wouldn't all the life on the planet be in trouble anyway?;-)
Except maybe cockroaches...:-)
One of them damned little buggers would mutate
to compensate and pretty soon the roaches would rule the world feeding off of the corpses of the animal life that couldn't adapt.
No currently developed public key encryption algorithm has been mathematically demonstrated to be secure.
You do know that only one private key encryption algorithm has been proven to be mathmatically secure, right? That algorithm is the "One Time Pad". That said, it is of limited use because of the problems of distributing the key, the fact that the key can only be used once, and the key is as large as the message to be encrypted. What the hell do you mean by "demonstrably secure" anyway?
Cryptographic algorthms, even private key ones, don't need to be mathmatically proven to be useful, or we basically wouldn't have cryptography. Algorithms should, however be subject to review by the best available cryptographers, and, 'we haven't managed to crack it yet' is really the best that can be done.
This is clearly unacceptable for any serious application. When highly confidential and sensitive data is transferred, it is critical that a demonstrably secure algorithm be used. All public key algorithms have failed this test, and thus do not deserve consideration in a serious computing environment.
The industry is aware of the shortcomings of cryptography, well, at least some of it is. The rest of it has no excuse anymore because the literature is out there. The industry also knows that in order to be useful, cryptography has to be usable, and so certain compromises have to be made. Public key cryptography is absolutely necessary in order for cryptography to be used on a wide scale.
Of course Las Vegas is the fastest growing city in the US. Alcohol blue laws are only one thing, and the bay area has pretty lax and open standards in other areas that make it attractive to many people to live there. Personally, what keeps me out of the bay area most is the oppressively high cost of living. Second to that, the over litigousness and bizzare politics of California in general are kinda a turnoff, but that is a matter of personal preference I guess.
While free speech is protected by the First Amendment, there must be drawn a limit to which this umbrella of protection is stopped. That limit is drawn where your speech (or in this case, writings) causes harm to another individual.
Are you a lawyer? I am not either, but from what I've seen things are not quite that simple. Certainly a lot of things are printed and/or broadcast every day that everyone would agree are legal and protected by the First Amendment but 'cause harm' to another. Think political cartoons, think editorial pages, think National Lampoon, MAD Magazine, even, for example Hustler.
was right to have his website censored by the school system
The limit for the school to 'censor' such a web site should be limited to their ability to block it from access through the school's internet connection. The school should not be allowed to punish kids for what they do and/or say off school grounds and outside school hours. If any wrong was done to the associate principal, he should have to resort to outside means to have it righted, not by abusing his position of authority within the schools. What if the schools decide to start punishing kids for expressing political or religious beliefs on their own time? Sure, they might be able to keep them from doing it at school, but what right to they have outside the schools? What if a kid distributes political flyers outside school and another kid brings them to school? Who did something wrong, the kid who distributed the flyers or the one who brought them to school? If someone is viewing a web page at school that the school has somehow banned, then it should be them that is punished, not the person who created it.
When speech causes harm, whether it be physical injuries, or mental anguish, to another person, the speaker has violated the rights of the target of the speech and therefore, not protected by the First Amendment.
Not necessarily. In many cases the courts have held that material that undoubtedly caused 'mental anguish', for example, are protected by the First Amendment. Satire, for example was upheld in the well publicized supreme court case as dramatized in 'The People vs. Larry Flynt'.
This is called slander or libel and is punishable by law
Slander and libel are not only fairly narrowly defined, they are very difficult to prove in court. For example, satire is usually considered defensible when it should be obvious that the claims would not be mistaken as true (for example, Hustler magazine's fake ad which implied that Jerry Fallwell had incestuous relations with his mother).
Deliberately spreading rumors or insulting another person is against the law
Deliberately spreading false rumors may be illegal, or it may not. Deliberately spreading true rumors is almost always going to be legal. Insulting people is not necessarily illegal either. I could say 'I think Hillary Clinton is a lying, cheating bitch'. That is legal. If that is my opinion, then the statement is entirely factual, regardless of wheter Hillary really is a lying cheating bitch or not. In order for something to be libelous or slanderous, it has to be false. Saying 'I think the associate principal sodomizes goats' may be significantly different legally than saying 'I've seen the associate principal sodomizing goats'.
Just ask the National Inquirer.
Fine. The Enquirer wins almost every case brought against them. If they didn't, they'd have been out of business a long time ago, because they piss off a lot of people, especially politicians and celebrities who have a lot of influence.
I don't agree with the ACLU all the time, but it sickens me even more when I think of the warped sense of justice and what the consititution and bill of rights are all about that kids get sent by the wacked out school systems in this country.
Unfortunately, the only way to make money programming is to work for a closed source company.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but this is a load of excrement. The majority of programmers work in IT shops on in-house projects, not in shrinkwrap software producing organizations. While most in-house software is so specialized that it doesn't make sense to open source it as a whole, much of it contains parts that could be open sourced. It is also tremendously beneficial to use pre-written open sourced parts when developing an in-house application. This type of development works totally well with open source.
And as for programmers not spending their free time writing open source software, it is silly to assume that many of them won't choose to do so on their own. Nothing forces them. Not everyone's idea of unwinding is the same. Programming and fresh air aren't mutually exclusive either when you are working on your own projects, at least not now that laptops and handhelds are readily available.
And at any rate, I think it is more often the poor schmucks who are stuck working long hours in the dungeons of commercial software houses that are the victims of dehumanization than most open source developers. The fact that so many trolls spew the same tired cliches would seem to bear that out.
