It seems to me that, as long as Orin Hatch and other politicians are actively reconsidering the fine print of the DMCA, we should lobby for a "whistle blower exemption" to be added to the concept of Fair Use.
By way of example, if Microsoft had the forsight to copyright their infamous "Halloween Documents", the Justice Department's case against them would have been considerably weaker.
If somebody is engaging in fraud or other illegal activities, documents which incriminate them that leak out should be considered fair game to republish as an act of critical speech.
It used to be axiomatic to say that nothing is on the web except for that which somebody considered it worth the trouble to put it there.
Since a lot of very optimistic people thought they could eventually turn a site that gives content away into a for-profit site, there was a gold rush of speculators trying to get on the bandwagon.
Now that it turns out that making money via web publishing is not going to be easy, and only those who planned for the extremely long haul are ever going to see a profit, the brief and shining moment of free professionally-made content is coming to a close.
So, the day when we could take advantage of VC folly by getting lots of free stuff may be ending. A few places, like/. and imdb are still going strong, but many others are soon to drift into the ether... We all had to know that this day was coming.
Let's take this in stride. Were things really so bad in the days before Slate and Salon?
That's easy. All he has to do is right a songe called "One for Metallica".
The filters will surely pick this is up as the song "One" by Metallica, and block him.
Complain nicely (once, but in writing). Watch as your friends repost your song as "1 - Metalica", "One fer MeTaLiCa", "Unoay orfay Etalicamay", etc. The filters will eventually find and block those two. Then haul their asses into court for repeatedly blocking your song, even after you told them to stop.
Since paying you off would be cheaper than risking the deals they are brokering with the labels, you win fabulous cash prizes! Yay, overlitigation!
Your point is a good one. Sweeden, Cuba, and China are probably the least capitalist nations in the world right now (or, at any rate, the most socialist). None of them seem to be overwhelmed with immigration the way we are. That is a pretty good litmus of what sort of system most people would like to live under.
Actually, my point was that "pure" capitalism has not really been tried yet, at least not in America. In its early history, the economy was partly propped up by slavery. Education has been a socialist system for over a century, and agriculture has been under heavy regulation for nearly as long.
I don't think we can say for certain whether a totally privatized education system would work better or not. My suspicion is that it might, but it will never happen... Too many politicians would rather introduce wrong-headed ideas (like vouchers), which incrementally erode public education without actually reforming it.
So far, I'm glad to see that GWB has not totally jumped onto the voucher bandwagon.
You can't have "libertarian socialism". The freedom to keep your own property is the central pillar of libertarianism. If you think government owning some or all of your property is a good thing, you are not a libertarian. You might as well say that you advocate "communist capitalism"
The laws of Leviticus were the laws regulating the nation of Israel at a specific time in history. Nobody observes them in their entirety, other than a few small sects of ultra-orthodox Jews.
Every civilization in history has had laws regulating sexual behavior, with brutal concequences for violations, and the laws differ from one culture to another. Ghandi's wife was 13 when she married him, yet a 19-year old boy will go to prison for having sex with a 14-year old girl in most states. While these laws may seem arbitrary and strange to many people, it is because sexual behavior is a powerful motivating force behind the formation people into families, and civilizations depend of family structures to function. That is why many countries offer special benifits and protections to married couples which they do not extend to same-sex monogamous relationships, because those benifits were created to encourage cohesion of child-producing family units.
(In case you are wondering, I am of the opinion that we have it backwards... many Christian churches recognize gay marriage, but the government does not. If it were up to me, Christian churches would not, but the government would.)
My point, if you read my comment a little more carefully, is that when you GPL your software, it does not remove my ownership of my software. Therefore, the GPL is just an option, available to me, but not required of me, should I want to share my software and make sure it stays shared, rather than mess with maintaining ownership.
Whether Richard Stallman and his circle of friends want to stamp out the concept of data ownership is irrelevant to the fact that the GPL does not do so.
That's easy. Stop all the government subsidies of electric car development and production, and the price will pretty much triple, making them items of rare luxury. After all, the best "chick magnet" cars are the ones that show off wealth and status.
Truly though I think Open Source was our best chance for bringing down the beast. But even that card could not trump the widespread ignorance and apathy that keep Capitalism alive and thriving.
