I would define censorship as an by the government to limit access to information.
All censorship is bad
That's an extreme position, and it merits extreme counterexamples:
- child pornography - step-by-step instructions for making crystal meth - exhortations to murder abortionists - military secrets (like how to shoot down Stealth aircraft)
Should the government permit me to create a web page that includes the following? - A schedule showing when your wife / girlfriend / mother / daughter is home alone - A map showing how to get to their house - A VRML walkthrough of their house - Detailed instructions for defeating any security system on the house - Faked nude or lingerie shots of the victim - Detailed statements, purportedly from the victim, describing their rape fantasies
You may believe that one or two of these examples may not merit censorship. But if you believe that NONE of these should be censored, I certainly don't want you around MY children.
Granted that some things should be censored, the debate boils down to where to draw the line, and that's a tricky proposition.
I believe the post you replied to had nothing to do with spam, rather the fact that MS software could cause data loss, shut down a computer, etc. --- hukt on fonix werkt phor me!
What's the harm in actually teaching our children what's bad, and what they probably should stay away from, instead of trying to put a clamshell over them and hope that nothing ever gets through?
I keep poisonous household chemicals in a cabinet with a "child-proof" latch. Applying your reasoning to this situation would suggest that I should let my kids have access to these poisons and teach them not to drink them. I'm not going to take the chance that my kids might ignore me. Ultimately, they'll be old enough to get through the child-proof latch, but by then they'll be old enough to understand exactly what poison is and what it can do.
I feel the same thing applies to knowledge about the world around us. My *%@^ inlaws told my son about tornadoes, and now we have to hold him at night anytime there's a windstorm while he cries about "tomatoes". He was too young for that knowledge.
Seriously, though, if the display tubes in the library are large... Librarians have already considered this and shot it down. While it discourages some people from viewing objectionable material, it doesn't discourage all people. Those who aren't easily embarassed keep right on viewing objectionable material, but now everyone - small children included - will be able to see it. some librarians hzve noted that exhibitionistic patrons actually seemed to enjoy viewing objectionable material more if they knew that everyone else knew they were looking at it.
Let's keep it that way- leave it an open channel for information in print I seriously doubt that any of the libraries you patronize have subscriptions to Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, etc. They could easily afford to. I don't doubt that such magazines would have a higher readership than "Photography Today" or "The New Yorker". The only possible explanation for their failure to provide such materials is censorship.
This thought is not original with me, but I don't recall the source. Xerox formed PARC with the idea that it would help them make money. They realized that directed reseach may produce incremental improvements but not breakthroughs, so they let researchers do what they wanted (within reason). Most of PARC's research was worthless to Xerox, as Xerox did not want to risk significant amounts of money in unproven markets. The laser printer that PARC developed, however, more than paid for the cost of PARC.
"Filtering" does not work. It either permits access to some "bad" sites, or it prevents access to some non-"bad" sites. But having said that...
children...can make their own decisions This is laughable. Children can not always even make competent decisions about basic survival, let alone abstract ideas. I have for years explained the importance of a good diet, yet my children would eat only ice cream, candy, and kool-aid if I let them. They would play in the street (balls bounce better there), walk through poison ivy (they can't distinguish it from box elder), and hit each other ("He hit me first!") if I let them, despite the fact that I have explained REPEATEDLY why they shouldn't. Therefore, I forcefully limit their activities, adn will continue to do so until I judge they are smart/wise enough to take care of themselves. I likewise limit their exposure to knowledge until they are old enough to handle it. My oldest (who is four) has learned over the past two years that there are dead animals, living animals die (even baby bunnies), people sometimes kill and eat animals, and people die. I haven't let on yet that people kill people. Last night, I sent him to his room to play while I watched a violently explicit documentary on guerilla warfare on PBS.
The upshot is, I don't think YOU (as in "We the people...") should take MY money and expose my children to things they aren't ready for.
Just like being an outcast at my school doesn't mean what I say is irrelevent.
It does mean, however, that what you say will likely be ignored by the majority of people at your school.