I wouldn't consider moving to Utah because of the ridiculous blue laws there. Things are bad enough where I live now (midwest), and aren't much better where I am going (central Texas), but they are better than Utah. I personally think that every state should have liquor laws like Nevada... Open 24x7. I also think the drinking age should be lowered to 18.
Of course the stupid politicians, old people and worried mothers of the world will never let that happen...
Uh... you are getting Corel and Caldera confused. Corel bought WordPerfect from Novel and a bunch of Borland's office products like Quattro Pro. Caldera bought DR-DOS from Novel. Corel is a Canadian company, Caldera is a Utah company.
Re:Its time for: WHAT IS ESR WORTH?
on
ESR On XML-RPC
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· Score: 2
Good thing ESR doesn't live in the hideously overpriced bay area... There are places where $300,000 will buy you a nice, new, 3000+ square foot house in a good neighborhood... Like a large part of the country.
From an incredibly high base. Look at countries where gun control is enacted and compare the number of fatal shootings. On a per capita basis there are few states in the US which aren't worse than Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles in the 70s.
I guess I am fortunate enough to live in one of those states, however, I tend to doubt your statistics a little when it comes to total violent crime rates. Or at least just comparing the number of shootings is not the only thing to consider. Having been in the US during the 70s and now, I'd much rather be here than in Northern Ireland, thank you very much. I've never been to Ireland, but I've been to the UK, and I can't say that I felt any more safe there than I do where I live.
If everyone has a gun then every criminal will have a gun with which to be irresponsible. Not a great help.
Who said anything about everyone. Felons would be excepted, very few people would disagree with that. If a large share of everyone else might be armed at any given time, felons would have to be much more careful with what they did. Besides that if the criminals have guns now, then increasing the number of honest citizens that do is improving the odds. Switzerland for example actually requires firearms possession and training for many of their citizens, and they have a lower violent crime rate than the UK or Australia.
Yes it is.
We will have to disagree on this one then.
The freedom to say what you like without living in fear of being shot is part of having a democracy.
I say what I like now and I don't fear being shot, and I live in a state with relatively few gun control laws. Many places with strict gun control laws (like the UK or Australia) I would be much more fearful of saying what I like for fear of being jailed, if not shot.
I don't think that a widely armed populace would lead to people being gunned down in the streets over words, or we'd see it happening already, and we don't. The vast majority of our violent crime is related to the marketing of illegal drugs.
Guns are not the only weapons but they are among the best.
Guns are only a tool, and as such they can be used for good or bad.
Kennedy was shot, Lincoln was shot, Reagan was shot. How much harder would it be to have stabbed them, and how much better would their chances of survival have been?
Well, Reagan did survive. What would their chances have been if the assassins chose to use suicide bombers? There is no 100% way to avoid political assasinations.
Arguments will always lead to some violence, it is better to limit the potential of that violence even at the "risk" of making a fanciful future rebellion a bit more fanciful.
The benefits of firearms ownership outweigh that though, for all of the few people who are shot every year, guns are used by law abiding citizens to prevent crimes many more times. And if you ban guns, then your arguments will revert back to the physically strongest always having the upper hand, so its not really that big of a win.
Mainly in duration, it was pretty wild but not for very long.
The wild west has been grossly exaggerated in both duration and intensity. As in other places where there is or have been very little civilization, you would be far more likely to die of disease than from a gunshot in the 'wild west'. The biggest killers in those days were influenza and cholera. Drunk driving these days kills an order of magnitude more people than do gunshot wounds. Deaths due to smoking related illnesses kill far more than that. You don't see me calling for a return of prohibition or a ban on tobacco.
This is true but are you going to get a gun and go tell congress to sort it out? How long would you last?
As I've said before, one person can't stand alone against the government.
Would it make any difference if everyone who thought that way went with you (with guns)?
Getting that number of people (somewhere around 76 million gun owners in the US according to what I've read) to agree on much of anything would be a challenge. Anything that you could, would provide a force to be reckoned with.
Do you think the 60's riots would have got faster results if the civil rights protesters had had guns, our would there just have been a lot more dead people?
There is no question that if the 60's protesters had been armed, then the riots would have been over and resolved much more quickly, one way or the other. There might have been a less death and destruction if the riots hadn't lasted on and off for 5 or 6 years, but that is hard to say. Believe it or not, most people think twice before they arm themselves and go into a situation like that.
The difference in the NRA's intent and the result of their actions is important. I'm sure most members do not understand that what they are doing is leading down the road a fascist state.
I still don't see any sort of reasonable evidence that anything the NRA is doing is leading towards a fascist state. Things the previous (very anti-NRA) administration were doing (Clipper, key escrow, burning cult members, gutting the bill of rights) certainly seem more in line with 'leading down the road of a fascist state'.
A fascist state (in post-nazi terms) is one where the strong rule.
That is far too simplistic a definition to be useful.
Guns make people stronger, but only in attack. To use the strength a gun gives you requires it's use or the threat to use it (and the threat must be backed up occasionally by actual use). This leads to the fascist position where if you dislike what someone says to you you just shoot them (so much for freedom of speech!), which Hitler actively encouraged amoungst "true ayrans".
Oh, please. That is about as much of a stretch as it would take to span the grand canyon. Presence of a gun, and the willingness to use it (in self defense, or the defense of others) does not necessarily lead to unrestricted mayhem in the streets as you would lead people to believe. There are several states which have liberalized concealed carry laws (often enacted, as in Florida, in order to eliminate racism in the permit issuance system) and they have actually seen a decrease in violent crime since it has become easier and more fair to get a concealed carry permit.
