Look people, the US government does NOT SERVE YOU. It serves the interests of the moneyed and corrupt corporations which support it.
Um, no. It serves the interest of EVERYONE, including people who own stock in corporations. Do you really think the government should only represent people who don't own any stock?
One of the government's functions is to enforce laws. It is illegal to steal copyrighted material, therefore, they are doing exactly what they should be doing. Your childish "right to steal" that you think you have doesn't exist.
Millioniares are lining up around the block to sing up for just a venture.
Millionaires are lining up for something with nobody to tell them that it's actually boring, and not real space travel.
Let's see what happens when ships are actually flying, and people come back saying, "Yeah, it was kind of cool, but way too short. I think I'll wait for them to get to orbit when we can stay awhile."
Well, to be precise, the path part of URLs is allowed to be case significant, but not all web servers implement case significance. So it'd be stupid to implement an encoding scheme that depended on it.
1 person walks at about 2 km/d. 1 robot moves at 2 m/d.
Where do you get that robots can only move 2 meters in a day? That's completely absurd. The Mars Rover could do 5 centimeters per second, although, they say it averages 1 cm/sec. At the average speed, it can cover 864 meters in a day, or almost a kilometer. And that's current technology; if we actually did start mass producing these things by the thousands, we could make a lot of improvements.
But this ignores the ease with which a human can obtain the information, the experience gained from living on another planet, and the pride in having a human on another planet in our solar system.
Pride is completely worthless. Pride didn't keep us on the moon, and it won't keep us on Mars. The living experience gained is interesting, but not particularly valuable, especially considering the price.
Make releasing dangerous information illegal. But why make all speech illegal?
Er, who talked about making all speech illegal? Your point was that all speech should be legal, only with consequences after the fact, and my point was that doesn't work in the real world.
The first amendment defends against prior restraint of speech by Congress through laws that restrict certain forms of publication. That does not mean all responsibility for the content is absolved--if I print total lies about, say, John Kerry, I can be sued in court after publication to prove the substance of my remarks or take responsibility for them through some form of punishment.
-sigh- Actually, you can write just about anything you want about John Kerry. There are specific exemptions -- IN THE LAW -- about public figures. You seem to think libel/slander is some law of physics, but it's not. They are specific exception to Freedom of Speech, just like yelling fire in a crowded theatre.
There are unwritten responsibilities that go along with the rights. Having the right to bear arms does not mean you can shoot up a school, for one example.
Sorry, but these are quite written, not unwritten.
Freedom of speech is a right, but you have no right to take away other people's rights. It only takes a mildly intelligent individual to figure out how to put those two facts together, so give it a try.
Unfortunately, this (typical Libertarian) logic doesn't hold up in the real world. I'm reminded of a Libertarian who tried to convince me that it should be legal for someone to shoot a gun at you -- as long as he misses. Until then, he has not violated your rights. But once he hits you, then he should be prosecuted.
Of course, the Libertarian was arguing that if you make the penalties Draconian enough, no one will fire the gun in the first place. But it's just silly logic, as most people can see. It's stupid to not have preventative measure that make it illegal in the first place to fire guns at people.
Same as with your logic. Sure, we could create the death penalty for anyone who publishes a Witness Protection list. But that doesn't help those who get killed by the crazy bastard who decides to publish it anyway.
I choose to interpret this as (hopefully) students are smarter than we give them credit for.
Take this one: "Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories."
Is there anybody who think that newspapers should be able to publish ANYTHING? Say, a list of witness protection program participants? The fact that you are a convicted child molestor, complete with picture, even if you're not? Hey, it's "freedom of speech", right?
Considering that many Slashdotter's knee-jerk reaction is that "all censorship is bad", I find this quite refreshing.
Howard Stern lost. Michael Powell was one of his favorite people. Stern got endless mileage out of using Powell as a marketing gimmick, especially when he was heading to Satellite.
Now that Powell is gone, Stern can't do his fake whining anymore, although it's possible that Stern will continue to stalk him in whatever job he goes to next, just so he can do more satellite advertising.
Can you share the albums across a home network? I have a bunch of pics and I use a program that I'm not totally happy with, but I need a program that can be used on two computers to access one shared set of pics (i.e., my computer has the pics, my wife's computer wants to look at them).
A company called Monsanto sells those specially engineered seeds, and according to their license agreements, they make it illegal to replant the seeds harvested from a previous crop.
