I know the DMCA does not recognize computer code as protected free speech, which is why I asked the question.
Sure, code is just instructions, but so are recipes, and I haven't seen any cooking books banned recently. Books about step-by-step drug manufacture, lock picking, and weapon creation are protected by free speech laws as well, and these books are no more than instruction sets.
Instructions are legal, even if following them isn't.
As far as the DMCA is concerned source code is NOT a creative work
Look at who is backing this law, it sure isn't programmers! The intent of this law, I believe, is clearly biased toward large corporations and serves their interests at the cost of the people's freedom. Of course the DMCA doesn't recognize source code as a creative work, it doesn't benefit them to do so.
Big money has perverted the government's intentions to give copyright holders some protection on the Internet into a law creating a full-blown digital police state without even marginal protection for the software infrastructure that holds it all together.
I applaude your questioning of some of the facets of the DMCA, and as a resident of Virginia, I am quite proud that an elected official from my state is one of the first to question these overly restrictive copyright laws. Your fight for the people will not go unnoticed.
I have a question pertaining to uncompiled code and freedom of speech. My understanding is that source code is just language, like that of an essay or poem. Essays and poems cannot (for the most part) be "banned" by the government as they are First Amendment protected speech.
How is it that high-powered organizations like the MPAA have won lawsuits against web sites that have done nothing more than make a link to uncompiled code? Aren't these sites and the programmers that wrote the code protected under First Amendment free speech?
Thank you for your time, efforts, and hopefully your answer.
But this isn't "Child Porn of any type", computer images aren't people and they can't be exploited. I'm just as disgusted by child-porn as you are, but I'm also watchful for anything which may open the door to inproper First Amendment legislation.
You would be hard pressed to back up the arguement that child porn somehow exploits children that weren't even involved in the process. One could even argue that artifical kiddie porn would keep children from being exploited because real kiddie porn would actually involve real photography of a real child, where computer generated porn is created in some pervert's den, sans children.
The word is "whet", and one could say that it would do so to the pedophile's appitite, but a pedophile is going to obtain child porn either way.
Should we save the artifical child at the cost of real children? That sounds like society cutting off its own nose to spite its face.
I called `em as I see `em, and I guess I must have saw this one wrong(?).
Someone mentioned that sending anti-spam money to the companies directly would be extortion, I saw your reply post which asked if sending money to charities was extortion as well, which it isn't.
The reason this was misunderstood was because of the post that you were replying to and the fact that you didn't re-cap what you had said in the post that you were responding to.
That being said, I am quite sorry for calling you a "Bad Slashdotter!". I should have posted that in reply to the "isn't this extortion" post.
The post you replied to brought up a valid point. Why should the public send money to a company for not sending them junk mail? That's like paying a child not to misbehave.
Keep in mind, the original post wasn't talking about sending money to a third-party organization with some teeth and and interest in protecting your mailbox. The original post was in reference to a post about sending money directly to the companies in question for not sending you their marketing garbage.
The ACLU and EFF are charities. They fight against a pre-existing problem which they did not cause. That's the difference between sending money to a charity so they can fight for an issue and sending a company for not doing what they're not supposed to do anyway.
I don't seen how you could even remotely relate the two.
You are correct. If you're not quick on your feet and don't have the ability to get out of bad situations, you aren't going to last long on your urban discovery trip.
The bottom line is to be careful, because dead geeks can't code.
Also, there's not a whole lot going on here in VA. You could probably mess around with the military bases, but I think it's more trouble than it's worth. I'm not in Hampton, so I'm not particularly versed on the situation there, but here in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach/Chesapeake area there aren't too many places around here to explore. We don't have abandoned buildings, but we do have miles of barbed wire at the local base you could crawl over while getting shot at.
Say one were to run into a scene like a meth lab. It's my opinion that that doesn't necessarily need to be considered dangerous.
What meth labs are you hanging out in?;)
Anyone who's just been violated (you walked into his secret meth lab) is going to be on edge, to say the least. I know that if I were a meth cooking maniac, living in a underground tunnel, I wouldn't want people there. Remember, these explorers, for the most part, aren't exploring some abandoned building on a hill somewhere. A lot of this "infiltration" is being done in inner-city environments where things can be a lot more dangerous. Sure, you won't find a crack den everywhere you explore, but if you're exploring in a bad area, you chance finding a lot more crack dens than you would like.
You aren't safe discovering homeless people, either. You're violating their space, and some squatters are very territorial. You wouldn't want people walking through your bedroom, and from what I've seen, the homeless feel the same way.