Legal gun owners tend to be much more responsible than illegal owners. Most of the violent crime is committed by people with previous felony convictions, who are already prohibited from firearms possession. The government can't stop criminals from importing thousands if not millions of tons of drugs into the country, how can they keep them from getting guns?
A well run democracy is a far better solution to a society's troubles than arming everyone and hoping they'll all get along.
A well run democracy isn't incompatible with firearms ownership. The US didn't have any significant problems with that until prohibition (no, the 'wild west' is almost entirely fictional and exaggerated) threw things out of balance. Once prohibition was repealed the gang violence problem dissapated. Things didn't start falling apart again until drug prohibition started becomming a problem. We should learn from history and figure out the 'war on drugs' isn't working, and isn't going to work. It has basically turned into a war on the bill of rights, and it is what is leading the US on the road to fascism, if anything.
Africa is full of countries where the citizens are well armed and, guess what, it makes for a living hell.>
I don't think that is what makes those countries a living hell. It is more likely massive scale poverty. Even in African countries with long running civil wars, you are more likely to die of malnutrition or from AIDS or other diseases than you are to be killed with a firearm.
But why go to Africa when you can go to LA? There are parts of US cities where gun ownership is very high and, guess what, it makes for a living hell.
California already has much more strict gun control than most of the rest of the country, and it has a worse crime problem than average too. There is no reason to think that more legislation will help. They can't seem to enforce what is already on the books. The same thing seems to hold true elsewhere in the country. The more gun control that is enacted, the more crime. Washington D.C. should be your ideal place to live, as guns are almost completely illegal to own there. Guess what, it has an order of magnitude more murders than does Arlington, VA, which is right across the river, has similar ethnic and economic demographics and where guns are legal. States in the midwest, for example which have little gun control, and a much higher per-capita gun ownership rate have sigificantly lower crime and murder rates than do east and west coast cities with extensive gun control laws.
The German example is actually a good illustration of where the NRA would like to go
Actually, that is a blatantly slanderous assertion. The NRA is actually very anti-fascist. Hitler was a big proponent of gun control, especially for Jews. The Nazi position on gun control and the 'pinko' one is basically the same: only the government should have guns. For that matter in the long run, the only difference between fascists and stalinists is the order in which they will remove all of your rights and the rhetoric they will use to try to justify doing it. In the end the average guy gets screwed.
I say nominal cause the fact is that without serious firepower far in excess of what is allowed into private hands, there's no way that any group of people could seriously mount any sort of resistance against the US military. See Waco.
Actually, that is pretty much not true. Waco is not a good example, because a small group like that, short of nuclear weapons could never expect to take down a government. On the other hand if there were hundreds of such groups with a common cause against the government, spread across a large area, then the government would have a serious problem. If those groups were able to get widespread popular support, then the government would be in a world of trouble. While an organized military stands a good chance against any small encampment or bunker of people, they tend to have real problems fighting a large scale guerilla war.
The North Vietnamese were able to beat the US despite being totally outmatched for weapons and equipment, and would have eventually done so even without Russian and/or Chinese support (just as they beat the French largely without significant outside backing).
The Afghans beat the Soviets similarly, and with very little assistance from us and with much more primitive weapons and what they stole from the Russians.
During the fall of the Soviet Union, people loyal to Boris Yeltsin used privately owned weapons to defend Yeltsin's compound, and the Soviets didn't have a good record on gun freedom (although it wasn't totally impossible to legally own anything like it is in the UK or Australia).
The Zapatistas down in central Mexico have been giving the government there fits for years, and they hardly have any backing at all, and they have been doing it in a country with draconian (although like anything in Mexico, poorly enforced) gun control.
And for an example closer to home, although not so recent... The Confederacy, though ultimately unsuccessful, was able to fight for a long time and inflict significant damage to the Union during the Civil War, and they made extensive use of privately owned arms. And no, I don't believe in slavery...
One thing you don't seem to take into account... In a guerilla war, the standing army becomes the rebel's supply line, so eventually what the army has, the rebels have. There are hundreds of thousands of military trained citizens in the US, many of whom have guerilla and counter-insurgency training. And for that matter, how easy is it for a standing army to take on people who look, talk and think like themselves? In numbers, if the military were to be used against civilians in this country, desertion would be widespread. How many soldiers if not whole units might change side if they thought that they were defending the constitution and the people against a corrupt government?
This whole 'the people wouldn't stand a chance against the government' thing comes up every time that gun control is mentioned, and it just doesn't fly.
Yes, in fact, I was a subscriber to Maximum Linux. I've been a subscriber to Linux Journal for years, in fact I have every issue.
Your point is already moot by your very presence here on Slashdot!
Proves nothing of the sort... Just because someone likes electronic media doesn't mean they can't like paper media as well, let alone that they have to hate paper media.
1.Microsoft's server software is used by most websites
Actually IIS is used to run less than 1/3 of
websites. Most web sites use Apache, about
60% according to Netcraft.
2. Microsoft makes the best browser
Matter of opinion, which some people disagree with.
and actually innovates with this browser. No other browser supports the technologies MS's browser does.
What, if any, useful features does IE have that
current versions of Netscape Navigator or Mozilla not have? What 'innovations' have they made in browser technology? They've certainly been trying to proprietarize the web, but that isn't something I'd consider a good thing.
3. MS made the modern internet possible.
This is the most laughable comment of all. Microsoft didn't know what a network was in 1983, which was when many consider the birth of the 'modern internet'. Microsoft was even late to the web party, not showing up until 1995 after Netscape had been there for a while and even then they just licensed Mosaic, which was already in existance for UNIX, Linux and MacOS as well. The original web browsing platform was NeXT Step, followed by UNIX, MacOS and trailed by Windows.
