5 USD -- not worth the effort it would take to find a buyer.)
Nothing against Mozilla, I'd just like to see some choice in the Linux browser market, and I'd like to see a free product.
Mozilla is distributed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL) and/or the Netscape Public License (NPL), which even Richard Stallman says are free software.
(Of course, RMS prefers that you use the GPL instead of the NPL/MPL, but they are free licenses.)
You could always build the newer package yourself. Just use apt-get source... to fetch the Debian-ized source code (from unstable), and then run debian/rules binary to compile and build a.deb file.
You could leave your sources.list pointing to the stable binaries but the unstable sources to achieve this.
(With the unstable version of apt, you can even use apt-get -b source... to fetch and build automatically.)
Re:Trading Exponential Progress for Short Term Pro
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New Patent Treaty
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· Score: 2
The alternative to patents is for corporate entities or individuals to keep all of their internal research as secret as possible to prevent competitor's copying their work.
True, but this has nothing to do with the current topic.
The reality of the situation is that we're going farther and farther overboard. The USPTO is issuing overbroad patents by the thousand. It's quickly reaching the point where it's impossible to do anything without a (large) team of patent lawyers continuously sifting through the stream of shit^H^H^H^Hpatents that flows down from the government to see which of them apply to whatever it is that you're trying to do (or have been doing for years).
In many ways, a return to the 18th century, pre-patent concept of trade secrets would be a welcome change. At least if something's "merely" a trade secret instead of a government-enforced patented idea, you can still use it! If you happen to invent something that's a trade secret of GM or Monsanto, then you get to use it in your own products. If you happen to invent something that's patented, though, you get a nasty lawsuit regardless of whether you even knew there was such a patent.
What needs to be thought is this treaty - specifically what can and cannot be considered new technology that is patent-worthy.
Yes. That's definitely something that needs to be revised.
But I'm also concerned about what this treaty means in other ways. If I understand this correctly, the treaty basically aims to force every nation to recognize patents from other nations.
If this were to happen, it would spell disaster for a lot of free software, and for the economies of many third-world countries. Consider the example of RSA encryption -- since the RSA algorithm is patented in the United States, American cryptographers cannot write code using that algorithm (unless they obtain a "license"). So anybody who wants to sell an RSA-based product has to base their business in Australia or some other country -- and even then they probably still can't sell to the United States. The situation is even worse for free software, because while a commercial organization may be able to pay the "license fees" to use the patented algorithm, no free software project will be able to do that.
So, what happens if Australia is forced to honor the American patent on RSA? All of the RSA development that moved to Australia to escape the patent is screwed. And if every country honors the patent, then the project is essentially terminated, because there will be no escape from the IP police.
Also think about what this means to Australia (or any other country) -- the commercial organizations who moved their business to Australia probably gave a nice little boost to the local econonmy. If they can't continue their business, then Australia's economy takes a hit.
Imagine going to england.uk (or whatever...) to learn about England and seeing a defaced site. The whole country looks stupid.
Yes -- the country basically sends the world the message "we're too stupid to stop script kiddies from defacing our web sites".
This whole thing reminds me of an old Simpsons episode: the one where Lisa steals all of the Teachers' Editions of the text books. The whole school comes to a screeching halt because none of the teachers know anything about the subjects they're teaching. In the end, she has to write "I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty" (or words to that effect) over and over.
but what that cracker did was illegal - so surely he should be punished?
No! You've got it completely backwards. Laws aren't the word of God. They're just a bunch of letters and numbers on a piece of paper.
Just because something is illegal does not mean it's wrong or that someone "should" be punished for doing it. The government is supposed to create laws to help protect the rights of the people. But lately the whole thing has just fallen apart. Everything's upside-down; instead of protecting and serving us, the government is abusing and harassing us.
It also seems that an example is being made here. If you tread on the toes of any.gov or.mil, it is highly likely that one day, you will be caught, especially if you are in the US.
Do you think it's right that the government should be allowed to "make an example" of us? The government is supposed to have fewer rights than the average citizen does, not more.
Where I come from, someone who takes advantage of weaker people is called a "bully". But apparently, if you're in D.C., bullying is not only tolerated, but encouraged.
Someone who defaces a government web site should get a small fine to cover the costs of restoring the web site. No jail time, and no forfeiture of other civil rights should be imposed.
To me, this seems like justice.
To me, this seems like a police state.
Econodwarf (was Re:"Give-back"?)
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Copyright!