Since you are an outcast, if you come up with a great idea, you will have no success in trying to implement it by telling everyone about your great idea. In fact, now that your idea has become closely associated with you, few in the majority will listen to the idea even if it comes from someone else. So when someone else Believes in your idea, they will have to present it differently and distance themselves from you in order to be considered by the majority.
ESR is a severe realist and is doing all he can to get as much as possible of RMS's ideal accepted by as many people as possible. We are very close to a situation in which music is free (speech), simply because it's easy to copy. I'm not sure how the music industry will continue to make a profit in decades to come, but I know it won't be based on limiting access to the musical "binaries". In the same vein, once all software is open-sourced, we will be in much the same situation. The majority will realize that they can do anything they want with the software...and they will. We will achieve de facto freedom before we achieve de juris freedom, simply because those who make the law always have an interest in the status quo. I like the course ESR has plotted; it means we might have software freedom in my lifetime. And while I don't disagree with RMS's ideals, I do disagree with his methods. If we depended solely on him, we would NEVER see software freed.
You must not have been around for too long; ESR has been quite vocal in his desire for "software that doesn't suck". This is why he supports open source.
Saying Bill Gates (who is the founder and CEO os MS and therefore the human being most responsible for MS's actions) is not responsible for DOS/Windows/Office viruses is analogous to saying that an automobile manufacturer is not responsible for the explosion of gas tanks in car crashes. The product's creators don't directly cause the problem, but they are grossly negligent.
The original statement is a lot more like saying that baseball bats are responsible for assaults. It's sort of true, but not really.
The original statement (if true) says that the programming language of choice (PERL) for extracting email addresses from the internet is also the programming language of choice for parsing email headers. I think this says more about the PERL's ability to process text than it does about the spam debate.
He complains that they didn't accept his document format; I dare say the head hunter said to his buddies, "here's some dude who ignored our clear instructions on what formats we accept". Yup. Complaining about customers is a typical non-professional behavior, and this outfit he dealt with was clearly unprofessional. Furthermore, they either don't know English very well or they don't know how to type.
Given that the owners of slashdot intend this as a business concern (they make money, right?), I think an argument could be made that their slashdot trademark has been violated and their reputation has been damaged. If they had registered slashdot as a trademark, they'd have a much better case, but I still think they have a case. Sue them.
MS monopolizes the programming market , the desktop application market, and the OS market.
Sun wants Java to be the programming language. AOL wants everyone to download applications from them for an hourly rate. Netscape wanted their browser to make the underlying OS irrelevant. You'd have a layered monopoly, each partner controlling a layer. Of course, Microsoft will just roll over and die...
IANAL, but I think trademarking "open source" would be like trademarking "object oriented". The trademark office might grant it (since they seem to be clueless), but I doubt it would hold up in court, since many different companies are using the phrase.
Shortsighted? $20K and a published technical manual. If I had the knowledge to do this, I'd jump at the chance. If I was worth more than that, I'd be earning more than that, you know what I mean?
And whether you realize it or not, you are calling RMS and Miguel Icaza liars, as they indicated that this is about the fee that a commercial publisher expected to pay an author.
As someone who hopes to someday be a novelist -- Don't ever underestimate the monetary value of a writer's work.:)
Don't over-estimate it, either. I believe that if you do the math (and assuming the facts are accurate), you'll find that $20,000 is good pay. According to the original post, the authors expected to get $1 per book, and the expected number of book sales was around 20,000. Thus it's not a substantially different deal for the author than a commercial publisher would offer.
We have cells in our lab that were harvested from a lady named Helen ~30 years ago(Hela cells) and they are still alive and kicking while Helen is not. This cells are very screwed up(>90 chromasomes) and they have active telmerase. I believe her name was actually Henrietta Lacks. Reader's Digest had a story about her some years ago. Her cells were widely used in cancer research and were known for "contaminating" other cell cultures, so that researchers who thought they were testing treatments on multiple cell cultures found that they were actually testing only HeLa cultures.
About ASP - it's a server thing, not a client thing. Saying ASP is MS only is like saying PERL is Unix only; it's true (from the server perspective) but is irrelevant in a discussion of browsers.
VBScript can be either server- or client-side, so that point is well-taken.
