Is Fair Use really excluded by the TOS?
Certainly it seems to be damn near impossible to make copies of this stuff (and no, I don't include the code-snippets in that).
What should the Fair Use provisions be? Copying up to 10% of the book?
I'm on a 56k modem and I found that my trial subscription to Safari was not useful for two reasons:
It took too long to download the pages which were presented with unnecessary (for presentation) extra framing
Having once downloaded a page there was no way to cache it with Squid, so I had to download it again if I wanted to flip back and forth (which is what I do with tech books
I completely understand why OReilly made these design decisions, but it makes them non-useful for me. I prefer to get CDs of etexts or just the good ol' paperback (pity about the reduced quality bindings they've introduced)>
Prof.Moglen,
as someone that is an expert in _winning_ legal battles, battles which inherently depend upon influencing the opinion and perception of the court, do you believe that those that argue that the emphasis of the Free Software Foundation upon "Freedom" is foolish and that it is better to pander to perceived audience of knaves that are less scared by the term "Open Source"?
I agree. I think Kevin is a criminal based upon his past acts. Yes he's been treated badly by the system, but he's now probably bending over backwards for the Feds assisting them with _their_ illegal activities. I still want an answer to this first question which he hasn't answered:
Cracking for the government (Score:5, Interesting)
by crush (19364) on Monday January 20, @09:32AM (#5119495) Hi Kevin, Two questions: 1. Have you been approached by any government agencies to deploy your cracking/hacking skills "in the service of the country" and what do you feel about these recruitment drives? 2. How would you hack the court systems to improve it?
I would suspect that given Kevin's venality and rampant self-justification that he's busy selling out his fellow net denizens.
He's a scumbag and a self-righteous scumbag at that.
Think I'm a troll, then ask yourself with such a wonderful model of GPL, why was Open Source neccessary?
Errmm....that'd be for the stated reason that the term Open Source was introduced: namely that there was a fear that businesses would be scared off by the usage of the word "Free"?. There was nothing wrong with the FSF model and oodles of Free Software is in use by business. Not everyone is a moron that needs to be tricked into doing the right thing. Surprisingly (for the arrogant and disdainful OSS model of "business people" as being cretins that need to be deceived) Free Software has been hugely succesful on its own terms.
Beware tricking people into doing something, you'll attract people under false impressions and they won't be the ones you want to attract. You'll fail to give them the chance to educate themselves and they won't behave in an educated manner.
Reading Stallman's writings [gnu.org] I come away with a sense that the ultimate over riding goal of the free software movement wasn't to see the code, or even to be able to share it with one another. It was to create a space in the software world where community could exist. Or to paraphrase Babylon 5...
You should really go back and do some more reading again then. It's quite simple really:
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Your FUD about Red Hat or anyone else is meaningless because they release their software under the GPL which guarantees those freedoms. I'm not surprised that you're confused about this with all the talk of "Open Source", but don't worry, it's all really "Free Software" and there's nothing you can do about it.
Re:Trying to link the WA consumer complaint form
on
SDF Punted, Due to DDOS
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Ah, it'd be nice if/. editors could correct that link, it should be:
http://www.wa.gov/ago/consumer/forms/
Trying to link the WA consumer complaint form
on
SDF Punted, Due to DDOS
·
· Score: 2, Informative
produces this error. Is this a/. problem or a problem with their link?
Not Found
The requested object does not exist on this server. The link you followed is either outdated, inaccurate, or the server has been instructed not to let you have it. Please inform the site administrator of the referring page.
IANAL and you may well be right, but there are things such as non-enforceable contracts. It requires going before a court to show that the terms of the contract are not reasonable under tort law or something like that.
Hmmm, bet you're running a pre-release version of some distro and that your problems are more related to that than anything else. Well? What are you running?
Sorry to come over with the same shit all the time [...] all this is soo sad.
You said it buddy! Just drop it. GNOME and KDE are both great desktops and people like them for largely personal reasons. I hope they both continue to be as succesful as they are. Personally I prefer how GNOME works because I'm used to it (and because they tend to emphasize the Free Software part as opposed to Open Source -- the only mention of "free" in the KDE release notes was as free closely adjacent to "Open Source". I feel that is a political misstep and will deflect attention from the most important thing to me, which is Freedom).
However, technically the KDE3.1 is a beautiful and well-engineered desktop and I congratulate all the hackers that worked on it.
If you are trying to get out the vote, you try to emphasize the part where the voters are important. I don't see anything sinister in this.