OK, farmer entered into an agreement with Monsanto, got it.
Somehow the powers-that-be got the idea that replanting seeds grown from your own soil is a crime.
No, somehow the powers-that-be got the idea that contracts are legally binding instruments.
You just figured this out? Apple is one of the WORST companies in the computer industry for screwing their customers and using the lawsuit as a weapon. Hell, "look and feel" mean anything to you?
It's one of the reasons that I detest Apple as a company and vowed never to give them one dime of my money no matter what.
People like to criticize Microsoft, but MS very rarely (if ever) uses lawsuits as weapons. Apple's historic behavior makes Microsoft look like a piker. The only reason no one really cares is because Apple has such a low marketshare anyway.
Do you consider it to be immoral to tax people and then fund a police force with the money, for example? After all, that would be discrimination against people who pay taxes but could defend themselves from criminals without police help.
No, because the police protect citizens impersonally. In other words, the money is being used to benefit society. The person being taxed receives a benefit from the tax. It doesn't matter if someone can protect themselves; they still gain a benefit. Police don't just protect people, they also investigate and arrest criminals.
On the other hand, it is intrinsically immoral to forcibly take from one person for the express purpose of giving a direct payment to another. There is zero benefit to the person being taken from.
Incidently, I should say that I'm not a Libertarian, although most Libertarians would agree with the principle. True Libertarians have their own brand of wrongness.
Granted of course. I will be sure to tell that to my sister the next time that she gets a few gallons of government subsidised Milk for her child. Or the next time I see my father laid off and scraping by and manages to pay the mortgage with his unemployment check while he looks for a new job.
Did it ever occur to you that the reason your sister needs milk subsidies or that your father is only scraping by is because of socialist policies?
Let's not even get into the immorality of forcibly taking from one person to give to another.
There's a reason that the US is the most richest, most powerful economy in the world, and it's because of the (relative) lack of socialism.
It's 1972. Intel has just released the 8008 microprocessor. Hobbiests and small electronics companies are struggling to sell "microcomputers" based on the new chip. It's up to you, do you buy one of these microcomputers, even though they're not as powerful as a "minicomputer", which btw, is something you can't afford anyway, or do you just complain loudly that microcomputers are useless and not really computers?
That'd be great... if this was the equivalent of an 8008. Which it's not.
It's the equivalent of a Magic Brain Calculator. A nice toy, but utterly useless to getting to full-blown electronic computers.
This was a *stunt*!! You don't seem to understand that this technology is almost totally useless for getting to orbit. It's not scalable. What it really is is a proof-of-concept of building a rocket by a private individual. But it's not space travel.
I want them to succeed. Supposedly they're working on real space vehicles, and more power to them.
And your point is what? That I'm not allowed to point out that this is more marketing than space travel because I haven't personally built my own rocket ship?
Does that mean I can't criticize Microsoft unless I've personally built my own multi-billion dollar operating system company?
Just feel the need to point out once again that this is not space travel, as far as I'm concerned.
Space travel is controlled space travel. That means travelling into space, establishing a controlled orbit, and then a controlled descent back to earth. That's space travel.
The Wright Brother's big advance was controlled, powered flight. Lots of people could shoot a projectile from one end of the field to the other, which is all (effectively) that was accomplished by Burt Rutan.
I don't want to be a big, wet blanket here, and I don't want to say nothing has been accomplished; it was a necessary first step. But it ain't space travel. Orbital insertions are two orders of magnitude harder.
I don't want marketing, I want real space travel, and that requires being a little harsh on all the marketing that surrounds this.
You may be a non-native English speaker, but using "we" in that context does not imply ownership. It's just a mildly "slang-ish" way of appealing to the general universe.
It is really crazyness. The press release for using the Quake 2 engine was FREAKING *APRIL 30, 1997* (3D Realms no longer has the press release on their web site, heh). And presumably they were working on it before that to some extent, so we're talking EIGHT YEARS.
I suspect the deal is that they want to have the "best game ever", and every time they get close, some game comes out that is better than what they have. So they trash it and start over.
How much you want to bet that there is discussion to trash it yet again with the release of Half Life II?
Sawed-off shotguns are easy to make, too. Doesn't seem to stop them being illegal.
