I've only been on the internet since 1989, but I, too, used to read Usenet. I haven't for several years. Why? The sheer volume of it makes it too difficult to keep up with.
As you point out, Usenet used to be the default place for discussion. But that in itself--not the rise of other discussion forums--led to the current state, where a much smaller fraction of people on the internet use Usenet for discussion. As the volume of Usenet users grew, newsgroups simply became too big for the average person to follow. Face it, if you want to discuss the latest episode of your favorite TV show, would you rather do it in a group of twenty people, or in a group of a thousand? Sure, the larger group will be more diverse and the best comments will be more insightful than in the smaller group, but that's a secondary consideration compared to the time it takes to follow the group.
It's almost paradoxical--fewer people use Usenet now because so many people use it that it's inefficient. I imagine a much smaller percentage of people use it than did 10 years ago, while the absolute numbers who use it are still growing.
The rise of web-based and email-based discussion forums are a result of the death of usenet, not its cause. It's a far from ideal solution. The implicit goal is to cut the time it takes to follow a discussion to a reasonable amount. The solution is to create smaller groups of people simply on the basis that not everybody knows about the forum. (Not that this was intentional, mind you--I'm not saying anyone ever sat down and said, "I'll create a web-based forum so that only a handful of people will know about it and thus discussion will occur at a manageable level, despite the fact that I'm not going to actively exclude anyone." It's more of a Natural Selection sort of pressure.) But for the average user, it's better than Usenet.
Fair enough. But why does JD Sallen get to speak for all Christians? What if the Catholic Church, which has been using "Corinthians" much longer than JD Sallen, wanted to take it away from Sallen?
It depends. Is it a book review, or an essay based on the concepts that he presents?
Bzzt, thank you for playing. Neither one of those is a copyright violation.
The multi-page summary is not a copy of anything Rosen wrote; it is in Katz's own words. Thus, it is not a copyright violation.
Perhaps you are confused because you know that a copyright owner has the right to control publication of "derivative works". But such "derivative works" are legally more narrowly defined than just a book summary. For example, an adaption of a book to a stage play, or a work of fiction using characters taken from another copyrighted work of fiction constitute derivative works. A summary of the book does not.
Tyranny of the majority?" What is this oxymoronic nonsense?
Only the same "oxymoronic nonsense" espoused by the founders. The danger is discussed in Federalist Paper #51.
Isn't that, quite literally, democracy?
Yes, exactly. Democracy in its purest, awfulest form. The democracy which can execute a person for absolutely no reason at all as long as a majority says so. Fortunately, we do not live in a pure democracy, but rather a democracy tempered by the guarantee of certain rights. Even if the majority wants to revoke those rights.
If the majority can abridge people's freedom of speech whenever they desire, as you seem to believe, what is the point of having a First Amendment at all? Speech of the minority, you seem to believe, is not protected, but speech of the majority needs no protection.
How about the right of the general public to see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear? That right (which, as far as I'm concerned, should be given equal footing with freedom of speech)
You're welcome to try to repeal the First Amendment. Until then, freedom of speech trumps the tyranny of the majority.
Constitutional rights are not an all-or-nothing thing. Example: convicted felons do not have the right to vote, but they do have the right not to be subject to cruel and unusual punishment.
Likewise, just because minors do not have the full constitutional rights of adults, that does not mean they have no constitutional rights at all. One of the classic cases upholding First Amendment rights of minors is Tinker v. Des Moines.
I'm not saying the Indianapolis ordinance in question is necessarily unconstitutional. The rights of minors is a very murky area of the law. I'm just saying that the/.ers who are saying "clearly this is constitutional, minors have no rights at all" are just as mistaken as those who are saying "clearly this is unconstitutional, it violates the First Amendment."
Hmm, I did some poking around and found that, while the Fourteenth Amendment hasn't always been interpreted that way, it has been for the past several decades.
Here's some websites I found which discuss the issue:
Fourteenth Amendment at Findlaw, with annotations. Especially see the "priviliges and immunities" section of the annotations, where the right to assemble and the right to petition the government are listed among those which states may not restrict. (Granted, those aren't the rights at issue here, but they are First Amendment rights.)