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· Score: 2
A society based on your give-back principle would be a very gray society... No one would bother producing anything new.
Why, look! There it is, in its natural habitat! The elusive econodwarf!
You can't say "give me" without giving back- in this case, paying the people who produce for you the things you enjoy.
How much of the purchase price of a new CD do you think the artist gets? And how much goes to the record company and the various middle-men?
As far as I understand it, it would be pretty difficult to rip out the core and leave the networking intact, and replace the core. The core is open source, but since the rest isn't, there's no easy way to plug in a new core.
Too bad there isn't a project which uses floating point. If there was, they could write a client that interleaves floating point with integer calculations to _use more of your computers brain at once_:)
Many of the distributed.net cores already use a combination of "normal" and MMX instructions to achieve this effect. Unfortunately, the d.net mailing list archive doesn't appear to be searchable, but I did find some preliminary analysis of an Athlon core which would derive similar benefits (read: chew through keys like a crazed wolverine on crack:-) ).
To "icing": your analysis of multiple-process issues isn't relevant here -- we're talking about a single execution thread, so there's no context switching. (What you said was true of course, but it just doesn't apply in this situation.)
But your point about having an attractive button (or set of buttons) for this purpose is a good one. I'm no graphic artist, though, so I can't help there. Perhaps a new Gimp logo contest?
Slashdot Mirror
Um, why can't you just use ps2pdf to make a nice Adobe PDF file to send them.
Because "nice PDF" is an oxymoron.
I guess you could make a PDF file that way, but it's not possible to make a "nice PDF" by any means.
It helps Mommies and Daddies be Mommies and Daddies. And I don't just mean by having kids, it helps them grow closer to each other. It gives both sides encouragement and energy. It is a lot of fun.
As long as your kids get this part of the message along with the warnings, I'll have no cause for complaint. :-)
I know of broken homes, and lives from people who had Sex expressed on them in very wrong ways.
Rape and child abuse are not sex. They are horrible crimes.
I could go on to say stuff like "if sex weren't considered so shameful then these abuse victims would be able to seek the counseling they need..." but I suspect that you don't need to hear it.
Take care.
By restricting traffic, for instance, to one side of the road or the other depending on the direction it is traveling you are actualy more free to arive at the destination you desire.
You trivialize freedom. We're not talking about societal conventions, and we're not even talking about public safety. Your traffic example doesn't even come close to the issues of free speech and censorship we were talking about.
But your traffic example makes me wonder... do you actually subscribe to the notion that sexual information is dangerous? Do you think that you are so weak and gullible that you need the law to protect you from your own sexuality?
Why do so many adults in this country distrust themselves? I can only surmise that they have been brainwashed, by a lifetime of propaganda, to believe that they cannot defend themselves, and that they need to be protected. And if this message that I'm writing serves no other purpose, I can at least hope that it will make someone ponder this.
It is an interesting irony that *restricting* some things actualy enhances freedom.
Life's full of ironies. Believe it or not, I'm not quite so mindless that I can't appreciate them.
The point of the GPL is to ensure that software remains free for all users, forever. Therefore the GPL prohibits you from taking away the freedom of others (by making a proprietary derivative work).
But this has very little to do with free speech. And nothing to do with sex.
Are you planning on just being able to give it to them on the spot?
I've thought about several lines of reasoning, but the short answer to your question is "yes".
It will depend on which child asks, how old he is at the time, and on exactly what he asks. I'm counting on "Where do babies come from?" (or a variant) being the first question, not "What is sex?".
The reason I took such offense at your answer was because you made sex sound like it's something wrong. It's not. It's the ultimate expression of caring and trust between people who love each other. And it's so much more than that, but I don't quite have the words for it yet.
But the propaganda which permeates American culture today would have you believe that sex is dirty, or shameful, or sinful (whatever that means). There are people out there who wish, consciously or otherwise, to suppress free exchange of information about sexuality, for reasons which I'm not quite able to fathom (though my brainwashing theory seems like a safe guess at the moment).
I was one of the people who contributed to alt.sex and alt.sex.wizards back in their glory days, before spam destroyed Usenet as we knew it. I learned so much there, and I wish that other people could have the same opportunity. (sexuality.org has some of the old alt.sex material on it, and a lot of wonderful references, for those of you in the Web generation who missed the boat the first time around.)
But if you and others like you persist in your blind faith that sex is something to be hidden away and suppressed, then I fear for the next generation.
why is Katz so confused about thinking Free Speech means someone is allowed to distribute Sex material to anyone?