My question is, what is with this need for geeks to "prove" something is innocuous based on the number of lines of code? It's just so stupid. Viruses are easy to write, too (I'm sure someone can do it in 15 lines), but that doesn't mean we shouldn't make those illegal.
Makes me weep for the future when I see college professors being so blind to what the real issues are here.
Finally, your last sentence is ridiculous. I have RTFA and no "shallow" political beliefs of his stick out so far that there's no need to even cite what they are. Your lack of any support for that statement, betraying an apparent assumption that everyone who isn't 'silly' will agree with you, makes it look like your own political beliefs are rather lacking in depth.
I don't want to get into a big debate on free trade, but his statement that '"they" WANT you to be paid less' is just stupid. Free trade is an incredibly complex concept, and you can't reduce it to such simple nonsense as "it's all intended to benefit the rich".
Apparently RMS thinks we should live in some protectionist utopia where wages are artificially propped up so that consumers can pay higher prices, but the world is moving toward a global economy. RMS is apparently too blind to see that.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, no. It serves the interest of EVERYONE, including people who own stock in corporations. Do you really think the government should only represent people who don't own any stock?
One of the government's functions is to enforce laws. It is illegal to steal copyrighted material, therefore, they are doing exactly what they should be doing. Your childish "right to steal" that you think you have doesn't exist.
Millionaires are lining up for something with nobody to tell them that it's actually boring, and not real space travel.
Let's see what happens when ships are actually flying, and people come back saying, "Yeah, it was kind of cool, but way too short. I think I'll wait for them to get to orbit when we can stay awhile."
Well, to be precise, the path part of URLs is allowed to be case significant, but not all web servers implement case significance. So it'd be stupid to implement an encoding scheme that depended on it.
URLs are case insignificant.
Two word hint: URL encoding.
(sheesh, the arrogance displayed on Slashdot knows no bounds)
Where do you get that robots can only move 2 meters in a day? That's completely absurd. The Mars Rover could do 5 centimeters per second, although, they say it averages 1 cm/sec. At the average speed, it can cover 864 meters in a day, or almost a kilometer. And that's current technology; if we actually did start mass producing these things by the thousands, we could make a lot of improvements.
But this ignores the ease with which a human can obtain the information, the experience gained from living on another planet, and the pride in having a human on another planet in our solar system.
Pride is completely worthless. Pride didn't keep us on the moon, and it won't keep us on Mars. The living experience gained is interesting, but not particularly valuable, especially considering the price.
Perhaps, but it's better to have 1,000 $350M probes that one $350 BILLION mission.
Er, who talked about making all speech illegal? Your point was that all speech should be legal, only with consequences after the fact, and my point was that doesn't work in the real world.
As usual, RM101 is correct.
The first amendment defends against prior restraint of speech by Congress through laws that restrict certain forms of publication. That does not mean all responsibility for the content is absolved--if I print total lies about, say, John Kerry, I can be sued in court after publication to prove the substance of my remarks or take responsibility for them through some form of punishment.
-sigh- Actually, you can write just about anything you want about John Kerry. There are specific exemptions -- IN THE LAW -- about public figures. You seem to think libel/slander is some law of physics, but it's not. They are specific exception to Freedom of Speech, just like yelling fire in a crowded theatre.
There are unwritten responsibilities that go along with the rights. Having the right to bear arms does not mean you can shoot up a school, for one example.
Sorry, but these are quite written, not unwritten.
Unfortunately, this (typical Libertarian) logic doesn't hold up in the real world. I'm reminded of a Libertarian who tried to convince me that it should be legal for someone to shoot a gun at you -- as long as he misses. Until then, he has not violated your rights. But once he hits you, then he should be prosecuted.
Of course, the Libertarian was arguing that if you make the penalties Draconian enough, no one will fire the gun in the first place. But it's just silly logic, as most people can see. It's stupid to not have preventative measure that make it illegal in the first place to fire guns at people.
Same as with your logic. Sure, we could create the death penalty for anyone who publishes a Witness Protection list. But that doesn't help those who get killed by the crazy bastard who decides to publish it anyway.
Yes, but only because the law recognizes that first amendment rights don't take precedent over slander.
Take this one: "Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories."
Is there anybody who think that newspapers should be able to publish ANYTHING? Say, a list of witness protection program participants? The fact that you are a convicted child molestor, complete with picture, even if you're not? Hey, it's "freedom of speech", right?