What has Linux done that can even compare to what Ms has acheived.
Linux has become one of, if not the, most popular web server platforms, and it has done it with virtually no advertising budget. Microsoft has spent billions advertising NT/W2K and IIS, and they keep running into a brick wall trying to grow their market share.
If Microsoft wasn't worried, they'd still be pretending Linux didn't exist.
and I'll say it again. Microsoft has a good point about open source and inovation.
I would disagree. In fact, I would say that Microsoft hasn't a clue as to what innovation is... or more like their definition of innovation is more like what I'd call 'immovation'.
Basically if open source gets out of hand,
What do you mean by 'out of hand'?
normal software development will cease,
That will never happen. If for no other reason than the fact that the type of thing that Open Source is most a threat to (shrink wrap boxed software) is what only a small percentage of programmers are paid to work on. Most programmers work in the IT departments of companies where they are writing primarily software for a specific business. Open Source greatly benefits this type of programmer because they can re-use other people's code instead of inventing everything from scratch.
At most what will have to happen is that a different way of rewarding programmers will have to be developed. There are a lot of people working on different angles for this, and we are still a ways from seeing which method or methods are going to win in the long run.
and the quality of software will go down. Why? Because the top programmers will no longer program, if they don't get paid.
Not only does that make assumptions that aren't necessarily true (that the only motivation of "top programmers" is monetary), but it completely ignores the fact that if more code was open sourced, more of the top programmers could review and fix each other's work, which would lead to an improvement of software quality.
I just don't see how you can refute this argument.
Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it can't be done.
It is really a pretty flimsy argument. Microsoft is just spreading alarmist fears in order to try to protect their own interests.
Also, how can Microsoft claim a trademark on Internet Explorer, if they are giving it away for free?
Well, the Windows version of IE isn't really free, it is included in the price of Windows. It is kinda like saying the ashtray in a new Ford Explorer is free. It isn't, you pay for it when you buy the truck, and you can't buy the truck without the ashtray. Not a perfect analogy because if you lose or break the ashtray in a truck you'd have to pay for a replacement, but the cost of replicating software (download) compared to making a physical object is the difference.
And as for other platforms, the Mac and Solaris versions of IE might be free now, but there is no guarantee that will last forever. If Microsoft was ever completely successful in eliminating competing browsers, you could bet that they would start charging for IE on non-Windows platforms.
Really? How do you figure that? You'd think that if Linus didn't like it in the Bay Area he'd be able to write his ticket just about anywhere else he might want to go be it back to Finland, somewhere else in Europe, Canada or even elsewhere in the US.
And as for Linus' acheivements, he has probably been busy with internal Transmeta stuff that it is would be difficult for someone outside to know about let alone judge. As for Linux kernel development, it isn't reasonable to assume that the pace of development in the early releases could have been sustained forever. The size of the code base, the number of platforms, and the number of collaborating coders has increased immensely over time, making it a much bigger challenge to manage. I think Linus has done a pretty good job of coping all things considered. It also seems like a pretty massive stretch to imply that any perceived slowdown was a direct result of Linus' move to the US. There is no way to think that had he taken a job somewhere in Europe for example that the results of increased demands on his time wouldn't have been the same or even worse.
So the bottom line is, flippant comments aside... How do you propose to judge Linus' achievements, and how to you plan to correlate that with his choice of locale?
And they didn't really even build that... Xenix was just a port of AT&T Research Version 7 UNIX with some horrible proprietary bastardizations and the rather poor Lattice C compiler.
Even Apple is doing more good development at this point that Microsoft, and that's really sad...
Apple has spent a lot of time resting on laurels, although OS X looks at least interesting. Microsoft hasn't really ever done anything that I'd consider very innovative development. They like to immitate and then claim to have invented it in the first place. 'Immovation' is what I like to call it. Apple has done some of the same things, but they are a little less blatant about it.
For what it's worth, few Open Source projects are really super 'innovative' either in terms of development, it has been the innovation in methods of development that has been more important. That is probably why Open Source scares Microsoft so much. It is changing the rules in ways that they can't control as closely as they are used to.
An excellent point... Why is it that there seem to be so many people out there that can't grasp the apparent contradiction in these arguments?
One thing to keep in mind though, is that Microsoft has their own definition of 'innovation'... One which I think can be more correctly termed 'immovation'.
If you're really interested in developing with Microsoft go to their fucking website or call them.
I'm not interested in developing 'with' Microsoft. As I said, I don't use their products. Unfortunately, their products are popular and so it is difficult to escape having to deal with their file formats and protocols.
They are a software company and do actually provide developers some assistance.
It just seems like they only do it as long as it is convenient for them. If you want to try to build something that is competing with them, then they will try to crush you. If you want to build something that works with their products, but it extends to competing products, then they will still try to stop you. For that matter, if you build a new product niche even in their environment they will likely wait until you prove the market then they will either try to buy you out for pennies or crush you so they can hijack the market.
If you want to throw hypocritical software licencing issues at them don't bother.
As if Microsoft has any room to talk about hypocracy when it comes to licensing... Have you ever read any of their license agreements?
My question about licensing is if I was to use the information from their books instead of reverse engineering one of their file formats or protocols, are they going to try to sue me for that?
Slashdot Mirror
Clone Seymore Cray
Unfortunately, Seymore has been dead a couple of years... I don't know if there is a viable DNA sample available to clone him.
wouldn't all the life on the planet be in trouble anyway? ;-)
:-)
Except maybe cockroaches...