Uh... because it means exactly that. Speech about sex must be just as protected as any other kind of speech.
it is very difficult to explain to people who don't have kids (that would be a cool slashdot poll, btw)
... I have two sons....
Unfortunately without a great understanding of the world at their age it will have to come across as "Don't let anyone show, touch, or talk about anything like that."
Every child is different. I don't even know how old yours are, so I can't judge your statement at face value. But when my children ask me about sex, I hope -- nay, I know -- that I can give them a better answer than that.
But what does any of this parenting stuff have to do with Katz's article or with free speech? Of course the rules are different when children are involved -- but that does not mean that censorship is tolerable.
Sexual activity is different in nature than everything else, and therefore there is a different prescribed way of handling it.
What?!?
I could as easily say "Mathematical activity is different in nature than everything else, and therefore there is a different prescribed way of handling it." Then we could have anti-public-math laws, and "save-the-children-from-math laws"...
(... and laws governing the export of mathematical functions to other countries (oops, we already have those in the USA!) ....)
But to get back on topic... what makes you think that sex is so special that it defines its own category in every realm of human endeavor?
All catagories have differences.
I realize I'm taking this sentence slightly out of context, but I believe you're making a grievous error. You seem to believe, like Aristotle, that the whole universe can be divided into neat little categories, labeled and stacked neatly on the shelf.
It just doesn't work that way.
Humans have sex. It's how we reproduce. It's a part of us, and you can't separate that part from the rest. Human sexuality is not a simple thing; it is vastly complex.
Sexuality is also not harmful to anyone, and nobody's sexuality infringes on anyone else's rights. So why would we need any laws concerning sexuality?
We already have laws against rape, sexual assault, and so forth. These laws cover specific acts, and they are good and necessary laws.
The are also sufficient. We have no need of more of them.
Sometimes I think the best way to get rid of porn w/o infringing on free speech rights would be to make it illegal to charge for or otherwise profit from it.
This is not compatible with freedom of speech. Not only does it require an objective "measuring stick" to determine what is or is not pornography (which I believe is impossible -- see my previous post in this thread), but it also requires labeling of all content. This labeling imposes a burden on the speaker, and many speakers will choose not to speak. This is self-censorship, and any law which promotes self-censorship is unconstitutional.
(Sorry, I can't remember the actual legal terminology. It was mentioned in the Bernstein case though, for those of you who feel like digging through /. archives or legal documents.)
There. No speech infringment -- people could talk about whatever they wanted, and still even produce the stuff
But you've created (in your hypothesis) a situation in which the state imposes its morality upon the public. While this may or may not directly qualify as an abridgement of the freedom of speech/press, it most certainly qualifies as an infringement of rights.
All speech is protected, unless that speech constitutes a clear and present danger (i.e., shouting "Fire! in a crowded theater). The burden of proof lies with you, to demonstrate that pornography is a clear and present danger to human life.
Of course, those of you that wanted to be exploited (yes, I'm talking about viewers of porn as well as those featured in it) would still lose out
This is a pretty tacit admission that you're willing to violate some people's rights just because you don't like what they choose to do with their freedom.
Are we, or are we not, adults? If we are adults, then we bear the responsibilities as well as the privileges of that status. One of those responsibilities is making up our own minds about issues (like pornography). If we choose to watch pornography, or to help produce it, or distribute it -- then that is our choice. If you think we're allowing ourselves to be "exploited", that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. But you have no right to choose for us, or to ask the government to choose for us.
Freedom means you get hurt sometimes, by making bad choices. That's how you learn. If someone makes all your choices for you, you don't learn, and you don't grow -- you become a slave.
I guess part of the problem is how you define porn. I have a pretty restrictive definition; I don't by any means want to eliminate any and all "erotic" or "explicit" content online or anywhere else.
You are inventing your own terminology. Unfortunately, you're using words that already have other, accepted meanings, and pretending that they have the meanings you want them to have.
This is a recipe for confusion at best, and for bait-and-switch rabble-rousing at worst.
I defined "pornography" as any artistic piece designed to stimulate a sexual response. I think the vast majority of people on both sides of this issue have a similar definition. Changing the definition of pornography to further your own beliefs is dishonest.
Back to the porn/free-speech issues.... If I understand you correctly, you believe it would be appropriate to censor certain types of works -- namely, those which depect rape, assault or derogatory treatment of certain people. Here, I must also disagree.