Well, this isn't an argument about "anything sinister" so don't introduce red herrings. It's ultimately about whether or not NAZI Germany was Capitalist or Socialist. You argued that becasue the NAZIs had "socialist" in their name then they must be socialist and I responded that accepting self-description leads one to accept that the USA is a Democracy. You've now admitted (duh) that it isn't and that "The US never clamed to be a complete democracy" while at the same time arguing that it's necessary to talk about Democracy in order to "get out the vote". So, make up your mind. Does the USA claim to be a democracy or not?
hat's easy. Can you tell me to the quarter percent what the federal reserve overnight rate should be? Why? Is that because the book to bill ratio for the semiconductor industry is up or down? What should we set the 30 year T-bill rate at? How about the 10 year? What effect will that change have on the bond market for utilities and telecommunications? The fact is, large parts of our monitary policy are not even determined by our elected representives, but by some one they chose, so its two steps removed from the people, and that's the way I like it.
You're still not answering the question. You've just described the existing system
Which "internatinal law" is that. Name the treaty.
The UN Charter clearly prohibits the use or threat of force by member nations. There are exceptions laid out with strict conditions in article 51 to cover the situation where self-defense is necessary. None of the attacks committed by the CIA as investigated by the Church commission fall under these exceptions. I'm surprised that you don't know this "internatinal law". (Ford's 76/77 presidential revocation of the use of assassinations and the later Order 126333 IIRC have no bearing on the Treaty obligations that the use bears under the UN Charter.
This is your example? This sounds like a regrettable incident, and heads should roll for it, but lets keep these things in perspective.
Apart from the fact that you are blithely dismissive of this violation of the Bill of Rights there are many more examples if you care to look for them. I have given you a single clear example of how Freedom and Democracy are not in effect in the USA. Many of the people in the above example were assaulted and wounded by the police. Even if this were the only example it should be enough to have caused national outrage. It didn't. Freedom and Democracy are absolute. They either exist or they don't: in the USA they don't despite the repeated rhetoric (which you yourself admit).
Do you even read your own links? These people were not assinated, they were harrassed.
Do you read my links? Obviously not. Or perhaps you didn't read enough at the page. Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were both wounded when a car-bomb exploded under their car. I'd call that an assassination attempt. Luckily they've won a case against the FBI. It's not proven yet who planted the bomb: timber industry goons or the FBI are the likely suspects. Irrespective of that the FBI have been found to have engaged in a systematic violation of constitutional rights.
but to say the American system is fundamentally broken because of this is wrong.
Again, you're introducing a red-herring. I never said that the American system was fundamentally broken. I'm proving that Freedom and Democracy don't operate as they should and that government "security" agencies are engaged in violations of some of the concepts that Americans hold to be important. That strand of the argument is intended to illustrate to you the dangers of accepting self-description as truth. You've already conceded this point by admitting that when the USA spouts off to foreigners about Democracy we're making a pleasant noise with our mouths but it doesn't mean anything specific and can be as unpleasant a concept as the idea of tricking the people into consenting to be governed. So let's leave that and concentrate on whether or not NAZI Germany was socialist.
If you run a factory in Nazi Germany, you get nice houses, etc. and control of day to day operations in the factory. You can not sell it, or decide what you want to produce, or do any of the things you can do with a factory in America.
Cite me a reference that shows that German Capitalists during the NAZI's rule were prevented from selling their businesses. So far I've seen no evidence from you that NAZI Germany was socialist.
The US never clamed to be a complete democracy. It was always was intended to be a democratic republic.
Right. So let's stop calling it a democracy. If you listen to any of the speeches made by US politicians over the last few decades they always refer to Democracy specifically. No reference is ever made to the fact that the Electoral College and Representative Democracy itself is a carefully crafted mask behind which rich people control society.
Hopefully they can choose someone smarter then them to figure the complicated things out.
Hmm. How can someone that's too dumb to have their own opinions on monetary policy be smart enough to choose the person with the correct opinions? Either the majority of people are reasonably intelligent and should control their own lives or else there's no point in Brin pretending that we've made any advances beyond feudalism.
And the US is free, relative to most of the world. You can stand on the street and say "George W Bush? More like George W Shrub!" all day long, and the CIA will not come for you.
Perhaps not the CIA, they seem to specialize in foreign assassinations (illegally under international law of course), but the FBI will certainly photograph you, have you detained on a pretext by the police, fingerprint you and enter you into their records. This will be accomplished after the police have arrested 649 of you in violation of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution (in the Bill of Rights) which states that Congress shall pass no law which inhibits the right to free speech and to assemble to petition the government.
