And we've suffered for our divergence from their elegant plan. Not that their structure was perfect, but the underlying principles were well-founded, and we'd have been better served to stay closer to them.
(Note that it has never been taken literally since day one anyway. For example, for many decades slavery was allowed in spite of the fact that it was in direct violation of the Bill of Rights.)
Complete nonsense.
The Bill of Rights as originally written was ONLY a constraint upon the federal government, not upon the states and certainly not upon the people. If you can find something in the Bill of Rights that barred slavery, it would only have prevented the federal government from owning slaves.
It wasn't until the 14th amendment altered the Constitution (in the *proper* way for the document to be "living") that federally-guaranteed civil rights became a reality. And even that didn't automatically make the Bill of Rights automatically applicable to anyone other than the federal government. Various of the first ten amendments have been "incorporated" into the 14th amendment as being applicable against the states, but not all of them, and a few elements have been found to specifically not apply to anyone other than the federal government.
Don't forget the other wildcards: General Welfare and National Security. And the National Security wildcard really isn't even in the Constitution. Put'em all together and the whole idea of "checks and balances" is just laughable.
Yes, this is plagiarism. I'm TAing now and if a student handed in something like this we'd fail her. No question.
Irrelevant. Student honor codes quite rightly require originality (though it's less common that we'd wish), but the world isn't school.
This is also a gross abuse of copyright. I'm not talking about the evil "oh this has been copyrighted for 70s years" copyright, or even using copyright for non-commercial uses. This is classic copyright violation for her own commercial use.
That would be the case if the new work was merely exploiting the old, lacking the creativity to make something worthwhile. But that doesn't appear to be the case here. Instead, it appears that the new work is substantially better and more valuable than the old, and also that a key part of the innovative ideas in the new work is related exactly to the mixing of old materials, without permission or apology, to create new value.
Further, from a purely economic standpoint, it appears that the success of "Axolotl Roadkill" may actually be driving sales of "Strobo". I think you'd better wait to see if the original author -- the only person who has legal standing to sue for infringement -- actually feels damaged. It may well be that his ego is flattered and his wallet is fattened and that he has no objections whatsoever.
The fact that she didn't acknowledge the sources makes the whole thing all the more egregious and shows that she really probably knew what she was doing was wrong.
Perhaps. Or perhaps she was just making her book an example of the mashup culture she was writing about, and recognized that calling attention to it would remove her work from that culture -- because that's not the norm there.
Referring to the German Amazon page about the book, the Times article said 'Under the heading “Customers who bought this item also bought” was “Strobo” by Airen'. I think that raises some interesting questions. Artistic questions aside, can you argue that plagiarism damages the author of the plagiarized work if it increases sales?
There are two common theories for why we have copyright. I think the more correct one (at least for US copyright law -- yes, I realize that these events are playing out in Germany, under German law) is that copyright exists in order to promote creativity, and on that basis it's very hard to argue that "mashup" works that actually do create something new and interesting by combining pieces of older stuff don't satisfy that goal just as well as purely original works. And in this case, no one appears to be arguing that this young woman is simply riding the coattails of Airen.
The other theory is the economic one: that copyright exists so that authors get paid. Although we'd need to see real numbers to know for sure, the fact that sales of "Axolotl Roadkill" seems to be driving increased sales of "Strobo" seems to indicate that this usage of text from Strobo satisfies that version of copyright rationale as well. It'll be interesting to see what Airen says about the use of his work. Does he feel ripped off, or flattered?
Not necessarily. There's another possibility - someone else can do the work to adapt Googles code to mainline. It can happen, if other Googles fixes, otherwise unaccessible, will be attractive enough for mainline devs/users.
Adapting Google's code to make it acceptable to the Linux developers will mean redesigning it, changing the API from something that very narrowly serves Google's needs to something that is general and flexible enough to serve not only Google's requirements but many others as well. The result will be something that will require Google to change their non-kernel code to make use of the improved kernel API.
So, if someone else did do the work and got it into the mainline kernel, but Google didn't buy in and do the work to use the new API, then we'd be exactly where we are, with Google managing its own kernel. Other people might make use of the new API, which would be a good thing, but it wouldn't address the issue of the Google fork.
the entire worldwide cost of the LHC over 15 years is about 3-4 weeks in Iraq...
Yeah, but the war in Iraq is about protecting freedom, don't you get that??