I'm not saying that it would be absolutly deadly to walk into one of these labs, or a crack den, or someone's glorified Maytag box, but it isn't a situation a weekend explorer would want to be in.
If you want to go out exploring yourself, remember this: Any situation, if improperly handled, could be lethal to you and others.
Very rarely do you see anything but a living entity referred to with an "action" word, like "fuck". Grammar laws are supposed to be somewhat similar from word to word. Replace "fuck" with a word like "jerk".
The problem is that the example was referring to a non-living object, a Jeep. You wouldn't refer to a Jeep as a "jerk", just as you wouldn't refer to it as a "fuck". It's fine to refer to a living entity as a "fuck"; you should probably call a non-living object "fucker".
You do have to remember that proper usage of the word "fuck" is kind of a gray area and that the only way to concrete its grammatical usage is to use the word "fuck" often.
Exactly, his platform choice was a function of his environment, not choice. The reason he wrote Linux was because he was unhappy with the state of 386 operating systems.
Had a few variables changed, Linux could have easily been written on a Mac Plus*.
You are right, Intel deserves no credit for Linus' innovation.
*I have no idea when the Plus came out. I'm fairly sure that it was before 1991, so I used it for this example.
Grammar Police:"Fuck! The fucking fuckers fucked the fucking fuck up!"
I'm pretty sure you meant that to read:
"Fuck! The fucking fuckers fucked the fucking fucker up!"
This contrasts the original post as the quote you gave would be someone commenting on an action ( a "fuck up" ) and not an item/person ( a "fucker" ). This more closely follows your senario of an improperly repaired Jeep.
Thank you.
Re:An interesting hobby.
on
Infiltration
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· Score: 2
All the hazards that you outline are valid. One needs to remember that you could get into one of these caverns and never come out.
Also, be very watchful of steam pipes. Steam will burn you quicker that water of the same temperature, and it's not just an empty danger. There have been many people that have died in steam related accidents. All it takes is for one of your two-hundred pound drunken buddies to stand atop a thin steam pipe. A cloud of steam later and you can basically assume that your friend has sustained some wicked injuries.
And exercise caution when adventuring into abandoned buildings. I have seen floors and celings completly caved in. One false step and you could find yourself under a few tons of drywall and two-by-fours.
Down here in Norfolk, VA, I'm sure it's not too far fetched. Something tells me that a pasty, frail computer geek such as myself wouldn't survive too long if I were to stumble across an angry vagrant or a crack-addict in one of the many abandoned building in the area.
Any building that's even remotely accessable is filled with all species of drug-addicts. Once the business moves out, the junkies move in. I would love to take a good long look around this area, but I'd hate to be caught here in Norfolk even an hour after sundown.
To reply to your comment about crack dens and meth labs, they do exist. There is a chance that you could get into a situation where you couldn't get out of.
From Infiltration.org, read about Paris catacombs, hash dealers, and discovery.
Re:Usenet Group on the Subject alt.college.tunnels
on
Infiltration
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· Score: 1
I saw a mention of alt.college.tunnels on one of these Infiltration sites. Apparently, it was subject to the same spam that all of the alt.college tree was, and has fallen into disuse. I'm sure there's still some interesting stuff posted from time to time, anyway.
Actually, HIV can be transmitted by any type of sexual contact, not just intercourse.
Once, a group of doctors was being spoken to at a University and the question was posed as to the safety of condoms and their effectivness in preventing disease. The doctors were asked if they would trust a condom to protect them from HIV. Not a single one raised their hand.
I hate to sound Troll-ish, but what are you doing trusting a corporation like eBay in the first place?
Right now, there's no evidence that this was done with malice. It seems like there is malice from the outside, but who knows what the person who set this plan into action was thinking.
Like I've said, when they do it for a second time, despite user uproar, then they're evil. This is a minor inconvience, like a speeding ticket, a headache, or a "News Flash" during your favorite show and probably shouldn't provoke you to cancel your eBay account. Despite their current stupidity stint, I still think that the services they provide are top-quality, and I'm not going to inconvience myself further by throwing that service away just because of a single bad decision on the company's part.
Yes, I understand what eBay did. However, the result of these actions are just one e-mail message to delete and a little bit of time spent setting their profile back. Sure, it wasn't right, but eBay wouldn't dare try it again. Especially since most of the users who got the e-mail will just revert to their original mail-box friendly settings.
I don't see why it's worth a Slashdot story and so much venom. It would be a bigger issue if every user of eBay was going to be spammed into oblivion effective immediately. You won't recieve eBay spam until 1/23.