You can't categorize sexuality, and you can't categorize art. Art which stimulates you sexually may not do a damned thing for me, and vice versa. Moreover, art which some people believe promotes "degradation" may not invoke a similar response from others -- the latter group may think it's satire.
This is the reason why freedom of speech and freedom of the press are essential. It's impossible to create any objective "measuring stick" for art to divide the "pornography" from the "non-pornographic" art, or to divide the "degrading" art from the "non-degrading" art. By its very nature, art challenges us to discard these artificial boundaries within our minds, and to treat each piece on its own merits (or lack thereof).
While I respect the goodness of your intentions, I'm sure you know what they say about the road to Hell.
All of the above, and
Keep trying, Opera developers. Once this actually works it will be ready for beta testing.
From the patent:
If it's "invisible light", how can the cat see it? If the cat doesn't see it, how does it induce any behavior at all?
According to one of my high school teachers, the sales tax (at least here in Ohio) was intended to be a tax on the merchant, not the consumer. Hence the term "sales tax" instead of "purchase tax". Of course the merchant immediately passes the burden on to the consumer. So in reality the consumer is the one paying the tax -- the merchant merely handles the administrative overhead (these days, by buying a computerized point-of-sale system; but when I was a kid I remember seeing "sales tax cheat sheets" -- laminated/plastic documents at the check-out with the amount of sales tax for ranges of total purchase amount, which the cashier would consult when adding up the bill).
How many of you have downloaded mp3s from actual sites like mp3.com that are not copyright protected?
The songs on mp3.com are copyrighted. You are not permitted to distribute them, unless the artist overrides this restriction (and I haven't seen any that do). Of course, it's in mp3.com's interests to see their artists' songs distributed far and wide, so I doubt they'll crack down on anyone who distributes the files.
To answer your question, though: I think you'd be surprised. I've downloaded a few dozen songs from mp3.com, at least. I've also bought 5 D.A.M. CDs from them, and will probably buy more in the future. A lot of the artists on mp3.com are good -- as good as anything on the radio (which isn't saying much these days).
The vast majority of my MP3 files were ripped directly from CDs that I own. I've got several hundred CDs, and a couple thousand fully-legal MP3 files.
Most of the "illegal" MP3 files I have fall into two categories: rare/live/B-side songs from artists I adore, or one-shot singles from artists from whom I only like one song and don't want to buy a whole album just to get that song.
E.g., I have bought every Tori Amos studio album, and every single I could get my hands on. But most of the singles are out of print -- so the B-sides on those singles can only be had by either buying the single from someone, or copying it. In either case, neither Tori nor Atlantic Records gets any money at all. So why not just copy the B-side tracks?
If I could pay, say, $0.50 USD directly to Tori Amos for every B-side, live track, etc. that I've downloaded, I'd do it. And I think a lot of other people would, too (though the price they'd be willing to pay might be different, and of course the artist might not be Tori).
The same goes for the one-shot songs. There are a lot of one-hit wonder artists out there, or artists who only have 1-3 songs I like. Would you pay $0.25 for a copy of Tommy Tutone's "867-5309 (Jenny)"? Or The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star"? A lot of people would, especially if it were easy and had no overhead. Even more would, if they knew the money was going to go straight into the artist's pocket, and not to some record company exec. But would you buy a whole album at $12-$18 USD just to get one of those songs? No, probably not, unless it's a Rhino Records compilation or something.
The next great innovation for the human race is going to be secure, anonymous, untraceable electronic currency. And it's going to turn the whole world upside-down.
Technically, Napster is providing servers that do nothing other than show who else using the client is connected. The clients talk to each other for all other information (or so I'm led to believe).
When you "log in" to Napster, the client sends your list of available files to the server. Searches use the database on the server, for speed. (Could you imagine trying to search for a file by opening a socket to thousands of modem-connected Widows systems, and then asking these systems whether they have anything matching your search criteria?)
going after the people running a Napster server [...] What charge can you possibly bust this guy on? Facilitating the transfer of pirates audio?
Argh! Don't give them any ideas!
The scary part is that your flippant comment is much too close to reality. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (which is now a US law -- no need to wait for the next millennium!) it's now illegal to circumvent copy protection (no matter how lame), or to create a program which enables other people to circumvent copy protection.
Now, that's not quite what Napster does -- there's no copy protection on a CD, so an MP3 ripped from CD didn't defeat any copy protection, and so the trading of ripped MP3 files via Napster doesn't have anything to do with copy protection. However, given the recent stupidity of Congress (like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act), and given the obvious influence that corporations have over the government, it's not just conceivable that Congress will pass a law as you describe, but likely.