(No, I have no idea HOW the war in Iraq protects "freedom", and I'm less sure all the time that "freedom" means what I think it means, but let's not get into that).
I think thats the whole issue here. Why does Goggle have to do any work to get "accepted" into the main kernel anyway?
They don't have to. If they don't, however, their codebase and the mainline codebase are going to grow further and further apart, which means that (a) the Android kernel will not be able to easily gain the bugfixes and enhancements that go into mainline and (b) the mainline kernel will not be able to easily take advantage of the drivers written for the Android kernel. Both will lose.
I strongly suspect that what will ultimately happen, as has happened before, is that the Android devs will eventually realize that maintaining their own fork of the Linux kernel is just too much effort and that it is actually less work to do what's required to get their changes integrated into mainline. Many other companies have been through this same process and come to the same conclusion.
Eventually companies might start selling ARM versions of their software, but that will take a long time unless Microsoft force them to.
Even more important: consumers may not care
The point of a netbook is that it's for people who don't need a lot of apps. In fact, mostly it runs one app, a web browser. As web apps get richer, it becomes less important to have anything other than a web browser. So, even if Microsoft does port Windows to ARM, and lots of applications get ported as well, they may still not achieve any sort of real platform lock-in because few people will care about any of those applications.
Windows may run beautifully on ARM, but if the users neither know nor care what operating system their netbook is running, the OS will become just another commodity component with netbook makers looking to squeeze out every penny. And in that world, Windows can only beat Linux by matching its price -- zero -- but Microsoft has to make a profit somewhere.
I know you're joking, but the truth is that a.22 round is more than capable of killing.
I can't find the reference at the moment, but I've seen statistics showing the.22LR as the cartridge that kills the most people annually in the US. It's not recommended as a self-defense round because it is less likely to result in a quick stop than heavier cartridges, and the fact that it's a rimfire makes it less reliable than centerfire rounds, but it kills people just fine.
If you believe that simply holding a functional weapon is a deterrent, your enemy probably isn't going to have time to inspect the details...
Since 95% of firearms self-defense incidents do not involve a shot being fired, not only is caliber unimportant, it usually doesn't even matter if the firearm is functional.
The building of the interstate system, a massive government project, succeeded in reaching its goal of allowing the utilization of vast swaths of under-utilized land, allowing commensurate increases in economic capacity.
Of course, that wasn't the primary goal of the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.
As in stone tablets for all you FSM heretics that never went to Sunday school. However, even with a young earth, it should have entered the public domain by now.
Not after Congress makes the next retroactive trademark term extension! All IP terms are going to be extended to 1 billion years, retroactive, so Congress doesn't have to mess with the issue again but the Supreme Court can still argue that the terms are "for a limited time".
(Actually, trademarks don't have time-limited expirations. They stay valid as long as they remain in use and are defended. Since Moses hasn't been filing all of the lawsuits needed to maintain his trademark, he's lost it).
It has nothing to do with the changes Debian was making. That just provoked the conversation and led to the discovery of the REAL issue: Mozilla does not allow redistribution of modified software under its brand.
That makes it non-free, per Debian's guidelines, which makes it unacceptable for inclusion in the base system, per Debian's Social Contract (no need for scare quotes; the social contract isn't notional, it's thoroughly documented).
Nice try, but no. Because in the 21st century, an "on-demand" army or a volunteer militia doesn't work. In fact, it hasn't worked since the 19th century. Wars now involve much greater degrees of technology, distance and speed. Therefore if you have the remotest plans to be in a war, whether defensive or offensive, you must have a standing, well-trained army, established command, technological parity with or superiority over your possible opponents, and stockpiles of weapons. In most cases you also need nuclear weapons.
For offensive operations, I'd agree with you. I completely disagree that national defense cannot be accomplished with a small cadre of national ground troops (perhaps 50K), plus a good navy and air force, a strong national guard and a well-armed and civilian population.
During WWII, Admiral Yamamoto is supposed to have said "You cannot invade the mainland United States, there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass". Whether he actually said it or not, it was true, and it is true. Add to that a navy and an air force (with nukes) to make delivering significant bodies of troops to our shores difficult, and a million-strong reserve force equipped with and trained on modern weapons (the national guard), and there's simply no question -- that's not just a viable national defense, it's a match for anything in the world.
And it doesn't require nearly the expense of what we have now, doesn't tempt presidents to play world policeman, doesn't pose the same risk to our civil liberties and doesn't ignore the constitution.