Now, if they do it again, I'll be happy to change my song. Another eBay spam and I will personally be the first to suggest crucifixion of the genius behind this situation.
It's no big secret that Slashdot is a spammer haven, and the e-mail addresses here are quite often harvested. To try to cut down on the spam that I get, I put a "NOSPAM" in my e-mail address.
E-Bay sent a single message to its users who didn't want constant updates. Sure, it's an inconvience, but we're talking about a single e-mail message. If I were to remove the "NOSPAM" from my e-mail address, my incoming message queue size would increase exponentially.
You said it yourself, "post with your real email address and let us spam you". "Us" doesn't sound like the single message that E-Bay sent out. I don't agree with what E-Bay did, but it's not like they flooded your Inbox, cancelled your credit card, and killed your houseplants.
Many times, E-Bay's been a place for me to find junk that just can't be found in my neck of the woods. I think cancellation of your account is kind of an overreaction to the situation. E-Bay's given you the option of setting your preferences back to the way they were, and you won't recieve anything until 1/23, anyway. Set them back yourself, and if they perform a stunt like this again (which I don't think they will) then leave E-Bay.
I think that E-Bay will be well aware of the anxiety this e-mail caused, and avoid situations such as these in the future.
I don't care if his PowerPC fell through a time warp and he purchased it eight years ago. The important part is that it's been up for the better part of a year.
;)
Thanks for the information though, I was wondering when the first Apple PowerPC boxen came out, and now I know. Do you recommend any place in particular for purchasing old Apple PPC hardware?
Is LinuxPPC a viable alternative to x86 Linux? Can I run my department on a LinuxPPC-based server with the same peace-of-mind that I get on an i386-based box running Linux? Will I still enjoy the almost surrealistic uptimes I get with my current Linux server? Does the LinuxPPC code still suffer from chronic flakey-ness?
I'm currently looking into obtaining a PowerPC box to test out the current state of Linux on the PPC platform. Hopefully your answers will point me down the path of RISC utopia.
Slashdot Mirror
I know the DMCA does not recognize computer code as protected free speech, which is why I asked the question.
Sure, code is just instructions, but so are recipes, and I haven't seen any cooking books banned recently. Books about step-by-step drug manufacture, lock picking, and weapon creation are protected by free speech laws as well, and these books are no more than instruction sets.
Instructions are legal, even if following them isn't.
As far as the DMCA is concerned source code is NOT a creative work
Look at who is backing this law, it sure isn't programmers! The intent of this law, I believe, is clearly biased toward large corporations and serves their interests at the cost of the people's freedom. Of course the DMCA doesn't recognize source code as a creative work, it doesn't benefit them to do so.
Big money has perverted the government's intentions to give copyright holders some protection on the Internet into a law creating a full-blown digital police state without even marginal protection for the software infrastructure that holds it all together.
That is the problem with the DMCA.
Congressman Boucher--
I applaude your questioning of some of the facets of the DMCA, and as a resident of Virginia, I am quite proud that an elected official from my state is one of the first to question these overly restrictive copyright laws. Your fight for the people will not go unnoticed.
I have a question pertaining to uncompiled code and freedom of speech. My understanding is that source code is just language, like that of an essay or poem. Essays and poems cannot (for the most part) be "banned" by the government as they are First Amendment protected speech.
How is it that high-powered organizations like the MPAA have won lawsuits against web sites that have done nothing more than make a link to uncompiled code? Aren't these sites and the programmers that wrote the code protected under First Amendment free speech?
Thank you for your time, efforts, and hopefully your answer.
I am a laweyr.
:)
`Nuff said.
But this isn't "Child Porn of any type", computer images aren't people and they can't be exploited. I'm just as disgusted by child-porn as you are, but I'm also watchful for anything which may open the door to inproper First Amendment legislation.
You would be hard pressed to back up the arguement that child porn somehow exploits children that weren't even involved in the process. One could even argue that artifical kiddie porn would keep children from being exploited because real kiddie porn would actually involve real photography of a real child, where computer generated porn is created in some pervert's den, sans children.
The word is "whet", and one could say that it would do so to the pedophile's appitite, but a pedophile is going to obtain child porn either way.
Should we save the artifical child at the cost of real children? That sounds like society cutting off its own nose to spite its face.
I called `em as I see `em, and I guess I must have saw this one wrong(?).
Someone mentioned that sending anti-spam money to the companies directly would be extortion, I saw your reply post which asked if sending money to charities was extortion as well, which it isn't.