Jimi Hendrix.
If we measured the ammount of reliability of various services we would see that networks are far less reliable than say water or even electricity.
And this has what to do with Red Hat? Do you think RHAT should be investing in sewers? What's your point?
Storing information remotely requires a large ammount of money.
Depends on what you're storing.
[...] all your personal games/music/term papers/books /etc and put all of it on the web?
Why would you want to do this? Sheer geek factor? OK, let's assume you have some motive....
It would be the height of lunacy to store all this information on the existing "web hosting" sites. They're not scaled for it. Either you'd want to do it yourself, or you'd want a full data storage site -- not a "web hosting" site, that's for small amounts of data.
If you were going to do it yourself, you'd need a whole bunch of disk drives (RAID 4 or RAID 5 preferably), and enough computers (or equivalent devices, like NetApp NFS toasters) to control them. You'd probably want some serious UPSes, or maybe a generator. (Or both.) And most importantly, you'd need a network capable of getting the data from the storage farm to the computers that want to use it. If you want to use it from multiple sites, then you'll need a WAN, or you could use the Internet (if you have a permanent connection). If you want to use it from anywhere then you'll need to connect it to the Internet. At that point, you have just become a data warehouse. So why not throw in a few more TB of storage and offer service to others to help recoup your costs?
And what does this have to do with RHAT?
I have had personal experience with slashdot not being avaible or timely or even speedy for quite a while.
... and therefore Red Hat should not invest in Mozilla or Sendmail? Are you just whining to hear yourself whine?
In short networking is for the aristocrats.
No, it's accessible to even lower middle-class people in the USA. Even some of the poor can get online if they're clever enough to use the local public libraries.
Do you think RHAT should invest in something that will improve the lives of the poor? Well, that's really noble, but it's a lousy business model. The poor don't have much disposable discretionary income to throw at RHAT.
For example what happens if I want to connect to the internet at 300bps or lower?
I don't think I could find a 300 baud modem if I tried. I've got an old 1200 baud at home, but it's broken. I've got a working 2400 baud....
Why can't the modem at the ISP simply take the connection and allow me to give up some of the possible 53kps to allow me to connect?
I don't know of any reason why this wouldn't work, but I must admit I haven't actually tried it (see above), and my theoretical background in analog/digital conversion is a bit lacking. Have you actually tried this? What problems did you encounter?
Seriously, if you can afford $120 - $240 USD a year (depending on where you live) for a dialup connection, you can afford at least a 14.4kbps modem. And I know a 14.4kbps modem will work with my ISP, because I've done it. (I still have the 14.4kbps modem, too. I'd estimate its resale value at about $5 USD -- not worth the effort it would take to find a buyer.)
Nothing against Mozilla, I'd just like to see some choice in the Linux browser market, and I'd like to see a free product.
Mozilla is distributed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL) and/or the Netscape Public License (NPL), which even Richard Stallman says are free software.
(Of course, RMS prefers that you use the GPL instead of the NPL/MPL, but they are free licenses.)
You could always build the newer package yourself. Just use apt-get source ... to fetch the Debian-ized source code (from unstable), and then run debian/rules binary to compile and build a .deb file.
You could leave your sources.list pointing to the stable binaries but the unstable sources to achieve this.
(With the unstable version of apt, you can even use apt-get -b source ... to fetch and build automatically.)
The alternative to patents is for corporate entities or individuals to keep all of their internal research as secret as possible to prevent competitor's copying their work.
True, but this has nothing to do with the current topic.
The reality of the situation is that we're going farther and farther overboard. The USPTO is issuing overbroad patents by the thousand. It's quickly reaching the point where it's impossible to do anything without a (large) team of patent lawyers continuously sifting through the stream of shit^H^H^H^Hpatents that flows down from the government to see which of them apply to whatever it is that you're trying to do (or have been doing for years).
In many ways, a return to the 18th century, pre-patent concept of trade secrets would be a welcome change. At least if something's "merely" a trade secret instead of a government-enforced patented idea, you can still use it! If you happen to invent something that's a trade secret of GM or Monsanto, then you get to use it in your own products. If you happen to invent something that's patented, though, you get a nasty lawsuit regardless of whether you even knew there was such a patent.
Patents exist to protect our intellectual property.