Later when they restart the COINTELPRO and other FBI operations which have in the past and recently involved assassination of domestic political figures, then you'll be able to say "at least we're not Stalinist USSR". After all we never had internment camps did we?
The Nazis were socialists because they siezed control of pretty much the entire industrial output of Germany
You're going to have to be a little more precise in your definition here because while one can definitely say that the output of German industry during WW2 was geared to the needs of the State exactly the same applied to the USA, Britain etc. Furthermore the major German firms remained privately owned, just as one example Krupps was owned by Alfred Krupp von Bohnen und Halbach who was prosecuted during Nuremburg for his use of slave labor. Most industrialists managed to escape. Most business were held privately and were not nationalized. Thus, NAZI Germany was a primarily Capitalist venture. They didn't need to shoot the people running things because the people running things (who were not your average dumb schmoe who's always watching TV) were Capitalists that bankrolled Hitler and the NAZIs as a way to keep control of the country.
In "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" Caspian and his men attack the (admittedly corrupt) governor of the Lone Islands, storming into his office, throwing the furniture about, insinuating that they have a huge fleet offshore etc.
Then there's the attack on the bullies by Jill and Eustace at the end of The Silver Chair (one of my favorite quotes "lions, fascists, it's not FAIR!").
The NAZIs *were* capitalists. Private industrial and commercial concerns were not seized and redistributed to the people. That's what socialists believe in. If that redistribution of goods doesn't occur then it doesn't matter what they call themselves, they're capitalists. Russia under the authoritarian leninists practised State Capitalism and called it socialism. NAZIs practiced Capitalism and called it National Socialism. Both were lying. Neither were socialists. It's like the USA saying that it practices Freedom and Democracy. It restricts the freedom of its own citizens and other nations and implements Representative Democracy. Observe what people do, don't believe what they say.
in the context of "was he as bad as he really was" and answers that we know so because we live in a democracy in which holocaust deniers are easily proved wrong.
I'd agree that Hitler was a monster. But Brin is ignoring the real re-writing of history that went on: Western "democracies" like the USA supported Hitler and his defence of Capitalism against Communism until he started to threaten the balance of world power. Even after Hitler was defeated the USA offered sanction and material reward to the capitalists, scientists and torturers that were an integral part of Nazi Germany. Hitler didn't do it without help. Germany didn't do it without help. Some of you are familiar with Operation Paperclip's importation of rocket scientists (who among more innocent pursuits, such as developing Weapons of Mass Destruction, supervised high-G experiments on prisoners), but don't necessarily know that this extended to the amnesty and recruitment of members of the SS that were knowlegeable about Communist resistance. This was continued in Italy with the support of Mafia and fascisti.
So, the question for Mr.Brin is more accurately is "did they use the Ring?". Did they do evil to achieve good? Did they bomb innocent Afghanistanis and starve over 500,000 Iraqi children to do a greater good?
Mr.Brin is the hopeless Romantic, but unlike Tolkein he's not writing a fantasy, he's rewriting history.
Excellent points. I suspect that Brin is ignorant of the Silmarillion, but even so if he'd spent any time with LoTR then he'd realise that Sam and Frodo are the heroes.
I'm also deeply suspicious of anyone that can write that "Bored of the Rings" is the funniest book in the English language. Yeah, Dildo hur hur hur!
Give me a break. The guy is flexing the intellectual muscles that he's gained during his population ecology studies. It's a little bit of fun and I'd rather he did this than many other things.
The mathematics upon which most of science is based is not fasifiable. "1+1=2" is not falsifiable.
Sort of an irrelevant side issue. The point is that there *are* testable theories, such as "DNA/RNA are responsible for passing on the likenesses that one sees between parents/offspring". Modest claims like these can be disproven or proven by taking an evidence based approach to supporting theories. If the results are repeatable then the evidence suggests probabilistically that the theory is believable. All grand claims (like God or RNA-world) are non-provable and may be fun to speculate about but they're ultimately futile.
Whilst this is an interesting and plausible theory it is not the first one that speculated that "cells came first", if by cell one means a simple compartment. In 1991 there were speculations that simple lipid bilayers could autoassemble and that the protected environment this produced would allow RNA structures to act as enzymes/catalysts in a local environment. Other theories postulated that the RNA-catalyst/enzyme would form on inorganic clays.
