sharing 802.11b with neighbors who don't pay for their own service is immoral,
No, it is kind. You are paying for bandwidth, and allowing others to use some of it for nothing. Now, if your neighbors and you share the cost of a connection, and then share the connection, then that is not immoral, any more than sharing the cost of a cake, and then each eating half is immoral.
And if I don't like the terms of the GPL, but it's all that's available, I won't release them. How does that benefit anyone?
Why is this? I can understand that many people would (and do) choose a different licence when given the choice. But why would you keep something to yourself rather than release it under the GPL? You wouldn't make money either way, and the GPL doesn't impose any future restrictions on you as the copyright holder.
Not to mention all the other waste that everyone wants NIMBY, and the feds have been trying to force on Nevada for, what, twenty years?
As opposed to fossil fuels, which send their pollution into everyone's air? At least nuclear waste can be carted away from MBY, to somewhere like Nevada, where they seem to have a pretty expansive view of what consists of their BY's.
We are behaving like children with shiny, dangerous toys.
An apt analogy. Some will die, some will be injured and wiser, and some will take them apart and put them together in new and unexpected ways. Such is the way of life.
I thought Protector started off really well until it slowly devolved into "super genius can do absolutely anything at all" and saves the day for the human race.... I'm reading Ringworld Throne right now hoping not to be disappointed with the series.
So never fear, people addicted to intelligent Science fiction have something new on the horizon.
You won't find many bigger B5 fans than I, but B5 doesn't have a very good track record with the movies. Also, even if the show does get picked up, it's quite a long way over the horizon.
Compare this to recording and interpreting a fax machine's signals (remember handshaking, negotiation, etc). It can be done, but it takes real talent and lots of time, more talent and time than the KGB had to go around in the late 80s.
I'm sure smarter people than I tried and failed, but it seems that if you can tap a phone call, you could tap a fax call, and print out the result automatically with the right machine.
Cheap technology is Pandora's box and they've opened it.
No argument here. I was just a bit surprised that tapping a fax machine would prove difficult.
Censorship isn't inherently communist - it's inherently authoritarian. Authoritarian is the type of government in both China and Saudi Arabia. Neither is really communist, and China is only vaguely communist in some of it's economic policies.
There are a billion Chinese people. Telling a Chinese girl that she's "one in a million" is like telling her that there are 1,000 girls that look just like her.
Well, less then 500, actually, since women are less than 50% of the population in China.
However, if Redhat were convicted of breaking the law, and offered to duplicate many copies of their software and give those copies to poor schools instead of recieving an actual punishment, people might be a bit cynical about it.
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Perhaps I've misunderstood ... I said release software, not code.
Ah. That makes more sense to me. It was I who misunderstood you.
sharing 802.11b with neighbors who don't pay for their own service is immoral,
No, it is kind. You are paying for bandwidth, and allowing others to use some of it for nothing. Now, if your neighbors and you share the cost of a connection, and then share the connection, then that is not immoral, any more than sharing the cost of a cake, and then each eating half is immoral.
They do, if you turn them on. And they wouldn't complain if your neighbors plugged their lights into your house, either.
Or sell the first copy for a million billion dollars.
And if I don't like the terms of the GPL, but it's all that's available, I won't release them. How does that benefit anyone?
Why is this? I can understand that many people would (and do) choose a different licence when given the choice. But why would you keep something to yourself rather than release it under the GPL? You wouldn't make money either way, and the GPL doesn't impose any future restrictions on you as the copyright holder.
Could you extract the stupidity and take it with you (in a shielded container)? Or would you have to take the stupid person with you in the car?
Not to mention all the other waste that everyone wants NIMBY, and the feds have been trying to force on Nevada for, what, twenty years?
As opposed to fossil fuels, which send their pollution into everyone's air? At least nuclear waste can be carted away from MBY, to somewhere like Nevada, where they seem to have a pretty expansive view of what consists of their BY's.
We are behaving like children with shiny, dangerous toys.
An apt analogy. Some will die, some will be injured and wiser, and some will take them apart and put them together in new and unexpected ways. Such is the way of life.
I thought Protector started off really well until it slowly devolved into "super genius can do absolutely anything at all" and saves the day for the human race. ... I'm reading Ringworld Throne right now hoping not to be disappointed with the series.
Good luck.
Blech. "Renee the Vampire Slayer"...
But Boone is back this week, I think.
I guess I'm a glutton for punishment.
Ah, but what if a Party has no competent authorities?
So never fear, people addicted to intelligent Science fiction have something new on the horizon.
You won't find many bigger B5 fans than I, but B5 doesn't have a very good track record with the movies. Also, even if the show does get picked up, it's quite a long way over the horizon.
Compare this to recording and interpreting a fax machine's signals (remember handshaking, negotiation, etc). It can be done, but it takes real talent and lots of time, more talent and time than the KGB had to go around in the late 80s.
I'm sure smarter people than I tried and failed, but it seems that if you can tap a phone call, you could tap a fax call, and print out the result automatically with the right machine.
Cheap technology is Pandora's box and they've opened it.
No argument here. I was just a bit surprised that tapping a fax machine would prove difficult.
But be thankful that we still have freedom of speech and press and that we aren't getting government filtered content stuck down our throats.
As much.
Censorship isn't inherently communist - it's inherently authoritarian. Authoritarian is the type of government in both China and Saudi Arabia. Neither is really communist, and China is only vaguely communist in some of it's economic policies.
There are a billion Chinese people. Telling a Chinese girl that she's "one in a million" is like telling her that there are 1,000 girls that look just like her.
Well, less then 500, actually, since women are less than 50% of the population in China.
Bush and Ashcroft have already authorized several of them.
This is exactly what happened in the Soviet Union when the wall fell. The old guard discovered they can't easily tap a fax machine.
Off topic, but what's hard about tapping a fax machine?
Well, libertarianism is the hope that opposing greeds will cancel out.
Well, China has it's own distribution of Linux...
Or get 3, and set them up RAID-style for a game system as reliable as the Space Shuttle!
The Moller has flown for several seconds.
I guess your comment still stands...
For several reasons, implementors would probably create highways,
Not the least of which would be the 'restricted airspace' over wealthy neighborhoods.
However, if Redhat were convicted of breaking the law, and offered to duplicate many copies of their software and give those copies to poor schools instead of recieving an actual punishment, people might be a bit cynical about it.
At my most cynical, I don't think I could have come up with a more worthless settlement...