Linux is not being sold by Red Hat - they are selling Linux support and an easy installation toolkit. What happens when other, easy-to-use Linux toolkits are made available for free download? Then all Red Hat is is a technical support company.
You are absolutely correct as long as Red Hat rolls over and dies as soon as someone else manages to match the value of their package. However, if Red Hat stays on the ball, they will continuously improve their oferings. If you look at industries besides the software industry, you will find a similar situation. As long as there is competition within the industry, each company strives to improve their product (though sometimes the improvement is along the lines of "Now with scrubbing bubbles!"). This is healthy and normal.
Samba is (presumably) so named because it permits Linux to communicate using SMB (Server Message Blocks). SMB (as I understand it) is the upper-level protocol used by NetBIOS. NetBIOS is supposed to go away in Windows 2000 (aka NT 5). From that point forward, there will be no need for SMB and thus Samba.
The above is intended more as a question than a statement; is my analysis or understanding of the facts incorrect?
If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to steal the Phantom Menace, he and all his family will eat finest fish at every meal all their life long.
Re:Not just a reel, the entire film - inside job
on
TPM movie reel stolen
·
· Score: 1
"...who has the trust of theater management..."
Or perhaps someone who is IN theater management. Think about it...the owner of the theater will be the one making all the money off the theater. The management will simply be salaried (high salary, but still just salary). Then along comes the most hyped film ever, and the theater manager sees a chance to cash in and retire to the Cayman Islands.
I'd make it more like a 1E6:1. My interpretation of "10:1 Lucas is annoyed" is "I'll bet my $10 against your $1 that Lucas is annoyed - winner gets $11". You only make bets like that when you're certain you're right (or at least, wrong less than one time in eleven). My bet would be my $1E6 against your $1. You'd stand to win a lot if you won, but you wouldn't win.
Slashdot Mirror
I would define censorship as an by the government to limit access to information.
All censorship is bad
That's an extreme position, and it merits extreme counterexamples:
- child pornography
- step-by-step instructions for making crystal meth
- exhortations to murder abortionists
- military secrets (like how to shoot down Stealth aircraft)
Should the government permit me to create a web page that includes the following?
- A schedule showing when your wife / girlfriend / mother / daughter is home alone
- A map showing how to get to their house
- A VRML walkthrough of their house
- Detailed instructions for defeating any security system on the house
- Faked nude or lingerie shots of the victim
- Detailed statements, purportedly from the victim, describing their rape fantasies
You may believe that one or two of these examples may not merit censorship. But if you believe that NONE of these should be censored, I certainly don't want you around MY children.
Granted that some things should be censored, the debate boils down to where to draw the line, and that's a tricky proposition.
I believe the post you replied to had nothing to do with spam, rather the fact that MS software could cause data loss, shut down a computer, etc.
---
hukt on fonix werkt phor me!
What's the harm in actually teaching our children what's bad, and what they probably should stay away from, instead of trying to put a clamshell over them and hope that nothing ever gets through?
I keep poisonous household chemicals in a cabinet with a "child-proof" latch. Applying your reasoning to this situation would suggest that I should let my kids have access to these poisons and teach them not to drink them. I'm not going to take the chance that my kids might ignore me. Ultimately, they'll be old enough to get through the child-proof latch, but by then they'll be old enough to understand exactly what poison is and what it can do.
I feel the same thing applies to knowledge about the world around us. My *%@^ inlaws told my son about tornadoes, and now we have to hold him at night anytime there's a windstorm while he cries about "tomatoes". He was too young for that knowledge.
Seriously, though, if the display tubes in the library are large ...
Librarians have already considered this and shot it down. While it discourages some people from viewing objectionable material, it doesn't discourage all people. Those who aren't easily embarassed keep right on viewing objectionable material, but now everyone - small children included - will be able to see it. some librarians hzve noted that exhibitionistic patrons actually seemed to enjoy viewing objectionable material more if they knew that everyone else knew they were looking at it.
Let's keep it that way- leave it an open channel for information in print
I seriously doubt that any of the libraries you patronize have subscriptions to Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, etc. They could easily afford to. I don't doubt that such magazines would have a higher readership than "Photography Today" or "The New Yorker". The only possible explanation for their failure to provide such materials is censorship.