Capitalism, as currently practiced in the Western world, has given us the largest and most prosperous middle-class in history, exended the life-expectancy of even the poorest and most downtrodden in society, and has first eroded, then extinguished, the evil caste systems of the past. It's not perfect, it still takes about 3 generations for a destitude family to rise into the ranks of the middle class, and even then it seems to require the aid of a socialist education system and a great deal of charity and/or public assistance. Nevertheless, a better system has yet to be conceived by mankind and measure up to the test of real-world practice on a large scale.
Capitalism was a fantastic idea. In capitalism, every man is a king, because he owns his property absolutely, and every man is a servant, because you can only generate wealth by serving the will of others (one way or another). Your assets are not dictated by what you, or anybody else, think you need, but rather by how much society values your contributions to the greater good (i.e., how much people are willing to pay for your goods, services, knowledge, and labor).
The GPL does not "remove ownership", any more than if I open a public park am I "removing ownership" of land. You still own your yard, and I still own the software I write.
The GPL is just one of several ways to share your code and make sure it stays shared.
Trying to position yourself as an "enemy" of capitalism is about as smart as all those companies that tried to position themselves as "enemies" of Microsoft over the last 20 years. Wouldn't it be better to promote the concept of the GPL as something that is sometimes the right tool for the job in some situations, regardless of your favorite macro-economic policies?
When you talk about "recycling" you are talking about what are known as "breeder" reactors. The problem then is that you are talking about weapons-grade plutonium, and there are lots of treaties in place which control who can have that stuff and how much.
I can't help but wonder what would happen if we took most of the money currently spend on researching "alternative" fuels and dumped it into hardcore research towards the goal of safe, controlled fusion reactions.
Ralph Nader once called the Corvair "unsafe at any speed", but the old Corvair was an armored tank compared to the death-trap which you just described.
No it doesn't. I can build a model airplane that accellerates faster than a F550.
For that matter, sprinter Michael Johnson will come off the line a lot faster than any car, and will only be passed when the car accelerates beyond his top speed.
Building a flyweight car that hops off the line quickly impresses almost nobody.
What makes car-lovers drool over the Ferrari is not how quickly it gets to 60, but how well it drives at 120.
What will impress the layman (and me) is when you drop an electric motor (complete with the full load of commuter batteries) into an F550 body and beat the gas-powered version in two races: the famous "0-60" test, and a longer road-race that tests top sustainable speed and handling characteristics.
Gas-powered car runs out of fuel: fill it, keep driving. Battery-powered car runs out of power: Whip out the cell phone (praying the battery is charged), wait for tow truck.
Then what would I use to pull my boat out to the lake when I go fishing?
Seriously, nearly all of the alternative commuter vehicles proposed in the last few years completely overlook the fact that the car (or light pick-up in my case) is a multi-purpose vehicle, and most of us do not want to spend an additional $20K on a vehicle that is good for getting to work and back only.
The electric car sure looks spiffy... Can I drive it to Chicago at 70 MPH? Can I put my bass guitar amp and a drum kit in it? Can I haul anything? Can I drive through 7 inches of snow without getting stuck? If a Ford Windstar van t-bones it at 40 MPH, will I survive?
Until the answer to ALL of those questions is "yes", the electric commuter car is only practical as a second vehicle, which means that it is only truly practical for two kinds of people: 1: Rich people, and 2: Those who never drive anywhere except to work and back, and never take much with them when they do.
Just a comment on a previous posting by yourself: In countries were we take real geography in school, we learn that AMERICA IS A CONTINENT SPANNING FROM CANADA TO ARGENTINA. American is a person coming from a country located in this continent.
Sorry, AC, but you are wrong. There are two continents spanning from Canada to Argentina, North America and South America. A "North American" is somebody from North America, a "South American" is somebdody from South America, and an "American" is somebody from the North American country known as the United States of America.
To put it simply, I define a religion the same way I would define any philosophy, by its teachings. What people say they might be doing in the name of Christ does not modify who Christ is in any way. Likewise, I evaluate the Koran by what it says, not by what some wrong-headed people might have done.
I consider it a simple fact of human nature that people do evil things, and they justify it using the most celebrated moral arguments available. If there were no religions, there would still be all the horrible things you mention... they would simply be done in the name of "patriotism" or "humanism" or whatever.
