What happens if I release my thesis into the public domain under the GPL before I hand it in to my professor?
While IANAL, having read many nice books on the topic, including If it is determined by a court that your thesis is a work for hire, then any licenses you distributed it under would be held null and void, because you were not the copyright holder. Remember, GPL depends on copyright law to work. If you don't have copyright, you can't GPL it. (And if it is a work for hire, then you don't have copyright.) Sorry, dem's da breaks.
If my thesis is considered the University's work for hire, what will be the penalties imposed on me for speaking about my thesis in public? Is there a grace period during which I can legally speak about my thesis?
Oh, you can *certainly* speak *about* your thesis. Ideas are not copyrightable, on the exact expression of them. Just like I can speak about a book that you wrote (as long as I don't claim to have written it), you could speak about a thesis that you wrote for the University. I'm not sure if you can claim you wrote it, though. But again, IANAL.
After I hand in my thesis, is it legal for me to think about my thesis, or must I stop thinking about it until I have legally purchased a copy?
This thing may be a lower level language than many, but it's still not true assembly.
Actually, it's really more like C. Assembly language is SUPPOSED to represent the actual machine code. It's about the closest thing to programming in raw hex numbers.
What they showed was more like C really... it had structured if and while constructs, variables^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hunlimited registers. HOw is this ANYTHING like assembler? Those kinds of constructs tend to require the generation of code, and any code that's generated that the programmer is unaware of is bad because then the programmer doesn't know what's really going on.
Normally, this really isn't a problem, but when you're writing something that's timing dependent, like a device driver, you actually do need to know what's going on AT THE PROCESSOR LEVEL. Otherwise, there's no guarantee that your program will meet the timing requirements.
Why would we need non-profits? We already have, for example, the Free Software Foundation. Aren't the proprogation of software and end of wasteful spending on inferior closed source solutions what they're all about? There exists TONS of freely-available open source software available for municipalities and states to run. Word processors like AbiWord, spreadsheets like Gnumeric, etc.
Now if they need custom database applications or something, that's something quite different. That's where systems integrators come in. But many local governments have differing requirements, depending on the laws of each locality. That's why custom software development is frequently necessary.
Similarly, I believe there should be a HIGHER tax on gas, and maybe even cigarettes. By increasing the cost of driving around a big honkin' INEFFICIENT SUVs or whatever, it will tend to make people buy more efficeint vehicles.
Do you like the economy? Do you want it screwed up? Do you want to be on the unemployment line come November 8?
C'mon. Higher gas taxes were CERTAINLY screw up the economy. For one, look at what it will do companies like General Motors. This is a company that makes *no money* whatsoever on fuel efficient vehicles. In fact, on small cars, they lose money! The only vehicle segment GM makes any kind of significant money on, at all, is trucks. Rase gas taxes, and sure people will buy more fuel efficient vehicles, but then they'll put GM out of business.
This is NOT an issue of "Everday Joe" vs. "The Big Powerful Money Grubbing Corporations." Without big business, you would NOT -- I repeat NOT -- have a job, you would NOT -- I repeat NOT -- be able to buy all these wonderful toys you have to play with and you would -- NOT -- repeat NOT have the HIGH standard of living you have now.
I think Atari, as a brand name, could very well come back with a PSX2-competing product. They're a very well known brand name to Gen-Xers, who seem to have the most discretionary income to spend on these types of products.
You will more than likely see similar IP laws among most of the European Nations, as well as in Canada and really, and quite possibly Japan.
The reason for this (near as I can tell) is that these countries have undergone a switch from what I call "productionism" to "consumerism".
Well, actually the reason most European nations, Canada, and actually a whole lot of other countries are similar in terms of IP laws is because of the Berne Convention. For a full list of countries that have signed on check out some interesting info on the Berne Convention at wipo.org There are too many to list here.
Anyway, the three principles behind the convention are:
(a) Works originating in one of the contracting States (that is, works the author of which is a national of such a State or works which were first published in such a State) must be given the same protection in each of the other contracting States as the latter grants to the works of its own nationals (principle of "national treatment") [3].
(b) Such protection must not be conditional upon compliance with any formality (principle of "automatic" protection)[3].
(c) Such protection is independent of the existence of protection in the country of origin of the work (principle of the "independence" of protection). If, however, a contracting State provides for a longer term than the minimum prescribed by the Convention and the work ceases to be protected in the country of origin, protection may be denied once protection in the country of origin ceases[3].