It means that it was ill-designed. I don't know how long the US will survive with the constitution at its nominal core, but the "Constitution" is now only a small part of and often in contradiction with its real constitution, i.e. the body of written law, common law and political precedent that really determine how it is run.
The problem with this view is that we no longer feel the need to abide by what you call the "real constitution", either. It's all malleable, changeable at almost the whim of the current leadership. We hardly even pay lip service to it. One administration flouts the law and the next presidential candidate decries the actions until he's in power, when he embraces and expands them. Congress does nothing but bluster, and not even that for long.
The federal government continues to accumulate power to the point that states are effectively just administrative regions and, even worse, the executive continues to tighten its hold on the central government. The famed system of checks and balances has eroded almost beyond recognition.
Perhaps the constitution is brittle. I suppose republics are brittle, as perhaps are democracies of any form. Oligarchies are robust and flexible, and dictatorships supremely efficient (even if you rotate dictators every eight years).
Personally, I'll take brittle and hard to maintain over what we're heading towards.
Well Debian goal is to be Pure GNU at all costs even if it effects the end user. That is why they made the Iceweasel name. As they feel because the trademark firefox name makes it unpure.
More precisely, Debian's goal is that their core system, including the desktop and the default applications, should be Free Software (which is not the same as GNU software).
Mozilla's enforcement of trademarks on the Firefox name and artwork make the software non-free, in the sense that it is not legal for anyone to modify and redistribute the software at will. Anyone who wants to distribute unmodified copies of FF may do so. Anyone who wants to distribute modified versions must get permission from Mozilla, otherwise they're infringing Mozilla's trademarks.
Iceweasel does not use any Mozilla trademarks, so anyone can modify and redistribute it to their heart's content, without getting permission from anyone (though they still have to comply with Mozilla's license). So, Iceweasel is Free Software, and can therefore be included in the core Debian system.
Ubutnu is a bit lax on this and its goal is to be more focused on its users, and less on being Pure... Hence it allows you to install off of apt the "Non-Free" code, after giving a scary lecture to make people who say yes feel like evil criminals.
"Non-Free" is the wrong term here; what you mean is "Restricted". Restricted software is software that may be illegal to use in some jurisdictions. Non-free software is legal to use, but may be illegal to modify and redistribute. Ubuntu uses non-free software wherever they think it makes sense, and without any end-user warning. Ubuntu uses restricted software where necessary, and gives you the scary warnings because you may, in fact, be breaking the law.
In contrast, Debian excludes non-free software from the core system (but puts it in the non-free repository, if you want it) and does not distribute restricted software at all.
Funny, but for anyone who wants to really understand the issue, it's much more nuanced and more sensible than that.
Mozilla told Debian that Debian could not distributed modified versions of Firefox with the Mozilla trademarked names and images. Debian developers habitually patch upstream software in various ways to make it fit into the Debian system better, to fix bugs, etc. One solution would have been for Debian to ship only the exact versions released by Mozilla. Another solution would have been for Debian to get Mozilla to approve each modified version that Debian wanted to release. A pain, but doable.
However, the discussion highlighted another, deeper problem: If Debian can't modify FF and redistribute the result without infringing on Mozilla's trademarks, that means neither can anyone else. Under Debian's Free Software guidelines, it must be possible for users of Debian to modify and redistribute software at will, [i]without[/i] needing to acquire any additional permissions, or else the software is non-free. That meant that FF is non-free software.
That's not a huge problem; Debian distributes lots of non-free software. So a solution to the problem might have been to get Mozilla's permission to distribute the modifications, and then put FF in the non-free repository. Per the Debian Social Contract, however, non-free software cannot be essential to the operation of the system. So FF couldn't be the default browser on the system.
But Debian [i]wanted[/i] FF to be the default browser, and so did Mozilla. It's a fine browser, perhaps even the best around, free, non-free or proprietary. And Debian really didn't have another good option -- Seamonkey is in the same boat, Dillo sucked, Konqueror is tied to KDE, etc.
Debian's other option, obviously, was to simply ignore their own rules, and ship non-free software as a core system component. That would have been a huge compromise to their principles, and would have opened up all sorts of questions about why *other* non-free software couldn't be in the base system as well. Big can of worms there.
So, what Debian did was to recognize that it was only the trademarked names and artwork which were non-free. The code was under the MPL, which is a Free Software license. Their best option, then, was to distributed the code without the trademarks. Iceweasel, Icedove, etc. are Free Software, per Debian's guidelines, but they have all the functionality of the Mozilla products, and are fully compatible with them.