Organized religion is a source of comfort for a lot of people, and an organizing force for a great deal of charity and kindness, but all religious organizations are still organizations of people, and people are fallible.
Anyway, this thread has been going on in a day's-old discussion, so I doubt that anybody is reading it but you and I at this point. It was nice discussing this with you.
Kindly direct me to the verse in the Koran which teaches killing infidels gets you into heaven. If you can't, I will just dismiss you as making this stuff up.
As for the Bible telling you how to kill homosexuals... that's just silly. Nowhere does the Bible even use a word meaning "homosexuals". The concept of sexual orientation simply did not exist at the time. There were laws regulating sexual behavior, specifically withing the nation of Israel, but at no time was a distinction drawn between "gay people" and "strait people"... That paradigm is a relatively new invention.
Furthermore, if you read Paul's letters in the New Testament (the book which sets Christianity apart from Judaism), you would know that Paul urged Christians not practice same-gender sex themselves, but always tollerate those who do, and treat them with compassion.
If you are gay, I would say to you that anybody who mistreats you, hates you, or is physically violent towards you is not behaving in a Christian manner, and would gladly rebuke their behavior. Nearly all Christians would agree with me on that position 100%, but unfortunately the honest, loving, and compassionate monothiests of the world are not the ones who make news headlines. Most of us go about living our quiet lives in obscurity, wondering why so many people despise our beliefts.
The Spanish Inquisition... ah, yes... every Catholic-haters favorite bogeyman.
The fact is, most criminals at the time preferred to be tried by the Church, because while the inquisitors were certainly brutal by today's standards, they were far more likely to grant mercy than the court of Spain.
That's not to say they were right, only that their actions are frequently distorted by those who are looking for resons for anti-Catholic bigotry.
Lastly, you can't actully say that any of the things you mentioned were sanctioned by "The" Church... they may have been sanctioned by one sect (in other words, it was sanctioned by "a Church", but you should judge a philosophy for what it is, not by the hypocritical way in which some groups may have done.
To put it another way. If I kill somebody and say that I did it "in the name of 1+1trouble", does that mean that everybody on earth who considers you a friend is a murderer? That's basically what you are saying about God when you insist on lumping every monothiest together with the worst of the Jihad terrorists in history.
Guilt by assiciation is an old debate trick, and most rational people can see through it.
Normally, if students steal previous works and submit them for grades, the line is easy to draw: Did they do any actual work, or did they just paste in somebody else's code?
However, as this was a senior level CS class, I find myself asking why the profs were assigning problems for which solutions could already easilly be found?
Shouldn't senior programming students be expected to be capable of solving new problems? Shouldn't the profs be working a little harder to find new knots for the students to untie? If the instructor is just assigning programs out of the back of some textbook, he/she is short-changing those students.
While I may disagree with your assesment of these religions (I consider them to be a net good to society), I don't think you can read Dune too many times.
Like Asimov's first 3 Foundation books (the ones from the 50's), it continues to be great reading even after you have gone through it a few times.
Slashdot Mirror
By way of example, if Microsoft had the forsight to copyright their infamous "Halloween Documents", the Justice Department's case against them would have been considerably weaker.
If somebody is engaging in fraud or other illegal activities, documents which incriminate them that leak out should be considered fair game to republish as an act of critical speech.
It used to be axiomatic to say that nothing is on the web except for that which somebody considered it worth the trouble to put it there.
Since a lot of very optimistic people thought they could eventually turn a site that gives content away into a for-profit site, there was a gold rush of speculators trying to get on the bandwagon.
Now that it turns out that making money via web publishing is not going to be easy, and only those who planned for the extremely long haul are ever going to see a profit, the brief and shining moment of free professionally-made content is coming to a close.
So, the day when we could take advantage of VC folly by getting lots of free stuff may be ending. A few places, like /. and imdb are still going strong, but many others are soon to drift into the ether... We all had to know that this day was coming.
Let's take this in stride. Were things really so bad in the days before Slate and Salon?
holy crap. one should never type when home with a fever.... did I really just use "right" instead of "write"!?
The filters will surely pick this is up as the song "One" by Metallica, and block him.