The Fourteenth Amendment: First Amendment II? Excellent summary of a few relevant cases, how the courts' view of the Fourteenth Amendment has changed over time, particularly with a view towards the political philosophy behind it.
Still, it seems that the courts are currently applying First Amendment rights as if the Fourteenth Amendment also prohibited state and local governments from encroaching upon those rights. State and local ordinances are often struck down on the grounds that they violate citizens' First Amendment rights. One of the seminal cases seems to be Gitlow v. New York, in which Justice Sanford, delivering the opinion of the court, writes "[W]e may and do assume that freedom of speech and of the press... are among the personal rights and 'liberties' protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the States." Granted, as the analyses above mention, prior to Gitlow the courts did not necessarily see the Fourteenth Amendment as extending First Amendment prohibitions to State governments, since then the Fourteenth Amendment has, for the most part, been interpreted that way.
For a recent example, see City of Erie, et al., v. Pap's A.M.. The question at hand in this case was whether an ordinance enacted by the city of Erie, Pennsylvania, violated the First Amendment. While the eventual decision was that the ordinance was constitutional, both sides seem to implicitly accept that the First Amendment (via the Fourteenth Amendment) applies to laws passed by the city of Erie.
In other words, what I'm trying to say is, if you're asking whether this interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment can be defended purely from the text of the amendment and philosophy alone, I don't know. But it is certainly the way the Fourteenth Amendment has been interpreted in practice for the past several decades.
While it's true that minors may have fewer rights than adults, that does not mean that they have no rights at all. The Constitution does not protect minors in the same way that it protects adults, but it does still protect them to some extent. (How much is a very murky area of the law.)
Not public domain, however Trademarks can be lost because of common usage.
Which is completely different from the public domain issue. In copyright and patent law, IP passes into the public domain after a certain period of time, regardless of how strongly it has been protected by the company which owns the IP. A trademark may stay trademarked indefinitely.
Excellent point, especially considering the analogy to biological viruses:
Ebola virus is quite deadly, but kills in a matter of a few days. It may wipe out an entire village, but doesn't spread beyond that because it killed all its hosts too quickly.
HIV is also quite deadly, but it takes 10 or more years to kill. Despite the fact that it's relatively hard to transmit (compared to most other viruses), there's tens of millions of people infected with HIV. It has plenty of time to spread itself to other hosts.
"Insightful"???? Only if the moderators, like the poster, do not realize that trademark != copyright != patent != trademark, and that unlike copyright and patent law, there is no concept of "public domain" in trademark law.
There really needs to be a "-1 Misinformative" moderation option.
Also don't forget that for most Representative races, there are more than two options. If your representative votes for HR 2987, don't simply vote for his/her major-party opponent without investigating the opponent's views as well. If you're not satisfied by that, choose one of the "minor-party" candidates.
Some people argue that voting for a minor-party or independent candidate is a "wasted vote". This is true only if you cannot see any further ahead than the next term of office. If you plan on dying in the next two years and don't care what happens to the country after you die, then--and only then--would a vote for a third-party candidate be a wasted vote.
A vote for a third-party candidate sends the message that the usual Democrat-Republican oligarchy is unacceptable. It may encourage one of the major parties to move in the direction of the voted-for party in order to regain the lost voters. It is also an encouragement to those who are working against both Republicans and Democrats to keep up the fight, letting them know that their words are not falling on deaf ears.
Refuse to accept the lesser of two evils, when there are three or more choices.
I have to say I laughed out loud when I got to the part about the Flourinert turning to gel! In fact, that was the main reason I kept reading anyway. I have never heard of flourinert before, but I do know that there aren't too many things still liquid at LN2 temperatures.
Yep. There's a small number of very good jokes/comedy routines/etc. where you see the punchline coming a mile away, and yet it's still funny when you get to the punchline. This is one of those.
This stuff is perfectly fine IF it does not catch fire.
3M claims that Fluorinert is nonflammable. I didn't find any info about its chemical composition, but others have speculated here that it's a fluorocarbon or mixture of fluorocarbons, and if that's correct than it is nonflammable.