So that pretty much explains why the laws are all the same: per the Berne Convention they have to be.
Well, I actually got a guy busted for downloading kiddie pr0n, which he actually was doing on *my* Ethernet connection.
They did take his computer and basically destroyed it. They didn't take mine because (as they told me) I had voluntarily turned him in. If I hadn't, they said, they would've taken mine in an instant.
They couldn't bust him for possession, though, because the material ended up on some ZIP disks, which I had turned in. Since he didn't actually HAVE the ZIP disks in question, and the kiddie pr0n sitting on his hard drive also was not in his possession, they only got him on INTENT to possess. The *female* judge that he got told him that she wanted to put him *under* the jail.:)
I'm involved with this struggle on a daily basis where I work.
Whereas I work in the Math-Based Manufacturing Technology dept. for GM Vehicle Operations, corporate IS&S wants to maintain a sane network environment.
For that reason, I'm in charge of our dept's Windows 2000 engineering CAD pilot. We have sandbox Win2K boxes installed for testing of locally-developed applications.
Furthermore, the company is slowly moving to ONE domain for engineering (corp.gm.com). They've been told to eliminate compilers, eliminate locally-developed applications, etc. Yet, we have a business-need for those same locally-developed apps.
So IS&S has had no choice but to admit that, since we have a real business case, they need to allow us to KEEP those locally-developed applications and locally installed software, provided that testing is done in a locked-down sandbox area.
If we wanted to install Linux on a box or two, once again, they wouldn't have any choice. We would be ready with business case in hand, and they just wouldn't have a choice. They'd have to let us have our sandbox systems.
It doesn't really irritate me that it is suggested that you have to pay licenses for all software.
Not all software. I'm sure the Debian Project or SuSE or Red Hat doesn't care if you install their distros on more than one computer. In fact, they probably encourage it!
Nah. I disagree. I think Apple has the wrong strategy. Too many people these days only understand the terms "Microsoft", "Windows" and "Intel Inside". If they don't see these things, they don't buy the computer. I know that's sad and pathetic, but it's the truth.
Apple has at least been able to keep its loyalists in line with the change in leadership back to Steve Jobs. If they really want to see true growth, they need to lure other people to their platform.
The reason that Linux has been so successful in the area of growth is that it runs well on commodity hardware that you can buy from virtually any hardware vendor. Someone can take a box that they bought because it said "Microsoft" and "Intel" on it, and can conceivably run Linux on it.
If they could do that with Mac OS X, they could get converts. The key is to make it so that its NOT a big deal to move from the "Wintel" hardware to the Apple hardware...make it a "no brainer". Maybe the OS X runs better on Apple hardware, or something like that.
Sure they do -- someone's paying for that 800 number. The business you call pays for it. A lot. And the interexchange (i.e. backbone) carrier that takes the call gets a chunk of that money from the carrier who provides that 800 number to the business -- though that's a cut of the phone call, not a direct cut from the order.
But, bear in mind that the Internet business is also already paying hosting-related fees (off-site DNS hosting, bandwidth usage/pipe, web hosting if they aren't doing themselves, if they are doing it themselves, there is the equipment and maintenance, etc.), although for most businesses this isn't as big of an expense as it sounds.
OK, I live in the SF Bay area, and I work for one of the national DSL providers (NOT the ISP, but the people who actually deliver the line for you, and NOT one of the ILECs). I can't name them specifically, but let's just say they aren't Rhythms.
Ok, well, I take then you work for Covad.:-) Really there's only Rythms and Covad and not much anyone else...:)
Unless you work at an I/CLEC, you have no idea how screwed up the physical plant for the phone system is. Line conditioners, repeaters, bad wiring installs, mismatched/mislabeled wiring - it's a wonder people get anything installed. Alot of this can be blamed on the "get it done, and don't worry about it" attitude of the ILEC. However, a large amount is also due to the fact that the phone system was (and is) designed to deliver VOICE PHONE service, and things that are done to improve voice are often harmful for data carriers.
I know that and that's why I don't blame the problems I've had with my DSL on either Telocity (my ISP) or Rythms (the people that put the line in). I blame Ameritech (my CLEC or ILEC, I'm not sure which one Ameritech is or what the difference is, but I know they used to be referred to as a CLEC, I don't know what an ILEC is).
Anyways here's the problems I've had in a nutshell:
When they put in my SDSL, I was at like 784. I'm FAIRLY SURE that I'm too far for that speed, but they put it in anyway, and it worked, but it would go down for a few minutes several times a day.