It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was the best available.
An air force is debatable; it could be provided at either the state or federal level.
Let me guess, because it's not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.
Clearly. The constitution describes how two categories of military force should be managed: navy and army. Obviously, air forces weren't considered because they didn't exist. Therefore, unless we're going to amend the constitution to address the air force, we have to figure out which of those two categories it fits in. I think solid arguments can be made for either, but I tend towards classifying it with the navy. If you're interested, I can explain why.
You know, you will hate me for pointing this out, but you live in the twenty-first century and not the eighteenth. It would behoove you to notice that.
Because in the 21st century we no longer care about the Rule of Law? Sorry, but if that's where we're headed, I don't want to go there.
The constitution is the fundamental basis of all legal authority in the United States. If we think it's outdated, there's a mechanism in the document for updating it. What doesn't make any sense at all, though, is to simply ignore the supreme law of the land because it doesn't allow what we want to do. If the government can ignore the supreme law of the land, of course it can ignore its own lesser laws, right?
And we have, in fact, seen an ever-increasing amount of scofflaw behavior by our own government. The Bush administration contains examples too numerous to mention, but we can find plenty of examples in every period going clear back to FDR.
If you care about freedom, the Rule of Law is critical. And given that the constitution is the highest law in our nation, it seems like it would be a good idea to start by paying rigorous attention to it. If it's outmoded, amend it! If we can't muster the political will for an amendment, well, perhaps we should consider what that means.
You say that like there is a guaranteed income in "full time employment".
Of course not. But there's a big difference between being able to expect your paycheck twice a month barring a layoff or a major screwup and knowing that your gig ends in a month and you have nothing lined up after that.
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The founding fathers were libertarians.
And we've suffered for our divergence from their elegant plan. Not that their structure was perfect, but the underlying principles were well-founded, and we'd have been better served to stay closer to them.
(Note that it has never been taken literally since day one anyway. For example, for many decades slavery was allowed in spite of the fact that it was in direct violation of the Bill of Rights.)
Complete nonsense.
The Bill of Rights as originally written was ONLY a constraint upon the federal government, not upon the states and certainly not upon the people. If you can find something in the Bill of Rights that barred slavery, it would only have prevented the federal government from owning slaves.
It wasn't until the 14th amendment altered the Constitution (in the *proper* way for the document to be "living") that federally-guaranteed civil rights became a reality. And even that didn't automatically make the Bill of Rights automatically applicable to anyone other than the federal government. Various of the first ten amendments have been "incorporated" into the 14th amendment as being applicable against the states, but not all of them, and a few elements have been found to specifically not apply to anyone other than the federal government.
Don't forget the other wildcards: General Welfare and National Security. And the National Security wildcard really isn't even in the Constitution. Put'em all together and the whole idea of "checks and balances" is just laughable.
Assault and copyright infringement are completely different things, both morally and in the law. Maybe you should try a car analogy?
Yes, this is plagiarism. I'm TAing now and if a student handed in something like this we'd fail her. No question.
Irrelevant. Student honor codes quite rightly require originality (though it's less common that we'd wish), but the world isn't school.
This is also a gross abuse of copyright. I'm not talking about the evil "oh this has been copyrighted for 70s years" copyright, or even using copyright for non-commercial uses. This is classic copyright violation for her own commercial use.
That would be the case if the new work was merely exploiting the old, lacking the creativity to make something worthwhile. But that doesn't appear to be the case here. Instead, it appears that the new work is substantially better and more valuable than the old, and also that a key part of the innovative ideas in the new work is related exactly to the mixing of old materials, without permission or apology, to create new value.
Further, from a purely economic standpoint, it appears that the success of "Axolotl Roadkill" may actually be driving sales of "Strobo". I think you'd better wait to see if the original author -- the only person who has legal standing to sue for infringement -- actually feels damaged. It may well be that his ego is flattered and his wallet is fattened and that he has no objections whatsoever.
The fact that she didn't acknowledge the sources makes the whole thing all the more egregious and shows that she really probably knew what she was doing was wrong.
Perhaps. Or perhaps she was just making her book an example of the mashup culture she was writing about, and recognized that calling attention to it would remove her work from that culture -- because that's not the norm there.