Anyway, great interesting theory, but the only truly scientific theories are ones that are falsifiable, and this one is not. It'll join all the other RNA-world/early-evolution hypotheses as interesting and plausible speculation. Nothing wrong with that, but it's a mite more interesting to investigate falsifiable hypotheses, otherwise one might as well be talking to Creationists.
Please do not blame Opera for not being open source. [snip]
I am not using Opera, because I have strong computer and I can waste resources for such product like Mozilla. But there are places when Mozilla is not a right thing.
I don't understand your argument. Why should I not be concerned that Opera is non-Free just because one of the Free alternatives in it's default state is huge? Also why do you not make any mention of the many smaller, faster and Free browsers such as Galeon, Phoenix and Dillo?
I've used it for 7 years. I've started looking into Evolution but I'm really just interested in the fact that I _know_ the pine interface back to front. I've always felt a little dirty because of the licensing issue. The only things missing in pine are GPG signing now that threading has been done. Your post has convinced me to have a look at emacs VM. I tried mutt and thought that it's interface was awful.
Slashdot Mirror
He should redesing this to take advantage of one of the most efficient and enjoyable forms of transport: the modern roadbike.
Essentially this would mean dumping the engine and all the other crap he's added.
Is Fair Use really excluded by the TOS? Certainly it seems to be damn near impossible to make copies of this stuff (and no, I don't include the code-snippets in that). What should the Fair Use provisions be? Copying up to 10% of the book?
- It took too long to download the pages which were presented with unnecessary (for presentation) extra framing
- Having once downloaded a page there was no way to cache it with Squid, so I had to download it again if I wanted to flip back and forth (which is what I do with tech books
I completely understand why OReilly made these design decisions, but it makes them non-useful for me. I prefer to get CDs of etexts or just the good ol' paperback (pity about the reduced quality bindings they've introduced)>Prof.Moglen, as someone that is an expert in _winning_ legal battles, battles which inherently depend upon influencing the opinion and perception of the court, do you believe that those that argue that the emphasis of the Free Software Foundation upon "Freedom" is foolish and that it is better to pander to perceived audience of knaves that are less scared by the term "Open Source"?
He's a scumbag and a self-righteous scumbag at that.
Errmm....that'd be for the stated reason that the term Open Source was introduced: namely that there was a fear that businesses would be scared off by the usage of the word "Free"?. There was nothing wrong with the FSF model and oodles of Free Software is in use by business. Not everyone is a moron that needs to be tricked into doing the right thing. Surprisingly (for the arrogant and disdainful OSS model of "business people" as being cretins that need to be deceived) Free Software has been hugely succesful on its own terms.
Beware tricking people into doing something, you'll attract people under false impressions and they won't be the ones you want to attract. You'll fail to give them the chance to educate themselves and they won't behave in an educated manner.
You should really go back and do some more reading again then. It's quite simple really:
Your FUD about Red Hat or anyone else is meaningless because they release their software under the GPL which guarantees those freedoms. I'm not surprised that you're confused about this with all the talk of "Open Source", but don't worry, it's all really "Free Software" and there's nothing you can do about it.
Ah, it'd be nice if /. editors could correct that link, it should be:
http://www.wa.gov/ago/consumer/forms/
Not Found
The requested object does not exist on this server. The link you followed is either outdated, inaccurate, or the server has been instructed not to let you have it. Please inform the site administrator of the referring page.
IANAL and you may well be right, but there are things such as non-enforceable contracts. It requires going before a court to show that the terms of the contract are not reasonable under tort law or something like that.
I'll take your answer as a "yes, I am running a pre-release of some distro" then shall I? Basically you don't know what you're doing.
Hmmm, bet you're running a pre-release version of some distro and that your problems are more related to that than anything else. Well? What are you running?
You said it buddy! Just drop it. GNOME and KDE are both great desktops and people like them for largely personal reasons. I hope they both continue to be as succesful as they are. Personally I prefer how GNOME works because I'm used to it (and because they tend to emphasize the Free Software part as opposed to Open Source -- the only mention of "free" in the KDE release notes was as free closely adjacent to "Open Source". I feel that is a political misstep and will deflect attention from the most important thing to me, which is Freedom).
However, technically the KDE3.1 is a beautiful and well-engineered desktop and I congratulate all the hackers that worked on it.
Until you cite references I'm going to consider that I've won this one. You are probably wise to stick to the NFL.
Duh.
Like, that's an argument? Double duh, ya know?
If you are trying to get out the vote, you try to emphasize the part where the voters are important. I don't see anything sinister in this.