Then they dropped me to 384, and at first it seemed fine, but then there started to be speed degradations at times, and there was still the occasional dropped connection. Interestingly enough, recently the speed degrations and the dropped connections went away (knock on wood) for some reason, but I don't believe it's a coincidence that that happened right after Ameritech was out on my street working on some wires.:)
All-in-all I've had a rough experience, but since it started working smoothly I can say that I'm pretty happy with it, even if its only 384. I have a static IP, I'm not behind a firewall as with some cable modem providers, and my speed stays pretty consistent these days. (knock on wood). And its only costing me $50/month, equipment included.
I guess it would depend: do X apps run unmodified on OS X? (My guess would be probably not.) So if you wanted to run X apps, you would need an X server, right?
Only Mac people would think it would be silly to run non-Macintosh apps on a Mac.
If i dialed my friends computer direct, would the phone company be liable if i xfered a copyrighted song? No just as it would not be liable if i used it to make a threating phone call.
But your friend would. And I think herein lies the rub. Back in my BBS days, that's exactly what you would do. BBSes would even be connected to networks, like FidoNet. Yet they still could be held legally liable for stuff that went across those networks. Remember the case of Steve Jackson Games: their BBS and all of its equipment were confsicated because of pirated software, and much of it was put online by it's users. (We didn't have cool technologies like MP3 in those days:)
ISPs are really just logical extensions of BBSes, except that most ISPs (with the notable exception of "online services" like AOL or MSN) don't have their own local content. Although some ISPs have portals that are specific to their users, so the lines are blurring. ISPs provide Internet access, but people dialup or otherwise connect to them, and the content does pass through their systems.
I'm not saying that ISPs shouldn't be given common carrier status: I'm just providing background and playing devil's advocate here.
Huh? Classic works remarkably well. In fact, it really sets new standards in emulation (it helps to be on the same native processor). Virtually all apps run, except those that require low-level hardware access. Apple has gone to great extents to be backwards compatible. Look what it did with Carbon. With Carbon did 90% of the work for porting ancient Mac apps to Mach. That's amazing stuff.
And this is true of Windows NT for running older (Win16 and DOS) applications as well. The Emulators guy made the comparison of Mac OS X vs. Mac OS 9 as being analagous to Windows 9x vs. Windows NT. The statement you made there shows that this comparison is true. OF COURSE if you have applications that do direct hardware access on a platform that has protections to not allow this...those applications aren't going to run. It only makes sense.;)
Also, bear in mind that most commercial software comes with no warranty either. Just check the "shrink wrap" or "click wrap" agreeemnts. "THIS PROGRAM COMES WITH NO WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED."
sure, there may be formal QA in commercial softwre, but what does it really mean if the user can't get his money back?
I agree. A lot of Debian people seem to think autodetect isn't necessray.
I'm telling you it is. Windows 2000, *if* you have standard hardware, installs like cake: just start the installer, it doesn't ask questions it just installs everything. That's the way to do it.
If you don't want to install everything, go with the "self healing" mode that Office 2000 does: when something is needed, it ask for the CD, it gets installed automagically.
I know you guys HATE Microsoft, I hate 'em as much as the next guy, but they have the right idea for installing stuff.
But when was the last time you heard of a Democrat having to leave office over a scandal?
Good point. It demonstrates just how morally corrupt they are.:)
BTW--I'm not saying the Republicans don't have their fair share of morally corrput members either. If it were up to me, I'd trash the whole damn morally corrupt government and start over.:)
In legislative context (e.g. Congress), an "initiative" is a formal step that's part of making something law, before it gets voted on by the entire body. When Gore said he "took the initiative in creating the Internet", it was a miswording and political exaggeration, not an outright lie.
I guess whether or not it's a lie depends on what your definition of "is" is. (Oh wait, that's a different guy...:)
I have lots to criticize Gore about. Let's not even get started about illegal campaign contributions, selling American nuclear secrets to the Chinese, etc.
That wouldn't be news for nerds, that would be politics for hotheads.:)
What happens if I release my thesis into the public domain under the GPL before I hand it in to my professor?
:)
While IANAL, having read many nice books on the topic, including If it is determined by a court that your thesis is a work for hire, then any licenses you distributed it under would be held null and void, because you were not the copyright holder. Remember, GPL depends on copyright law to work. If you don't have copyright, you can't GPL it. (And if it is a work for hire, then you don't have copyright.) Sorry, dem's da breaks.