Referring to the German Amazon page about the book, the Times article said 'Under the heading “Customers who bought this item also bought” was “Strobo” by Airen'. I think that raises some interesting questions. Artistic questions aside, can you argue that plagiarism damages the author of the plagiarized work if it increases sales?
There are two common theories for why we have copyright. I think the more correct one (at least for US copyright law -- yes, I realize that these events are playing out in Germany, under German law) is that copyright exists in order to promote creativity, and on that basis it's very hard to argue that "mashup" works that actually do create something new and interesting by combining pieces of older stuff don't satisfy that goal just as well as purely original works. And in this case, no one appears to be arguing that this young woman is simply riding the coattails of Airen.
The other theory is the economic one: that copyright exists so that authors get paid. Although we'd need to see real numbers to know for sure, the fact that sales of "Axolotl Roadkill" seems to be driving increased sales of "Strobo" seems to indicate that this usage of text from Strobo satisfies that version of copyright rationale as well. It'll be interesting to see what Airen says about the use of his work. Does he feel ripped off, or flattered?
Not necessarily. There's another possibility - someone else can do the work to adapt Googles code to mainline. It can happen, if other Googles fixes, otherwise unaccessible, will be attractive enough for mainline devs/users.
Adapting Google's code to make it acceptable to the Linux developers will mean redesigning it, changing the API from something that very narrowly serves Google's needs to something that is general and flexible enough to serve not only Google's requirements but many others as well. The result will be something that will require Google to change their non-kernel code to make use of the improved kernel API.
So, if someone else did do the work and got it into the mainline kernel, but Google didn't buy in and do the work to use the new API, then we'd be exactly where we are, with Google managing its own kernel. Other people might make use of the new API, which would be a good thing, but it wouldn't address the issue of the Google fork.
Why? Real scientists have already confirmed it.
Because the Mythbusters would dress up in cowboy costumes and play "high noon" music.
the entire worldwide cost of the LHC over 15 years is about 3-4 weeks in Iraq...
Yeah, but the war in Iraq is about protecting freedom, don't you get that??
(No, I have no idea HOW the war in Iraq protects "freedom", and I'm less sure all the time that "freedom" means what I think it means, but let's not get into that).
I think thats the whole issue here. Why does Goggle have to do any work to get "accepted" into the main kernel anyway?
They don't have to. If they don't, however, their codebase and the mainline codebase are going to grow further and further apart, which means that (a) the Android kernel will not be able to easily gain the bugfixes and enhancements that go into mainline and (b) the mainline kernel will not be able to easily take advantage of the drivers written for the Android kernel. Both will lose.
I strongly suspect that what will ultimately happen, as has happened before, is that the Android devs will eventually realize that maintaining their own fork of the Linux kernel is just too much effort and that it is actually less work to do what's required to get their changes integrated into mainline. Many other companies have been through this same process and come to the same conclusion.
I think cellular data plans will end up being cheap and ubiquitous. Look at the Kindle model, and I think the iPad is going to do the same.
Eventually companies might start selling ARM versions of their software, but that will take a long time unless Microsoft force them to.
Even more important: consumers may not care
The point of a netbook is that it's for people who don't need a lot of apps. In fact, mostly it runs one app, a web browser. As web apps get richer, it becomes less important to have anything other than a web browser. So, even if Microsoft does port Windows to ARM, and lots of applications get ported as well, they may still not achieve any sort of real platform lock-in because few people will care about any of those applications.
Windows may run beautifully on ARM, but if the users neither know nor care what operating system their netbook is running, the OS will become just another commodity component with netbook makers looking to squeeze out every penny. And in that world, Windows can only beat Linux by matching its price -- zero -- but Microsoft has to make a profit somewhere.
It's all speculation, of course. Time will tell.
I know you're joking, but the truth is that a .22 round is more than capable of killing.
I can't find the reference at the moment, but I've seen statistics showing the .22LR as the cartridge that kills the most people annually in the US. It's not recommended as a self-defense round because it is less likely to result in a quick stop than heavier cartridges, and the fact that it's a rimfire makes it less reliable than centerfire rounds, but it kills people just fine.
If you believe that simply holding a functional weapon is a deterrent, your enemy probably isn't going to have time to inspect the details...
Since 95% of firearms self-defense incidents do not involve a shot being fired, not only is caliber unimportant, it usually doesn't even matter if the firearm is functional.
The building of the interstate system, a massive government project, succeeded in reaching its goal of allowing the utilization of vast swaths of under-utilized land, allowing commensurate increases in economic capacity.