Well, this isn't an argument about "anything sinister" so don't introduce red herrings. It's ultimately about whether or not NAZI Germany was Capitalist or Socialist. You argued that becasue the NAZIs had "socialist" in their name then they must be socialist and I responded that accepting self-description leads one to accept that the USA is a Democracy. You've now admitted (duh) that it isn't and that "The US never clamed to be a complete democracy" while at the same time arguing that it's necessary to talk about Democracy in order to "get out the vote". So, make up your mind. Does the USA claim to be a democracy or not?
hat's easy. Can you tell me to the quarter percent what the federal reserve overnight rate should be? Why? Is that because the book to bill ratio for the semiconductor industry is up or down? What should we set the 30 year T-bill rate at? How about the 10 year? What effect will that change have on the bond market for utilities and telecommunications? The fact is, large parts of our monitary policy are not even determined by our elected representives, but by some one they chose, so its two steps removed from the people, and that's the way I like it.
You're still not answering the question. You've just described the existing system
Which "internatinal law" is that. Name the treaty.
The UN Charter clearly prohibits the use or threat of force by member nations. There are exceptions laid out with strict conditions in article 51 to cover the situation where self-defense is necessary. None of the attacks committed by the CIA as investigated by the Church commission fall under these exceptions. I'm surprised that you don't know this "internatinal law". (Ford's 76/77 presidential revocation of the use of assassinations and the later Order 126333 IIRC have no bearing on the Treaty obligations that the use bears under the UN Charter.
This is your example? This sounds like a regrettable incident, and heads should roll for it, but lets keep these things in perspective.
Apart from the fact that you are blithely dismissive of this violation of the Bill of Rights there are many more examples if you care to look for them. I have given you a single clear example of how Freedom and Democracy are not in effect in the USA. Many of the people in the above example were assaulted and wounded by the police. Even if this were the only example it should be enough to have caused national outrage. It didn't. Freedom and Democracy are absolute. They either exist or they don't: in the USA they don't despite the repeated rhetoric (which you yourself admit).Do you even read your own links? These people were not assinated, they were harrassed.
Do you read my links? Obviously not. Or perhaps you didn't read enough at the page. Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were both wounded when a car-bomb exploded under their car. I'd call that an assassination attempt. Luckily they've won a case against the FBI. It's not proven yet who planted the bomb: timber industry goons or the FBI are the likely suspects. Irrespective of that the FBI have been found to have engaged in a systematic violation of constitutional rights.
but to say the American system is fundamentally broken because of this is wrong.
Again, you're introducing a red-herring. I never said that the American system was fundamentally broken. I'm proving that Freedom and Democracy don't operate as they should and that government "security" agencies are engaged in violations of some of the concepts that Americans hold to be important. That strand of the argument is intended to illustrate to you the dangers of accepting self-description as truth. You've already conceded this point by admitting that when the USA spouts off to foreigners about Democracy we're making a pleasant noise with our mouths but it doesn't mean anything specific and can be as unpleasant a concept as the idea of tricking the people into consenting to be governed. So let's leave that and concentrate on whether or not NAZI Germany was socialist.If you run a factory in Nazi Germany, you get nice houses, etc. and control of day to day operations in the factory. You can not sell it, or decide what you want to produce, or do any of the things you can do with a factory in America.
Cite me a reference that shows that German Capitalists during the NAZI's rule were prevented from selling their businesses. So far I've seen no evidence from you that NAZI Germany was socialist.
The US never clamed to be a complete democracy. It was always was intended to be a democratic republic.
Right. So let's stop calling it a democracy. If you listen to any of the speeches made by US politicians over the last few decades they always refer to Democracy specifically. No reference is ever made to the fact that the Electoral College and Representative Democracy itself is a carefully crafted mask behind which rich people control society.
Hopefully they can choose someone smarter then them to figure the complicated things out.
Hmm. How can someone that's too dumb to have their own opinions on monetary policy be smart enough to choose the person with the correct opinions? Either the majority of people are reasonably intelligent and should control their own lives or else there's no point in Brin pretending that we've made any advances beyond feudalism.
And the US is free, relative to most of the world. You can stand on the street and say "George W Bush? More like George W Shrub!" all day long, and the CIA will not come for you.
Perhaps not the CIA, they seem to specialize in foreign assassinations (illegally under international law of course), but the FBI will certainly photograph you, have you detained on a pretext by the police, fingerprint you and enter you into their records. This will be accomplished after the police have arrested 649 of you in violation of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution (in the Bill of Rights) which states that Congress shall pass no law which inhibits the right to free speech and to assemble to petition the government.