No. Patents (and copyrights) exist to promote the progress of science and useful arts (clause 8) (non-Americans may substitute their own national references).
What needs to be thought is this treaty - specifically what can and cannot be considered new technology that is patent-worthy.
Yes. That's definitely something that needs to be revised.
But I'm also concerned about what this treaty means in other ways. If I understand this correctly, the treaty basically aims to force every nation to recognize patents from other nations.
If this were to happen, it would spell disaster for a lot of free software, and for the economies of many third-world countries. Consider the example of RSA encryption -- since the RSA algorithm is patented in the United States, American cryptographers cannot write code using that algorithm (unless they obtain a "license"). So anybody who wants to sell an RSA-based product has to base their business in Australia or some other country -- and even then they probably still can't sell to the United States. The situation is even worse for free software, because while a commercial organization may be able to pay the "license fees" to use the patented algorithm, no free software project will be able to do that.
So, what happens if Australia is forced to honor the American patent on RSA? All of the RSA development that moved to Australia to escape the patent is screwed. And if every country honors the patent, then the project is essentially terminated, because there will be no escape from the IP police.
Also think about what this means to Australia (or any other country) -- the commercial organizations who moved their business to Australia probably gave a nice little boost to the local econonmy. If they can't continue their business, then Australia's economy takes a hit.
I think this proposed treaty is a bad idea.
If the Apollo space program can be considered a hack, then I nominate the pyramids of Egypt.
People are still impressed by them thousands of years after they were built.
Imagine going to england.uk (or whatever...) to learn about England and seeing a defaced site. The whole country looks stupid.
Yes -- the country basically sends the world the message "we're too stupid to stop script kiddies from defacing our web sites".
This whole thing reminds me of an old Simpsons episode: the one where Lisa steals all of the Teachers' Editions of the text books. The whole school comes to a screeching halt because none of the teachers know anything about the subjects they're teaching. In the end, she has to write "I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty" (or words to that effect) over and over.
but what that cracker did was illegal - so surely he should be punished?
No! You've got it completely backwards. Laws aren't the word of God. They're just a bunch of letters and numbers on a piece of paper.
Just because something is illegal does not mean it's wrong or that someone "should" be punished for doing it. The government is supposed to create laws to help protect the rights of the people. But lately the whole thing has just fallen apart. Everything's upside-down; instead of protecting and serving us, the government is abusing and harassing us.
It also seems that an example is being made here. If you tread on the toes of any .gov or .mil, it is highly likely that one day, you will be caught, especially if you are in the US.
Do you think it's right that the government should be allowed to "make an example" of us? The government is supposed to have fewer rights than the average citizen does, not more.
Where I come from, someone who takes advantage of weaker people is called a "bully". But apparently, if you're in D.C., bullying is not only tolerated, but encouraged.
Someone who defaces a government web site should get a small fine to cover the costs of restoring the web site. No jail time, and no forfeiture of other civil rights should be imposed.
To me, this seems like justice.
To me, this seems like a police state.
A society based on your give-back principle would be a very gray society... No one would bother producing anything new.
Why, look! There it is, in its natural habitat! The elusive econodwarf!
You can't say "give me" without giving back- in this case, paying the people who produce for you the things you enjoy.
How much of the purchase price of a new CD do you think the artist gets? And how much goes to the record company and the various middle-men?
As far as I understand it, it would be pretty difficult to rip out the core and leave the networking intact, and replace the core. The core is open source, but since the rest isn't, there's no easy way to plug in a new core.
Too bad there isn't a project which uses floating point. If there was, they could write a client that interleaves floating point with integer calculations to _use more of your computers brain at once_ :)
Many of the distributed.net cores already use a combination of "normal" and MMX instructions to achieve this effect. Unfortunately, the d.net mailing list archive doesn't appear to be searchable, but I did find some preliminary analysis of an Athlon core which would derive similar benefits (read: chew through keys like a crazed wolverine on crack :-) ).
To "icing": your analysis of multiple-process issues isn't relevant here -- we're talking about a single execution thread, so there's no context switching. (What you said was true of course, but it just doesn't apply in this situation.)
That way, important sites can brag, "This site uses no wonky extensions that aren't in a blessed form of Java, JavaScript, or Shockwave"
I prefer the works just fine with any browser approach. And by the way, Shockwave currently has no Linux plugin. That's Flash.
But your point about having an attractive button (or set of buttons) for this purpose is a good one. I'm no graphic artist, though, so I can't help there. Perhaps a new Gimp logo contest?