Complain nicely (once, but in writing). Watch as your friends repost your song as "1 - Metalica", "One fer MeTaLiCa", "Unoay orfay Etalicamay", etc. The filters will eventually find and block those two. Then haul their asses into court for repeatedly blocking your song, even after you told them to stop.
Since paying you off would be cheaper than risking the deals they are brokering with the labels, you win fabulous cash prizes! Yay, overlitigation!
Your point is a good one. Sweeden, Cuba, and China are probably the least capitalist nations in the world right now (or, at any rate, the most socialist). None of them seem to be overwhelmed with immigration the way we are. That is a pretty good litmus of what sort of system most people would like to live under.
I don't think we can say for certain whether a totally privatized education system would work better or not. My suspicion is that it might, but it will never happen... Too many politicians would rather introduce wrong-headed ideas (like vouchers), which incrementally erode public education without actually reforming it.
So far, I'm glad to see that GWB has not totally jumped onto the voucher bandwagon.
You can't have "libertarian socialism". The freedom to keep your own property is the central pillar of libertarianism. If you think government owning some or all of your property is a good thing, you are not a libertarian. You might as well say that you advocate "communist capitalism"
Every civilization in history has had laws regulating sexual behavior, with brutal concequences for violations, and the laws differ from one culture to another. Ghandi's wife was 13 when she married him, yet a 19-year old boy will go to prison for having sex with a 14-year old girl in most states. While these laws may seem arbitrary and strange to many people, it is because sexual behavior is a powerful motivating force behind the formation people into families, and civilizations depend of family structures to function. That is why many countries offer special benifits and protections to married couples which they do not extend to same-sex monogamous relationships, because those benifits were created to encourage cohesion of child-producing family units.
(In case you are wondering, I am of the opinion that we have it backwards... many Christian churches recognize gay marriage, but the government does not. If it were up to me, Christian churches would not, but the government would.)
My point, if you read my comment a little more carefully, is that when you GPL your software, it does not remove my ownership of my software. Therefore, the GPL is just an option, available to me, but not required of me, should I want to share my software and make sure it stays shared, rather than mess with maintaining ownership.
Whether Richard Stallman and his circle of friends want to stamp out the concept of data ownership is irrelevant to the fact that the GPL does not do so.
That's easy. Stop all the government subsidies of electric car development and production, and the price will pretty much triple, making them items of rare luxury. After all, the best "chick magnet" cars are the ones that show off wealth and status.
Unfortunately, we are all off topic, because his article had no specific points.
Capitalism, as currently practiced in the Western world, has given us the largest and most prosperous middle-class in history, exended the life-expectancy of even the poorest and most downtrodden in society, and has first eroded, then extinguished, the evil caste systems of the past. It's not perfect, it still takes about 3 generations for a destitude family to rise into the ranks of the middle class, and even then it seems to require the aid of a socialist education system and a great deal of charity and/or public assistance. Nevertheless, a better system has yet to be conceived by mankind and measure up to the test of real-world practice on a large scale.
Capitalism was a fantastic idea. In capitalism, every man is a king, because he owns his property absolutely, and every man is a servant, because you can only generate wealth by serving the will of others (one way or another). Your assets are not dictated by what you, or anybody else, think you need, but rather by how much society values your contributions to the greater good (i.e., how much people are willing to pay for your goods, services, knowledge, and labor).
The GPL is just one of several ways to share your code and make sure it stays shared.
Trying to position yourself as an "enemy" of capitalism is about as smart as all those companies that tried to position themselves as "enemies" of Microsoft over the last 20 years. Wouldn't it be better to promote the concept of the GPL as something that is sometimes the right tool for the job in some situations, regardless of your favorite macro-economic policies?
I can't help but wonder what would happen if we took most of the money currently spend on researching "alternative" fuels and dumped it into hardcore research towards the goal of safe, controlled fusion reactions.
A lot better.
Ralph Nader once called the Corvair "unsafe at any speed", but the old Corvair was an armored tank compared to the death-trap which you just described.
For that matter, sprinter Michael Johnson will come off the line a lot faster than any car, and will only be passed when the car accelerates beyond his top speed.
Building a flyweight car that hops off the line quickly impresses almost nobody.
What makes car-lovers drool over the Ferrari is not how quickly it gets to 60, but how well it drives at 120.