This thought is not original with me, but I don't recall the source. Xerox formed PARC with the idea that it would help them make money. They realized that directed reseach may produce incremental improvements but not breakthroughs, so they let researchers do what they wanted (within reason). Most of PARC's research was worthless to Xerox, as Xerox did not want to risk significant amounts of money in unproven markets. The laser printer that PARC developed, however, more than paid for the cost of PARC.
"Filtering" does not work. It either permits access to some "bad" sites, or it prevents access to some non-"bad" sites. But having said that...
children...can make their own decisions
This is laughable. Children can not always even make competent decisions about basic survival, let alone abstract ideas. I have for years explained the importance of a good diet, yet my children would eat only ice cream, candy, and kool-aid if I let them. They would play in the street (balls bounce better there), walk through poison ivy (they can't distinguish it from box elder), and hit each other ("He hit me first!") if I let them, despite the fact that I have explained REPEATEDLY why they shouldn't. Therefore, I forcefully limit their activities, adn will continue to do so until I judge they are smart/wise enough to take care of themselves. I likewise limit their exposure to knowledge until they are old enough to handle it. My oldest (who is four) has learned over the past two years that there are dead animals, living animals die (even baby bunnies), people sometimes kill and eat animals, and people die. I haven't let on yet that people kill people. Last night, I sent him to his room to play while I watched a violently explicit documentary on guerilla warfare on PBS.
The upshot is, I don't think YOU (as in "We the people...") should take MY money and expose my children to things they aren't ready for.
Just like being an outcast at my school doesn't mean what I say is irrelevent.
It does mean, however, that what you say will likely be ignored by the majority of people at your school.
Since you are an outcast, if you come up with a great idea, you will have no success in trying to implement it by telling everyone about your great idea. In fact, now that your idea has become closely associated with you, few in the majority will listen to the idea even if it comes from someone else. So when someone else Believes in your idea, they will have to present it differently and distance themselves from you in order to be considered by the majority.
ESR is a severe realist and is doing all he can to get as much as possible of RMS's ideal accepted by as many people as possible. We are very close to a situation in which music is free (speech), simply because it's easy to copy. I'm not sure how the music industry will continue to make a profit in decades to come, but I know it won't be based on limiting access to the musical "binaries". In the same vein, once all software is open-sourced, we will be in much the same situation. The majority will realize that they can do anything they want with the software...and they will. We will achieve de facto freedom before we achieve de juris freedom, simply because those who make the law always have an interest in the status quo. I like the course ESR has plotted; it means we might have software freedom in my lifetime. And while I don't disagree with RMS's ideals, I do disagree with his methods. If we depended solely on him, we would NEVER see software freed.
What exactly, if not freedom, *does* he want?
You must not have been around for too long; ESR has been quite vocal in his desire for "software that doesn't suck". This is why he supports open source.
Saying Bill Gates (who is the founder and CEO os MS and therefore the human being most responsible for MS's actions) is not responsible for DOS/Windows/Office viruses is analogous to saying that an automobile manufacturer is not responsible for the explosion of gas tanks in car crashes. The product's creators don't directly cause the problem, but they are grossly negligent.
The original statement is a lot more like saying that baseball bats are responsible for assaults. It's sort of true, but not really.
The original statement (if true) says that the programming language of choice (PERL) for extracting email addresses from the internet is also the programming language of choice for parsing email headers. I think this says more about the PERL's ability to process text than it does about the spam debate.
NSA grabber...
You forgot:
AK-47, Uzi, RPG, cocaine, heroin, 100K, U235, weapons-grade, girl, naked, nude
I think that the majority of slashdot readers generally don't READ the source code, let alone care about it. My suggestion for a poll:
"I read X% of the source code for Y% of the programs I use." Or maybe "I read all the source code of the for X% of my applications."
Or maybe the READERS of slashdot are hard-core hackers, but the POSTERS aren't. Of course that would imply that I'm not a hard-core hacker...
He complains that they didn't accept his document format; I dare say the head hunter said to his buddies, "here's some dude who ignored our clear instructions on what formats we accept".