If my thesis is considered the University's work for hire, what will be the penalties imposed on me for speaking about my thesis in public? Is there a grace period during which I can legally speak about my thesis?
Oh, you can *certainly* speak *about* your thesis. Ideas are not copyrightable, on the exact expression of them. Just like I can speak about a book that you wrote (as long as I don't claim to have written it), you could speak about a thesis that you wrote for the University. I'm not sure if you can claim you wrote it, though. But again, IANAL.
After I hand in my thesis, is it legal for me to think about my thesis, or must I stop thinking about it until I have legally purchased a copy?
Was this intended to be a joke?
This thing may be a lower level language than many, but it's still not true assembly.
Actually, it's really more like C. Assembly language is SUPPOSED to represent the actual machine code. It's about the closest thing to programming in raw hex numbers.
What they showed was more like C really... it had structured if and while constructs, variables^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hunlimited registers. HOw is this ANYTHING like assembler? Those kinds of constructs tend to require the generation of code, and any code that's generated that the programmer is unaware of is bad because then the programmer doesn't know what's really going on.
Normally, this really isn't a problem, but when you're writing something that's timing dependent, like a device driver, you actually do need to know what's going on AT THE PROCESSOR LEVEL. Otherwise, there's no guarantee that your program will meet the timing requirements.
Why would we need non-profits? We already have, for example, the Free Software Foundation. Aren't the proprogation of software and end of wasteful spending on inferior closed source solutions what they're all about? There exists TONS of freely-available open source software available for municipalities and states to run. Word processors like AbiWord, spreadsheets like Gnumeric, etc.
Now if they need custom database applications or something, that's something quite different. That's where systems integrators come in. But many local governments have differing requirements, depending on the laws of each locality. That's why custom software development is frequently necessary.
Similarly, I believe there should be a HIGHER tax on gas, and maybe even cigarettes. By increasing the cost of driving around a big honkin' INEFFICIENT SUVs or whatever, it will tend to make people buy more efficeint vehicles.
Do you like the economy? Do you want it screwed up? Do you want to be on the unemployment line come November 8?
C'mon. Higher gas taxes were CERTAINLY screw up the economy. For one, look at what it will do companies like General Motors. This is a company that makes *no money* whatsoever on fuel efficient vehicles. In fact, on small cars, they lose money! The only vehicle segment GM makes any kind of significant money on, at all, is trucks. Rase gas taxes, and sure people will buy more fuel efficient vehicles, but then they'll put GM out of business.
This is NOT an issue of "Everday Joe" vs. "The Big Powerful Money Grubbing Corporations." Without big business, you would NOT -- I repeat NOT -- have a job, you would NOT -- I repeat NOT -- be able to buy all these wonderful toys you have to play with and you would -- NOT -- repeat NOT have the HIGH standard of living you have now.
So stop whining about pollution...
What's wrong with Windows' font antialiasing (other than the fact that it doesn't work all the time? :)
Here, I'll do the problem on the board:
:)
20 Marlboros in a pack
1/2 * 20 Marlboros = 10 Marlboros
20 Marlboros - 10 Marlboros = 10 Marlboros
10 Marlboros - 1 Marlboro = 9 Marlboros
1/3 * 9 Marlboros = 3 Marlboros
9 Marlboros - 3 Marlboros = 6 Marlboro
Is the answer lung cancer?
I think Atari, as a brand name, could very well come back with a PSX2-competing product. They're a very well known brand name to Gen-Xers, who seem to have the most discretionary income to spend on these types of products.
The reason for this (near as I can tell) is that these countries have undergone a switch from what I call "productionism" to "consumerism".
Well, actually the reason most European nations, Canada, and actually a whole lot of other countries are similar in terms of IP laws is because of the Berne Convention. For a full list of countries that have signed on check out some interesting info on the Berne Convention at wipo.org There are too many to list here.
Anyway, the three principles behind the convention are:
So that pretty much explains why the laws are all the same: per the Berne Convention they have to be.
Well, I actually got a guy busted for downloading kiddie pr0n, which he actually was doing on *my* Ethernet connection.
:)
They did take his computer and basically destroyed it. They didn't take mine because (as they told me) I had voluntarily turned him in. If I hadn't, they said, they would've taken mine in an instant.