Later when they restart the COINTELPRO and other FBI operations which have in the past and recently involved assassination of domestic political figures, then you'll be able to say "at least we're not Stalinist USSR". After all we never had internment camps did we?
The Nazis were socialists because they siezed control of pretty much the entire industrial output of Germany
You're going to have to be a little more precise in your definition here because while one can definitely say that the output of German industry during WW2 was geared to the needs of the State exactly the same applied to the USA, Britain etc. Furthermore the major German firms remained privately owned, just as one example Krupps was owned by Alfred Krupp von Bohnen und Halbach who was prosecuted during Nuremburg for his use of slave labor. Most industrialists managed to escape. Most business were held privately and were not nationalized. Thus, NAZI Germany was a primarily Capitalist venture. They didn't need to shoot the people running things because the people running things (who were not your average dumb schmoe who's always watching TV) were Capitalists that bankrolled Hitler and the NAZIs as a way to keep control of the country.
In "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" Caspian and his men attack the (admittedly corrupt) governor of the Lone Islands, storming into his office, throwing the furniture about, insinuating that they have a huge fleet offshore etc.
Then there's the attack on the bullies by Jill and Eustace at the end of The Silver Chair (one of my favorite quotes "lions, fascists, it's not FAIR!").
The NAZIs *were* capitalists. Private industrial and commercial concerns were not seized and redistributed to the people. That's what socialists believe in. If that redistribution of goods doesn't occur then it doesn't matter what they call themselves, they're capitalists. Russia under the authoritarian leninists practised State Capitalism and called it socialism. NAZIs practiced Capitalism and called it National Socialism. Both were lying. Neither were socialists. It's like the USA saying that it practices Freedom and Democracy. It restricts the freedom of its own citizens and other nations and implements Representative Democracy.
Observe what people do, don't believe what they say.
in the context of "was he as bad as he really was" and answers that we know so because we live in a democracy in which holocaust deniers are easily proved wrong.
I'd agree that Hitler was a monster. But Brin is ignoring the real re-writing of history that went on: Western "democracies" like the USA supported Hitler and his defence of Capitalism against Communism until he started to threaten the balance of world power. Even after Hitler was defeated the USA offered sanction and material reward to the capitalists, scientists and torturers that were an integral part of Nazi Germany. Hitler didn't do it without help. Germany didn't do it without help. Some of you are familiar with Operation Paperclip's importation of rocket scientists (who among more innocent pursuits, such as developing Weapons of Mass Destruction, supervised high-G experiments on prisoners), but don't necessarily know that this extended to the amnesty and recruitment of members of the SS that were knowlegeable about Communist resistance. This was continued in Italy with the support of Mafia and fascisti.
So, the question for Mr.Brin is more accurately is "did they use the Ring?". Did they do evil to achieve good? Did they bomb innocent Afghanistanis and starve over 500,000 Iraqi children to do a greater good?
Mr.Brin is the hopeless Romantic, but unlike Tolkein he's not writing a fantasy, he's rewriting history.
Excellent points. I suspect that Brin is ignorant of the Silmarillion, but even so if he'd spent any time with LoTR then he'd realise that Sam and Frodo are the heroes. I'm also deeply suspicious of anyone that can write that "Bored of the Rings" is the funniest book in the English language. Yeah, Dildo hur hur hur!
Give me a break. The guy is flexing the intellectual muscles that he's gained during his population ecology studies. It's a little bit of fun and I'd rather he did this than many other things.
Whilst this is an interesting and plausible theory it is not the first one that speculated that "cells came first", if by cell one means a simple compartment. In 1991 there were speculations that simple lipid bilayers could autoassemble and that the protected environment this produced would allow RNA structures to act as enzymes/catalysts in a local environment. Other theories postulated that the RNA-catalyst/enzyme would form on inorganic clays.
Anyway, great interesting theory, but the only truly scientific theories are ones that are falsifiable, and this one is not. It'll join all the other RNA-world/early-evolution hypotheses as interesting and plausible speculation. Nothing wrong with that, but it's a mite more interesting to investigate falsifiable hypotheses, otherwise one might as well be talking to Creationists.
"Built by ATI" or "Powered by ATI" ?
I've used it for 7 years. I've started looking into Evolution but I'm really just interested in the fact that I _know_ the pine interface back to front. I've always felt a little dirty because of the licensing issue. The only things missing in pine are GPG signing now that threading has been done. Your post has convinced me to have a look at emacs VM. I tried mutt and thought that it's interface was awful.