An additional (possible) problem is cooling the CPU too much. At sufficiently low temperatures, silicon ceases to be a semiconductor and becomes completely nonconducting. I don't know off-hand whether that temperature is above or below that of LN2, though.
But scott@b is probably right about LN2 directly on the motherboard not being that good of a coolant. Due to the gaseous layer he describes, you can hold LN2 in your hand without any damage. (Something that's not recommended for any length of time with dry ice, despite the fact that the temperature of dry ice is much higher than that of LN2.)
Slashdot Mirror
I've only been on the internet since 1989, but I, too, used to read Usenet. I haven't for several years. Why? The sheer volume of it makes it too difficult to keep up with.
As you point out, Usenet used to be the default place for discussion. But that in itself--not the rise of other discussion forums--led to the current state, where a much smaller fraction of people on the internet use Usenet for discussion. As the volume of Usenet users grew, newsgroups simply became too big for the average person to follow. Face it, if you want to discuss the latest episode of your favorite TV show, would you rather do it in a group of twenty people, or in a group of a thousand? Sure, the larger group will be more diverse and the best comments will be more insightful than in the smaller group, but that's a secondary consideration compared to the time it takes to follow the group.
It's almost paradoxical--fewer people use Usenet now because so many people use it that it's inefficient. I imagine a much smaller percentage of people use it than did 10 years ago, while the absolute numbers who use it are still growing.
The rise of web-based and email-based discussion forums are a result of the death of usenet, not its cause. It's a far from ideal solution. The implicit goal is to cut the time it takes to follow a discussion to a reasonable amount. The solution is to create smaller groups of people simply on the basis that not everybody knows about the forum. (Not that this was intentional, mind you--I'm not saying anyone ever sat down and said, "I'll create a web-based forum so that only a handful of people will know about it and thus discussion will occur at a manageable level, despite the fact that I'm not going to actively exclude anyone." It's more of a Natural Selection sort of pressure.) But for the average user, it's better than Usenet.
OK, I don't understand moderators at all. I was sure my comment would be downmoderated as flamebait.
Fair enough. But why does JD Sallen get to speak for all Christians? What if the Catholic Church, which has been using "Corinthians" much longer than JD Sallen, wanted to take it away from Sallen?
Bzzt, thank you for playing. Neither one of those is a copyright violation.
The multi-page summary is not a copy of anything Rosen wrote; it is in Katz's own words. Thus, it is not a copyright violation.
Perhaps you are confused because you know that a copyright owner has the right to control publication of "derivative works". But such "derivative works" are legally more narrowly defined than just a book summary. For example, an adaption of a book to a stage play, or a work of fiction using characters taken from another copyrighted work of fiction constitute derivative works. A summary of the book does not.
If you use the character of Harry Potter in a movie without permission, that's copyright violation.
If you use the ideas in the Harry Potter books in a movie, that's not a copyright violation.
Pretending you know something about copyright when you obviously don't is technically stupidity.
Only the same "oxymoronic nonsense" espoused by the founders. The danger is discussed in Federalist Paper #51.
Isn't that, quite literally, democracy?
Yes, exactly. Democracy in its purest, awfulest form. The democracy which can execute a person for absolutely no reason at all as long as a majority says so. Fortunately, we do not live in a pure democracy, but rather a democracy tempered by the guarantee of certain rights. Even if the majority wants to revoke those rights.
If the majority can abridge people's freedom of speech whenever they desire, as you seem to believe, what is the point of having a First Amendment at all? Speech of the minority, you seem to believe, is not protected, but speech of the majority needs no protection.
You're welcome to try to repeal the First Amendment. Until then, freedom of speech trumps the tyranny of the majority.
Likewise, just because minors do not have the full constitutional rights of adults, that does not mean they have no constitutional rights at all. One of the classic cases upholding First Amendment rights of minors is Tinker v. Des Moines.
I'm not saying the Indianapolis ordinance in question is necessarily unconstitutional. The rights of minors is a very murky area of the law. I'm just saying that the /.ers who are saying "clearly this is constitutional, minors have no rights at all" are just as mistaken as those who are saying "clearly this is unconstitutional, it violates the First Amendment."