What will impress the layman (and me) is when you drop an electric motor (complete with the full load of commuter batteries) into an F550 body and beat the gas-powered version in two races: the famous "0-60" test, and a longer road-race that tests top sustainable speed and handling characteristics.
Gas-powered car runs out of fuel: fill it, keep driving.
Battery-powered car runs out of power: Whip out the cell phone (praying the battery is charged), wait for tow truck.
Seriously, nearly all of the alternative commuter vehicles proposed in the last few years completely overlook the fact that the car (or light pick-up in my case) is a multi-purpose vehicle, and most of us do not want to spend an additional $20K on a vehicle that is good for getting to work and back only.
The electric car sure looks spiffy... Can I drive it to Chicago at 70 MPH? Can I put my bass guitar amp and a drum kit in it? Can I haul anything? Can I drive through 7 inches of snow without getting stuck? If a Ford Windstar van t-bones it at 40 MPH, will I survive?
Until the answer to ALL of those questions is "yes", the electric commuter car is only practical as a second vehicle, which means that it is only truly practical for two kinds of people: 1: Rich people, and 2: Those who never drive anywhere except to work and back, and never take much with them when they do.
That's funny, I thought they were caused by the fall of the Roman Empire.
Sorry, AC, but you are wrong. There are two continents spanning from Canada to Argentina, North America and South America. A "North American" is somebody from North America, a "South American" is somebdody from South America, and an "American" is somebody from the North American country known as the United States of America.
I hope this sorts it out for you, thanks.
I consider it a simple fact of human nature that people do evil things, and they justify it using the most celebrated moral arguments available. If there were no religions, there would still be all the horrible things you mention... they would simply be done in the name of "patriotism" or "humanism" or whatever.
Organized religion is a source of comfort for a lot of people, and an organizing force for a great deal of charity and kindness, but all religious organizations are still organizations of people, and people are fallible.
Anyway, this thread has been going on in a day's-old discussion, so I doubt that anybody is reading it but you and I at this point. It was nice discussing this with you.
As for the Bible telling you how to kill homosexuals... that's just silly. Nowhere does the Bible even use a word meaning "homosexuals". The concept of sexual orientation simply did not exist at the time. There were laws regulating sexual behavior, specifically withing the nation of Israel, but at no time was a distinction drawn between "gay people" and "strait people"... That paradigm is a relatively new invention.
Furthermore, if you read Paul's letters in the New Testament (the book which sets Christianity apart from Judaism), you would know that Paul urged Christians not practice same-gender sex themselves, but always tollerate those who do, and treat them with compassion.
If you are gay, I would say to you that anybody who mistreats you, hates you, or is physically violent towards you is not behaving in a Christian manner, and would gladly rebuke their behavior. Nearly all Christians would agree with me on that position 100%, but unfortunately the honest, loving, and compassionate monothiests of the world are not the ones who make news headlines. Most of us go about living our quiet lives in obscurity, wondering why so many people despise our beliefts.
The fact is, most criminals at the time preferred to be tried by the Church, because while the inquisitors were certainly brutal by today's standards, they were far more likely to grant mercy than the court of Spain.
That's not to say they were right, only that their actions are frequently distorted by those who are looking for resons for anti-Catholic bigotry.
Lastly, you can't actully say that any of the things you mentioned were sanctioned by "The" Church... they may have been sanctioned by one sect (in other words, it was sanctioned by "a Church", but you should judge a philosophy for what it is, not by the hypocritical way in which some groups may have done.
To put it another way. If I kill somebody and say that I did it "in the name of 1+1trouble", does that mean that everybody on earth who considers you a friend is a murderer? That's basically what you are saying about God when you insist on lumping every monothiest together with the worst of the Jihad terrorists in history.
Guilt by assiciation is an old debate trick, and most rational people can see through it.
However, as this was a senior level CS class, I find myself asking why the profs were assigning problems for which solutions could already easilly be found?
Shouldn't senior programming students be expected to be capable of solving new problems? Shouldn't the profs be working a little harder to find new knots for the students to untie? If the instructor is just assigning programs out of the back of some textbook, he/she is short-changing those students.
Like Asimov's first 3 Foundation books (the ones from the 50's), it continues to be great reading even after you have gone through it a few times.