The reason this was misunderstood was because of the post that you were replying to and the fact that you didn't re-cap what you had said in the post that you were responding to.
That being said, I am quite sorry for calling you a "Bad Slashdotter!". I should have posted that in reply to the "isn't this extortion" post.
Please accept my apologies.
Bad Slashdotter! Incorrect!
The post you replied to brought up a valid point. Why should the public send money to a company for not sending them junk mail? That's like paying a child not to misbehave.
Keep in mind, the original post wasn't talking about sending money to a third-party organization with some teeth and and interest in protecting your mailbox. The original post was in reference to a post about sending money directly to the companies in question for not sending you their marketing garbage.
The ACLU and EFF are charities. They fight against a pre-existing problem which they did not cause. That's the difference between sending money to a charity so they can fight for an issue and sending a company for not doing what they're not supposed to do anyway.
I don't seen how you could even remotely relate the two.
It's no big fucking deal you fucking fuck, I just wanted something other than Beowulf clusters to talk about and English, I guess, is a close second.
Hey, you can verify our conclusions! Did we say what you meant?
You are correct. If you're not quick on your feet and don't have the ability to get out of bad situations, you aren't going to last long on your urban discovery trip.
The bottom line is to be careful, because dead geeks can't code.
Also, there's not a whole lot going on here in VA. You could probably mess around with the military bases, but I think it's more trouble than it's worth. I'm not in Hampton, so I'm not particularly versed on the situation there, but here in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach/Chesapeake area there aren't too many places around here to explore. We don't have abandoned buildings, but we do have miles of barbed wire at the local base you could crawl over while getting shot at.
Hmmmmmm...
I'll go get my shoes on.
Say one were to run into a scene like a meth lab. It's my opinion that that doesn't necessarily need to be considered dangerous.
;)
What meth labs are you hanging out in?
Anyone who's just been violated (you walked into his secret meth lab) is going to be on edge, to say the least. I know that if I were a meth cooking maniac, living in a underground tunnel, I wouldn't want people there. Remember, these explorers, for the most part, aren't exploring some abandoned building on a hill somewhere. A lot of this "infiltration" is being done in inner-city environments where things can be a lot more dangerous. Sure, you won't find a crack den everywhere you explore, but if you're exploring in a bad area, you chance finding a lot more crack dens than you would like.
You aren't safe discovering homeless people, either. You're violating their space, and some squatters are very territorial. You wouldn't want people walking through your bedroom, and from what I've seen, the homeless feel the same way.
I'm not saying that it would be absolutly deadly to walk into one of these labs, or a crack den, or someone's glorified Maytag box, but it isn't a situation a weekend explorer would want to be in.
If you want to go out exploring yourself, remember this: Any situation, if improperly handled, could be lethal to you and others.
Be cautious, hackers.
Point taken, but...
Very rarely do you see anything but a living entity referred to with an "action" word, like "fuck". Grammar laws are supposed to be somewhat similar from word to word. Replace "fuck" with a word like "jerk".
The problem is that the example was referring to a non-living object, a Jeep. You wouldn't refer to a Jeep as a "jerk", just as you wouldn't refer to it as a "fuck". It's fine to refer to a living entity as a "fuck"; you should probably call a non-living object "fucker".
You do have to remember that proper usage of the word "fuck" is kind of a gray area and that the only way to concrete its grammatical usage is to use the word "fuck" often.
In business meetings.
Really important business meetings.
I'm always glad to help, especially when it allows me to be informative and still say "fuck" fourteen times.
Exactly, his platform choice was a function of his environment, not choice. The reason he wrote Linux was because he was unhappy with the state of 386 operating systems.
Had a few variables changed, Linux could have easily been written on a Mac Plus*.
You are right, Intel deserves no credit for Linus' innovation.
* I have no idea when the Plus came out. I'm fairly sure that it was before 1991, so I used it for this example.
Grammar Police: "Fuck! The fucking fuckers fucked the fucking fuck up!"
I'm pretty sure you meant that to read:
"Fuck! The fucking fuckers fucked the fucking fucker up!"
This contrasts the original post as the quote you gave would be someone commenting on an action ( a "fuck up" ) and not an item/person ( a "fucker" ). This more closely follows your senario of an improperly repaired Jeep.
Thank you.
All the hazards that you outline are valid. One needs to remember that you could get into one of these caverns and never come out.