Of course, that wasn't the primary goal of the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.
As in stone tablets for all you FSM heretics that never went to Sunday school. However, even with a young earth, it should have entered the public domain by now.
Not after Congress makes the next retroactive trademark term extension! All IP terms are going to be extended to 1 billion years, retroactive, so Congress doesn't have to mess with the issue again but the Supreme Court can still argue that the terms are "for a limited time".
(Actually, trademarks don't have time-limited expirations. They stay valid as long as they remain in use and are defended. Since Moses hasn't been filing all of the lawsuits needed to maintain his trademark, he's lost it).
Never have figured out why they don't just all use HTML syntax <grumble/>
You first, or did you mean XHTML?
Distinction without a difference, with respect to the <i> tag.
Whoosh!
It has nothing to do with the changes Debian was making. That just provoked the conversation and led to the discovery of the REAL issue: Mozilla does not allow redistribution of modified software under its brand.
That makes it non-free, per Debian's guidelines, which makes it unacceptable for inclusion in the base system, per Debian's Social Contract (no need for scare quotes; the social contract isn't notional, it's thoroughly documented).
Nice try, but no. Because in the 21st century, an "on-demand" army or a volunteer militia doesn't work. In fact, it hasn't worked since the 19th century. Wars now involve much greater degrees of technology, distance and speed. Therefore if you have the remotest plans to be in a war, whether defensive or offensive, you must have a standing, well-trained army, established command, technological parity with or superiority over your possible opponents, and stockpiles of weapons. In most cases you also need nuclear weapons.
For offensive operations, I'd agree with you. I completely disagree that national defense cannot be accomplished with a small cadre of national ground troops (perhaps 50K), plus a good navy and air force, a strong national guard and a well-armed and civilian population.
During WWII, Admiral Yamamoto is supposed to have said "You cannot invade the mainland United States, there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass". Whether he actually said it or not, it was true, and it is true. Add to that a navy and an air force (with nukes) to make delivering significant bodies of troops to our shores difficult, and a million-strong reserve force equipped with and trained on modern weapons (the national guard), and there's simply no question -- that's not just a viable national defense, it's a match for anything in the world.
And it doesn't require nearly the expense of what we have now, doesn't tempt presidents to play world policeman, doesn't pose the same risk to our civil liberties and doesn't ignore the constitution.
It means that it was ill-designed. I don't know how long the US will survive with the constitution at its nominal core, but the "Constitution" is now only a small part of and often in contradiction with its real constitution, i.e. the body of written law, common law and political precedent that really determine how it is run.
The problem with this view is that we no longer feel the need to abide by what you call the "real constitution", either. It's all malleable, changeable at almost the whim of the current leadership. We hardly even pay lip service to it. One administration flouts the law and the next presidential candidate decries the actions until he's in power, when he embraces and expands them. Congress does nothing but bluster, and not even that for long.
The federal government continues to accumulate power to the point that states are effectively just administrative regions and, even worse, the executive continues to tighten its hold on the central government. The famed system of checks and balances has eroded almost beyond recognition.
Perhaps the constitution is brittle. I suppose republics are brittle, as perhaps are democracies of any form. Oligarchies are robust and flexible, and dictatorships supremely efficient (even if you rotate dictators every eight years).
Personally, I'll take brittle and hard to maintain over what we're heading towards.
How about the other option of not making so many goddamn patches?
How would that have addressed the problem with Firefox being non-free?
But Debian [i]wanted[/i] FF to be the default browser
Doh! Too much time on BBCode-using forums lately! Never have figured out why they don't just all use HTML syntax <grumble/>
Well Debian goal is to be Pure GNU at all costs even if it effects the end user. That is why they made the Iceweasel name. As they feel because the trademark firefox name makes it unpure.
More precisely, Debian's goal is that their core system, including the desktop and the default applications, should be Free Software (which is not the same as GNU software).
Mozilla's enforcement of trademarks on the Firefox name and artwork make the software non-free, in the sense that it is not legal for anyone to modify and redistribute the software at will. Anyone who wants to distribute unmodified copies of FF may do so. Anyone who wants to distribute modified versions must get permission from Mozilla, otherwise they're infringing Mozilla's trademarks.
Iceweasel does not use any Mozilla trademarks, so anyone can modify and redistribute it to their heart's content, without getting permission from anyone (though they still have to comply with Mozilla's license). So, Iceweasel is Free Software, and can therefore be included in the core Debian system.