One of them damned little buggers would mutate to compensate and pretty soon the roaches would rule the world feeding off of the corpses of the animal life that couldn't adapt.
No currently developed public key encryption algorithm has been mathematically demonstrated to be secure.
You do know that only one private key encryption algorithm has been proven to be mathmatically secure, right? That algorithm is the "One Time Pad". That said, it is of limited use because of the problems of distributing the key, the fact that the key can only be used once, and the key is as large as the message to be encrypted. What the hell do you mean by "demonstrably secure" anyway?
Cryptographic algorthms, even private key ones, don't need to be mathmatically proven to be useful, or we basically wouldn't have cryptography. Algorithms should, however be subject to review by the best available cryptographers, and, 'we haven't managed to crack it yet' is really the best that can be done.
This is clearly unacceptable for any serious application. When highly confidential and sensitive data is transferred, it is critical that a demonstrably secure algorithm be used. All public key algorithms have failed this test, and thus do not deserve consideration in a serious computing environment.
The industry is aware of the shortcomings of cryptography, well, at least some of it is. The rest of it has no excuse anymore because the literature is out there. The industry also knows that in order to be useful, cryptography has to be usable, and so certain compromises have to be made. Public key cryptography is absolutely necessary in order for cryptography to be used on a wide scale.
Of course Las Vegas is the fastest growing city in the US. Alcohol blue laws are only one thing, and the bay area has pretty lax and open standards in other areas that make it attractive to many people to live there. Personally, what keeps me out of the bay area most is the oppressively high cost of living. Second to that, the over litigousness and bizzare politics of California in general are kinda a turnoff, but that is a matter of personal preference I guess.
While free speech is protected by the First Amendment, there must be drawn a limit to which this umbrella of protection is stopped. That limit is drawn where your speech (or in this case, writings) causes harm to another individual.
Are you a lawyer? I am not either, but from what I've seen things are not quite that simple. Certainly a lot of things are printed and/or broadcast every day that everyone would agree are legal and protected by the First Amendment but 'cause harm' to another. Think political cartoons, think editorial pages, think National Lampoon, MAD Magazine, even, for example Hustler.
was right to have his website censored by the school system
The limit for the school to 'censor' such a web site should be limited to their ability to block it from access through the school's internet connection. The school should not be allowed to punish kids for what they do and/or say off school grounds and outside school hours. If any wrong was done to the associate principal, he should have to resort to outside means to have it righted, not by abusing his position of authority within the schools. What if the schools decide to start punishing kids for expressing political or religious beliefs on their own time? Sure, they might be able to keep them from doing it at school, but what right to they have outside the schools? What if a kid distributes political flyers outside school and another kid brings them to school? Who did something wrong, the kid who distributed the flyers or the one who brought them to school? If someone is viewing a web page at school that the school has somehow banned, then it should be them that is punished, not the person who created it.
When speech causes harm, whether it be physical injuries, or mental anguish, to another person, the speaker has violated the rights of the target of the speech and therefore, not protected by the First Amendment.
Not necessarily. In many cases the courts have held that material that undoubtedly caused 'mental anguish', for example, are protected by the First Amendment. Satire, for example was upheld in the well publicized supreme court case as dramatized in 'The People vs. Larry Flynt'.
This is called slander or libel and is punishable by law
Slander and libel are not only fairly narrowly defined, they are very difficult to prove in court. For example, satire is usually considered defensible when it should be obvious that the claims would not be mistaken as true (for example, Hustler magazine's fake ad which implied that Jerry Fallwell had incestuous relations with his mother).
Deliberately spreading rumors or insulting another person is against the law
Deliberately spreading false rumors may be illegal, or it may not. Deliberately spreading true rumors is almost always going to be legal. Insulting people is not necessarily illegal either. I could say 'I think Hillary Clinton is a lying, cheating bitch'. That is legal. If that is my opinion, then the statement is entirely factual, regardless of wheter Hillary really is a lying cheating bitch or not. In order for something to be libelous or slanderous, it has to be false. Saying 'I think the associate principal sodomizes goats' may be significantly different legally than saying 'I've seen the associate principal sodomizing goats'.
Just ask the National Inquirer.
Fine. The Enquirer wins almost every case brought against them. If they didn't, they'd have been out of business a long time ago, because they piss off a lot of people, especially politicians and celebrities who have a lot of influence.
I don't agree with the ACLU all the time, but it sickens me even more when I think of the warped sense of justice and what the consititution and bill of rights are all about that kids get sent by the wacked out school systems in this country.
I believe the 1/3 was put into place in some states because previously without limits, lawyers were sometimes taking a lot more than 1/3.
Unfortunately, the only way to make money programming is to work for a closed source company.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but this is a load of excrement. The majority of programmers work in IT shops on in-house projects, not in shrinkwrap software producing organizations. While most in-house software is so specialized that it doesn't make sense to open source it as a whole, much of it contains parts that could be open sourced. It is also tremendously beneficial to use pre-written open sourced parts when developing an in-house application. This type of development works totally well with open source.
And as for programmers not spending their free time writing open source software, it is silly to assume that many of them won't choose to do so on their own. Nothing forces them. Not everyone's idea of unwinding is the same. Programming and fresh air aren't mutually exclusive either when you are working on your own projects, at least not now that laptops and handhelds are readily available.
And at any rate, I think it is more often the poor schmucks who are stuck working long hours in the dungeons of commercial software houses that are the victims of dehumanization than most open source developers. The fact that so many trolls spew the same tired cliches would seem to bear that out.
I wouldn't consider moving to Utah because of the ridiculous blue laws there. Things are bad enough where I live now (midwest), and aren't much better where I am going (central Texas), but they are better than Utah. I personally think that every state should have liquor laws like Nevada... Open 24x7. I also think the drinking age should be lowered to 18.