They couldn't bust him for possession, though, because the material ended up on some ZIP disks, which I had turned in. Since he didn't actually HAVE the ZIP disks in question, and the kiddie pr0n sitting on his hard drive also was not in his possession, they only got him on INTENT to possess. The *female* judge that he got told him that she wanted to put him *under* the jail.
I'm involved with this struggle on a daily basis where I work.
Whereas I work in the Math-Based Manufacturing Technology dept. for GM Vehicle Operations, corporate IS&S wants to maintain a sane network environment.
For that reason, I'm in charge of our dept's Windows 2000 engineering CAD pilot. We have sandbox Win2K boxes installed for testing of locally-developed applications.
Furthermore, the company is slowly moving to ONE domain for engineering (corp.gm.com). They've been told to eliminate compilers, eliminate locally-developed applications, etc. Yet, we have a business-need for those same locally-developed apps.
So IS&S has had no choice but to admit that, since we have a real business case, they need to allow us to KEEP those locally-developed applications and locally installed software, provided that testing is done in a locked-down sandbox area.
If we wanted to install Linux on a box or two, once again, they wouldn't have any choice. We would be ready with business case in hand, and they just wouldn't have a choice. They'd have to let us have our sandbox systems.
It doesn't really irritate me that it is suggested that you have to pay licenses for all software.
Not all software. I'm sure the Debian Project or SuSE or Red Hat doesn't care if you install their distros on more than one computer. In fact, they probably encourage it!
Sounds like Red Hat is getting ready to takeover the desktop market. It now has the same functionality as Windows Me! :-)
Nah. I disagree. I think Apple has the wrong strategy. Too many people these days only understand the terms "Microsoft", "Windows" and "Intel Inside". If they don't see these things, they don't buy the computer. I know that's sad and pathetic, but it's the truth.
Apple has at least been able to keep its loyalists in line with the change in leadership back to Steve Jobs. If they really want to see true growth, they need to lure other people to their platform.
The reason that Linux has been so successful in the area of growth is that it runs well on commodity hardware that you can buy from virtually any hardware vendor. Someone can take a box that they bought because it said "Microsoft" and "Intel" on it, and can conceivably run Linux on it.
If they could do that with Mac OS X, they could get converts. The key is to make it so that its NOT a big deal to move from the "Wintel" hardware to the Apple hardware...make it a "no brainer". Maybe the OS X runs better on Apple hardware, or something like that.
Sure they do -- someone's paying for that 800 number. The business you call pays for it. A lot. And the interexchange (i.e. backbone) carrier that takes the call gets a chunk of that money from the carrier who provides that 800 number to the business -- though that's a cut of the phone call, not a direct cut from the order.
But, bear in mind that the Internet business is also already paying hosting-related fees (off-site DNS hosting, bandwidth usage/pipe, web hosting if they aren't doing themselves, if they are doing it themselves, there is the equipment and maintenance, etc.), although for most businesses this isn't as big of an expense as it sounds.
Go back and watch the movie. The UI had a colorful little Apple logo in the upper left corner of the screen...
OK, I live in the SF Bay area, and I work for one of the national DSL providers (NOT the ISP, but the people who actually deliver the line for you, and NOT one of the ILECs). I can't name them specifically, but let's just say they aren't Rhythms.
:-) Really there's only Rythms and Covad and not much anyone else... :)
:)
Ok, well, I take then you work for Covad.
Unless you work at an I/CLEC, you have no idea how screwed up the physical plant for the phone system is. Line conditioners, repeaters, bad wiring installs, mismatched/mislabeled wiring - it's a wonder people get anything installed. Alot of this can be blamed on the "get it done, and don't worry about it" attitude of the ILEC. However, a large amount is also due to the fact that the phone system was (and is) designed to deliver VOICE PHONE service, and things that are done to improve voice are often harmful for data carriers.
I know that and that's why I don't blame the problems I've had with my DSL on either Telocity (my ISP) or Rythms (the people that put the line in). I blame Ameritech (my CLEC or ILEC, I'm not sure which one Ameritech is or what the difference is, but I know they used to be referred to as a CLEC, I don't know what an ILEC is).
Anyways here's the problems I've had in a nutshell:
When they put in my SDSL, I was at like 784. I'm FAIRLY SURE that I'm too far for that speed, but they put it in anyway, and it worked, but it would go down for a few minutes several times a day.