Yup. Complaining about customers is a typical non-professional behavior, and this outfit he dealt with was clearly unprofessional. Furthermore, they either don't know English very well or they don't know how to type.
Given that the owners of slashdot intend this as a business concern (they make money, right?), I think an argument could be made that their slashdot trademark has been violated and their reputation has been damaged. If they had registered slashdot as a trademark, they'd have a much better case, but I still think they have a case. Sue them.
MS monopolizes the programming market , the desktop application market, and the OS market.
Sun wants Java to be the programming language. AOL wants everyone to download applications from them for an hourly rate. Netscape wanted their browser to make the underlying OS irrelevant. You'd have a layered monopoly, each partner controlling a layer. Of course, Microsoft will just roll over and die...
IANAL, but I think trademarking "open source" would be like trademarking "object oriented". The trademark office might grant it (since they seem to be clueless), but I doubt it would hold up in court, since many different companies are using the phrase.
Wicked Werdna, what's your opinion?
Shortsighted? $20K and a published technical manual. If I had the knowledge to do this, I'd jump at the chance. If I was worth more than that, I'd be earning more than that, you know what I mean?
And whether you realize it or not, you are calling RMS and Miguel Icaza liars, as they indicated that this is about the fee that a commercial publisher expected to pay an author.
As someone who hopes to someday be a novelist -- Don't ever underestimate the monetary value of a writer's work. :)
Don't over-estimate it, either. I believe that if you do the math (and assuming the facts are accurate), you'll find that $20,000 is good pay. According to the original post, the authors expected to get $1 per book, and the expected number of book sales was around 20,000. Thus it's not a substantially different deal for the author than a commercial publisher would offer.
We have cells in our lab that were harvested from a lady named Helen ~30 years ago(Hela cells) and they are still alive and kicking while Helen is not. This cells are very screwed up(>90 chromasomes) and they have active telmerase.
I believe her name was actually Henrietta Lacks. Reader's Digest had a story about her some years ago. Her cells were widely used in cancer research and were known for "contaminating" other cell cultures, so that researchers who thought they were testing treatments on multiple cell cultures found that they were actually testing only HeLa cultures.
About ASP - it's a server thing, not a client thing. Saying ASP is MS only is like saying PERL is Unix only; it's true (from the server perspective) but is irrelevant in a discussion of browsers.
VBScript can be either server- or client-side, so that point is well-taken.
Linux is not being sold by Red Hat - they are selling Linux support and an easy installation toolkit. What happens when other, easy-to-use Linux toolkits are made available for free download? Then all Red Hat is is a technical support company.
You are absolutely correct as long as Red Hat rolls over and dies as soon as someone else manages to match the value of their package. However, if Red Hat stays on the ball, they will continuously improve their oferings. If you look at industries besides the software industry, you will find a similar situation. As long as there is competition within the industry, each company strives to improve their product (though sometimes the improvement is along the lines of "Now with scrubbing bubbles!"). This is healthy and normal.
Samba is (presumably) so named because it permits Linux to communicate using SMB (Server Message Blocks). SMB (as I understand it) is the upper-level protocol used by NetBIOS. NetBIOS is supposed to go away in Windows 2000 (aka NT 5). From that point forward, there will be no need for SMB and thus Samba.
The above is intended more as a question than a statement; is my analysis or understanding of the facts incorrect?
Les Miserables summarized:
A man steals a loaf of bread and never hears the end of it.
If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to steal the Phantom Menace, he and all his family will eat finest fish at every meal all their life long.
"...who has the trust of theater management..."
Or perhaps someone who is IN theater management. Think about it...the owner of the theater will be the one making all the money off the theater. The management will simply be salaried (high salary, but still just salary). Then along comes the most hyped film ever, and the theater manager sees a chance to cash in and retire to the Cayman Islands.
I'd make it more like a 1E6:1. My interpretation of "10:1 Lucas is annoyed" is "I'll bet my $10 against your $1 that Lucas is annoyed - winner gets $11". You only make bets like that when you're certain you're right (or at least, wrong less than one time in eleven). My bet would be my $1E6 against your $1. You'd stand to win a lot if you won, but you wouldn't win.