Of course the stupid politicians, old people and worried mothers of the world will never let that happen...
3.Corel buys DR DOS, sues MS
Uh... you are getting Corel and Caldera confused. Corel bought WordPerfect from Novel and a bunch of Borland's office products like Quattro Pro. Caldera bought DR-DOS from Novel. Corel is a Canadian company, Caldera is a Utah company.
Good thing ESR doesn't live in the hideously overpriced bay area... There are places where $300,000 will buy you a nice, new, 3000+ square foot house in a good neighborhood... Like a large part of the country.
Next troll...
From an incredibly high base. Look at countries where gun control is enacted and compare the number of fatal shootings. On a per capita basis there are few states in the US which aren't worse than Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles in the 70s.
I guess I am fortunate enough to live in one of those states, however, I tend to doubt your statistics a little when it comes to total violent crime rates. Or at least just comparing the number of shootings is not the only thing to consider. Having been in the US during the 70s and now, I'd much rather be here than in Northern Ireland, thank you very much. I've never been to Ireland, but I've been to the UK, and I can't say that I felt any more safe there than I do where I live.
If everyone has a gun then every criminal will have a gun with which to be irresponsible. Not a great help.
Who said anything about everyone. Felons would be excepted, very few people would disagree with that. If a large share of everyone else might be armed at any given time, felons would have to be much more careful with what they did. Besides that if the criminals have guns now, then increasing the number of honest citizens that do is improving the odds. Switzerland for example actually requires firearms possession and training for many of their citizens, and they have a lower violent crime rate than the UK or Australia.
Yes it is.
We will have to disagree on this one then.
The freedom to say what you like without living in fear of being shot is part of having a democracy.
I say what I like now and I don't fear being shot, and I live in a state with relatively few gun control laws. Many places with strict gun control laws (like the UK or Australia) I would be much more fearful of saying what I like for fear of being jailed, if not shot.
I don't think that a widely armed populace would lead to people being gunned down in the streets over words, or we'd see it happening already, and we don't. The vast majority of our violent crime is related to the marketing of illegal drugs.
Guns are not the only weapons but they are among the best.
Guns are only a tool, and as such they can be used for good or bad.
Kennedy was shot, Lincoln was shot, Reagan was shot. How much harder would it be to have stabbed them, and how much better would their chances of survival have been?
Well, Reagan did survive. What would their chances have been if the assassins chose to use suicide bombers? There is no 100% way to avoid political assasinations.
Arguments will always lead to some violence, it is better to limit the potential of that violence even at the "risk" of making a fanciful future rebellion a bit more fanciful.
The benefits of firearms ownership outweigh that though, for all of the few people who are shot every year, guns are used by law abiding citizens to prevent crimes many more times. And if you ban guns, then your arguments will revert back to the physically strongest always having the upper hand, so its not really that big of a win.
Mainly in duration, it was pretty wild but not for very long.
The wild west has been grossly exaggerated in both duration and intensity. As in other places where there is or have been very little civilization, you would be far more likely to die of disease than from a gunshot in the 'wild west'. The biggest killers in those days were influenza and cholera. Drunk driving these days kills an order of magnitude more people than do gunshot wounds. Deaths due to smoking related illnesses kill far more than that. You don't see me calling for a return of prohibition or a ban on tobacco.
This is true but are you going to get a gun and go tell congress to sort it out? How long would you last?
As I've said before, one person can't stand alone against the government.
Would it make any difference if everyone who thought that way went with you (with guns)?
Getting that number of people (somewhere around 76 million gun owners in the US according to what I've read) to agree on much of anything would be a challenge. Anything that you could, would provide a force to be reckoned with.
Do you think the 60's riots would have got faster results if the civil rights protesters had had guns, our would there just have been a lot more dead people?
There is no question that if the 60's protesters had been armed, then the riots would have been over and resolved much more quickly, one way or the other. There might have been a less death and destruction if the riots hadn't lasted on and off for 5 or 6 years, but that is hard to say. Believe it or not, most people think twice before they arm themselves and go into a situation like that.
The difference in the NRA's intent and the result of their actions is important. I'm sure most members do not understand that what they are doing is leading down the road a fascist state.
I still don't see any sort of reasonable evidence that anything the NRA is doing is leading towards a fascist state. Things the previous (very anti-NRA) administration were doing (Clipper, key escrow, burning cult members, gutting the bill of rights) certainly seem more in line with 'leading down the road of a fascist state'.
A fascist state (in post-nazi terms) is one where the strong rule.
That is far too simplistic a definition to be useful.
Guns make people stronger, but only in attack. To use the strength a gun gives you requires it's use or the threat to use it (and the threat must be backed up occasionally by actual use). This leads to the fascist position where if you dislike what someone says to you you just shoot them (so much for freedom of speech!), which Hitler actively encouraged amoungst "true ayrans".
Oh, please. That is about as much of a stretch as it would take to span the grand canyon. Presence of a gun, and the willingness to use it (in self defense, or the defense of others) does not necessarily lead to unrestricted mayhem in the streets as you would lead people to believe. There are several states which have liberalized concealed carry laws (often enacted, as in Florida, in order to eliminate racism in the permit issuance system) and they have actually seen a decrease in violent crime since it has become easier and more fair to get a concealed carry permit.
Legal gun owners tend to be much more responsible than illegal owners. Most of the violent crime is committed by people with previous felony convictions, who are already prohibited from firearms possession. The government can't stop criminals from importing thousands if not millions of tons of drugs into the country, how can they keep them from getting guns?