Also, be very watchful of steam pipes. Steam will burn you quicker that water of the same temperature, and it's not just an empty danger. There have been many people that have died in steam related accidents. All it takes is for one of your two-hundred pound drunken buddies to stand atop a thin steam pipe. A cloud of steam later and you can basically assume that your friend has sustained some wicked injuries.
And exercise caution when adventuring into abandoned buildings. I have seen floors and celings completly caved in. One false step and you could find yourself under a few tons of drywall and two-by-fours.
Down here in Norfolk, VA, I'm sure it's not too far fetched. Something tells me that a pasty, frail computer geek such as myself wouldn't survive too long if I were to stumble across an angry vagrant or a crack-addict in one of the many abandoned building in the area.
Any building that's even remotely accessable is filled with all species of drug-addicts. Once the business moves out, the junkies move in. I would love to take a good long look around this area, but I'd hate to be caught here in Norfolk even an hour after sundown.
To reply to your comment about crack dens and meth labs, they do exist. There is a chance that you could get into a situation where you couldn't get out of.
From Infiltration.org, read about Paris catacombs, hash dealers, and discovery.
I saw a mention of alt.college.tunnels on one of these Infiltration sites. Apparently, it was subject to the same spam that all of the alt.college tree was, and has fallen into disuse. I'm sure there's still some interesting stuff posted from time to time, anyway.
Actually, HIV can be transmitted by any type of sexual contact, not just intercourse.
Once, a group of doctors was being spoken to at a University and the question was posed as to the safety of condoms and their effectivness in preventing disease. The doctors were asked if they would trust a condom to protect them from HIV. Not a single one raised their hand.
Yeah, free love is long gone, man.
"Breach of Trust"?
I hate to sound Troll-ish, but what are you doing trusting a corporation like eBay in the first place?
Right now, there's no evidence that this was done with malice. It seems like there is malice from the outside, but who knows what the person who set this plan into action was thinking.
Like I've said, when they do it for a second time, despite user uproar, then they're evil. This is a minor inconvience, like a speeding ticket, a headache, or a "News Flash" during your favorite show and probably shouldn't provoke you to cancel your eBay account. Despite their current stupidity stint, I still think that the services they provide are top-quality, and I'm not going to inconvience myself further by throwing that service away just because of a single bad decision on the company's part.
Yes, I understand what eBay did. However, the result of these actions are just one e-mail message to delete and a little bit of time spent setting their profile back. Sure, it wasn't right, but eBay wouldn't dare try it again. Especially since most of the users who got the e-mail will just revert to their original mail-box friendly settings.
I don't see why it's worth a Slashdot story and so much venom. It would be a bigger issue if every user of eBay was going to be spammed into oblivion effective immediately. You won't recieve eBay spam until 1/23.
Now, if they do it again, I'll be happy to change my song. Another eBay spam and I will personally be the first to suggest crucifixion of the genius behind this situation.
It's no big secret that Slashdot is a spammer haven, and the e-mail addresses here are quite often harvested. To try to cut down on the spam that I get, I put a "NOSPAM" in my e-mail address.
E-Bay sent a single message to its users who didn't want constant updates. Sure, it's an inconvience, but we're talking about a single e-mail message. If I were to remove the "NOSPAM" from my e-mail address, my incoming message queue size would increase exponentially.
You said it yourself, "post with your real email address and let us spam you". "Us" doesn't sound like the single message that E-Bay sent out. I don't agree with what E-Bay did, but it's not like they flooded your Inbox, cancelled your credit card, and killed your houseplants.
It's not the same thing, Anonymous Coward.
Many times, E-Bay's been a place for me to find junk that just can't be found in my neck of the woods. I think cancellation of your account is kind of an overreaction to the situation. E-Bay's given you the option of setting your preferences back to the way they were, and you won't recieve anything until 1/23, anyway. Set them back yourself, and if they perform a stunt like this again (which I don't think they will) then leave E-Bay.
I think that E-Bay will be well aware of the anxiety this e-mail caused, and avoid situations such as these in the future.
Collect them all, take over the world.
Now that encryption has been broken on these Capcom ROMS, will MAME begin to support these games that we've been robbed of stealing for so long?
[ Ack! Robbed of stealing. Figure that logic out. ]
I don't care if his PowerPC fell through a time warp and he purchased it eight years ago. The important part is that it's been up for the better part of a year.
;)
Thanks for the information though, I was wondering when the first Apple PowerPC boxen came out, and now I know. Do you recommend any place in particular for purchasing old Apple PPC hardware?
I'm currently looking into obtaining a PowerPC box to test out the current state of Linux on the PPC platform. Hopefully your answers will point me down the path of RISC utopia.