Ubutnu is a bit lax on this and its goal is to be more focused on its users, and less on being Pure... Hence it allows you to install off of apt the "Non-Free" code, after giving a scary lecture to make people who say yes feel like evil criminals.
"Non-Free" is the wrong term here; what you mean is "Restricted". Restricted software is software that may be illegal to use in some jurisdictions. Non-free software is legal to use, but may be illegal to modify and redistribute. Ubuntu uses non-free software wherever they think it makes sense, and without any end-user warning. Ubuntu uses restricted software where necessary, and gives you the scary warnings because you may, in fact, be breaking the law.
In contrast, Debian excludes non-free software from the core system (but puts it in the non-free repository, if you want it) and does not distribute restricted software at all.
Funny, but for anyone who wants to really understand the issue, it's much more nuanced and more sensible than that.
Mozilla told Debian that Debian could not distributed modified versions of Firefox with the Mozilla trademarked names and images. Debian developers habitually patch upstream software in various ways to make it fit into the Debian system better, to fix bugs, etc. One solution would have been for Debian to ship only the exact versions released by Mozilla. Another solution would have been for Debian to get Mozilla to approve each modified version that Debian wanted to release. A pain, but doable.
However, the discussion highlighted another, deeper problem: If Debian can't modify FF and redistribute the result without infringing on Mozilla's trademarks, that means neither can anyone else. Under Debian's Free Software guidelines, it must be possible for users of Debian to modify and redistribute software at will, [i]without[/i] needing to acquire any additional permissions, or else the software is non-free. That meant that FF is non-free software.
That's not a huge problem; Debian distributes lots of non-free software. So a solution to the problem might have been to get Mozilla's permission to distribute the modifications, and then put FF in the non-free repository. Per the Debian Social Contract, however, non-free software cannot be essential to the operation of the system. So FF couldn't be the default browser on the system.
But Debian [i]wanted[/i] FF to be the default browser, and so did Mozilla. It's a fine browser, perhaps even the best around, free, non-free or proprietary. And Debian really didn't have another good option -- Seamonkey is in the same boat, Dillo sucked, Konqueror is tied to KDE, etc.
Debian's other option, obviously, was to simply ignore their own rules, and ship non-free software as a core system component. That would have been a huge compromise to their principles, and would have opened up all sorts of questions about why *other* non-free software couldn't be in the base system as well. Big can of worms there.
So, what Debian did was to recognize that it was only the trademarked names and artwork which were non-free. The code was under the MPL, which is a Free Software license. Their best option, then, was to distributed the code without the trademarks. Iceweasel, Icedove, etc. are Free Software, per Debian's guidelines, but they have all the functionality of the Mozilla products, and are fully compatible with them.
It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was the best available.
An air force is debatable; it could be provided at either the state or federal level. Let me guess, because it's not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.
Clearly. The constitution describes how two categories of military force should be managed: navy and army. Obviously, air forces weren't considered because they didn't exist. Therefore, unless we're going to amend the constitution to address the air force, we have to figure out which of those two categories it fits in. I think solid arguments can be made for either, but I tend towards classifying it with the navy. If you're interested, I can explain why.
You know, you will hate me for pointing this out, but you live in the twenty-first century and not the eighteenth. It would behoove you to notice that.
Because in the 21st century we no longer care about the Rule of Law? Sorry, but if that's where we're headed, I don't want to go there.
The constitution is the fundamental basis of all legal authority in the United States. If we think it's outdated, there's a mechanism in the document for updating it. What doesn't make any sense at all, though, is to simply ignore the supreme law of the land because it doesn't allow what we want to do. If the government can ignore the supreme law of the land, of course it can ignore its own lesser laws, right?
And we have, in fact, seen an ever-increasing amount of scofflaw behavior by our own government. The Bush administration contains examples too numerous to mention, but we can find plenty of examples in every period going clear back to FDR.
If you care about freedom, the Rule of Law is critical. And given that the constitution is the highest law in our nation, it seems like it would be a good idea to start by paying rigorous attention to it. If it's outmoded, amend it! If we can't muster the political will for an amendment, well, perhaps we should consider what that means.
Your post is content-free.
You say that like there is a guaranteed income in "full time employment".
Of course not. But there's a big difference between being able to expect your paycheck twice a month barring a layoff or a major screwup and knowing that your gig ends in a month and you have nothing lined up after that.