Here's some websites I found which discuss the issue:
Still, it seems that the courts are currently applying First Amendment rights as if the Fourteenth Amendment also prohibited state and local governments from encroaching upon those rights. State and local ordinances are often struck down on the grounds that they violate citizens' First Amendment rights. One of the seminal cases seems to be Gitlow v. New York, in which Justice Sanford, delivering the opinion of the court, writes "[W]e may and do assume that freedom of speech and of the press... are among the personal rights and 'liberties' protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the States." Granted, as the analyses above mention, prior to Gitlow the courts did not necessarily see the Fourteenth Amendment as extending First Amendment prohibitions to State governments, since then the Fourteenth Amendment has, for the most part, been interpreted that way.
For a recent example, see City of Erie, et al., v. Pap's A.M.. The question at hand in this case was whether an ordinance enacted by the city of Erie, Pennsylvania, violated the First Amendment. While the eventual decision was that the ordinance was constitutional, both sides seem to implicitly accept that the First Amendment (via the Fourteenth Amendment) applies to laws passed by the city of Erie.
In other words, what I'm trying to say is, if you're asking whether this interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment can be defended purely from the text of the amendment and philosophy alone, I don't know. But it is certainly the way the Fourteenth Amendment has been interpreted in practice for the past several decades.
Quite right. It's the fourteenth amendment which has been held to extend that prohibition to state and local governments.
Um, is this a troll? The 14th amendment extends the prohibitions on Congress to state and local governments.
While it's true that minors may have fewer rights than adults, that does not mean that they have no rights at all. The Constitution does not protect minors in the same way that it protects adults, but it does still protect them to some extent. (How much is a very murky area of the law.)
Which is completely different from the public domain issue. In copyright and patent law, IP passes into the public domain after a certain period of time, regardless of how strongly it has been protected by the company which owns the IP. A trademark may stay trademarked indefinitely.
Ebola virus is quite deadly, but kills in a matter of a few days. It may wipe out an entire village, but doesn't spread beyond that because it killed all its hosts too quickly.
HIV is also quite deadly, but it takes 10 or more years to kill. Despite the fact that it's relatively hard to transmit (compared to most other viruses), there's tens of millions of people infected with HIV. It has plenty of time to spread itself to other hosts.
There really needs to be a "-1 Misinformative" moderation option.
Downmoderate me as redundant, but I'll keep posting it until people learn.
See http://www.nolo.com/encycloped ia/faqs/pct/pct31.html
and http://www.nolo.com/encycloped ia/faqs/pct/pct11.html.
See http://www.nolo.com/encycloped ia/faqs/pct/pct31.html
and http://www.nolo.com/encycloped ia/faqs/pct/pct11.html.
I don't care if you downmoderate me as redundant, I'm going to keep saying it as long as people keep making the mistake.
OK, let's all say this together now,
"Copyright != trademark != patent != copyright"
See, that wasn't so hard now, was it?
It's amazing how many uninformed /.ers assume copyright == patent == trademark in any IP dicsussion.
Some people argue that voting for a minor-party or independent candidate is a "wasted vote". This is true only if you cannot see any further ahead than the next term of office. If you plan on dying in the next two years and don't care what happens to the country after you die, then--and only then--would a vote for a third-party candidate be a wasted vote.
A vote for a third-party candidate sends the message that the usual Democrat-Republican oligarchy is unacceptable. It may encourage one of the major parties to move in the direction of the voted-for party in order to regain the lost voters. It is also an encouragement to those who are working against both Republicans and Democrats to keep up the fight, letting them know that their words are not falling on deaf ears.
Refuse to accept the lesser of two evils, when there are three or more choices.
Yep. There's a small number of very good jokes/comedy routines/etc. where you see the punchline coming a mile away, and yet it's still funny when you get to the punchline. This is one of those.
3M claims that Fluorinert is nonflammable. I didn't find any info about its chemical composition, but others have speculated here that it's a fluorocarbon or mixture of fluorocarbons, and if that's correct than it is nonflammable.
But scott@b is probably right about LN2 directly on the motherboard not being that good of a coolant. Due to the gaseous layer he describes, you can hold LN2 in your hand without any damage. (Something that's not recommended for any length of time with dry ice, despite the fact that the temperature of dry ice is much higher than that of LN2.)