Considering that many Slashdotter's knee-jerk reaction is that "all censorship is bad", I find this quite refreshing.
Now that Powell is gone, Stern can't do his fake whining anymore, although it's possible that Stern will continue to stalk him in whatever job he goes to next, just so he can do more satellite advertising.
Anyone know?
OK, farmer entered into an agreement with Monsanto, got it.
Somehow the powers-that-be got the idea that replanting seeds grown from your own soil is a crime.
No, somehow the powers-that-be got the idea that contracts are legally binding instruments.
What's the story here?
It's one of the reasons that I detest Apple as a company and vowed never to give them one dime of my money no matter what.
People like to criticize Microsoft, but MS very rarely (if ever) uses lawsuits as weapons. Apple's historic behavior makes Microsoft look like a piker. The only reason no one really cares is because Apple has such a low marketshare anyway.
Do you consider it to be immoral to tax people and then fund a police force with the money, for example? After all, that would be discrimination against people who pay taxes but could defend themselves from criminals without police help.
No, because the police protect citizens impersonally. In other words, the money is being used to benefit society. The person being taxed receives a benefit from the tax. It doesn't matter if someone can protect themselves; they still gain a benefit. Police don't just protect people, they also investigate and arrest criminals.
On the other hand, it is intrinsically immoral to forcibly take from one person for the express purpose of giving a direct payment to another. There is zero benefit to the person being taken from.
Incidently, I should say that I'm not a Libertarian, although most Libertarians would agree with the principle. True Libertarians have their own brand of wrongness.
Did it ever occur to you that the reason your sister needs milk subsidies or that your father is only scraping by is because of socialist policies?
Let's not even get into the immorality of forcibly taking from one person to give to another.
There's a reason that the US is the most richest, most powerful economy in the world, and it's because of the (relative) lack of socialism.
That'd be great... if this was the equivalent of an 8008. Which it's not.
It's the equivalent of a Magic Brain Calculator. A nice toy, but utterly useless to getting to full-blown electronic computers.
This was a *stunt*!! You don't seem to understand that this technology is almost totally useless for getting to orbit. It's not scalable. What it really is is a proof-of-concept of building a rocket by a private individual. But it's not space travel.
I want them to succeed. Supposedly they're working on real space vehicles, and more power to them.
Does that mean I can't criticize Microsoft unless I've personally built my own multi-billion dollar operating system company?
Space travel is controlled space travel. That means travelling into space, establishing a controlled orbit, and then a controlled descent back to earth. That's space travel.
The Wright Brother's big advance was controlled, powered flight. Lots of people could shoot a projectile from one end of the field to the other, which is all (effectively) that was accomplished by Burt Rutan.
I don't want to be a big, wet blanket here, and I don't want to say nothing has been accomplished; it was a necessary first step. But it ain't space travel. Orbital insertions are two orders of magnitude harder.
I don't want marketing, I want real space travel, and that requires being a little harsh on all the marketing that surrounds this.
You may be a non-native English speaker, but using "we" in that context does not imply ownership. It's just a mildly "slang-ish" way of appealing to the general universe.
I suspect the deal is that they want to have the "best game ever", and every time they get close, some game comes out that is better than what they have. So they trash it and start over.
How much you want to bet that there is discussion to trash it yet again with the release of Half Life II?
My question is, what is with this need for geeks to "prove" something is innocuous based on the number of lines of code? It's just so stupid. Viruses are easy to write, too (I'm sure someone can do it in 15 lines), but that doesn't mean we shouldn't make those illegal.
Makes me weep for the future when I see college professors being so blind to what the real issues are here.
Finally, your last sentence is ridiculous. I have RTFA and no "shallow" political beliefs of his stick out so far that there's no need to even cite what they are. Your lack of any support for that statement, betraying an apparent assumption that everyone who isn't 'silly' will agree with you, makes it look like your own political beliefs are rather lacking in depth.
I don't want to get into a big debate on free trade, but his statement that '"they" WANT you to be paid less' is just stupid. Free trade is an incredibly complex concept, and you can't reduce it to such simple nonsense as "it's all intended to benefit the rich".
Apparently RMS thinks we should live in some protectionist utopia where wages are artificially propped up so that consumers can pay higher prices, but the world is moving toward a global economy. RMS is apparently too blind to see that.