Then they dropped me to 384, and at first it seemed fine, but then there started to be speed degradations at times, and there was still the occasional dropped connection. Interestingly enough, recently the speed degrations and the dropped connections went away (knock on wood) for some reason, but I don't believe it's a coincidence that that happened right after Ameritech was out on my street working on some wires.
All-in-all I've had a rough experience, but since it started working smoothly I can say that I'm pretty happy with it, even if its only 384. I have a static IP, I'm not behind a firewall as with some cable modem providers, and my speed stays pretty consistent these days. (knock on wood). And its only costing me $50/month, equipment included.
I guess it would depend: do X apps run unmodified on OS X? (My guess would be probably not.) So if you wanted to run X apps, you would need an X server, right?
Only Mac people would think it would be silly to run non-Macintosh apps on a Mac.
If i dialed my friends computer direct, would the phone company be liable if i xfered a copyrighted song? No just as it would not be liable if i used it to make a threating phone call.
:)
But your friend would. And I think herein lies the rub. Back in my BBS days, that's exactly what you would do. BBSes would even be connected to networks, like FidoNet. Yet they still could be held legally liable for stuff that went across those networks. Remember the case of Steve Jackson Games: their BBS and all of its equipment were confsicated because of pirated software, and much of it was put online by it's users. (We didn't have cool technologies like MP3 in those days
ISPs are really just logical extensions of BBSes, except that most ISPs (with the notable exception of "online services" like AOL or MSN) don't have their own local content. Although some ISPs have portals that are specific to their users, so the lines are blurring. ISPs provide Internet access, but people dialup or otherwise connect to them, and the content does pass through their systems.
I'm not saying that ISPs shouldn't be given common carrier status: I'm just providing background and playing devil's advocate here.
Huh? Classic works remarkably well. In fact, it really sets new standards in emulation (it helps to be on the same native processor). Virtually all apps run, except those that require low-level hardware access. Apple has gone to great extents to be backwards compatible. Look what it did with Carbon. With Carbon did 90% of the work for porting ancient Mac apps to Mach. That's amazing stuff.
;)
And this is true of Windows NT for running older (Win16 and DOS) applications as well. The Emulators guy made the comparison of Mac OS X vs. Mac OS 9 as being analagous to Windows 9x vs. Windows NT. The statement you made there shows that this comparison is true. OF COURSE if you have applications that do direct hardware access on a platform that has protections to not allow this...those applications aren't going to run. It only makes sense.
Also, bear in mind that most commercial software comes with no warranty either. Just check the "shrink wrap" or "click wrap" agreeemnts. "THIS PROGRAM COMES WITH NO WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED."
sure, there may be formal QA in commercial softwre, but what does it really mean if the user can't get his money back?
I agree. A lot of Debian people seem to think autodetect isn't necessray.
I'm telling you it is. Windows 2000, *if* you have standard hardware, installs like cake: just start the installer, it doesn't ask questions it just installs everything. That's the way to do it.
If you don't want to install everything, go with the "self healing" mode that Office 2000 does: when something is needed, it ask for the CD, it gets installed automagically.
I know you guys HATE Microsoft, I hate 'em as much as the next guy, but they have the right idea for installing stuff.
But when was the last time you heard of a Democrat having to leave office over a scandal?
:)
:)
Good point. It demonstrates just how morally corrupt they are.
BTW--I'm not saying the Republicans don't have their fair share of morally corrput members either. If it were up to me, I'd trash the whole damn morally corrupt government and start over.
Considering I'm not even done with my bachelor's degree yet, I doubt very much that I was your freshment English teacher.
:)
OTOH, there was that entire year I can't remember due to too many drugs...
Not that any of this makes lying any more excusable. But lying about a private blow job isn't in the same league as Watergate or Iran-Contra.
Illegal campaign contributions, FBI files, White Water, Juanita Broderick, hmmm...I'd say clinton lied about FAR MORE than a simple blow job.
Or is this all part of that same "vast right wing conspiracy." Hmph.
In legislative context (e.g. Congress), an "initiative" is a formal step that's part of making something law, before it gets voted on by the entire body. When Gore said he "took the initiative in creating the Internet", it was a miswording and political exaggeration, not an outright lie.
:)
:)
I guess whether or not it's a lie depends on what your definition of "is" is. (Oh wait, that's a different guy...
I have lots to criticize Gore about. Let's not even get started about illegal campaign contributions, selling American nuclear secrets to the Chinese, etc.
That wouldn't be news for nerds, that would be politics for hotheads.