A well run democracy is a far better solution to a society's troubles than arming everyone and hoping they'll all get along.
A well run democracy isn't incompatible with firearms ownership. The US didn't have any significant problems with that until prohibition (no, the 'wild west' is almost entirely fictional and exaggerated) threw things out of balance. Once prohibition was repealed the gang violence problem dissapated. Things didn't start falling apart again until drug prohibition started becomming a problem. We should learn from history and figure out the 'war on drugs' isn't working, and isn't going to work. It has basically turned into a war on the bill of rights, and it is what is leading the US on the road to fascism, if anything.
Africa is full of countries where the citizens are well armed and, guess what, it makes for a living hell.>
I don't think that is what makes those countries a living hell. It is more likely massive scale poverty. Even in African countries with long running civil wars, you are more likely to die of malnutrition or from AIDS or other diseases than you are to be killed with a firearm.
But why go to Africa when you can go to LA? There are parts of US cities where gun ownership is very high and, guess what, it makes for a living hell.
California already has much more strict gun control than most of the rest of the country, and it has a worse crime problem than average too. There is no reason to think that more legislation will help. They can't seem to enforce what is already on the books. The same thing seems to hold true elsewhere in the country. The more gun control that is enacted, the more crime. Washington D.C. should be your ideal place to live, as guns are almost completely illegal to own there. Guess what, it has an order of magnitude more murders than does Arlington, VA, which is right across the river, has similar ethnic and economic demographics and where guns are legal. States in the midwest, for example which have little gun control, and a much higher per-capita gun ownership rate have sigificantly lower crime and murder rates than do east and west coast cities with extensive gun control laws.
The German example is actually a good illustration of where the NRA would like to go
Actually, that is a blatantly slanderous assertion. The NRA is actually very anti-fascist. Hitler was a big proponent of gun control, especially for Jews. The Nazi position on gun control and the 'pinko' one is basically the same: only the government should have guns. For that matter in the long run, the only difference between fascists and stalinists is the order in which they will remove all of your rights and the rhetoric they will use to try to justify doing it. In the end the average guy gets screwed.
I say nominal cause the fact is that without serious firepower far in excess of what is allowed into private hands, there's no way that any group of people could seriously mount any sort of resistance against the US military. See Waco.
Actually, that is pretty much not true. Waco is not a good example, because a small group like that, short of nuclear weapons could never expect to take down a government. On the other hand if there were hundreds of such groups with a common cause against the government, spread across a large area, then the government would have a serious problem. If those groups were able to get widespread popular support, then the government would be in a world of trouble. While an organized military stands a good chance against any small encampment or bunker of people, they tend to have real problems fighting a large scale guerilla war.
The North Vietnamese were able to beat the US despite being totally outmatched for weapons and equipment, and would have eventually done so even without Russian and/or Chinese support (just as they beat the French largely without significant outside backing).
The Afghans beat the Soviets similarly, and with very little assistance from us and with much more primitive weapons and what they stole from the Russians.
During the fall of the Soviet Union, people loyal to Boris Yeltsin used privately owned weapons to defend Yeltsin's compound, and the Soviets didn't have a good record on gun freedom (although it wasn't totally impossible to legally own anything like it is in the UK or Australia).
The Zapatistas down in central Mexico have been giving the government there fits for years, and they hardly have any backing at all, and they have been doing it in a country with draconian (although like anything in Mexico, poorly enforced) gun control.
And for an example closer to home, although not so recent... The Confederacy, though ultimately unsuccessful, was able to fight for a long time and inflict significant damage to the Union during the Civil War, and they made extensive use of privately owned arms. And no, I don't believe in slavery...
One thing you don't seem to take into account... In a guerilla war, the standing army becomes the rebel's supply line, so eventually what the army has, the rebels have. There are hundreds of thousands of military trained citizens in the US, many of whom have guerilla and counter-insurgency training. And for that matter, how easy is it for a standing army to take on people who look, talk and think like themselves? In numbers, if the military were to be used against civilians in this country, desertion would be widespread. How many soldiers if not whole units might change side if they thought that they were defending the constitution and the people against a corrupt government?
This whole 'the people wouldn't stand a chance against the government' thing comes up every time that gun control is mentioned, and it just doesn't fly.
I didn't have any moderator points at the time anyway, so fptht.
...Linux users hate printed media.
Flamebait.
Do you, as a Linux user, wish to dispute this?
Yes, in fact, I was a subscriber to Maximum Linux. I've been a subscriber to Linux Journal for years, in fact I have every issue.
Your point is already moot by your very presence here on Slashdot!
Proves nothing of the sort... Just because someone likes electronic media doesn't mean they can't like paper media as well, let alone that they have to hate paper media.
O.K., perhaps I should have said in current versions of Windows... Starting with Windows 98 customers were forced to pay for IE as part of Windows.
1.Microsoft's server software is used by most websites
Actually IIS is used to run less than 1/3 of websites. Most web sites use Apache, about 60% according to Netcraft.
2. Microsoft makes the best browser
Matter of opinion, which some people disagree with.
and actually innovates with this browser. No other browser supports the technologies MS's browser does.
What, if any, useful features does IE have that current versions of Netscape Navigator or Mozilla not have? What 'innovations' have they made in browser technology? They've certainly been trying to proprietarize the web, but that isn't something I'd consider a good thing.
3. MS made the modern internet possible.
This is the most laughable comment of all. Microsoft didn't know what a network was in 1983, which was when many consider the birth of the 'modern internet'. Microsoft was even late to the web party, not showing up until 1995 after Netscape had been there for a while and even then they just licensed Mosaic, which was already in existance for UNIX, Linux and MacOS as well. The original web browsing platform was NeXT Step, followed by UNIX, MacOS and trailed by Windows.
What has Linux done that can even compare to what Ms has acheived.
Linux has become one of, if not the, most popular web server platforms, and it has done it with virtually no advertising budget. Microsoft has spent billions advertising NT/W2K and IIS, and they keep running into a brick wall trying to grow their market share.
If Microsoft wasn't worried, they'd still be pretending Linux didn't exist.
and I'll say it again. Microsoft has a good point about open source and inovation.
I would disagree. In fact, I would say that Microsoft hasn't a clue as to what innovation is... or more like their definition of innovation is more like what I'd call 'immovation'.
Basically if open source gets out of hand,
What do you mean by 'out of hand'?
normal software development will cease,
That will never happen. If for no other reason than the fact that the type of thing that Open Source is most a threat to (shrink wrap boxed software) is what only a small percentage of programmers are paid to work on. Most programmers work in the IT departments of companies where they are writing primarily software for a specific business. Open Source greatly benefits this type of programmer because they can re-use other people's code instead of inventing everything from scratch.
At most what will have to happen is that a different way of rewarding programmers will have to be developed. There are a lot of people working on different angles for this, and we are still a ways from seeing which method or methods are going to win in the long run.
and the quality of software will go down. Why? Because the top programmers will no longer program, if they don't get paid.
Not only does that make assumptions that aren't necessarily true (that the only motivation of "top programmers" is monetary), but it completely ignores the fact that if more code was open sourced, more of the top programmers could review and fix each other's work, which would lead to an improvement of software quality.
I just don't see how you can refute this argument.
Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it can't be done.
It is really a pretty flimsy argument. Microsoft is just spreading alarmist fears in order to try to protect their own interests.
Also, how can Microsoft claim a trademark on Internet Explorer, if they are giving it away for free?
Well, the Windows version of IE isn't really free, it is included in the price of Windows. It is kinda like saying the ashtray in a new Ford Explorer is free. It isn't, you pay for it when you buy the truck, and you can't buy the truck without the ashtray. Not a perfect analogy because if you lose or break the ashtray in a truck you'd have to pay for a replacement, but the cost of replicating software (download) compared to making a physical object is the difference.
And as for other platforms, the Mac and Solaris versions of IE might be free now, but there is no guarantee that will last forever. If Microsoft was ever completely successful in eliminating competing browsers, you could bet that they would start charging for IE on non-Windows platforms.
And achieved less :-p
Really? How do you figure that? You'd think that if Linus didn't like it in the Bay Area he'd be able to write his ticket just about anywhere else he might want to go be it back to Finland, somewhere else in Europe, Canada or even elsewhere in the US.
And as for Linus' acheivements, he has probably been busy with internal Transmeta stuff that it is would be difficult for someone outside to know about let alone judge. As for Linux kernel development, it isn't reasonable to assume that the pace of development in the early releases could have been sustained forever. The size of the code base, the number of platforms, and the number of collaborating coders has increased immensely over time, making it a much bigger challenge to manage. I think Linus has done a pretty good job of coping all things considered. It also seems like a pretty massive stretch to imply that any perceived slowdown was a direct result of Linus' move to the US. There is no way to think that had he taken a job somewhere in Europe for example that the results of increased demands on his time wouldn't have been the same or even worse.
So the bottom line is, flippant comments aside... How do you propose to judge Linus' achievements, and how to you plan to correlate that with his choice of locale?
It was called Xenix...
And they didn't really even build that... Xenix was just a port of AT&T Research Version 7 UNIX with some horrible proprietary bastardizations and the rather poor Lattice C compiler.
Even Apple is doing more good development at this point that Microsoft, and that's really sad...
Apple has spent a lot of time resting on laurels, although OS X looks at least interesting. Microsoft hasn't really ever done anything that I'd consider very innovative development. They like to immitate and then claim to have invented it in the first place. 'Immovation' is what I like to call it. Apple has done some of the same things, but they are a little less blatant about it.
For what it's worth, few Open Source projects are really super 'innovative' either in terms of development, it has been the innovation in methods of development that has been more important. That is probably why Open Source scares Microsoft so much. It is changing the rules in ways that they can't control as closely as they are used to.
An excellent point... Why is it that there seem to be so many people out there that can't grasp the apparent contradiction in these arguments?
One thing to keep in mind though, is that Microsoft has their own definition of 'innovation'... One which I think can be more correctly termed 'immovation'.
I for one find it very telling that Linux started in Finland.
Not that I don't think you have a few points, but how telling is it then that Linus moved to the US?
If you're really interested in developing with Microsoft go to their fucking website or call them.
I'm not interested in developing 'with' Microsoft. As I said, I don't use their products. Unfortunately, their products are popular and so it is difficult to escape having to deal with their file formats and protocols.
They are a software company and do actually provide developers some assistance.
It just seems like they only do it as long as it is convenient for them. If you want to try to build something that is competing with them, then they will try to crush you. If you want to build something that works with their products, but it extends to competing products, then they will still try to stop you. For that matter, if you build a new product niche even in their environment they will likely wait until you prove the market then they will either try to buy you out for pennies or crush you so they can hijack the market.
If you want to throw hypocritical software licencing issues at them don't bother.
As if Microsoft has any room to talk about hypocracy when it comes to licensing... Have you ever read any of their license agreements?
My question about licensing is if I was to use the information from their books instead of reverse engineering one of their file formats or protocols, are they going to try to sue me for that?